“The Lord Has Need of Them” – Advent 1 (Ad Te Levavi) 2011

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text for this morning is taken from the Gospel just read from St. Matthew chapter 21. We focus on the words, “The Lord Has Need of Them”.

Our Lord’s coming is one of humility and lowliness. One could hardly imagine a more contrary approach to what we call the Christmas season than Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Yet for more than a thousand years, the Church has welcomed each new church year not with the Annunciation or one of the pre-Christmas stories, but rather with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. If ever there was evidence that God’s ways are not our ways, this is it.

But there it is. While we shop ‘til we drop and have days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, in the Church our eyes are fixed on Jesus. This is a season of contrasts for the Christian. On the one hand, the themes of family and friends and gift giving are certainly good and appropriate. It resonates with our American sense of pride and the way things ought to be. Yet there is this nagging sense that things are not right. Surely there is something more than home and hearth or trees and tinsel.

Jesus, the Righteous Branch, knows something that our world does not remember. His understanding of who you are and what you truly need is deeper, far deeper than we can even fathom. Jesus knows that you are suffering. He knows that you are mourning over your sin and brokenness. He knows that this season, these months, are the hardest of the year for most people. He knows that while you put on a happy face and try to exude Christmas cheer, He knows that there is mourning.

So what do you mourn this holy season? Do you mourn the death of a loved one? Or the shattering of a marriage? The loss of income, of friendship, or of something deeper? What is it that you fear? The unknown? Those inevitable conflicts with family, and the spent expectations which seem so inevitable? Whatever it is that you fear, it is pretty likely that it will be on your mind and in your heart this month. Life has a way of getting in the way when all we want to do is forget. And no amount of forgetfulness pills in alcohol and food and shopping are going to change that.

But back to our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem. The scene is set just a few days away from our Lord’s betrayal and death at the hands of sinners. They are in Bethphage, just a scant mile from the holy city. This city was really the dugout or batter’s box for the priests. They went there after their service in the Temple, and it was there that they prepared for service in the Lord’s house. You couldn’t travel more than a mile on the Sabbath, so this was the staging area for those getting ready to do the Lord’s bidding at His house. So here is Jesus, ready to do the ultimate service of sacrifice, getting ready to go. Jesus then tells the disciples to go into town, find a donkey and a colt, and bring them back. And if anyone questions you about it, say to them quite simply, “The Lord needs them.”

God has a way of pressing things into His service that we never planned or intended. Our grief and our joy. Our sorrows. Even our sins have been pressed into His holy service. For however broken and troubled you are, our Lord with gentleness and care takes all of these pieces of your crazy life and says to you quite simply, “I need this. Can I have this? It would fit in perfectly into my plan for your salvation.” It’s as if God takes inventory of all of the junk in your life, and everything you would toss as as too hard or too painful, that is what He wants to use for His own holy purposes.

I will be the first to admit that this is hard to see at times. Ok. Not hard. Impossible. How can God use all of this junk to prepare me for His appearing? And I’ll be honest with you: I don’t know. I don’t know in my own life, and I don’t know in yours, either. But what our Lord says to you today is that everything you have and everything you are is pressed into His service.

But this is very important to understand. What I am not talking about is the sort of cheesy “God has a plan” sort of talk that we so often try to comfort ourselves with. It goes much deeper than that. What God wants for you this week and every week is that you recognize what is really going on around you through His Word and Spirit. St. Paul put it this way in our Epistle,

“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. 12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

So what our Lord asks of you today is simple. Wake up! Remember who you are, a baptized child of God, holy and beloved. Remember that our Lord’s coming is about you. It is about your salvation, which is right here, right now. Jesus Word is here, His body and blood are ever present, offering you forgiveness, life and salvation.

The Lord is our righteousness, we hear in Jeremiah. You, like those people lining the streets for our Lord so many years ago, are here awaiting His coming. You wait, but you wait in the prison cell of your sin and brokenness. But your wait is not in vain. Our righteousness is coming, indeed He has already come for you. He is here, even now, ready to release you from all that binds you and holds in thrall. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote this about this season:

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The door to your freedom has been opening in the birth and death and resurrection of our Advent King, the Lord of heaven and earth. Be free. Our king is coming to you. Rejoice, daughter of Zion! Shout and rejoice! Sing with palm branches in your hards and faith in your hearts as we cry out with the people of Jerusalem, angels, archangels and all the company of heaven, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

He is coming for you. He is coming now. He is coming with healing in His wings. He is coming to set you free. Blessed is He who comes.

Believe it for Jesus’ sake, Amen.

And now the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith to life everlasting. Amen.

 

Advent Longing

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Annunciation 1 large

It is always dangerous to say that a season is my favorite time of the year.  But there it is.  Right now Advent is my favorite time of the year.  The hymns are sublime, the Gospel is clear and beautiful.  The hope of the One to Come washes over you like a flood.

