Trinity 17

Luke 14:1-11- Trinity Seventeen - October 12, 2014
God Humbles the Exalted and Exalts the Humble

Christ is our Physician.  He heals by the almighty power of God, because he is the almighty God.  The Man Jesus who witnessed helpless misery on earth is the same God in heaven who never ceases to meet the needs of his creation.  He continues to see our needs, and even when they appear to be ignored or remain unmet, he does not sleep.  He notes them and in his wisdom will most certainly address them.  He gives rest to those who suffer with no end in sight.  He does so in his own time.  That is why we call on him in a day when he may be found.  We wait on God who has compassion. 

St. Matthew's

Matthew 9:9-13 - St. Matthew the Apostle & Evangelist - September 21, 2014
Jesus Is Our Merciful Physician

As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him. 

Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.  And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

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Christ gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.  He gave them for the Church.  We continue to benefit from the ministry of the apostles, prophets, and evangelists through Holy Scripture.  God commanded them to speak his words and for some to commit them to writing for our sake.  He gave them his Spirit to work in them and through them.  We hear and read the words they recorded and receive them as from God himself, because they are from God himself.  The Bible is a gift from Jesus. 

Jesus sends ministers today to teach us the Bible. 

Trinity 13

Luke 10:21-37 - Trinity Thirteen - September 14, 2014
Jesus Is The Neighbor We Need

Jesus thanks his Father that he has hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes.   This here requires two things to be clarified.  First of all, who are the wise and prudent and who are the babes?  And second of all, what are “these things” that are hidden to some and revealed to others? 

The wise and prudent are those who know the law, but who don’t know what it is for.  They think that the law is intended to help them become righteous on their own.  They are foolish.  The babes, or the little infants, on the other hand, are those who know that they are sinners.  They are those who are helpless to fulfill what the law requires, because the law demands that they love from pure hearts.  We do not love as God requires.  We cannot.  We have neither the will nor the way, because we are poor miserable sinners who have been lost and condemned since before we were infant babes.  We know the law.  The law works wrath.  It is good that we know this.  For what is hidden from the self-righteous wise and prudent is revealed to us who have been born from above by water and the Spirit.  And so in simple faith we receive what Christ freely gives, as little children who desire true spiritual milk. 

Trinity 12

Mark 7:31-37 - Trinity Twelve - September 7, 2014
Ears to Hear and Tongues to Confess

“Sing aloud to God our strength; make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob. Alleluia.” 

We call him the God of Jacob.  This means that he is the God who wants us to rely solely upon his word.  That is always how he has revealed himself – through his word.  He does not reveal himself through our personal experiences.  In fact, our personal experiences deceive us.  They distract us.  They make us expect one thing when we should expect another.         Often we feel strong.  We feel close to God.  But we need to be brought low.  We need to be made weak.  God is our strength.  And we find his strength when we recognize how weak we are and cling to his word alone.  There true joy is found.            Often we feel forsaken.  We feel like God is too displeased or fed-up with us to continue to strive within us.  When this is how we feel, we need to repent, as David did, and as we sing: “Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”  We are weak, but he is strong.  His strength is found in his mercy – where he is faithful to forgive us our sin and to increase our faith in him. 

Trinity 11

Luke 18:9-14 - Trinity Eleven - August 31, 2014
The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

A couple springs ago on the Saturday evening before high school graduation, I was fiddling around in my garage with the garage door open.  There evidently was some sort of graduation party nearby because there were cars parked up and down the block and plenty of teenage voices to be heard.  It brought back fond memories of not so many years ago when I was walking in the same shoes.  But I was a little bit embarrassed as they passed my house by the thought that perhaps I also once talked, so-to-speak, in the same shoes.  A whole conversation which I could hear begin a block away and carry on for a block in the opposite direction consisted of two boys and two girls taking polite turns speaking sentence after sentence.  I must have heard about 30 or 40 complete sentences … and every single one – I kid you not – began with the word I.  They weren’t talking filthy or rude or starting fights.  Like I said, they weren’t even interrupting one another.  Everything was very civil.  But despite their best behavior, a certain egotism was plainly revealed. 

Trinity 10

Jeremiah 8:4-12 (Luke 19:41-48) - Trinity Ten - August 24, 2014
Hanging on Jesus’ Words

You shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord: When men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return? Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return. I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken rightly; no man relents of his evil, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle. Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming, but my people know not the judgment of the Lord. How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. The wise men shall be put to shame; they shall be dismayed and taken; behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord, so what wisdom is in them? Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to conquerors, because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.  They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.”

The prophet Jeremiah records God’s frustration with his people.  It’s a frustration with sin, and of course with the unbelief that’s at the root of sin.  Sin is unlike anything else.  The natural inclination in our sinful hearts is not simply an unfortunate tendency to make the wrong choice here and there.  It is, in fact, rebellion against God.  He created earth and all that fills it to be good.  The sin that spoils what God made good begins in our own hearts.  By nature we are enemies of God.  By nature, we deserve his wrath. 

By nature.  But how natural really is sin?  Isn’t it rather a corruption of nature? 

Trinity 9

1 Corinthians 10:1-13 - Trinity Nine - August 17, 2014
Written for Our Learning

The Apostle Paul does not want us to be ignorant.  No teacher wants his students to be ignorant.  He wants them to know what he knows.  Consider his subject matter.  He wants us to know the Bible.  The Bible that he used as his textbook when writing to the Christians in Corinth was of course the Old Testament prophets, along with the New Testament Gospels that by this time had already circulated throughout the growing Church, wherever the Apostles had gone.  The Gospels are the history of the life of Christ, the Son of God.  The Old Testament is the history of the life of God’s chosen people, the children of Israel.  The events of the Old Testament are not just historical events that have some religious or moral lesson to them.  They are more.  They are the accounts of what God did through and for his people in order to teach them of their future redemption in Christ.  And they continue to teach us.