Text: Ephesians 6:10-20

Be Strong

            Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.  The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle which was read earlier.

            War seems to be on people’s minds today.  We’re fighting the war on terrorism.  We’re wondering if things could escalate to World War III.  We’re fighting the war on drugs.  I remember fighting this war when former first lady Nancy Reagan promoted the “Just say no to drugs” campaign back in the ‘80’s, a war we’re still fighting today.  War is something that is constantly around us.

            There’s another war not many people realize is going on, because the enemy is largely unseen.  This war is more critical than any our nation has ever fought, and the casualties are much heavier.  This time the enemy is no pushover.  Every ounce of our energy, every weapon we can bring to bear, and every defense we can raise will not be enough.  IN THIS WAR, WE NEED THE FULL ARMOR OF GOD!

            You do know which war I’m talking about now, don’t you?  You do know the enemy.  No, I’m not talking about the war against terrorism that began five years ago this past Monday, September 11, 2001, that war against a nearly invisible enemy who nevertheless seems to be operating in the shadows everywhere.  No, we’re at war against a different unseen enemy, far more dangerous: we are at war with Satan.

            In our text for today, Paul writes to the Ephesians: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.”  We are at war with none other than Satan himself, and truth be told, Satan likes the way that the war is going.  When Satan started the war back in the Garden of Eden, it was the shot heard around the cosmos because at that very moment, Satan started and ended a war with a single piece of fruit.  He rejoiced in his victory because he forever separated man from God.  As far as Satan was concerned, this was a well-fought war; however, God was ready to begin His own war to regain His creation back.

            Many people think that the Old Testament is only Law and that the New Testament is only Gospel.  However, the very first Gospel message is not found in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John; it is found in Genesis 3:15 – “And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”  Let me dissect this verse for you.

            The serpent brought death into the world.  Therefore, “your offspring” refers to all of mankind because we are all born as children of Satan because of our fallen nature.  “Her offspring” is Jesus Christ Himself, who will be the one to crush the head of Satan.  This could only happen at the expense of Christ Himself, hence the serpent striking Christ’s heel, ultimately ending in Christ’s death. 

            While the war has ultimately ended with Satan being defeated by Jesus’ death and resurrection, the battles still rages on today in all of our lives.  That is why Paul tells us to “put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”  We continue to be assaulted by Satan and his evil ways every day.  It can be very easy to surrender in our daily battle, but that is why Paul tells us why we need the full armor of God and not just bits of pieces of it.  As General Sherman said, “War is hell!”

            First, we put on the belt of truth.  Every soldier in every war needs to feel convinced that the cause for which he’s fighting is true.  Our cause is true.  We see first hand what the affects of this war have caused: it causes separation from God, all the evils in the world that we see and hear about and ultimately it all ends in death.  We stand firmly in our faith against Satan and against the world because God has opened our eyes to see him as he truly is.  Next we place on us the breastplate of righteousness.  The key to this is that it is not our righteousness.  If it were, our righteousness could never stand against Satan because our righteousness, our works, the best we can do, is as filthy rags.  We cannot rely upon ourselves; we must rely solely upon Christ.  Christ’s death upon the cross and His laying down of His life and His ultimate resurrection gives us that protection from whatever Satan can throw at us because we are no longer children of Satan but made children of God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

            Our feet are fitted “with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”  We are able to follow Jesus who came to bring peace with the saving message of the Gospel.  The shield of faith which we take up is able to “extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”  These flaming arrows are constantly around us.  They are in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds.  The shield of faith is God’s gift which apprehends salvation, effects the forgiveness of past sins, affords access to God, assures eternal life by the deposit of the Holy Spirit, rendering us holy and without blame.  Again, this is not our shield, but the shield that is given to us by God.  No shield that we bring to the battlefield can defend us.  Every flaming arrow that Satan shoots at us will penetrate the shield.   

            The helmet of salvation that we wear is salvation won for us.  In the ultimate battle of the cross and the grave, Jesus defeated the devil and broke Satan’s power.  Satan fired all his arrows and spent all his weapons; he has nothing left.  Christ has given us the victory by His death and resurrection. 

            Our armor against Satan is complete, minus one thing: a weapon, the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  Again, this is not our weapon, nothing that we bring to the war.  Even if we did bring something to fight with, it would not be able to stand up to the arsenal that Satan has.  Only the Word of God, which is Jesus Christ made flesh, could defeat Satan.  It was He would come into this world, not at our asking, but of the Father’s will.  It was Jesus Christ who lived a life without sin for all of us who are sinful.  It was Jesus Christ who died a death that no one else could die on our behalf.  It was Jesus Christ, by His resurrection from the grave that defeated Satan, not us. 

            We as Christians and blood-bought children of God need to remain strong.  We should not be strong in ourselves because if we put our strength in ourselves, we will only find weakness.  While it would be easy to be strong and to put our strength in this world, we will only find destruction and the devil.  Instead, we need only to be strong and find strength in the Lord and His power: for it is there that we are given the victory in Jesus Christ.