The longing of Advent for me is also closely associated with death.  Our daughter, Nadia, died in utero the day after Thanksgiving in 2005.  Our Son, Emmanuel, died in utero on December 21, 2009.  My mother died on January 9.  So this season is really a time of longing for me.  Longing for what is gone.  Longing for what can never be.

But that really is what our Lord’s coming is all about.  Our Lord’s birth is miraculous.  It should not have happened.  By all reason and common sense, it is impossible.  Yet it is true.

This season as we long for what is lost, look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.  He is the One who wipes away our tears.  He is the one who will create all things new.  He is the one who has gives us hope (Nadia) by becoming one with our flesh and blood.  He is God-with-Us (Emmanuel).

Lord, make all things new.  I hope in your Word alone.

-Pr. Peperkorn

 

Vindication (Matthew 25:31-46) 2011

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text for this morning is the Gospel just read from St. Matthew chapter 25.

Today we are going to talk about a great word that you don’t hear very much. The word is vindication. Vindication means that you have been publicly cleared of the charges brought against you in a court of law. It means that you have been declared innocent by the judge, and that the whole world now knows this to be true.

We are talking about vindication today because the Last Day is your vindication. That’s what our Gospel is about for today. The Last Day is your day of vindication. When we talk about the end times and the Last Days, there is a lot of confusion, and even a lot of fear on the parts of Christians. Parables like the story of the sheep and the goats don’t help matters. It is very easy as a Christian to look at the Last Day as one final opportunity to screw up. There can be that nagging fear: what if I forgot something? What if God finds out about that one sin? Does this mean I won’t get in? Images of St. Peter at the pearly gates sadly shaking his head may come to mind.

If we are honest with ourselves, we all view the Day or the Last Day with that trepidation and fear. When you hear the term “judgment day” or something like it, the image pops in your head of the “justice is blind” lady holding the old fashioned scales in her hand. Will my good works outweigh my sins? That is what we want to know. And you know the answer.

If we leave it there, Satan wins. Remember first of all that one of the oldest words or terms to describe Satan is that he is the accuser. What he does, and he’s really good at it, is to pull all of your attention away from Christ and His mercy, and onto yourself. There is nothing that Satan loves more than a good unhealthy dose of naval gazing. That’s why he works so hard to dredge up these past sins and failures. That’s why things you did days, weeks, months or even years ago keep coming back. They keep coming back because Satan never wants you to forget that you are a sinner and deserve hell. Or rather, if you know you are a sinner, he wants to make sure that you know you are the worst sinner ever, and that there is no way God could possibly forgive that. So he blinds you to your own sin and weaknesses, until he is ready to pull them up at just the wrong time, at just the worst possible moment. This is how Satan works to drive you from the Gospel. Satan’s tool is the Law, to beat you down, to point the finger at you, and to drive you to despair.

And it is right here that you stand. You stand condemned. You are not worthy to stand before God on the Last Day. In that regard, Satan is absolutely right. Your righteousness is as filthy rags. There is no good thing that dwells within you. No, not even one. You are all together corrupt. You are a sinner, through and through. And so am I. If you are left watching the scales tip between your so-called good works and your sinful works, you are doomed.

Now do you remember what our word for the day is again? Vindication. The Last Day is the day of vindication for you. What this means is this. You are a poor, miserable sinner. We got that. Satan is right. You are nothing more than a beggar before God, with nothing to offer him save your sins.

But what God does is miraculous. God looks at you, standing there in your goat-clothes, scratchy and ugly, and says to you, “Well, done, Good and faithful servant. Come, receive the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.”

Huh? I’m not a good-works-working sheep! I’m a goat! I don’t deserve this! I should be cast away like the filthy rags that I really am.

But here is the key to your vindication: When God looks at you, He sees Jesus. It’s that simple. God looks at Jesus, the very Son of God made flesh, and sees perfect obedience. He sees the merciful one, the suffering servant of all, the righteous one. He sees every Law fulfilled, every command kept, every work done to its fullest perfection.

Yes, when God looks at you, He sees Jesus. He sees that the Garden of Eden has been remade, that God and man are now reconciled, and that you are perfect and holy, righteous in every way. The scale of justice we talked about before? It isn’t your good works versus your evil works. It’s your sin against Christ’s righteousness. And Christ’s righteousness outweighs your sins, every time. There is no sin too great that you can commit that Jesus didn’t die for on the cross. None. Not one. They are all paid for, every one. As we sing in one of our communion hymns, “blood that but one drop of has the power to win, forgiveness for the world and all its sin.”

So that final Day is the day of vindication. This is the day God takes his revenge out on Satan. “Vengence is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” On that Day, Satan and all his evil works shall be cast away forever. But not you.

