Sermons

What is preaching? St. Paul writes in Romans: “Whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14-15)

Therefore our Lutheran Confessions state: “It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.” (Augsburg Confession VII:1-3)

There are 256 posts filed in Sermons (this is page 55 of 86).

Trinity 10 2011 – Luke 19:41-47 “Absolution”

28. August 2011
Trinity 10
Luke 19:41-47

Catechetical Sermon on Confession and Absolution (Augsburg XI-XII). The audio recording also includes reflections on the commemoration of St. Augustine of Hippo, the sack of Rome, and his “City of God.”

“Our churches teach that private Absolution should be retained in the churches, although listing all sins is not necessary for Confession. For, according to the Psalm, it is is impossible. ‘Who can discern his errors?’ (Psalm 19.12).” (Augsburg Confessions, Article XI). Confessions of sins is retained in our churches. You know this well. Each Sunday we confess our sins before God and neighbor corporately. Did you also know that our churches retained private or individual confession? Perhaps not.

You might be quick to call this practice “Roman Catholic.” You would be half right. Repentance and forgiveness of sins is the central and universal practice of our church. Any doctrine or practice received from Jesus through the apostles is rightly called catholic. When you confess your sins before your pastor in a Lutheran church, there is a difference from the Roman practice.

“Our churches reject those who do not teach that forgiveness of sins comes through faith, but command us to merit grace through satisfactions of our own. They also reject those who teach that it is necessary to perform works of satisfaction, commanded by Church law, in order to remit eternal punishment or the punishment of purgatory” (Augsburg XII.10). Our Lutheran Confession outright denies that you can earn forgiveness through saying the Rosary, our Fathers, or Hail Marys. Its not that pious practices are in and of themselves wrong. On the contrary, you ought to pray the Lord’s Prayer daily, even throughout the day.

You cannot earn our Lord’s forgiveness. You are utterly incapable of loving God or loving neighbor according to our sinful flesh. Your will is so corrupted that you choose to do evil all the time. You cannot choose to obey. You cannot choose to be forgiven. You cannot escape eternal punishment.

You need is Jesus. You need a Savior, who does the saving for you. You need a Redeemer, who redeems you from the pit. You need a Sanctifier, who creates in you a clean heart. You need a Righteous One, who obeys the law for you. You need a Lamb of God, who dies as the sacrifice for you. You need a Scapegoat who suffers  the penalty of your rejection and abandonment of God for you. You need Jesus.

That’s why “our churches teach that … the church ought to impart Absolution to those who return to repentance [Jeremiah 3:12].” You need Absolution, that is, forgiveness. You need to be made holy and righteous in God’s eyes. You need this holiness to enter into his courts with praise. Righteousness imparted to you for the sake of Christ makes you ready to walk through the gates whose heads are lifted up. The reconciliation given to you in Christ will be declared before the judgment throne on the last day.

Absolution is not randomly thrown about. It is not cast recklessly. Bound inextricably with Absolution is repentance. “Now, strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel [Romans 10:17] or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven” (AC XII.2-5).

Believing that Christ has forgiven your sins is bound to the knowledge of sin, the terror your trespasses put on your conscience. Logically, this makes sense. For what would be the point of forgiveness if there is no sin? It is the knowledge of sin that makes the Gospel of Jesus all the more sweet. That sick taste in our mouth is just like a dog returning to its vomit. The only medicine that cleanses and purifies is the pure sweet Gospel of Christ’s Absolution.

“[Absolution] comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror. Then good works are bound to follow, which are the fruit of repentance [Galatians 5:22-23]” (AC XII.6). Thus, the Christian church is built, sustained, freed, and fruitful because of repentance, that is, contrition over sin and faith, born of the Gospel of forgiveness. Or to say it another way, the rock upon the church is built is the rock that is Christ. You need Jesus.

Confession and Absolution is nothing else than the renewal of what we already received in our Baptism. In Baptism, our Lord Jesus snatched us out mouth of the roaring lion and placed on his shoulders. Like little lambs, we were redeemed from all that we sought in our corruption. Rather than follow after idols of this world,  we know follow the Good Shepherd. Here too, you were saved for Christ’s sake, by the forgiveness won in his death and resurrection.

Everything you need is in Jesus. What, then, of those who deny Christ? What of those who hear and refuse to believe? For those who are not contrite, the church must declare the consequence of their unbelief. For those who refuse to acknowledge their sin cannot be forgiven. Its not to say Christ doesn’t desire to forgive them. Nor was Jesus’ death insufficient to atone for their sin or the sin of the whole world. No, he desires all men to come to the knowledge of the truth.

That doesn’t stop some from rejecting Jesus and His forgiveness. They look at the cross and say, “so what?” They see their resurrected Lord and laugh, “Big deal!” Their unbelief has a stranglehold on them and will drag them to the grave. Worse yet, it will damn them to an eternity of torment, with lakes of fire, and all that.

