Reformation Sunday

Matthew 11:12-19 - Reformation - October 28, 2012
Preaching the Kingdom

A mighty fortress is our God, a trusty shield and weapon.  Those who trust in Him will not be disappointed.  God cannot suffer violence, after all, and so nothing can happen to God that could possibly render Him unable to keep His promises. 

We find God, that is, we flee to God, not by figuring out where He’s hiding, but by knowing where He comes to us – where He reveals Himself as our mighty defender.  God comes to us in His word and sacraments. And so we flee to Him by fleeing to these.  This means that when trouble comes, when sickness strikes and cancer spreads, when children worry us and cause heartache, and when money runs out – whatever it is – we flee to God precisely by fleeing to the forgiveness of sins.  It may not seem like the answer at the time, but that’s because we’re sinners.  And so, like the paralytic lying stuck on his back, it is the answer we need from Jesus: “Child, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven.”  And that’s what we need: good cheer, boldness and confidence toward God.  When we know the God who forgives us our sins, then we know the God who concerns Himself with all our earthly problems as well. 

No other god cares about the troubles of your life, because no other god deals squarely with the source of all your trouble.  Only this God cares: who takes your sin and death upon Himself and who faces divine justice as your Substitute.  All other images or thoughts of God that seem to make Him more relevant to our daily needs are nothing more than idols.  When we consider and think about the God in whom we trust – the God who loves and listens – the God who helps us cope and who is there for us – we need always to have in mind the God who comes to sinners in mercy for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.  He is our God.  There is none beside Him.  He is our mighty fortress. 

And He rules us.  He rules us by forgiving us our sins. His kingdom is not a faraway fortress like some distant political system issuing rules and policies.  No, it is the present and active reign of God here in our midst. “He’s by our side upon the plain with His good gifts and Spirit.”  We find God with us, defending us from the devil and from the weakness of our own flesh, only there where He is fighting by our side and giving us the victory.  The good gifts with which Jesus fights for us today are His Gospel and Sacraments.  Through these He gives us His Holy Spirit so that we by grace believe His holy word.  This is the reign of God with us.  This is the kingdom of heaven. 

“And from the days of John the Baptist until now,” Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” 

The devil hates God.  He was God’s evil foe before he was our evil foe.  But since God cannot suffer violence, the devil attacks God by attacking the object of God’s love, His Church.  And the devil attacks the Church by attacking the word of God by which the Church is created, and upon which she is built.  John the Baptist preached this word.  That’s why Jesus says that since he began, the kingdom has been suffering violence.  

But it didn’t begin with John.  “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.”  This refers to Scripture.  John added nothing to Scripture.  He fulfilled his prophetic office simply by being faithful to Scripture.  All of Scripture points to Christ.  And so that’s who John pointed to as well – with his own finger in fact – “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”   Every faithful preacher of the word points to Christ, and preaches what John preached.  And it is precisely by doing this that the kingdom of heaven incites such a violent reaction today.   We consider this today on Reformation Sunday.  We still remember and thank God for Martin Luther not because he was innovative or revolutionary.  No, but because, like John the Baptist, he was faithful to the written text of holy writ.  He preached the Bible.

Since the person and work of Jesus Christ is the central message of all Scripture, this means that the biblical doctrine of justification is the chief article of the Christian faith.  It teaches that sinners are justified – that is, forgiven and declared righteous before God – not by any works they’ve done, but by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  There is nothing the devil hates more than when this Gospel is preached in its truth and purity.  And so when it is, the devil rages. 

The devil rages by telling lies.  He seeks to destroy your faith by denying God’s word.  The violence that the devil wreaks always amounts to some sort of objection to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.  It is unbelief.  It is doubt.  It is selfishness.  It is the presumption that one can remain faithful to God without faithfully hearing His word.  It is the refusal to repent of sin.  It is the desire to sanctify sin. It is finding one’s confidence toward God in one’s own goodness or at least in one’s own not-so-badness. This is where all violence against the kingdom begins.  Right there in our own hearts. 

The reason the response to the Gospel is so violent is because the Gospel is, in a manner of speaking, violent itself.  It is violent in that it makes an uncompromising claim on all who hear it.   It tells sinners who seek God’s favor to discard their own righteousness as rubbish and to be clothed instead by the obedience of another.  

The Gospel is a violent claim because it is met with violence.  Sinners by nature violently hold onto their own righteousness.  Sinners trust in the law.  They claim the righteousness that the law demands and snatch it up and take it by force.  But they can’t have it.  And that is why we must be prepared to receive the Gospel first by being taught that the law does not make us righteous, but condemns us as sinners.  We need to own up to our guilt before God and repent.  This is what John preached.  He spoke the law to those under the law in order that every mouth may be stopped, and so that all the world might become guilty before God.  John taught that by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in God’s sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 

John preached what he preached because God told him to.  “And if you are willing to accept it,” Jesus said of him, “he is Elijah who is to come.”  Through the prophet Malachi, God had promised to send one who would prepare His way before Him.  He calls him Elijah.  This is what Jesus is referring to.  Of course, John was not a reincarnation of Elijah the prophet.  That’s ridiculous.  No, John is called Elijah because he was to do what Elijah did.  And so, if I may, I’d like briefly to compare Elijah the prophet to John the Baptist in just a couple of details.  