            Satan once ruled the world, and even today, working in the shadows, always lurking, he’s no pushover.  But he is pushed-over!  Christ has defeated Satan.  We’re still at war with Satan, fighting battles until the day that we die.  But in Christ, we are armed for victory and have ultimately won the war through Jesus Christ.  In the name of Jesus, amen.

            Now the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.

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Text: John 6:24-35

 The Bread of Life

Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
from the Gospel, which was read earlier.

Most of us
have heard the saying, “A cat has nine lives.” It’s not true. A cat has only one
life. Only human beings have, or are
meant to have, more than one life. God intends that you and I have lives, plural. God intends that we have bodily life,
characterized by breathing, thinking, and muscular activity. He gives us this life through our
parents. God also intends that we have
spiritual life as well; the life of God Himself, characterized by loving God
with everything we’ve got and loving our neighbor as ourself. This life God gives us, and nourishes,
through Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the Gospel message of salvation. In God’s design, we are to be born and then
be born again. In fact, unless the
second birth occurs, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus once told
Nicodemus.

Logically
then, designed for two kinds of life, bodily and spiritual, a human being needs
two kinds of bread, or food, bodily food and spiritual food. Today, we hear Jesus impress upon us this
truth: JESUS, THE BREAD OF LIFE, IS THE FOOD THAT ENDURES TO ETERNAL LIFE.

Today, we
may or not be overly concerned with what kind of food that we eat, just that
eat. A person on the street isn’t too
picky about eating scraps of food they find in the trash or leftover food that
a caring person gives to them. They eat
the food because that is the only food that they have at their disposal. Children, if given the choice, would probably
want to eat McDonald’s everyday over eating fruits and vegetables. What we fail to understand is that this is
food of the body; food that will ultimately pass away. What if we ate prime rib and filet mignon all
of our life? Will that sustain our souls? Of course not! But we don’t see it that way. We’d rather have the good food because for
some reason, we think that the better the food we have, the better live that we
will have. That, however is not true,
but it is sadly the way that some think. We need the bread that gives eternal spiritual life, not just the bread
that gives bodily life.

We need
daily food. This is evident from the
account of the feeding of the five thousand just prior to our text. This is evident from Israel’s need for food after they left Egypt;
God provided manna and quail to the Israelites in the wilderness. This is evident in the Fourth Petition of the
Lord’s Prayer; “Give us this day our daily bread.”

I’m a lover
of video games, ever since playing PONG for the first time. One of the video games that I’m playing now
is a game where people are stranded on a desert island. They need to build shelters, harvest food and
care for the sick. If they don’t have
enough food, it will say something like “Bob is worried about food.” In the game, Bob is worried about food for
the body, not food for the soul. We are
often like Bob, worried only about food for the body and not food for the
soul. We cannot live merely by bread
alone. Why not? Because we have another mouth to feed,
another life to sustain; our spiritual life.

When God
created the first people of the human race, He endowed them with both kinds of
life, bodily and spiritual. When Adam
and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, they immediately lost their
spiritual life, the life of God. As God
had warned them, they died that very day – and eventually they would lose their
bodily life as well. By committing
spiritual suicide, our first parents spiritually murdered the whole human race
by causing sin to enter the world. Every
person born into this world since is alive in the body, but dead in the soul. David writes in Psalm 51, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from
the time my mother conceived me.” Paul writes in Romans, “For the
wages of sin is death.” We are
sinful from the start. With that sin
brings death. Every person born into
this world is sinful, whether we want to admit it or not. Every person in this world will die, whether
we want to admit it or not. That is a
reality due to what happened in the Garden of Eden. Damnation is what we deserve, hell is where
we are destined, game over. Fortunately
for us, what Paul wrote in Romans doesn’t end there. “For
the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus
our Lord.”

Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, came into our world as a human being to give us this
spiritual life again which was once ours. He achieved this goal by dying on the cross and by rising again from the
grave. This was something that was done for us, not by us! Even though
Jesus has made available the bread of life, His very body and blood for us, we
are still dead in our transgressions and sins. Just as a corpse cannot raise itself and come to the table for a meal,
so we are unable to raise ourselves and acquire the bread of life which gives us
spiritual life.

Yet for
some reason, we think we can. Even in
our text for today, those present asked Jesus, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” The rich young ruler asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The jailer at Philippi asked Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I
do to be saved?” The answer to those
questions: nothing, we can do nothing to be saved, because salvation happens
from outside of us. Jesus tells us that “apart from me you can do nothing.” Nothing that we do or try to do will sustain
our souls. Only the bread of life, who
is Christ Jesus, can sustain us. Luther
tells us in the meaning of the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I cannot
by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ…or come to Him.”

