3rd Sunday after Pentecost 6/01/08 Text: Matthew 7:15-29 Title: Putting the C back in church
3rd Sunday after Pentecost
6/01/2008
Text: Matthew 7:15-29
Title: Putting the C back in church.
I have titled my sermon for this morning, “Putting the C back in church.” I have done this because the Christian church has forgotten its roots and purpose. And because of that it has no value for the majority of people in the United States. Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in what we call Third World countries, but in the more advance countries Christianity is declining, especially the mainline denominations.
This has become a grave concern to me, as a Lutheran pastor. People are searching for spiritual things. They want purpose in their lives. They want to know they are loved and cared for. They are snapping up spiritual books like crazy as they search for meaning in their lives. They now know that that science and human knowledge on which they built their hopes is failing them. They are looking and yet they are not becoming Christians.
We must ask ourselves, as a Christian congregation, why that is. What is it that is keeping them from knowing true freedom, the freedom that is only found in Christ? We could say that it is because as a whole the Christian church is not modern enough. It is not getting with the program in its worship services. It is stuck in the past.
While there is no doubt that there is some truth in that statement, I have to say that I have found out that it is not the whole truth. As I visit with pastors of different denominations, many who put on modern worship services, they tell me that one of the problems with modern worship is that you have to keep offering a better service each Sunday, as the people get bored with the service.
Offering modern worship is not the cure all, for a lot of large churches have, according to their pastors, a large turnover of people, as they go off searching for the newest and latest worship. Our society which is built on consumerism has become consumers of churches. What I mean is that the vast majority of people attend a particular church as long as it meets their felt needs. When the church does not meet their felt needs anymore off they go to the next church.
But there is more to the problem than church consumerism. There is the Christian church itself, for it has not done a lot to keep itself rooted in the Gospel of Jesus. It is riddled with scandal, cover-up, and infighting. Our own synod is not immune as charges are leveled at those in the synod and local congregations where faithful pastors are charged, not because of heresy, but because of worship practices.
It is a sad time indeed, for the Christian church. I have shared this with you this morning because, I firmly believe that if Jesus were walking among us today he would say the same words to us that are recorded in our Gospel lesson for today.
This particular text is part of the concluding words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It is long sermon in which he makes it perfectly clear that you cannot separate your faith life and your everyday life. His sermon addresses all the things we deal with in life and how we as followers of Jesus are to act. He speaks of anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, loving one’s enemies, giving to the needy, fasting, using of money, worry, judging of others, praying, and the general treatment of others, all those things we all struggle with on a daily basis.
He closes his sermon by telling us that if you do not bear fruit, that is do good, you are not a follower of his. Faith and doing good cannot be separated.
Let us start with verse 21. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do mighty works in your name?’” Here comes the part that is so unlike what we think Jesus would say. “I never knew you; depart from, you workers of lawlessness.” He continues in verse 24, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
This is where I wish we had a screen and projector in the sanctuary so that I could show you a video I saw of two structures and how they held up to a storm on the coast. One was a lighthouse sitting on a rock out in the water and the other was a beach house sitting on pilings driven deep in the sand.
The storm gradually weakened the beach house until it collapsed, but the light house remained unscathed. It really drove home the importance of having a firm foundation. Our religious life, our secular live is the same way. We must build on a firm foundation; one that will not be shattered when times are tough. We need a foundation that will stand up under pressure. That foundation can only be Jesus and his saving work on our behalf. It cannot be anything else, for anything else is sand.
It can only be him, for even though we believe in Jesus saving work, even though we are saved by grace alone, we are still sinners deserving of God’s punishment. That will not change until we die. That is why we must cling to Jesus along, for he alone is our salvation.
Going back to verse 21 through 23 of our Gospel reading for this morning we read some words that should shock us. Jesus is not talking to unbelievers, but to those in the church, those that we would say were religious leaders that it does not make any difference whether you confess Jesus name, or do church things in his name, if you do not do the will of the Father then you will not be accepted in Jesus’ presence.
It is pretty clear according to that passage if a person believes that they are a follower of Jesus, but is not doing the will of God the Father, they are only kidding themselves. They are not saved. That is serious stuff, so we had better know what the will of the Father is.
We don’t have to look far in God’s Word, to see what the will of the Father is, for in John 6:40, we read “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."
It is clear as it can be. The Father’s will is that all should believe in Jesus. It does not say; and do this or do that in worship. It only says that a person needs to believe in Jesus as their Savior. That is it.
We now know what the will of the Father is, so now we need to know what it means to believe in Jesus as one’s Savior. It simply means that since Jesus and the Father are one, that we are to do the will of Jesus. And what is that will? It is to love God above all things and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
It is not enough to just have knowledge of Jesus and his saving work, or to profess his name, or to defend the faith. That does not impress him. We are to do what he did. We who claim to be Christians are to live our lives in love. As much as we would like to do it sometimes, we cannot separate our saving faith from our works, for to do so is to build our faith on sand. Amen
6/01/2008
Text: Matthew 7:15-29
Title: Putting the C back in church.
