Lent 2

Matthew 15:21-28 - Lent Two – Reminiscere - Feb. 21, 2016         
The Command and Promise of Prayer

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God commands us to pray.  This is reason enough to pray.  Certainly this is enough reason to do anything.  When God tells you to do something, you should do it.   Jesus commands all nations to be baptized.  So what should all nations do?  Do what he says: repent, and be baptized.  Jesus commands his disciples to take and to eat – to take and to drink.  So what should his disciples do?  They should take what he gives them and do what he says.  Jesus commands sinners to come to him.  What should sinners do?  They should stop following their own ideas and false teachers who tickle their fancy, and go to him who commands them to come.  Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow.  God’s commands are clear.  By them we are compelled to obey.  But the command alone, although clear and earnest enough, is not enough to prompt us to do these things in true faith.  I mean, one can go through the motions, certainly!  But if one is to do these things while trusting in God for a blessed outcome – if one is to gain any benefit – more than a command is needed.  That is why he attaches his promise. 

Lent 2

Matthew 15:21-28 - Reminiscere Sunday - March 1, 2015
Faith Desires What God Desires

The doctrine of justification is the chief article of the Christian religion.  This means that it is both the most important thing for you to know, and, in fact, the center of everything that God reveals in Holy Scripture.  The Bible teaches that God forgives the sinner, not because of any merit or worthiness in the sinner, but freely – by grace alone through faith alone. 

·       By grace alone means to say that the sinner is accounted righteous before God, not because of what he has done or left undone, but by sheer, undeserved grace.  God loves us.  Grace excludes all works of man. 

·       By faith alone means that the sinner receives this gracious reckoning of God when he believes that God accepts him into his eternal favor solely on account of what Christ his Son has done on the cross to make full satisfaction for all the world’s sins.  This is what it means to be justified by faith alone.  And so we see that faith also excludes all works of man – because faith relies on grace. 

Lent 2

Matthew 15:21-28 - Reminiscere, Lent II - February 24, 2013 

Wrestling with God

Our Introit this morning comes from Psalm 25 and begins by asking God to remember His tender mercies and lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old.  That is to say that they are from a long time ago.  That’s why, I suppose, the Psalmist, who is King David here, asks God to remember them.  It’s not like God forgets.  He doesn’t.  We do.  We take them for granted.  We take advantage of our freedom under God’s grace.  We cave into fleshly lusts of various stripes, and so we forget who we are as children of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ.  We ignore God’s word to our peril, and so forget who God is as our merciful Father, reconciled by the propitiating sacrifice of His Son.  And as often as we in our sinful weakness forget, we ask God to remember.  We cry to God for mercy.  And this is what it means to be saved by grace through faith.  It means that God continue to recall and apply His promises of old.  And we continue to ask Him to.  We don’t ask for something new when we cry for mercy.  We ask for something old.  We ask for the same thing.  We ask that God once again, as He has already done so many countless times, open up and reveal His heart to us sinners, so that we might again know and believe His love for us.  And God remembers. 

I remember learning the German word for “remember.”  I’ll spare you the pronunciation of the word with its guttural R’s, but it’s a really neat word.  It literally means to bring something deep within yourself so as to be able to retrieve it at will.   It’s a helpful picture of what it means to remember. 

Lent 2

Psalm 121/Matthew 15:21-28 - Reminiscere, Lent II - March 4, 2012 

Our help comes from the Lord

Last Sunday, I preached on the Psalm that was appointed for the first Sunday in Lent, Psalm 32.  Psalm 32 is what we call a penitential Psalm, because it teaches us to repent of our sins, to confess them to God, and to place our faith in Him who forgives us our sins for Jesus’ sake.  This Psalm even gives us the very words to use.  And in fact we do use them—regularly, just as we did this morning: “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.’ And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” 

The Psalm appointed for today is different.  It’s not a penitential Psalm.  But in our same liturgy, right before we speak these words from Psalm 32, we pray the words that today’s Psalm teaches us to pray.  See if you can pick these words out as we read Psalm 121 in Jesus’ name: 

1I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help. 
2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.
8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore. 

These are Your words holy Father; sanctify us by Your truth; Your word is truth.  Amen. 

Imagine in your mind a lady in distress, within a village overrun by bandits, looking with the glimmer of hope in her longing eyes to the distant horizon, where from behind a hill appears the heartening silhouette of what looks like it might be a brave hero coming to offer his help and save the day.  “I will lift up my eyes to the hills,” she says, “from whence—maybe, I hope, boy wouldn’t it be nice if my help were to come.”  Ah, but there’s no confidence here.  There’s no guarantee of rescue.  Her desire for help cannot assure her of anything.