For you see, there is one more thing that we must keep ever before us as we look to the Last Day. It is another Day. It is the Day of sorrows. It is the day when our Lord took all of your sins to the grave. On that Good Friday so many years ago God’s wrath over sin was poured out. God’s wrath over your sin was poured out upon our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And because of that Day, the Day of Atonement, your Day of Vindication is secure.

Lift up your hearts to the Lord, fellow redeemed! Every time you eat His body and drink His blood, you show forth His death until He comes again on the Last Day. God’s Word of forgiveness, of absolution, is spoken over you again and again and again. Don’t be afraid. Be comforted and at peace, for your salvation is secure. It is secure in the blood of Christ, shed for you.

On that Day the last enemy, death, will be destroyed. On that Day you will be reunited with the saints in heaven and with all of God’s elect. On that Day everything that is broken will be fixed, every tear wiped clean with joy, and every wound of sin and sorrow will be healed.

It’s kinda crazy, isn’t it? To think that all that will come to pass according to our Lord’s Word and promise. But it is true. You need not fear this day. Rather, long for it. Look to this day. It is the day of vindication for you. It is the Day when everything is settled according to Jesus’ promise: “I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost…” (John 17:12).

You are in the Father’s hands. The Lord knows them that are His, and you are one of them. Come, blessed by the Father. Inherit the kingdom. Come, eat of the banquet of salvation. Come, have a fortaste of the feast to come in the Supper of His Son’s body and blood. Come. Come, for the Day of your vindication as at hand.

Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

And now the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Luther on Preaching

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Wherever faith is not preached and is not given primary importance, wherever we do not begin by learning how we are united with Christ and become branches in Him, all the world concentrates only on its works.  On the other hand, wherever faith alone is taught, this leads to false Christians, who boast of their faith, are baptized, and are counted among the Christians but give no evidence of fruit and strength.  This makes it difficult to preach to people.  No matter how one preaches, things go wrong; the people always hedge.  If one does not preach on faith, nothing but hypocritical works result.  But if one confines one’s preaching to faith, no works ensue.  In brief, the outcome is either works without faith or faith without works.  Therefore the sermon must address itself to those who accept and apprehend both faith and works; the others, who do not want to follow, remain behind.  Just as the devil, who is the god and lord of the world, will never become pious, so it will never be possible to make the whole world pious.  And no matter how much one says to the world, it grows defiant and does all the more in opposition.  It takes this as a provocation to be even worse.  Because these people refuse to hear and to believe, we let them go their way until they find and experience the truth, not only in eternity but also here in this temporal life.

But we preach to the little flock, who know, and reflect on, their eternal destiny, whose chief concern is to remain in this Vine, who find all their consolation in Him, and who then also give practical proof of this in their conduct.  For faith will surely manifest itself in such fruit, as Christ said earlier: “He who abides in Me bears much fruit.”

Luther’s Works, vol. 24, pp. 249-250.

God’s Gift of True Doctrine in Christ (Reformation 2011)

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Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Rocklin, California
Reformation Sunday (October 30, 2011)
John 8:31-36 and Romans 3:21-26

TITLE: “God’s Gift of True Doctrine in Christ”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for the Festival of the Reformation is from John chapter 8, with focus on the words, You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

What is the point of the Reformation? You will find this day many views of the Reformation celebrated throughout the land, and yet many will look at today and miss the point entirely. Let’s examine a few ways that people misunderstand and misapply the Reformation. We can call them myths of the Reformation:

The Reformation frees us to get back to the Bible. Well that certainly sounds very pious, and it kind of resonates with our American ears. We like freedom talk, after all. We like to hear about how our nation has freed the Iraqis from slavery. We like hear about lost freedoms being restored. But that isn’t the point of the Reformation. For freedom to get back to the Bible for many, especially in Luther’s day, simply meant to believe whatever false teaching and silly notion that anyone had about the Bible. Luther couldn’t have cared less about freedom, at least not in the sense of do anything you want.

Here’s another one. The Reformation is a day for us to celebrate our heritage as Lutherans. That certainly is what often happens on Reformation. It kind of serves as a cultural heritage day, where we remember whatever each person thinks it means to be Lutheran, sing some good old favorites, and then go home feeling like we’ve really showed those Roman Catholics a thing or two. But this certainly cannot be what was behind the Reformation. Luther never intended to cause controversy; he simply wanted to talk about Jesus and what is the Gospel. It was the persecution of the truth that really forced catholic churches to become known as “Lutheran” churches.