Only Jesus
can provide the bread that gives external spiritual life. Jesus warns us in our text, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for
food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” The food of this world is just that, of this
world. It’s materialism, worldliness,
pursuit only of the bread of this life. We gather all we can in this world to make us feel good about ourselves
or to fill some void in our lives. But
what good does it do us? We can’t take
it with us when we die. And the things
that we do have, they only get replaced by bigger and better items. But in the end, they do us no good. They can’t bring about salvation, they can’t
bring about forgiveness of sins and they can’t bring about life everlasting. Only the Son of Man can give us “food that endures to eternal life.”

The bread
of life that is given to us, we eat it when we partake of the means of grace:
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Whoever
eats this bread from heaven receives the “food
that endures to eternal life.” We “will never go hungry.”

Since Jesus
is the bread of life and since He assures us that whoever eats this bread will
never go hungry, what shall we say to these things? What better response than the cry of our
text: “Sir, … from now on give us this
bread.” In the name of Jesus, amen.

Now the
peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through
faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.

**Due to a clerical error, our Gospel readings for Pentecost 11 and Pentecost 13 got switched.**

Text: John 6:51-58

The Living Bread

Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
from the Gospel which was read earlier.

If you ask
my wife, she will tell you that I like food, maybe even a little too much. While food is good, good food is even better. Give me a nice steak and I’ll call that good food. I can live off of sandwiches if I had to, but
I can live a lot better off of a good piece of steak.

In our text
for today, Jesus makes a statement that is a hard statement for the disciples
and other listeners in the Capernaum synagogue to swallow: “I am the living
bread that came down from heaven. If
anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” Their attitude toward Jesus of Nazareth had
undergone a dramatic change since only the previous evening. Just a few miles away and only a few hours
before, Christ had fed five thousand men with five small barley loaves and two
small fish. At that time He filled the
role of Messiah much to the liking of the Jews. They wanted an earthly king. They
wanted a leader who would feed them by miraculous means every day. So when Jesus withdrew from the crowds and
returned to Capernaum,
many followed Him.

Those who
sought earthly bread from an earthly king were very disappointed once they
caught up with Jesus back in Capernaum,
however. He gave them no new miracles.
He produced not a single new loaf of miracle-bread. Instead He used their curiosity to go into a
discourse on much more important matters. “I
am the bread of life,” He announced. This was a “hard teaching” for many; it still is. Yet it is a Gospel gem for those who hunger
for eternal life.

The Jews
had been trying to get another miracle out of Jesus. They had been talking about how the Lord had
once fed their forefathers with manna. Still impressed by that event in the desert many centuries earlier, they
challenged Jesus, “Can you top this?” So Jesus reminded them of something
they were overlooking: their forefathers had died. Even with a steady diet of
manna from heaven, an entire generation of their ancestors had died!

So it is
the same with us. All the food in the
world will fill our stomachs in this life, but in the end, we will still be
hungry. Only the “living bread from heaven,” Jesus Christ and His Word sustain life
for all eternity. Manna was limited to
Jewish fathers in the wilderness. It
could not give life. In fact, it could
not sustain life lastingly for the people died a temporal death. But the Bread of Life, heavenly in nature, is
for all men. It does not allow spiritual
death; in fact it gives eternal life.

The Jews
couldn’t accept it. They didn’t
understand what it was that Jesus was saying. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They
didn’t understand what was to come with His death and resurrection. They didn’t understand at all. Did they think He was urging
cannibalism? There might have been some
who found the concept of Jesus Christ as their bread of life much too hard to
swallow. They preferred the bread
of their own righteousness to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.  For
them, He was too much a flesh-and-blood person like themselves to be
their Bread of Life. 

How often do we too misunderstand? Can we grasp the concept of what it is that
Jesus Christ is offering to us? Of
course we can’t grasp what it is that He is offering us. Can we truly understand how He so willingly
sacrificed His life for us? Can we truly
understand what how when in just a few moments when we come to the Lord’s
Table, in simple bread and wine we will receive forgiveness of sins in Christ’s
body and blood?

What Jesus says is very
disconcerting to the non-Christian, but very comforting to the Christian. “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has
eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Those who do not eat and drink the
crucified Son of God can be certain of their status. Christ speaks to them directly: “You have no life in you.” He voices a
similar warning later in John: “I told
you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I
claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.” That is what is available to those outside of
Christ; death. But for those who eat
Christ’s flesh and drinks His blood, they have eternal life.

This is the
joy of every Christian; life everlasting with the Bread of Life. The food the world provides is temporal and
will only last a short time. It will
sustain our needs in this world, but the things of this world cannot and will
not sustain us in the life to come in Christ. We rely solely on the Word of God and His life-giving Sacraments to
sustain us.

For those
listening to Jesus’ words, every word He spoke sounded stranger and
stranger. Did He really mean that His
body was bread? Did He really mean that
I had to eat His flesh in order to have life? Those at the synagogue were asking these and more of these types of
questions, trying to understand what exactly it was that Jesus meant. They still saw Jesus as a man and only a
man. He was to be their Jewish King, and
He was. However, He wasn’t King of the
Jews as they thought that He would be. His kingdom wasn’t an earthly kingdom. It never was supposed to be that way. He even told them that His kingdom was not of this earth, but they
didn’t understand that either. Jesus
Christ is more than just a man. He is true
God and true man. Since He is true God
and true man, it is He alone that is able to sacrifice Himself for our
sins. It is He alone that is able to
feed us with His body and His blood to sustain our bodies, but more importantly
sustain our souls and our faith.