Elijah preached.  He was a prophet; he spoke before kings, and was not ashamed.  King Ahab had done more to displease the Lord than all his fathers before him.  He married a wicked woman, Jezebel, for whom he built altars to the false god Baal, whose false prophets persecuted the true prophets.  Elijah was called to tell Israel to repent.  The first words that we have recorded from his mouth are these words of judgment, which he spoke to King Ahab.  “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.”  

God stopped the rain.  God punished Israel for her unfaithfulness.  Elijah was just the messenger.  But what did Ahab care?  He called him “the troubler of Israel” for saying what God said.  It’s interesting, though, that, although God’s punishment riled up His enemies for sure, it was not until Elijah actually spoke the word that he said he would – the good word that all Israel would have been wise to wait for, the word by which God would once again open heaven and replenish the land with water – it was not until this word was spoken that Elijah’s real persecution began.  Elijah silenced and destroyed the prophets of Baal.  Only then did God end the drought.  Elijah spoke the word.  The rain came.  Jezebel raged.

So it was for John the Baptist.  The first words out of his mouth were: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”  And John spoke boldly before one king: calling on Herod to repent for having taken his own brother’s wife.  John called sin sin, and he suffered violence for it.  That wicked Jezebel of a woman that Herod married got John’s head on a platter.  Oh, the devil was riled for sure.  You can’t go and preach repentance, after all, without expecting to be persecuted for it.  People don’t want to hear that they are poor, miserable sinners.  They want to be uplifted.  And they want their preachers to play along like children calling to one another in the market place.  Sing, dance. Enough of this repentance talk. 

It isn’t that big of a wonder that Ahab was angry with Elijah, and that Herod was angry with John.  You bring up sin in a conversation anywhere, and you are a wet blanket to say the very least.  Repentance is not a popular theme.  There’s plenty of persecution that follows such a message. 

But try bringing up Jesus.  No, not the Jesus who is crafted in that same children’s market place, where He is re-designed to promote all the fads of the religious market today.  No, not that Jesus.  Not the Jesus who laments when we mourn, just to follow suit and affirm sinners in their every fleeting felt need.  Not the Jesus who empathizes, but who cannot actually save us from real pain and real sorrow and real trouble, because he doesn’t even dare to talk about real sin.  No.  Try bringing up the Jesus who propitiates the Father’s wrath against sinners by shedding His blood.  That Jesus.  Try speaking of the Jesus who takes the world’s sin upon Himself as the Lamb of God – the Jesus who reveals the righteousness of God – just as the prophets and law who prophesied until John bore witness.  Try speaking of that Jesus who fulfills and dispenses the righteousness that is received by faith in Him alone.  Only His righteousness will do.  Try speaking of the kingdom of heaven that John said would come.  Then real persecution is sure to follow.  Then Ahab, Jezebel, and the devil – the world and your own sinful flesh mark you as their real enemy.

Just as Elijah’s real troubles began once God destroyed the prophets of Baal and then sent cool rain to refresh His people, so the Church’s troubles begin whenever and wherever God breaks down the idols of impenitence and then sends the dew of His grace and mercy through the faithful preaching of Christ crucified for sinners.  This is what the devil hates.  This is what the flesh resists.  Count on it.  It is true what is written: “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”  But what brings the most violent response is what we Christians treasure the most.  “He who has ears to hear,” Jesus said, “let him hear.” 

Faith comes by hearing.  Faith comes by hearing that He who knew no sin became sin in your place in order that you might be the righteousness of God in Him.  Faith comes by hearing and faith receives what it hears.  The righteousness of God is not accessible to those who seek to snatch it violently by touting their own good works.  No, the righteousness of God is only found by those who in true repentance see where all righteousness was fulfilled in the obedient life of Jesus, and in His vicarious death on the cross.  We don’t take the righteousness He earned by force.  We take it by invitation.  And so by faith that comes by hearing, we tenaciously and violently hold onto the promises that we hear in the Gospel.

Today is Reformation Sunday, and so it’s good to thank God today that He has preserved His pure word and sacraments among us in the Lutheran Church. 

There is nothing worse than a drought of God’s word. It is worse than a drought of water by far.  Martin Luther experienced this.  And it made him God’s enemy.  Where there is no pure Gospel preached there is no peace with God, only war; no righteousness, only presumption; no hope, only despair; no life, only death.  But where there is the pure Gospel there is the forgiveness of sins, and so all these things come with it.  Martin Luther was a preacher.  We know him as a Reformer of the Church.  And if you will accept it, he is the angel, the messenger with the everlasting Gospel that Revelation 14 speaks about.  The Gospel we proclaim is everlasting.  This means that it won’t run dry.  Though its enemies rage, though we suffer in our lives by having to make bold confessions, though the devil attack our faith by tempting us to sin, and then by plaguing us with doubts of God’s mercy when he does, yet we find refuge in God who is our mighty fortress.  And though we feel the pain of conscience and persecution, yet God cannot suffer violence.  And so we stick to His word, and we are safe. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.