Then we have my favorite: The Reformation is the birth of the Lutheran Church. Well, Lutherans certainly may easily become self-righteous, and the view that the Lutheran Church is the container of everyone who is going to heaven would be the height of arrogance on our part. Yet we often act as if this is the case, by being callous toward other churches, not caring about them and what they teach, and especially by refusing to point out when they (or we) have departed from the teachings of the Bible. We even confess every Sunday: I believe in one, holy, Christian and apostolic church. There is only one church, not many. That one church is hidden just as faith is hidden, and yet it is revealed wherever God’s Word is preached in its truth and purity and the Sacraments are administered as Christ instituted them. So we rejoice wherever the Word is preached and the Sacraments given out, even if the flow of the Gospel is but a trickle, God has done great things through such small works.

So what, dear friends, is the point of the Lutheran Reformation? The point of the Reformation is that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. The point of the Reformation is that Jesus came to earth as one of us. He walked among us. He healed our diseases and forgave our sins. And He died on the cross, paying the penalty for your unbelief and sin. And in His resurrection from the dead, life and hope sprang up throughout the whole world.

This message, this doctrine of the Gospel, is the central point of Bible. This is what the Augsburg Confession says is the “article on which the church stands or falls.” Notice, though, that this is a doctrine, a teaching. Doctrine is what it’s all about. That’s right. Doctrine. That has to be one of the most unpopular words you could find. When you hear the word doctrine, it sounds old fashioned, out dated, and authoritarian. A word like doctrine brings to mind old men in rooms coming up with ways and rules to make being a Christian harder. But this is not true.

Doctrine, you see, is just another way to say teaching. The heart of the Reformation, more than anything else, was about teaching or doctrine. What doctrine? It had to do with the doctrine of who Jesus is and what he does for me. In the bible, you see, there is only one doctrine, not many. We read in the book of Acts, for example, how they describe the life of the early church: And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers (Acts 2:42 NKJV).

What Luther, by God’s grace, came to understand is that the Scriptures are a seamless whole, one garment woven throughout. All of the Scriptures teach of Christ. You may remember that after Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared to two disciples on the way to Emmaus. When they didn’t recognize him, and didn’t get the story of His death and resurrection, St. Luke records for us, “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27).

This one garment of the Bible is Christ, but not just kind of a cute, generic Jesus that you would find in a Wal-mart book. Every doctrine, every teaching of the Bible is intimately connected with who Jesus is, and what he does for us by dying on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. What this means is that when we learn about Baptism, we are learning about the forgiveness of sins. When I learn about the Lord’s Supper, even such hard to connect doctrines as closed communion, I am learning about the forgiveness of sins. The end of the world, creation, the work of the Holy Spirit, every teaching from the Bible is connected to God’s work of forgiving your sins and bringing you into heaven to be with him forever. For there is only one doctrine, and it is all about Christ for us.

This is what Jesus is talking about in our text when He says: If you continue in my Word, then you are my disciples. And you will know the truth, and the Truth will set you free. It’s all about Jesus. If we cannot see that the whole of the Scriptures is about Christ for us, then we cannot read the Bible at all. Yet if there is a danger to the Lutheran Church today, it is this: we have forgotten this love of doctrine. We have forgotten that learning doctrine connects us to Jesus, strengthens faith, and draws us to His eternal gifts of the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Sadly, we have by and large forgotten our first love as Lutherans. We have bought into the lie that doctrine doesn’t matter.

All you have to do is look at our study of God’s Word to see how quickly we have forgotten the point of the Reformation. How many families hear God’s Word together at home, sing the hymns of the faith and pray? How many families are willing to sacrifice time, money and more for Sunday School or to take time to learn the gifts of God? How many neglect Bible class, or have more important things to do even than coming to church regularly to hear the Word of God?

I bring this up on Reformation Day not to make you angry. No one likes self-examination. It is painful and critical and frankly unpleasant. We all dislike it. Yet that, dear friends, is precisely what Martin Luther sought to do when he posted the ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg 487 years ago today. Thesis One of the ninety-five theses begin this way:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Repentance means turning away from unbelief and turning toward Christ and His mercy toward us for the forgiveness of sins. It means turning away from ourselves and our wants, desires and selfishness, and turning toward God and His mercy in Jesus Christ. It means examination in the light of God’s Law, and recognizing once again that our only hope lies in the mercy of Jesus Christ.

The Church always needs to be reformed. If we cannot see that, then we are like the man who seeks to pull the speck out of his brother’s eye when he cannot see the plank sticking out of his own. God calls us to repentance this Reformation Day, but He also calls us to faith. There, dear friends, lies your hope. God does forgive your sins. All of them, from the greatest to the least. He forgives them all, and He says to you this day: I love you, I forgive you, and I want you to be with me forever in heaven. That is the doctrine. That is the teaching that God gave to Martin Luther so many years ago, and that is the teaching that he longs to deliver to you this day.

Thank God for Martin Luther and the Reformation of the Church. The light of the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins continues to shine forth throughout the world. And despite our weaknesses and failings, God is merciful to us. That is the heart of the Reformation. That is what it means to be Lutheran. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting. Amen.