Jesus makes
claims that only He can make: "For my flesh is real food and my blood
is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh
and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live
because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” It
is this bread and wine that gives life! Because of this meal that we eat, we remain
in Christ; in essence, we have life in Him. We have life in Him because the Father has sent Him. The Father sent the Son to defeat sin once
and for all, to restore humanity to its original intended position: as sons and
daughters of God.

This flesh and blood of Jesus Christ
will give to all who eat it eternal life. On the last day, we will be raised to life. That is the gift that all Christians and all
believers in Christ can look forward to. That is the gift that comes only from “the bread that came down from
heaven.” The food of this world will
pass away, but the bread of life will sustain us forever. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now the peace of God which passes
all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ
Jesus. Amen.

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

                                                                                    Blessings in Christ

        Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
from the Epistle, which was read earlier.

        In our
modern age of today, letter writing has gone out the window. Now, we send an email to a person, using
Internet lingo that if you didn’t use it, you would have no idea what it was
you were reading. Our life stories are
now on our blogs for everyone to read. Most of our emails or blog entries are short, disconnected pieces that
make little or no sense to those who don’t know us. In our Epistle reading for this morning, Paul
does the complete opposite. His letter
to the church at Ephesus is concise, it has a purpose. Paul sees
life from a cosmic perspective, giving us a God’s-eye view of things. He begins by seeing the individual
Christian’s life in the light of eternity. Our present faith has an eternal cause, God’s gracious choice of us in
Christ before the foundation of the world. It leads us to an eternal goal; that we may live forever to the praise
of His glorious grace.

        Paul
clearly wants to teach the readers of this letter to look beneath the surface
of life and understand its true nature. Life’s true nature is known only to God, summed up in Christ, and revealed
to us through the apostolic Word. The
impressive depth and breathtaking vision of the letter is all the more
remarkable in view of Paul’s confinement while writing it. Only faith in the promised love of God can
soar to such heights or sound such depths.

         That is why
Paul begins our text for today with the following: “Praise be to the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with
every spiritual blessing in Christ.” These words are a hymn of
praise. They aren’t found in a generic
hymnal for anyone who believes in a “higher power” or “supreme being.” These are words that a Christian speaks. It is directed to the God who is the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus
is the only way we can approach God, trust in Him, and have life everlasting
through His death.

        For Paul,
he could not say these words of praise for the first part of his life. He was too busy crucifying Christians and
doing all he could to destroy Christianity until the fateful day on the road to
Damascus that he saw Christ and his eyes were opened to the gift of everlasting
life that Jesus Christ came to give to all of mankind. Paul, who was one of the staunchest at trying
to destroy Christianity, now became pastor or missionary to many of the
churches in the New Testament: Corinth, Rome, Galatia,
Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, and Thessalonica. How is any of this possible? How can one kill Christians and then become
one of the chief teachers of the time?

         The answer
to this is simple: “For he chose us in him before the creation
of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” Before
the world was born, God set His heart on having you as His own forever.  Not only did He determine to embrace every
human being by the redeeming death of His Son, He also selected you personally
and individually in Christ before time began.  He chose you, not because you were holy and blameless, but that you might be holy and blameless
before Him.  The entire world can condemn
you, the devil may accuse you, and your own conscience convict you, but God has
determined that in Christ you are holy and blameless before Him.

        All of this
was done out of love by God for us in Christ Jesus. He chose us not out of a requirement or by
law, but we were chosen purely of His grace. He chose us “before the creation
of the world.” Even before the world
began, God chose us to be “holy and
blameless in his sight.” But ask
yourself why. Why did God do what He
did? If God knew that there was going to
be the Adolf Hitler’s and the Saddam Hussein’s and Osama Bin Laden’s of the
world, then why did He choose us to be His children? The answer is simple: it is because of the
love that He has for His creation. God
is the Father and we are His children. Ask any parent what they would give to their children and they would
probably answer that they would give them the world. If something bad happened to them, they would
do anything to save them. That is
exactly what God did for us.

        From the
moment that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
mankind became eternally separated from God. The only way to bring mankind back to God was through a Sacrifice like
no other. All throughout the Old
Testament, the chief priest would offer sacrifices to God on behalf of the
people. Once a year, the chief priest
would enter the temple and go to the Holy of Holies. These sacrifices failed in comparison to the
Sacrifice that would occur through the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ.

