Sermon, Sunday Oct. 27, 2013-Reformation Sunday

Jeremiah 31:3-34 , Romans 3:19-28 , John 8:31-36

Brothers and sisters,

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

What is Reformation Sunday all about? One word that is frequently associated with the Reformation is freedom. But the freedom associated with the reformation of the church is not the kind of freedom that you might be thinking. You see in American public life we do like to celebrate freedom, but it’s a freedom for yourself; a freedom to do what you want, to pursue your vision of the American Dream, or what have you. But the freedom that defined not only the reformation, but really our life as Christians is freedom from ourselves; freed from the law, freed from sin, freed from our complete inability to be righteous.

   We cannot properly appreciate this freedom separated from what our Lord Jesus says of the human heart: For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.  The spirit of the reformation can be heard not, first and foremost, in a quote from Martin Luther but in something Paul wrote in the lesson from Romans for today For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.  In this passage Paul is declaring to us that our only source of and hope for righteousness is Christ, and the immediate basis for this claim from Paul comes right before this passage where Paul cites Psalm 14 which says “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.

      And so since our only hope for righteousness is Christ then the law does nothing to make us righteous. Jesus is the only One who has ever fulfilled the law perfectly. Our only hope for righteousness is His righteousness. The law does not show us how to be righteous, it shows us how righteous we are not; as Paul writes in Romans 7… Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

     At the time of the reformation there were false-gospels that professed a false-righteousness. Rather than properly pointing to Christ these false gospels do what all false gospels ultimately do; just bring sinners back to their sinful selves. One such false gospel was taught by a man named Erasmus who taught that sinners can choose to believe through the power of their will; which would be a denial and rejection of our sinful nature and the reality that we are born dead in our trespasses and sin. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit who comes to us in the Word of Christ that we are able to believe. You see when you think that faith comes through the power of your sinful will then what do you do when you experience doubt and unbelief? You  try to will yourself to believe, so you would look for faith in your self, in your heart. But we know from the words of our Lord Jesus that out of the heart comes all sorts of sin, so going deeper within yourself just leads you away from Christ and toward unbelief and despair.

    Another false-gospel came from John Tetzel who was an indulgence preacher. An indulgence was said to be a remission of temporal punishment due to sin. An indulgence was obtained by giving money to the church. And in Luther’s time it was taught that by purchasing indulgences one could reduce the amount of time in purgatory for yourself or a loved one. It was a form of works-righteousness but with money; and like all forms of works-righteousness, a complete denial of our sinful nature.

    And today we see these same sorts of false-teaching re-packaged in different forms but every bit as futile and deadly. People are taught that sinners can save themselves by saying a certain prayer or going through a certain ritual. Others reject the purpose of the law to reveal our sin by essentially denying the reality of sin. We see this in the emergent post-modern movement which essentially teaches various forms of universalism-the false gospel that all will be saved regardless of what they believe. Both of these are rejections of the Word of Christ and are simply re-packaging of the same false-gospels and heresies that the church has always contended with-during Luther’s time and before, and they all drive sinners away from Christ and back into themselves.

   But God calls sinners away from ourselves in repentance to acknowledge our sin and to live our whole life humbly in repentance. In the first of his 95 theses Luther wrote When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. When you look to Christ in repentance you see the One who has taken your sins from you and bestowed unto you His righteousness which you receive in faith. So Peter writes that Christ is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

    Daily repentance is daily turning from yourself and your sinful nature and turning to Christ and His righteousness. Remembering the reformation is celebrating the gift of God’s righteousness given to you by the sacrificial death of Christ Jesus for you. Jesus does not merely tell you how to be saved but He is your salvation, He is the One put forward on your behalf to show you God’s righteousness that you would receive it by faith.