So it was, even for Jesus, as he entered the holy city preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins. His people refused to heed his voice, to receive his testimony. To reject Jesus, is to reject His forgiveness.  Even in the face of complete denial, Jesus cares. When he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” 

The very Messiah stood before them and they as a whole rejected Him. Not all of them, of course. He kept teaching and preaching in the Temple. Others came to faith on Good Friday, others as he appeared to them after His resurrection, and yet many more in Jerusalem on Pentecost.

The city would be destroyed but not quite yet. So it goes with Jesus. He visits you with His Word, calling you to repentance, working faith in your heart to believe the promise. He visits you with knowledge of sin and forgiveness in His shed blood. He visits you and performs the good work in you, in mercy and pity.

When you refuse this good and gracious Word, he waits in sorrow. He stands before you as you curse His name and weeps. When you hide from the shadow of his wings, he grieves. When you whore after idols, he suffers your infidelity.

He is longsuffering. But there will be an end. He suffers unbelief only for a time, only out of his incredible mercy. It is true: Our sin deserves instant punishment and yet he delays. Perhaps the span of your life is seventy or by reason of strength, eighty. Or perhaps death will greet you on the way home? Or perhaps our Lord will come to judge the living and dead tomorrow. He is longsuffering but only until the end.

He suffered in this way for Jerusalem. When Jesus looked upon Jerusalem, He knew that in a short 37 years, AD 70, the prophecy would come true. The call to repentance would ring out in the city until that last day. Finally, the consequence for their unbelief was great.

The old German church agendas, even the one published by our Concordia in St. Louis prescribed the reading of the account of the Destruction of Jerusalem on this day. It is story of the horrible fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy.

The destruction foretold is a glimpse into what the final days of the creation will be like. In Jesus’ Word and its fulfillment, you know how utterly important the life of faith—granted in your baptism, nurtured by the Word, declared in Absolution, fed in Christ’s own body and blood—is for that final judgement. You know how His many declarations of Absolution is the sweetest possible gift, forgiving you of your sin, far removing you from the fate consigned to Jerusalem.

May we heed his lesson well, rejoicing in Jesus Christ only as the gracious promise of forgiveness. While the judgment is delayed, let us not lose heart but remain steadfast in repentant faith.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

Trinity 9 2011 – “The Unjust Steward” – Luke 16:1-9

21. August 2011
Trinity 9
Luke 16:1-9

For the faithful Christian, there is a proper use of the wealth given to us by our Father. We have been given all that we need to support this body and life. Not only do we have clothing, shoes, home, land, and animals, we also have automobiles for transportation, farm equipment to make the toil of the land a little easier, cell phones and internet to communicate with the world, wells and city water for easy relief from thirst, air conditioning to beat the heat, and more. While we could live without some of these things, they have been given to us by our Father for our benefit, out of his goodness, and mercy.

The Gospel parable of the Unjust Steward is not about the gifts given to benefit our life. The parable is concerned with simply money, but mammon, that is, the greed for that which is more than the basic needs of the body. In other words, money in a derogatory sense, the idol that is worshiped, craved, and greedily sought.

As a parent, I spend a great deal of time distinguishing for my children the difference between what we need and what we want. How often we are convinced that we have only what we need! We are convinced have no mammon. The parable is spoken by Jesus because he knows we have been given more than we need. Jesus knows there is a great danger of greed, squander, or ill-gotten gain with this God-given surplus.

This is the sin of the Steward. He also said to His disciples:  “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. 2 So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ 

The steward of the parable wasted his master’s property and got caught. Instead of being satisfied with his wages, he consumes his master’s wealth. He squandered it just as the Prodigal Son had squandered his own inheritance. He is a reckless caretaker of his master’s wealth. Those who care for another’s property should use it to benefit the owner.  His actions make the mammon unrighteous.

The proper use of God’s gifts is more than simply being thankful. We sing “We give Thee but Thine own, What-e’er the gift may be; All that we have is Thine alone, A trust, O Lord, from Thee.” Certainly it is our duty to thank and praise, serve and obey him. Also, in service to God, we also use this wealth to the benefit of those neighbors around us. Where God gives, he gives in excess. God gives this excess so that you may give to others in public confession of His work for you.

The challenge of a surplus is discerning its best use. Extra wealth doesn’t take long to burn a hole in your pocket. It is no surprise that the steward could squander away the rich man’s wealth. Wasteful spending is all around us, not just with our own finances but in business and in government. Many are lacking the wisdom to spend mammon appropriately and for the most benefit.

The steward, after hearing of his pending job loss for wasting the possessions, calls in the debt of his former master’s debtors to gain some positive reputation with them. Not only had the steward squandered his master’s assets, now he was giving away even more… changing the bills of debtors.

3 “Then the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ 

5 “So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ 7 Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’

We shouldn’t place all the blame on the steward. Likely the debtors collaborated with him, knowing they were next to give an account before the rich man. The sons of this age are interested in self gain, saving face, and all this through dishonesty and waste. Their sinful actions make the mammon unrighteous. There’s plenty of sin to go around.