        Being a
child of God brings with it several benefits that we can barely grasp what it
means. First, “we have redemption through
his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Stop and ask yourself if you
truly understand that we have redemption through the blood of a Lamb that was
sacrificed for us. When we were at the
Higher Things conference, one of the in-depth sectionals we attended was The
Hitchhikers Guide to the Liturgy. There,
the pastor presenting went through all the various parts of the liturgy. When he got to the Agnus Dei, “Lamb of God
you take away the sin of the world…,” he showed a picture of a lamb who had
its legs tied, pierced in the side, with blood flowing. This visual, while a bit disturbing, shows a
very moving picture of what it was like for Christ to give up His life and the
great cost it was for us to have redemption.

        In the final part of our text, Paul
says quite a bit about what it is that we have received. “In him we were also chosen, having been
predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity
with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in
Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.  And you also were included in Christ when you
heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you
were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit
guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s
possession—to the praise of his glory.”

         In these final verses, Paul talks
about “we” and “you.” “We” refers
to Paul and his fellow countrymen, the Jews. “You” refers to the people of the Gentile nations, among whom Paul
preached and for whom he had been appointed an apostle. The basic thrust of the passage is to tell us
that God decided from eternity to unite Jew and Gentile believers in Christ, to
form one people who would be His “treasured possession.” Paul shows yet again that there is no
difference between Jew and Gentile, for all are saved through Christ.

         We have been chosen by God to
receive forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Note what Paul says. All this happens “according to the plan of
him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” Paul doesn’t say that it is due to what we
do. The plans of men fail, and
all our personal visions of the future fade, but God’s resolution concerning us
cannot fail. Through faith created in us
by the Holy Spirit, we have heard the saving message of the Gospel. Through faith, “you were marked in him with a
seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance
until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his
glory.” By means of the same gospel He will
preserve us in faith until we reach our glorious goal; heaven. To assure us
that the inheritance of heaven will be truly ours, He sealed us with the gift
of the Holy Spirit. Just as a seal
serves to mark out an object as belonging to an individual, so the Holy Spirit
is God’s “seal of ownership on us.”

         We have
been chosen to be the Father’s child. We
have been set free by the blood of Christ. We have been sealed by the promise of the Holy Spirit. These are the blessings that we have in
Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

        Now the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith until life everlasting.  Amen.

Text: 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

The Great Exchange

        Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
from the Epistle which was read earlier.

        It’s
hard being a pastor. We get up each
Sunday, stand before our congregations and we preach about sin. We preach about the sin that first came
through Adam and Eve, we preach about the sin that we have, we preach about the
sin that Jesus doesn’t have. In our
ministry, people don’t like to hear about sin. If a couple comes for marriage counseling and we ask if they are living
together, the answer has a strong possibility of being yes. When we tell them that living together before
or without marriage is a sin, we become the bad guy. Who are we to judge them? What right do we have to judge their
behavior?

        When
people are unhappy about not being able to take communion because they are not
a Lutheran, we tell them that we are not a “members only” club, that we are
following the words of Scripture. We do
not commune them for their benefit, not because you have to be a card-carrying
member of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.

        At
times, we pastors are seen as Public Enemy #1. So why do we continue to
be pastors? Wouldn’t it be easier for us to just quit, find a different
job where
everyone likes us and we’re happy? What
keeps us in the Office of Holy Ministry and in the pulpit week after
week? The love of Christ compels us. The love Christ has for those for
whom He
died and rose again is the force that motivates us.  And the love of
Christ
doesn’t compel just us pastors. It
compels all Christians. Every human
being is one for whom Christ died. By
that substitutionary death all persons, their sin, and their sinful
nature are
dead. People who are redeemed by Christ
are not to continue in sin or factional infighting, but to live for Him
who
died and rose again for them. Martin
Luther wrote that “sin is forgiven not so that we may continue in it
but that
we might break loose from it; otherwise it would be called a permission
and not
a remission of sin.” It is, therefore,
to further the aims of the loving Savior and to prepare His people to
love and
serve Him in return that Paul preaches.  It is for that reason why we
pastors continue
to preach.

        The
message that Paul gave to the Corinthians is the same message that pastors give
today: Christ died for all people, and because of His death and resurrection,
we live for the One who died for us, Jesus Christ. I’ve said this before and I will say it
again. Christ just didn’t die for the
rich and aristocrats, or for the poor and the lame. He died for all people, regardless of who
they are. Jesus, unlike sinners, doesn’t
play favorites. He treats all of us
equally: all as sinners.

        Through
Jesus Christ, we have died to sin and been made alive in righteousness. Our old self was crucified with Christ and
died there as surely as He died there. From the throes of death rises a new man fully redeemed and cleansed in
baptism to the glory of Christ our Lord.

        “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a
new creation: the old one has gone and the new has come!” Our sinful self, though it is still very much
a part of us, is no longer seen by God. When God looks at us, He sees us wrapped in the holiness and sinlessness
of Jesus Christ. We have been made holy
by the blood of the Lamb who died on Calvary’s
mountain. While it is hard to understand
that we can be “simul justus et peccator,”
at the same time sinner and saint, that is exactly what we are. When we were brought into the family of God
by our baptism, we became saints, even though we are very much a sinner. Our old sinful self is now gone and replaced
with the newness of Christ’s righteousness.

