Epiphany 4

Matthew 8:23-27 – Epiphany 4 – January 29, 2017
The Wind and the Waves Obey Him ♫♫♫

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He whom the world cannot enclose
In Mary’s bosom doth repose;
To be a little Child He deigns
Who all things by Himself sustains. Alleluia! (ELH 136:3)

What a marvelous thing to ponder.  This beautiful hymn stanza was written by Martin Luther for Christmas Day.  With it we consider the marvel of the incarnation and the humility with which the Son of God chose to become true man.  Nothing was made without him.  He sustains all things he made.  He cannot be contained or limited by anything in all creation.  And yet to save us he submits to extreme limitation.  He joins his creation in the truest, most literal sense by becoming a real human being.  Taking both human body and human soul he is made true man.  He contains himself in the womb of his mother.  He who is himself the source of life relies for a time on Mary for the life he needs.  He sweetly rests in her lap.  Thus he deigns to visit man and rescue us and serve us in our greatest need.  Hidden in his weakness is the greatest power in heaven and on earth.  In a helpless display of infant slumber, he is at the same time preserving the entire universe.   

Baptism of our Lord

Matthew 3:13-17 - Baptism of Jesus - January 8, 2017
God’s Love Revealed

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Dearly beloved of God, grace, mercy, and peace be to you through God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

One of the most dangerous false gospels of our day is the lie that we must love ourselves before we are able to love others.  Hardly can any claim be more contrary and diametrically opposed to the Christian religion than this.  And yet it is everywhere.  The world makes many assorted claims that are contrary to the truth of God’s word.  And we must resist them.  We must stand up against lie after lie because our faith and salvation depend on it and because it honors our God to do so.  They argue.  We must argue back.  They make their case.  And we take our stand on the word of God.  But the claim that we must love ourselves before we can love others isn’t even argued anymore.  It’s just asserted as though no one in his right mind could possibly take issue with this self-evident truth.  But we must take issue with it.  Because it isn’t true.  And it’s very harmful. 

Now obviously, if one is going to exert energy to live a productive or happy life, he or she must have some sense of his or her own value.  The question then becomes: where do we find our value?  Is the value of our life found in how generally good we are and how worthy of love we are?  Well then, if that’s the case, by all means learn to love what you are, embrace it, and make it your goal to get others to embrace it too.  Exude unearned confidence.  Show no shame.  Isn’t that how the celebrities gain the adoration of the world? 

But if you actually believe that you are a wayward creature of God whose deepest problem is your own sin and selfishness, then you recognize that your eternal value in the eyes of your Maker has nothing to do with what you have made of yourself or of your potential or of your hopes and dreams or of how you have learned to express yourself. 

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. 

Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12 - Epiphany - January 6, 2016         
Christ Is the Light of the World

                                                                                 

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Today is Epiphany.  Epiphany comes from the Greek word for “manifestation,” or “bringing to light.”  And so we celebrate today how Jesus made Himself known, not only to His chosen nation Israel, but also to the Gentiles.   

What are Gentiles?  Well, it’s a word that is simply translated straight from the Greek word for nations. That’s all the word means.  It’s someone who’s not a Jew – who’s not from the chosen nation of Israel.  It was God Himself who made this distinction when He called Abraham out from among the nations to be His own special people.  He did this when He said to him, “In your Seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”  Think of that!  God gave Abraham a promise – a promise that concerned and benefited all nations.  But it was given to one nation.  In fact it was this promise itself that created him as a nation.  After all, Abraham was childless when this promise of Christ was made.  This goes to show how much cooperation is required of sinners in order for God to set them apart as His own.  None. 

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.

Epiphany 2

John 2:1-11 - Epiphany II - January 18, 2015         
Jesus Honors Marriage

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This morning I’d like to talk about marriage since our Gospel lesson certainly lends itself to such a discussion.  In fact, the entire Epiphany season lends itself to the discussion of marriage.  Consider what we’ve been celebrating during Epiphany and how it speaks to marriage:

God became man and wed himself, so to speak, to our flesh forever – not just to Jewish flesh, but to all human flesh.  The divine Christ will never divorce himself from his humanity.  He remains God and Man forever.  He did not borrow his human nature the way a man borrows the company of a woman to meet some fleeting desire.  No, he assumed a human nature the way a man is permanently joined to his wife and becomes one flesh with her in marriage.  In this way he fulfills his enduring desire to save us.  Through this union of God and Man, this divine marriage of two Natures, Jesus creates new life.  As a faithful Head and honorable father, he cares for the life that his Church gives birth to through Baptism even as he remains with his Bride until the end of the ages.  Since he lives forever, the two shall never be parted, and he will never cease to care for his spiritual children. 