    Both the old and the new testaments bear witness to this. And you can see that it is the will of God that you continually hear and cling to this promise in the words of our Lord Jesus who promises that if you abide in His Word you are truly His disciples and the truth will set you free. Jesus is not making abiding in His Word a work here, rather He is making a promise. It is as if He is a doctor prescribing a medicine. The medicine is of no use if you don’t consume it.

    And so the Word of Christ; the law and the prophets are just words in a book if you do not abide in them. And so how do you “abide” in the Word? For one thing, this is why we have Christian education; Sunday School, confirmation, bible-studies. You also abide in His Word through regular worship attendance. And of course you can abide in His Word by spending time in the Word, reading the scriptures yourself. This is not new. You have heard about the importance of all of these things before, but what you need to know today is that all of this stuff; worship attendance, Bible-studies, confirmation is not just about keeping our doors open but rather they are given to each Christian for their spiritual survival.

    Abiding in the Word is the exact opposite of abiding in yourself. Abiding in the Word is abiding in the truth; the truth that you are a sinner and that Christ Jesus is your Savior. Abiding in yourself is to abide in futile attempts to strive toward your own righteousness. To abide in truth is to confess your sins and count on Christ Jesus for forgiveness and salvation. To abide in yourself is to abide in bondage to sin, death and the devil. To abide in truth is to abide in the Savior who knows you and shapes you and forms you and frees you to your neighbor and creation. Abiding in yourself is to abide in the devil who wants to take your life. Abiding in the truth is to abide in Christ Jesus who gives you eternal life by giving Himself unreservedly and abundantly.

    The reformation was not a re-invention of the church or Christianity. It was a re-discovery and restoration of the faith once for all delivered to the saints built on the truth that sets sinners free. And the knowledge of your sinfulness is an important part of this truth for it declares that you cannot free yourself from what you are. Jesus says that the sinner-which is you and me and all of us- is a slave, bound to our sinful natures. Slaves cannot free themselves. They can only be freed by someone else.

    Jesus declares Himself to be the way and the truth and the life. The truth that frees sinners is not a theory nor a philosophy it is the incarnate Son of God as the fulfillment of God’s final and saving and freeing promise to you. The promise is nothing less than true and eternal life in God’s Kingdom; the promise of being in the constant and joyous presence of our Savior and Lord. And what do you do to earn this?  You don’t. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. And the Son has set you free. By His death on the cross for your sins, you are free indeed!

     Today on reformation Sunday we do not celebrate a sinful person, though we would do well to thank God for His servant Martin Luther. Today we thank and praise our Lord Jesus for redeeming us from sin, death and the devil; for giving us everything for nothing, for taking us from captivity to ourselves and into the glorious and spiritual freedom of the children and heirs of God.

    With no merit on your part Jesus declares you free and loose from sin through the words of absolution, you hear the Gospel of salvation in Christ and you are freed, and soon you will witness the power of the Word of Christ, making ordinary bread and wine the bearers of nothing less than the body and blood of our Lord Jesus. God’s righteousness given to you in Christ is the essence of what the reformation is about. The redemption you receive from Christ brings God’s righteousness. Christ Jesus is the object of our faith and the earner of grace. Look to Him, trust in Him, Abide in Him, and be free.

Amen   

Sermon, Sunday October 20, 2013

Genesis 32:22-30 , 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 and Luke 18:1-8

Brothers and sisters,

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The church has a unique relationship to time. For 2000 years the church has been in a state of waiting; for the return of Christ, for the resurrection, for the day of the Lord. And this while the unbelieving world continues to mockingly ask us “Where is He? Why has He not come back yet? Why doesn’t He just show Himself?” And so to this very day we find comfort in these words from our Lord, “…with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”  You see Jesus is not slow to fulfill His promises as some count slowness. It is more a matter of His remarkable patience with us; sinners that we are.  God does not want any of us to perish but rather He wants all of us to be brought to repentance. God has remarkable patience with us and so we should have seek to have remarkable patience with God.