        The
key to all of this is to remember that it is not anything that we did. Paul makes this point yet again in our text,
as he does in several of his letters to the various churches: “All
this is from God.” Paul doesn’t say that this is from us. He doesn’t say it is from what we or someone
else did. God has reconciled us
to Himself through Christ by forgiving us all our sins, by counting them
against Christ instead of against us. In
Christ, God does not impute sin to us. Indeed,
the whole world is the named beneficiary of this reconciliation. God now considers all people to be different from what they were. Formerly, by
birth and nature, they were His enemies to be cast into eternal punishment. Now
their status is changed to make them holy and blameless in His sight. This is the saving grace of God’s love for
His people.

        Jesus,
the Word made flesh, is our substitute. He is the second Adam, undoing what the first Adam did by his
disobedience. He will take our place
before His Father and buy back all of humanity. Through His unlimited atonement, the whole world is reconciled to God.

        Jesus
lived our life perfectly. He became
fully man so that He would qualify as our substitute. Righteousness is
what He brings to God. But instead of righteousness to guarantee
God’s approval, He trades it all away to us for our sin. Jesus’
righteousness becomes ours by faith,
and our sin becomes His.

        As
I said, this isn’t easy for us to understand. But that’s the good part
of all of this: we don’t have to understand
God’s forgiveness to receive God’s forgiveness. You don’t have to
believe in the forgiveness of sins to receive it. Christ died for all people, even those
who choose not to accept it.

        Being
in Christ, being a new creation, is quite a gift in and of itself. But Paul tells us what it is that we are to
be: “be reconciled to God.” Those who receive the reconciliation as their
own, who give up trying to reach God by their own good works and take
forgiveness and life as the gift it is, they are the ones who are finally and
effectively reconciled to God. All
others, rejecting Christ, reject this reconciliation. These are those who choose to be reconciled
to self, seeking their own vices in a vain effort to bring about salvation of
some sorts. Everyone knows that Jesus
died for all, so it doesn’t really matter what it is I believe or what it is
that I do. I still have my golden ticket
to heaven. That is exactly what Satan wants
us to think and believe. But Scripture
says otherwise. “God made him who had no sin
to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

        Paul,
in simple and forceful terms, gives the gist of the “message of the reconciliation.”  Jesus had no sin, being born without it.  Yet God made Him to be sin, so covered Him
with the sins of the world that Christ became, as it were, sin personified.
When God regarded Him, He was affronted by all that sinful nature had become
and wrought, the sorry history of humankind, all its wickedness, and the ruin
of its goodness. But it was there, in
Christ, that we are made the righteousness of God.  Our sins are stripped from us, and the holiness
of Christ becomes ours.

        This
“message of reconciliation” that Paul
speaks of is our ministry, all of ours responsibility. Our Lord’s great exchange, His power of
reconciliation has been given to us as our ministry of reconciliation that we
are to share with others. We are ambassadors,
making known the wonders of God who desires mercy and grace toward His
creation. Just as we are no longer to
see ourselves in light of our old self, so we are no longer to see others in
the same way either, because God no longer sees us in that light. The gift that God has given to us He has
given to the whole world, the gift of forgiveness and the righteousness of
God. Amen.

        Now
the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.

Text: 2 Corinthinans 4:5-12

        Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes
from the Epistle which was read earlier.

        Have
you ever thought about what all it means to be a pastor, one who defends the
ministry of the Gospel? It’s a very easy
job because we only work one day a week. The other six days are just vacation I guess. But for that one day a week that we do work,
it takes a great deal of preparation. Sermons do not write themselves. Just
about anyone could sit down and write a sermon, but it takes great effort to
write a sermon where the Gospel is properly preached and Law and Gospel are
rightly divided. 

        When
a pastor preaches, it has nothing to do with him personally. It is the Holy Spirit, working through a
pastor who preaches. If we ourselves do
the preaching, we can preach about whatever we want to preach, however we want
to preach. But that isn’t what Paul
says. Paul says that we preach “Jesus Christ as Lord.”

        In
today’s text, Paul doesn’t focus on who is doing the preaching, but who it is
that is being preached about: Jesus Christ. Paul explains here why he is proclaiming Jesus and not himself, why he
is their slave and not seeking to be their master. It is because Paul had nothing to do with
creating this salvation. God the
Creator, who made light out of nothing, in the midst of blackest darkness, did
it. He proved His lordship even in our
conversion. He placed His light in the
heart of a man who once lived in darkness. The ministry of the Gospel is based on a justification and a conversion
which are entirely the decision and work of God. Paul has nothing to say about a contribution
on his part. God did it all. This is why he preaches only Christ.