Jesus honored marriage. 

Baptism of our Lord

Matthew 3:13-17 - Baptism of Our Lord - January 11, 2015         
There Must Be Something in the Water

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I recently heard a new song by a popular country music singer named Carrie Underwood.  I’m not really a fan of her music, but the theme of her song really impressed me, because it deals very clearly with a Christian theme, which itself is pretty remarkable for a song that has over 5 million views on YouTube.  It’s called Something in the Water, and refers very directly to the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.  I think it’s commendable for someone in today’s increasingly hostile climate to sing a song like this.  But, as has always been the case with country singers who sing about God, it also has much to be critiqued.  

She begins her song by saying she’s stuck in the drudgery of a sinful life: “No way out, no one to come and save me; wasting a life that the Good Lord gave me.”  Then someone told her, “I’ve been where you’ve been before.”  He then opened her eyes and told her the truth, saying, “Just a little faith, it’ll all get better.”  So then she says that she followed the preacher man down to the river: “And now I’m changed – And now I’m stronger – Oh, there must’ve been something in the water.” 

Like I said, there’s much to be commended here.  It’s pretty clever.  But as it often is with popular Christian songs, it’s not always what’s said (although it very often is) as much as what remains unsaid.  So now as I use parts of this song as a sort of outline, I’m going to pick it apart a little bit at a time, and also point out where it makes some good points. 

Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12 - Epiphany - January 6, 2015         
A Light to Lighten the Gentiles

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When God’s people were unfaithful to God’s word, God punished them.  He punished them in the worst way imaginable.  He didn’t rain fire or send plagues.  He sent the Babylonians to come and destroy the city of Jerusalem and the Temple that had once housed the glory of the Lord.  The Babylonians forced God’s people out of the Promised Land and made them move hundreds of miles away to the land of modern day Iraq.  This was known as the Babylonian captivity. 

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. 

Epiphany 2

John 2:1-11 - Epiphany Two - January 19, 2014           
Jesus Gives Joy to Marriage

Marriage is a divine institution, not a human institution.  Proof for this is that it is still around.  How many human ideas – as good as they were in their time for arranging society – have since grown obsolete?  Take for instance the feudal system of Medieval Europe.  And how many social conventions – as useful as they once were for guiding people’s behavior for the common good – have simply outworn their usefulness?  Take for instance the food rationing of the 1940s.  But marriage is different than these.  Marriage has been constant in its essential form and purpose throughout culture and time.  And that’s because it wasn’t invented by man.  It was invented by God. 

Epiphany 1

Luke 2:41-52 - Epiphany One - January 12, 2014           
Whose Children Are We

I remember when Monica and I brought our oldest child home from the hospital after he was born.  As far as anyone could have assumed, we were totally prepared for it.  We had fixed up his room; we had a bunch of diapers and stuff; and his car seat was all strapped in.  But once we were actually on our way to our apartment, it struck us how crazy it was that they were actually letting us take him home.  Did they know how little experience we had being a mother and a father?  Did they actually trust us to take care of this child?  Certainly, he would be better off in the hospital where the inevitable blunders of his parents could at least be offset by ready access to medical attention.  Well, of course, we were just nervous.  And as it turned out, he was much better off in our home.  And seeing as he’ll be turning six in a month, our inexperience wasn’t as dangerous as we thought. But besides all this, it’s not like they “let” us take him home at all.  He was never theirs.  God gave him to us, not to them. 

And this is the greater mystery to ponder: not that nurses and doctors let us go home with a baby, but that God commits to our care little children whom he loves.  They are his.  He gives them to us.  They are his before they are ours.  He gives them to us so that we might take care of them.  He loves them before we know them.  It is therefore our chief responsibility as parents to teach our children of the great love their Father in heaven has for them.  That is why we bring our children to be baptized according to Jesus’ command and promise. 

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. 

Transfiguration

Matthew 17:1-9 - Transfiguration - January 20, 2013

Hear Him
Finding God in Christ Alone

“I don’t believe in God.”  You’ve heard people say it.  So have I.  But what does this even mean, “I don’t believe in God”?  If you think about it, it can be taken in two different ways. 

One: You don’t believe that he even exists.  That is, you don’t believe that he is out there at all the way a grown child no longer believes in Santa Claus.  Or two: You don’t believe in him; that is, you don’t believe that he is reliable or trustworthy or ultimately good—the way a betrayed child no longer believes in his dead-beat father.  Now, all sorts of people make this first claim.  He isn’t real, they say.  He’s a myth, they say.  People made him up in order to enforce their repressive standards of morality, they say. 