I have titled my sermon for this morning, “Putting the C back in church.” I have done this because the Christian church has forgotten its roots and purpose. And because of that it has no value for the majority of people in the United States. Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in what we call Third World countries, but in the more advance countries Christianity is declining, especially the mainline denominations.
This has become a grave concern to me, as a Lutheran pastor. People are searching for spiritual things. They want purpose in their lives. They want to know they are loved and cared for. They are snapping up spiritual books like crazy as they search for meaning in their lives. They now know that that science and human knowledge on which they built their hopes is failing them. They are looking and yet they are not becoming Christians.
We must ask ourselves, as a Christian congregation, why that is. What is it that is keeping them from knowing true freedom, the freedom that is only found in Christ? We could say that it is because as a whole the Christian church is not modern enough. It is not getting with the program in its worship services. It is stuck in the past.
While there is no doubt that there is some truth in that statement, I have to say that I have found out that it is not the whole truth. As I visit with pastors of different denominations, many who put on modern worship services, they tell me that one of the problems with modern worship is that you have to keep offering a better service each Sunday, as the people get bored with the service.
Offering modern worship is not the cure all, for a lot of large churches have, according to their pastors, a large turnover of people, as they go off searching for the newest and latest worship. Our society which is built on consumerism has become consumers of churches. What I mean is that the vast majority of people attend a particular church as long as it meets their felt needs. When the church does not meet their felt needs anymore off they go to the next church.
But there is more to the problem than church consumerism. There is the Christian church itself, for it has not done a lot to keep itself rooted in the Gospel of Jesus. It is riddled with scandal, cover-up, and infighting. Our own synod is not immune as charges are leveled at those in the synod and local congregations where faithful pastors are charged, not because of heresy, but because of worship practices.
It is a sad time indeed, for the Christian church. I have shared this with you this morning because, I firmly believe that if Jesus were walking among us today he would say the same words to us that are recorded in our Gospel lesson for today.
This particular text is part of the concluding words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It is long sermon in which he makes it perfectly clear that you cannot separate your faith life and your everyday life. His sermon addresses all the things we deal with in life and how we as followers of Jesus are to act. He speaks of anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, loving one’s enemies, giving to the needy, fasting, using of money, worry, judging of others, praying, and the general treatment of others, all those things we all struggle with on a daily basis.
He closes his sermon by telling us that if you do not bear fruit, that is do good, you are not a follower of his. Faith and doing good cannot be separated.
Let us start with verse 21. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do mighty works in your name?’” Here comes the part that is so unlike what we think Jesus would say. “I never knew you; depart from, you workers of lawlessness.” He continues in verse 24, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
This is where I wish we had a screen and projector in the sanctuary so that I could show you a video I saw of two structures and how they held up to a storm on the coast. One was a lighthouse sitting on a rock out in the water and the other was a beach house sitting on pilings driven deep in the sand.
The storm gradually weakened the beach house until it collapsed, but the light house remained unscathed. It really drove home the importance of having a firm foundation. Our religious life, our secular live is the same way. We must build on a firm foundation; one that will not be shattered when times are tough. We need a foundation that will stand up under pressure. That foundation can only be Jesus and his saving work on our behalf. It cannot be anything else, for anything else is sand.
It can only be him, for even though we believe in Jesus saving work, even though we are saved by grace alone, we are still sinners deserving of God’s punishment. That will not change until we die. That is why we must cling to Jesus along, for he alone is our salvation.
Going back to verse 21 through 23 of our Gospel reading for this morning we read some words that should shock us. Jesus is not talking to unbelievers, but to those in the church, those that we would say were religious leaders that it does not make any difference whether you confess Jesus name, or do church things in his name, if you do not do the will of the Father then you will not be accepted in Jesus’ presence.
It is pretty clear according to that passage if a person believes that they are a follower of Jesus, but is not doing the will of God the Father, they are only kidding themselves. They are not saved. That is serious stuff, so we had better know what the will of the Father is.
We don’t have to look far in God’s Word, to see what the will of the Father is, for in John 6:40, we read “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."
It is clear as it can be. The Father’s will is that all should believe in Jesus. It does not say; and do this or do that in worship. It only says that a person needs to believe in Jesus as their Savior. That is it.
We now know what the will of the Father is, so now we need to know what it means to believe in Jesus as one’s Savior. It simply means that since Jesus and the Father are one, that we are to do the will of Jesus. And what is that will? It is to love God above all things and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
It is not enough to just have knowledge of Jesus and his saving work, or to profess his name, or to defend the faith. That does not impress him. We are to do what he did. We who claim to be Christians are to live our lives in love. As much as we would like to do it sometimes, we cannot separate our saving faith from our works, for to do so is to build our faith on sand. Amen
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 4:21 PM
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