        However,
that isn’t how it always is. Unfortunately, not every sermon a person will hear in their life will
focus on Jesus Christ and what it is that He did for us. We might hear a sermon that focuses on what
it is that we did to earn our salvation. We might hear a sermon that minimizes the salvific work of Jesus
Christ. God’s will is that people see
His glory and be saved, His glory is seen nowhere more clearly than in Jesus,
His person and His work. With faith the
light, the Holy Spirit gave Paul a drive to reveal Christ, God’s embodied
glory.

        For
Paul, there was darkness inside of him. He recognized that, as we should recognize the darkness inside all of
us, as well. That darkness is sin and it
is inside all of us, regardless of how much we try to deny it. Paul wrote to the Romans that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of
God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sin is much a part of us. It became a part of us when Adam and Eve ate
from the tree and it will be a part of us until the day we die, and we will die
because of death.

        If
God wanted to, He could have left us in the state of sin and death but chose to
send us hope. That hope was in the form
of His Son, Jesus Christ. Instead of
death, Paul writes that “we have
this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from
God and not from us.” This light of God is a great treasure
and an all-surpassing power. It changes
people, as it changed Paul. It causes
them to preach Christ, too. It leads
others to ask them for the reason for the hope that lives in them. This treasure that we have is the knowledge
of God; it is the Gospel. But human
beings would not naturally assume this was from God.

        Every
Christian is a saint and a sinner. The sinner in all Christians will always try
to take some credit for what God has done. And people listening to a preacher may try to give humanity the credit
for what they hear: “It was his education, his family background, his
parents. The people he preaches to must
be wonderful people.” God made sure
that anyone looking at Paul would not be inclined to give mankind the credit for
Paul’s faith and accomplishments. God
did that by using such a fragile, homely, clay jar as Paul.

        In
Paul’s day, people often hid their precious valuables in the cheap pots used
for mundane household chores. A
wastebasket, a garbage bag, or a throwaway cup might come closer in translating
into our idioms the scandal Paul has in mind. We tend to do that today also. We
hide a spare key in a fake rock in our garden if we get locked out. People hide money under their mattress or in
a book that has the pages cut out of it so it becomes a hidden compartment for
valuables.

        Our
treasure was also hidden in a jar of clay; the treasure of Jesus Christ. He came in the form of a man to bring
salvation and the forgiveness of sins for all of mankind. People took one look at this “jar of clay”
and dismissed it. They didn’t want to
listen to what Jesus had to say. They
looked at the miracles that He performed and dismissed those, calling it
trickery and the like. When they looked
at Jesus, all they saw was a man and nothing else, until His crucifixion. There they made the poignant statement: “Surely he was the Son of God!” It was in that statement that they saw the
treasure hidden in the jar of clay.

        We
are all called, in some manner, to preach the Gospel. At times, it can be rather easy, while other
times it can be quite trying. For Paul,
he experienced times of both, but more often than not, it was trying times that
Paul was preaching the Gospel: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not
crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck
down, but not destroyed.” Here, he was talking more about himself than
anyone else. He was plagued by
Satan, sinful people, a sin-riddled world, and his own sinful self with its
doubts and anxieties. Other things made
life difficult for him. But he never
became hopelessly pessimistic. The light
of the Gospel kept that from happening.

        The
same thing happens to us as well. We are
plagued by Satan, by sinful people, a sin-riddled world, and our sinful self
with its doubts and anxieties. But that
is not a cause for us to give up the fight of preaching the Gospel, the good
news of Jesus Christ. Paul used the
adversities in his life to push him all the more to preach the Gospel. When Paul visited the churches at Rome, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi,Colossae, he saw and heard things that were
devastating blows to the Gospel. Instead
of giving up, he fought all the harder to right the wrongs going on in the
churches at those places.

        We,
too, should never give up on the Gospel, for the prophet Isaiah records that “my word that goes out from my mouth: It
will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the
purpose for which I sent it.” God’s
Word does what it says it will, where it wills. We may not see the immediate response to that, but we know that it will
happen.

        For
us, we always have the great treasure in our jars of clay. “We always carry around in our body the death
of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given
over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal
body.” We are always a living remembrance of Jesus
Christ. People should be able to see
Jesus Christ in us. His love should
always be reflected in us.

        God proclaims His
Gospel through us jars of clay as He makes His light shine in darkness, Jesus
Christ taking our sin upon Himself and gives to us His righteousness. God proclaims His Gospel as He delivers power
in clay pots, using broken vessels to proclaim the saving message of Jesus Christ
and brings life from death, so that we all may have everlasting life. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

        Now the peace of God
which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith until
life everlasting. Amen.

Text: 1 John 4:13-21

            Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
from the Epistle which was read earlier.

            One
of the things that have Christians discussing is the Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic
text. Gnosticism’s basic tenet was that
the spiritual is good while the physical is bad. Some Gnostics concluded that
as long as you sang the “Hallelujahs” and “Amens” on your spiritual side on
Sunday morning, it didn’t matter what you did with your body on Saturday night
or in your life during the rest of the week. One of John’s emphases in this letter is to stress that God has redeemed
us body and soul. If God’s love has
sanctified our hearts, that love will radiate into our lives as well. If He has graciously led us to faith and a
change of heart, our outward lives will also be changed, and good works will
naturally follow and showcase that love. This shoots a hole through the Gnostics way of thought and brings us to
the key concept of our text: love.