So, then, why does Jesus say: So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. 9 “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”

Does Jesus advocate following the example of the dishonesty of the steward? No, the dishonest manager is commended for his shrewdness, not for his dishonesty. Shrewdness is having a sharp sense of judgment. He is commended for his quick thinking in working with the debtors to win their favor. Although the sons of this generation are dishonest, unjust, wasteful, and greedy, they act with quick judgment with the mammon they have. They use this wealth shrewdly for the benefit of making friends. They serve their mammon with faithfulness and devotion, using it in service to the worldly kingdom.

If the sons of this age act shrewdly with dishonest, unrighteous, dirty money… how much more should the sons of light act shrewdly with the wealth of this world! The sons of this age believe mammon is their own, to do with as they please. The sons of light are in the Father’s graces. The sons of light know that the surplus they have is a gift from God and to be used for God’s purpose.

And so Christ says to his disciples “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth…” We use this worldly wealth for the benefit of those around us. “Making friends” is benefiting those in need and endearing ourselves to them. The wealth of this world is made unrighteous by corruption, evil, greed… sin. In the hands of the sons of light, mammon is made good by God, to be used wisely for his purposes.

Jesus continues: 10 He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. 11 Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own? 

The parable is not just about temporal blessings, those that benefit the body. It is given as an example of how we ought to treat the treasures of the church, the Holy Gospel. We have been given the stewardship of the Gospel, the best of gifts.

Some act recklessly with this gift, showing little concern for its integrity. They suggest that we need to dress up this message, smooth out the rough edges, and package it in simple sayings. These marketing gurus sell the Gospel short of its message by reducing Jesus merely to a Mr. Nice Guy who gave good advice. Offensive messages such as describing man as a sinner in need of forgiveness are removed. In the process, these gurus destroy the need for Christ’s death and resurrection. The justification of the sinner is sidelined in the interest of a cheaper Gospel of righteous living and meaningful life.

In contrast, God wisely gave us means of His Word, His Baptism, and His Supper to speak the whole truth of His Gospel. We should not listen to the marketing gurus and discount His Gospel by stepping back from the whole ministry He has given us. Reducing the Gospel to merely words without its proper teaching and means of grace makes us no different from any of the cults around us.

Messages of moral teaching can be found by listening to Mohammed, Buddha, or Joseph Smith. There we hear the same message of life change that these marketing gurus suggest. Those who could benefit from the truth of forgiveness of sins and life eternal are instead left to “price shop” not just to Christian churches but the cults for the morality that best fits their perceived needs. We are poor stewards of the Gospel and act without wisdom if we alter the Gospel and waste its gift of salvation.

God provides the mammon of this world out of the same goodness and mercy as his gift justification of the sinner,. We receive the earthy excess in view of His justification of us. All good gifts come through Jesus Christ our Lord, who died for our sin.

How should we use these earthly gifts? Jesus says, “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.”  How can these friends won through mammon welcome us into these eternal dwellings, that is, heaven? Is Jesus suggesting that we should use the wealth of this world to gain entrance into heaven as has been falsely taught by the church of Rome or the ascetics of the wilderness who gave away everything and escaped to the wilderness? Are those of heaven who were fed, clothed, or sheltered by us in this world going to welcome us into heaven by virtue of these works?

No, these works merit us nothing towards heaven. Had it not been for Christ’s death and resurrection, these works would be no different from the unrighteous sons of this age. Indeed, there would be no sons of light if the true light of the world, Christ, had not come into the world. “Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you… While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” (Jn 12:35-36) To be a sons of light is to be separate from this world, distinct from the outer darkness, distinct from the unrighteous sons of this age.

As a son of light, your use of mammon is not unrighteous like the steward. Your mammon is made righteous by God. Those born of Christ produce fruit in keeping with their faith. As we learned last week, a good tree produces good fruit. Christians, freed from the curse of sin by Christ give freely of the wealth given to them. Their conscience is not burdened by identity, status, who is their friend, or how to get ahead in business… as with the sons of this age. Rather the Christian is free to act as God’s benefactor for the good of the neighbor. The wealth used in faith is purified by God. It is used for his purpose and in his wisdom. It is made righteous.

When we are welcomed into the eternal dwellings by these friends, they will thank us for demonstrating our faith to them by clothing them, feeding them, or housing them. They will remark how Christ was proclaimed in our lives. We will not enter on account of these deeds, but we will be joined by the faithful throng whose lives saw and heard faith which was not dead but alive… a faith given in baptism but proved by good fruits. They will give thanks to God for the confession of the gospel of Christ expressed not just in words but in deeds.

The life made right with God at the cross is lived in this grace. The grace of God comes to us in His Word and Sacrament where the Holy Spirit makes us new, retooling us for righteous use of his gifts. The steward squandered his master’s wealth and yet shrewdly used what little capital he had left to gain some friends. How much more can we be faithful stewards of his gifts and gain not just friends here on earth but by God’s grace,  friends into eternity.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana