12th Sunday after Pentecost 9/4/11 Matthew 18:1-20
12th Sunday after Pentecost
9/04/11
Text: Matthew 18:1-20
Our Gospel lesson for this morning has at least 10 different topics that I could preach on. That is way too many topics to deal with in one sermon, even if they are all good subjects, so as is my custom, I looked for an overall theme, the one topic that all the other verses supported.
What I found is this; God takes sin seriously. And why wouldn’t he take sin seriously? He is God, a perfect being that cannot let sin of any kind, whether it is that little white lie, or looking the other way when someone needs help, or keeping the gifts he has given each one of us go unused, or any of the other multitude of things that we each struggle with. God takes them seriously.
God despises sin of every kind, even those sins that we think are harmless or justify doing by misquoting or misusing God’s Word. We are indeed all poor miserable sinners still deserving of God’s wrath even while we stand before him declared innocent because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are, at the same time saint and sinner. Saint because of Jesus’ death and resurrection and sinner because; well, after all we are sinful human.
Three Sunday’s ago on Confirmation Sunday in your service folder was a text from Matthew 10:32-33 which explained the reason why the confirmands were there that day. It read “Whoever confesses me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.” That is what those young people were doing that day; making a confession of their faith before the congregation.
Faith, the faith they have and you have comes from God through the work of the Holy Spirit. Faith is born in weakness. It is born in need. It is receiving Jesus. It isn’t our doing. It isn’t even our talking or praying. Faith is none of these things. Faith doesn’t do. Faith is done to. Faith receives Jesus by trusting in him.
Faith doesn’t try to earn God’s love because faith knows that Jesus has given and revealed God’s love toward us. Faith doesn’t try to earn God’s favor, for faith knows that Jesus has earned God’s favor for us. Faith doesn’t work to get a reward because faith receives the award of salvation from the work that Jesus did.
Jesus even though he was without sin suffered by choosing to bear the full and final judgment of almighty God against all sinners. He chose to embrace every bit of our sin, and by taking it upon himself he set his love against our hatred, his purity against our lust, and his humble obedience against our proud and vain contempt for God that shows up when we trust more in our own ability or the ability of others rather than God to care for us.
This is what Jesus has done, and this is what our faith receives, and rejoices in, and this is why our faith is so very precious to God. For our faith receives the priceless treasure Jesus Christ himself whom God the Father loves and has loved from eternity.
God is the only one who can actually see the faith in your heart since he is the one who created it. He created it through his Holy Word and Baptism. This is how we can be confident that baptism is a means by which we are brought to faith and kept in the faith. Baptism is God’s holy Word bound to water by God’s own command. The two cannot be separated.
In the case of adults or older children, we teach them before they are baptized. In the case of little children and infants, we teach them after they are baptized. There is no difference between the baptism of a baby and the baptism of an adult. In either case the one who is baptized is given faith and believes in Jesus even though they might be able to articulate their faith.
While we cannot truly know whether a person has true faith we can know if someone has been given faith when we see them baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We see it happen. There is a record of it that we can look up. We can know if he or she has been taught the true Christian faith and confesses to believe it when we hear them make their confession of faith on Sunday morning during the worship service.
We can see their acts of love, charity, and forgiveness. These are the outward signs of faith. The world sees what marks us as Christians: our works done in love, our baptism, and our confession of the faith God gave us.
So every Sunday we confess our personal faith as a congregation, as we read one of the historic Christian creeds. This morning we will be confessing our Christian faith using the words of the Nicene Creed. In that creed we will say, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.” And then we will say that we believe “In one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.” And then we will say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.”
We will say those things and more as we state our belief in the holy Christian and apostolic Church, one Baptism for the remission of sins, and the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. That is our confession of faith.
That confession of faith then is not just going through the motions. It is one of the most solemn most important confessions you will ever make. For you see Jesus does not say, “Go along to get along and worry later about what you said.” No! He says “whoever confesses me before men I will confess” and “whoever denies me before men I will deny.”
And since we were baptized into Christ’s body, his Church, we confess the true faith that his Church confesses. We Lutherans don’t claim that the Little Catechism is our unique confession of the Christian faith. We claim that the teaching of the little Catechism for children and the Large Catechism for adults is the confession of the universal Christian Church. It is the Christian confession.
You might be wondering why I am talking to you about the public confession of faith that we make each Sunday. The simple reason is I see outside and inside the Christian community way too much “doctrinal indifference”.
To them Jesus is a warm fuzzy. He’s a religious security blanket who makes them feel good all over. The truth of God’s law and the truth of God’s gospel escapes them. They don’t know how to discern the difference between right and wrong according to God’s Word and they certainly don’t understand what difference it makes what they believe so long as they believe in Jesus; whatever that means.
My brothers and sisters in Christ God takes sin seriously. He condemns sin, all sin. He has to, for to do anything less is to not be God. We need to know that, for it is not just some pious thing we do.
Our confession of faith is important event though we in our sinfulness confess our faith in God feebly, imperfectly, and sporadically at times.
You will fail, as we all do from time to time, in your confession of the faith. You will forget who you are. You’ll fall on your face when it comes to doing what you promised. You’ll pass by the opportunity to confess Christ and his truth before others. Indeed, you will, as we all will, will deny him by your silence.
Jesus will still stand boldly before the Father saying in his confession, “Here are those you have given me. They are the people for whose sins I suffered, whose guilt I bore. They belong to me, and I acknowledge them. They bear the name of God, for they are baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Their names are written in the book of life.”
So, even though you falter from time to time Jesus will not turn away from you. He will receive you. He will absolve you of your sin. He will remind you of your baptism where he made you his. He will give you to eat of his very body and his blood, for forgiveness, salvation, and life eternal. He will restore you again, and again, and again, for you are his.
That my dear brothers and sisters in Christ is the life to which God called you in your baptism whether you were baptized as an infant, a child, a teenager, or an adult. That is the only life worth living and he has given it to you and he will keep you in it. That is your confession. That is God’s confession. Amen.
9/04/11
Text: Matthew 18:1-20
Our Gospel lesson for this morning has at least 10 different topics that I could preach on. That is way too many topics to deal with in one sermon, even if they are all good subjects, so as is my custom, I looked for an overall theme, the one topic that all the other verses supported.
What I found is this; God takes sin seriously. And why wouldn’t he take sin seriously? He is God, a perfect being that cannot let sin of any kind, whether it is that little white lie, or looking the other way when someone needs help, or keeping the gifts he has given each one of us go unused, or any of the other multitude of things that we each struggle with. God takes them seriously.
God despises sin of every kind, even those sins that we think are harmless or justify doing by misquoting or misusing God’s Word. We are indeed all poor miserable sinners still deserving of God’s wrath even while we stand before him declared innocent because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are, at the same time saint and sinner. Saint because of Jesus’ death and resurrection and sinner because; well, after all we are sinful human.
Three Sunday’s ago on Confirmation Sunday in your service folder was a text from Matthew 10:32-33 which explained the reason why the confirmands were there that day. It read “Whoever confesses me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.” That is what those young people were doing that day; making a confession of their faith before the congregation.
Faith, the faith they have and you have comes from God through the work of the Holy Spirit. Faith is born in weakness. It is born in need. It is receiving Jesus. It isn’t our doing. It isn’t even our talking or praying. Faith is none of these things. Faith doesn’t do. Faith is done to. Faith receives Jesus by trusting in him.
Faith doesn’t try to earn God’s love because faith knows that Jesus has given and revealed God’s love toward us. Faith doesn’t try to earn God’s favor, for faith knows that Jesus has earned God’s favor for us. Faith doesn’t work to get a reward because faith receives the award of salvation from the work that Jesus did.
Jesus even though he was without sin suffered by choosing to bear the full and final judgment of almighty God against all sinners. He chose to embrace every bit of our sin, and by taking it upon himself he set his love against our hatred, his purity against our lust, and his humble obedience against our proud and vain contempt for God that shows up when we trust more in our own ability or the ability of others rather than God to care for us.