It’s easier for one to say this, that he doesn’t believe that God exists at all than to say that he is mad at God, or that God let him down, or that he is afraid of God.  Boy, what insecurity to confess to.  Oh no.  You don’t hear folks talk that way quite so much.  People guard themselves more than that.  You’ll sound a lot more intellectual, after all, if you just deny his existence altogether – like, hey, he’s thought about this; he’s broken the shackles of ignorance and superstition; this guy’s deep.  But it is not deep to deny God; it is foolish.   Not only because of the consequences, but because of the obvious fact that God most certainly does exist. 

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1 & 53:1). 

Baptism of our Lord

Matthew 3:13-17 - Baptism of Jesus - January 13, 2013

Fulfilling All Righteousness

Baptism works the forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare. 

This is a lot of power to attribute to Baptism.  But we have the words and promises of God to prove our claim. We have these words of Jesus: He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who does not believe shall be condemned.  Baptism forgives sins.  Baptism gives to us what Jesus won for us.  Jesus said so.  He who believes what Jesus says has what his Baptism promises.  He who does not believe what Jesus says, rejects what Jesus has won.  We cherish our Baptism for the exact same reason that we cherish our Savior.  Jesus saves us by suffering and dying on the cross to take our sin away.  Baptism saves us by bringing to us the benefits of His great sacrifice.  Jesus saves us by overcoming death in our place and rising from the dead.  Baptism saves us because through it Jesus joins us to Himself – so closely — as Paul says, “we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 – Ash Wednesday – February 22, 2012
Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Our Father who art in heaven. 

What does this mean? 

With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.  

There are two good reasons to pray to God.  First, He commands us to pray to Him.  “Call upon me in the day of trouble.”  Second, He promises to hear our prayer.  “And I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:15).   If God didn’t give us His command and promise, we wouldn’t know whether or not we could or even if we should pray to Him.  But in His word He teaches us that indeed we can and indeed we ought to.  He also teaches us how. 

To pray means to ask.  We don’t tell God to give us anything.  We ask Him.  And we do so on the basis of His own kindness toward us.  Everything we have we receive from Him as a gift out of His fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us.  It is as we confess, “we are by nature sinful and unclean” and “we have justly deserved [God’s] temporal and eternal punishment.”  When we pray to God, we’re asking Him to give to us sinners things that we don’t deserve to have.  And He does, He gives them.  We should thank Him for what He gives, and pray that He would continue to give it.  And we do. 

Baptism of our Lord

Matthew 3:13-17 - Quinquagesima/Baptism of Jesus - February 19, 2012

Preaching Baptism

We call him John the Baptist because he baptized.  But John the Baptist was also a preacher.  St. Mark writes, “he came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” (Mk. 1:4).   John’s Baptism and his preaching were inseparable from each other.  In fact, the sacrament of Baptism can never be separated from the preaching of God’s word.  After all, it’s from the word of God that Baptism gets its power to save in the first place. 

Baptism doesn’t wash away sin simply by getting people wet—like some sort of magic potion.  No, it washes away sin by the power of the word that Jesus Himself attaches to the water.  He attaches His word to the water first by commanding that everyone be baptized, and second, by promising that he who believes and is baptized shall be saved.  Because of God’s command and promise we are able to point to our Baptism with confidence and say that that is where God forgives us our sin, rescues us from death and the devil, and gives us eternal life. 

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. 

Epiphany 3

Matthew 8:1-13 - Epiphany III - January 22, 2012

God’s Will, God’s Word

The leper said to Jesus, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  Everything depends on God’s will.  If God doesn’t want to do something, it won’t be done.  It’s that simple.  But Jesus was willing.  He touched this man and healed him.  This is what the leper had counted on. 

The centurion said to Jesus, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.”  Everything depends on God speaking.  God says it and so it is.  This is how He created the universe.  God’s word is powerful.  Jesus didn’t have to go anywhere in order to heal this man’s servant.  He only had to say the word.  The centurion relied on the power of God’s word. 

These are the two things that our faith is concerned about:  God’s will and God’s word.  Everything depends on these.  In fact, since we’re not able to know God’s will apart from His word, as far as we are concerned, these two things are really the same thing.  We can’t know what God wants without Him telling us what He wants?  We have no access to God’s thoughts toward us apart from where He makes His thoughts crystal clear.  Nowhere else does He do this than in the words that He inspired His prophets and apostles to write.  We call this word Holy Scripture, or the Bible.  These are the two things that faith trusts in: God’s gracious will, and the power of God’s word.