Sexagesima

Luke 8:4-15 - Sexagesima Sunday - January 31, 2016         
The Sower and the Seed

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This morning, our appointed Scripture lessons for Sexagesima Sunday invite us to consider the power of words.  Words have immense power.  We know this as a matter of Christian conviction for at least three reasons: First, because we know that by speaking his word almighty God created heaven and earth.  Second, because we know that the divine Word became human flesh and dwelt among us in order to atone for all human sin on the cross.  And third, because we know that whoever abides in the words of Jesus has life abiding in him, and that it is through his holy word that the Holy Spirit persuades us of God’s love for us in Christ and makes us temples of the triune God.  Words have immense power.  To deny this is to deny the power of God and naturally also the Christian faith.  But we affirm that words are immensely powerful as a matter of Christian conviction.  That is why we are gathered this morning to hear God’s word. 

Quinquagesima

Luke 18:31-46 - Quinquagesima - February 15, 2015         
Hide & Seek

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“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”  These words of St. Paul, which we heard in our Epistle lesson, have a very simple meaning.  He’s saying that just as one grows up from being a child who knows very little about the world to becoming an adult who knows much more, so also our understanding of God’s love in Christ in this earthly life is but a shadow of what we will know when we are glorified in heaven.  In other words, just as grownups know more than children, so also, Christians in heaven who live by sight know more than Christians on earth who live by faith and hope.  Paul’s analogy is a simple one.  When adulthood comes, childhood passes away.  So also, “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.”  Now our knowledge of God’s love is partial.  In heaven it will be perfect.  Faith and hope will cease and give way to sight.  But love, which we know even now, will endure forever. 

Consider what we sing in the hymn:

Now I may know
Both joy and woe,
Someday I shall see clearly
That He hath loved me dearly.

Sexagesima

Isaiah 55 - Sexagesima Sunday - February 23, 2014           
What It Pleases God to Accomplish

“Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God.” This is Luke 8:1, which is just a couple verses before our Gospel lesson begins. What a wonderful thing to consider: Jesus going all over the place – not to select cities and villages that have somehow earned the honor of his visit, but to every city and every village around. This is because what Jesus had to give was not just for some; it was for everyone — just as the sky opens up and pours rain and snow on the earth with no concern as to where it lands.

Septuagesima

Matthew 20:1-16 - Septuagesima - February 16, 2014
The First Shall Be Last

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.  Ephesians 2:8-10

The fact that we are saved by grace through faith is not of ourselves.  It is not our work; it is God’s.  Our salvation – from God speaking his promise, to the faith that the Holy Spirit creates in our hearts through this promise – is entirely the gift of God.  He is gracious.  The good works that we accomplish as Christians are also gifts of God.  We are his workmanship.  The faith that God creates to trust in his mercy is the same faith that springs forth into action.  The faith that does not produce fruit is a false faith – one that God has not created.  The faith that has no desire to please God is the faith that does not trust God. 

Quinquagesima

Luke 18:31-43 - Quinquagesima - February 10, 2013 

Faith Knows What It Wants

I remember when I was a kid, my parents chose the music in the car and so my siblings and I had no choice but to grow up on Oldies – you know, the music from the 50s and 60s.  I remember feeling like I was cut off from current pop-culture even as a young boy, because all my friends knew the bands and groups that were popular throughout the 90s, and like my parents, I was totally out of touch.  Now I suppose I never felt too deprived.  I still think that the music from my parents’ generation is about as good as it gets.  But I remember thinking that these old songs that I had grown up on were overly obsessed with singing about love.  And I remember being kind of embarrassed about it, like maybe my friends’ music was “cooler” than that.  But I eventually learned that it wasn’t just a 1960s thing.  Even the music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the music that my friends were listening to, the music that your kids and grandkids are listening to today, is just as obsessed with the topic.  Love.  The problem is – and the more music you listen to the more you realize this: how little the world knows about love. 

Sexagesima

Luke 8:4-15 - Sexagesima - February 3, 2013 

What Do You Want to Hear?

God’s word is powerful.  The reason it is powerful is because it is God’s word.  He speaks it.  It goes forth from His mouth to accomplish what He pleases.  It isn’t powerful because of what we see it do.  No.  Rather, it has the power to save because of who says it.  It is God’s word.  God says it.  God saves.  He is almighty, and so His word accomplishes what He purposes to accomplish, and it succeeds in the thing for which He sends it … because it is His word.  And He is God.  We should listen to God’s word – not insofar as it saves us, or insofar as it otherwise appears to benefit us, but because God says it.  That settles it.

By God’s word the heavens and the earth were made.  This is the written record of Genesis 1.  As Psalm 33 attests: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.”   Think of all that stuff described by evolutionists on the Discovery Channel.  They display in such marvelous detail the amazing and beautiful wonders of creation.  And of course they give all the credit to random chance just to avoid reckoning with God … but still! — You can really learn a lot about the created world by listening to them, can’t you?  And yet, it wasn’t made by them.  Their scientific descriptions didn’t cause anything to be.  It was all made and it is all upheld still by the power of God’s almighty word alone.  I think this helps put things into perspective.  When you look at the natural world, it isn’t just God who made it; it is God who made it by speaking.  And He speaks to us.  Here; this morning.  God’s word is powerful. 

Our word, on the other hand, is not.  It is weak.  It is often false.  We say things and nothing happens.  We exaggerate things, but reality doesn’t change.  We promise things and vow to do things, and then we fail.  And so our words fail with us. 

Sexagesima

Luke 8:4-15 - Sexagesima - February 12, 2012

What God Accomplishes

The word of God is powerful.  The reason that it is so powerful is because it is the word of God — and God is powerful.  God has the power to accomplish what He wants to accomplish.  And God accomplishes things by speaking His word.  That’s how He does it.  God does not speak simply to hear His own echo, but in order to accomplish on earth His good and gracious will toward men. 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth by speaking.  When He had finished, He looked at what He had made and called it good.  God doesn’t create bad things.  He creates good things.  The purpose for which God continues to send His creative word today is a good purpose.  Through it, He accomplishes good things.  The word of God is powerful and good because God is powerful and good.  And because God is everlasting, so also the word of God shall not pass away.  

God speaks to us today in the words of Holy Scripture.  There is no other place where we can expect to hear His voice, because there’s no other place where the Almighty God promises to speak.  Only by hearing what God wants to tell us in the Bible are we able to come to saving faith in Him, because there’s no other place where God makes promises to save us.  We are saved from our sin by believing what we hear.