This is what Jesus has done, and this is what our faith receives, and rejoices in, and this is why our faith is so very precious to God. For our faith receives the priceless treasure Jesus Christ himself whom God the Father loves and has loved from eternity.
God is the only one who can actually see the faith in your heart since he is the one who created it. He created it through his Holy Word and Baptism. This is how we can be confident that baptism is a means by which we are brought to faith and kept in the faith. Baptism is God’s holy Word bound to water by God’s own command. The two cannot be separated.
In the case of adults or older children, we teach them before they are baptized. In the case of little children and infants, we teach them after they are baptized. There is no difference between the baptism of a baby and the baptism of an adult. In either case the one who is baptized is given faith and believes in Jesus even though they might be able to articulate their faith.
While we cannot truly know whether a person has true faith we can know if someone has been given faith when we see them baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We see it happen. There is a record of it that we can look up. We can know if he or she has been taught the true Christian faith and confesses to believe it when we hear them make their confession of faith on Sunday morning during the worship service.
We can see their acts of love, charity, and forgiveness. These are the outward signs of faith. The world sees what marks us as Christians: our works done in love, our baptism, and our confession of the faith God gave us.
So every Sunday we confess our personal faith as a congregation, as we read one of the historic Christian creeds. This morning we will be confessing our Christian faith using the words of the Nicene Creed. In that creed we will say, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.” And then we will say that we believe “In one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.” And then we will say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.”
We will say those things and more as we state our belief in the holy Christian and apostolic Church, one Baptism for the remission of sins, and the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. That is our confession of faith.
That confession of faith then is not just going through the motions. It is one of the most solemn most important confessions you will ever make. For you see Jesus does not say, “Go along to get along and worry later about what you said.” No! He says “whoever confesses me before men I will confess” and “whoever denies me before men I will deny.”
And since we were baptized into Christ’s body, his Church, we confess the true faith that his Church confesses. We Lutherans don’t claim that the Little Catechism is our unique confession of the Christian faith. We claim that the teaching of the little Catechism for children and the Large Catechism for adults is the confession of the universal Christian Church. It is the Christian confession.
You might be wondering why I am talking to you about the public confession of faith that we make each Sunday. The simple reason is I see outside and inside the Christian community way too much “doctrinal indifference”.
To them Jesus is a warm fuzzy. He’s a religious security blanket who makes them feel good all over. The truth of God’s law and the truth of God’s gospel escapes them. They don’t know how to discern the difference between right and wrong according to God’s Word and they certainly don’t understand what difference it makes what they believe so long as they believe in Jesus; whatever that means.
My brothers and sisters in Christ God takes sin seriously. He condemns sin, all sin. He has to, for to do anything less is to not be God. We need to know that, for it is not just some pious thing we do.
Our confession of faith is important event though we in our sinfulness confess our faith in God feebly, imperfectly, and sporadically at times.
You will fail, as we all do from time to time, in your confession of the faith. You will forget who you are. You’ll fall on your face when it comes to doing what you promised. You’ll pass by the opportunity to confess Christ and his truth before others. Indeed, you will, as we all will, will deny him by your silence.
Jesus will still stand boldly before the Father saying in his confession, “Here are those you have given me. They are the people for whose sins I suffered, whose guilt I bore. They belong to me, and I acknowledge them. They bear the name of God, for they are baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Their names are written in the book of life.”
So, even though you falter from time to time Jesus will not turn away from you. He will receive you. He will absolve you of your sin. He will remind you of your baptism where he made you his. He will give you to eat of his very body and his blood, for forgiveness, salvation, and life eternal. He will restore you again, and again, and again, for you are his.
That my dear brothers and sisters in Christ is the life to which God called you in your baptism whether you were baptized as an infant, a child, a teenager, or an adult. That is the only life worth living and he has given it to you and he will keep you in it. That is your confession. That is God’s confession. Amen.
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 12:34 PM
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