           The
word “love” is used fourteen times in our text. It is also used thirteen times in the
previous six verses and five times in the following three verses. In English, unfortunately, we are stuck with
one word which covers three distinctly different Greek words: ἀγάπη, φιλία, and ἔρως. The
word used exclusively in our text is ἀγάπη. This
is divine love. This is self-sacrificing
love. This is love which compels me to
do what is best for you, even though it is inconvenient or painful for me.

            This
love from God the Father is not a love that is contingent on what you do in
return. This is true love, given freely
from God to everyone. “For God so loved the world that he gave his
one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have
eternal life.” Notice that John
doesn’t say that God loved the important people. He doesn’t say that God loved the poor
people. He doesn’t say that God loved
the people of the US.  John says that God loved the world, every
person in the world, regardless of race, age, class, geographic location. God loves the world because we are created in
His image and likeness.

            While
the love of God is given to all who believe, John writes, “If anyone
acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.” The
NIV uses the word “acknowledges” but the word that is found in the Greek is
“confession.” Each week, we make our
confession of faith each week in the words of the creeds of the Church. We make our own confession; we acknowledge
that Jesus is the Son of God. Acknowledgement is one of the outward signs that God’s love is alive and
well in the heart of the Christian.
            
            We know the love God
has for us. “We have known and still
know; we have believed and still believe.” We saw the love of God at the incarnation and birth of Christ in the
manger. We saw the love of God in
Christ’s teaching and we saw the love of God on the cross and in the
resurrection. All of this John says a
few verses before our text: “Whoever
does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He
sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”

            This
concept of remaining in each other could be compared to an electrical
circuit. As long as we are plugged into
the Source of love and power, we have love and power. We’re like wires. Wires are cold, dead, lifeless objects. By themselves, they won’t run your microwave
or heat the oven or light the lamp. But
when you hook a wire up to a power source, it becomes alive. It glows. It gives warmth. You can run your
appliances off it because it has the power and energy of the source flowing
through it. It is a modern version of
the Vine and the branches. We are
connected to God by His love for us, through His Son, Jesus Christ.
            
            For
a summary of our text, one need only look at verse 19: “We love because he
first loved us.” It specifies the love which has been
spoken of. It is the overriding love
which comes from the Source, God’s self-sacrificing love for us. It is not our piety, our love, our
dedication, or our commitment. It is
about Jesus and His love, His dedication, and His commitment to us. We know from all of Scripture that love for
God must be with the total heart, soul, and mind. We know too that this love must exceed the
love for relatives and spouse. Therefore,
it has been observed that love for God is essentially faith and trust in His
Word.
            
            Faith
and trust in His Word comes from hearing the Word of God preached and by receiving
the Lord’s body and blood. There we see
love extended to its fullest: by His sacrificial death and life-giving
Sacrament.
            
            The
love of God defeats fear. “There is
no fear in love. But perfect love drives
out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.” We do fear when we begin
to trust in ourselves. But help is only
and always solely in God Himself.  That’s
the point of verse 19. We have no fear
because fear has to do with punishment. Punishment
has already been dealt with through Jesus Christ. He took on death that was meant for us upon
Himself. Death has been destroyed
because of the love of God; love that sent His Son to death so that we might
have life.
            
            Though
Christ has defeated death for us, there is still a death for us. One chapter earlier, John talks about loving
and hating our brother. “We know that we have passed from death to
life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer,
and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” This again he addresses at the end of our
text. “If anyone says, “I love God,”
yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For
anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom
he has not seen. And he has given us
this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
            
            This
is powerful language! A person
who says he can love God and simultaneously hate his brother is worshiping his
own fictitious god. The energy of God’s
love, which is constantly flowing through us directly from the Source, will
bear positive fruit whenever it touches another person. If our brother comes into contact with us and
feels no warmth or light, he knows that something is dead somewhere along the
line. We have never seen the Source with
our own eyes, but we can see the objects of the Source’s love, our
fellowman. If His love flows out to
them, and our love is His love, then we must love too. It is a command from Him. The love for God and love for brother are
inseparable. They stand or fall
together.
            
            This
comes from what Jesus says in Matthew regarding the greatest commandment: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” The one commandment cannot be without the other, for the Law of God is a
unit, His will is only one. To
transgress the precept regarding brotherly love is to transgress the
commandment to love God.
            
            God
sent His Son in the flesh because He loves, because He wants us to remain in
Him until the Day of Judgment, where all believers will be united with Christ
for eternity. The love of God casts out
our fears because death has been defeated and we are made alive. Finally, we are left with the love of God
which has touched us so that our love touches others. What is this love? It is the love of God the Father, who sent
His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, to redeem a lost and condemned people
and to make them His beloved children. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
            
            Now
the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.