    God calls us to patiently trust the promises that He has revealed to us so many times before; that Christ Jesus is preparing a place for you, that He is making all things new, that He is with you to the end of the ages, that where two or three are gathered in His name He is there among them; all of God’s promises. In the lessons for this morning our Lord Jesus reveals to you not only just how important being patient with God is but also how infinitely patient He is with us.

    In our second lesson Paul says to Timothy and you “…continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Staying rooted in the Word of Christ is absolutely essential to Christians. This goes without saying. You have known the importance of abiding in the scriptures probably most of your life.

   But is an urgency to this because, there is indeed, as Paul says, a time coming when people will not endure sound teaching. I believe that time is here now. The very notion of sound doctrine is considered by many in the church to be antiquated and not relevant to a changing culture.  This is because the Word of Christ is always under attack because it does not just call you to faith but it creates, nurtures and sustains faith in the crucified and risen Savior.

    What Paul is talking about is an all out attack on the Gospel. The Gospel has the power to save you from the devil so the devil attacks it.  In the two verses that come before this passage Paul warns against this attack, saying that those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, and that this attack finds people not enduring sound teaching but with itching ears accumulating for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. False teachers will deceive God’s people just as the devil has deceived them. The truth of God’s Word is replaced with a lie as people find man-made myths more suitable to their sinful minds.

    Sounds like much of what we see today. Sin and the devil have convinced an unbelieving culture that they don’t need God. We are not wired to think we need help so the godless crowd looks around and says “Look at what we have done on our own. We don’t need God.”  There are countless TV shows, books and magazines that add fuel to this fire by undermining biblical truth claims. People fall hook, line and sinker for the latest attempt to disprove the Gospel; and before you know it the devil has convinced millions, even billions of people-sadly many of whom are Christian-that a lie is the truth and the truth is a lie.

    And sadly some even calling themselves “pastor” are part of the attack as preachers who  claim to be rooted in God’s Word preach a message that is far more man-centered than Christ-centered.  When asked if Jesus is the only way to salvation they will hem and haw for fear that they might otherwise offend someone. When their ministry is held up in the light of the great commission you see that they have replaced God’s plan of salvation in Christ with earthly, temporal objectives. And gullible souls continue to be impressed by all of this and so they turn away from listening to the truth and they wander off into myths.

    With our penchant for exchanging His truth for lies we give God more reason not just to be impatient with us but to cast us aside and forget about us. But  this is not God’s desire for you. It is His desire that you repent of your sins and trust in Christ, and what Christ has done for you, bearing the punishment that you deserve on the cross and rising for your salvation. It is His desire that you would continue to abide in the sacred writings of scripture which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. It is His desire to be with you for all eternity.

    But you are born dead in your trespasses and sins. Dead people cannot save themselves. Sin and the devil will tell you otherwise, but that is just an attempt to draw you away from Christ. But in baptism the work you cannot do is done for you as you are joined with Christ Jesus in His death and resurrection. In baptism the sin that corrupted you and makes you worthy only of death is cleansed and you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ.

   And so this One who saves you from sin and the devil in baptism can also protect you from the attacks of sin and the devil that come in this time of waiting. Holding fast to the Word of Christ is exactly what Christ Jesus wants of you for He desires to be near you to save you. He wants you to be like Jacob and the persistent widow. 

   Jacob is alone and scared. He is convinced that his brother Esau will kill him since he is coming to meet him with 400 men. Jacob had prayed that God would deliver him from the hand of his brother. And then as he is all alone, a mysterious man begins fighting and wrestling with Jacob until daybreak. And this man does not prevail against Jacob so he puts Jacob’s hip out of joint. The man was certainly able to prevail because it was God Himself but He doesn’t.

    And Jacob is injured and hardly able to fight but he tenaciously clings to this mysterious stranger and asks the man for a blessing. This is a humbled Jacob. This is a man who has seen the errors of his previously deceitful ways. He has seen the futility of following his own path of deceiving his brother for his birthright or scheming against Laban. It was his scheming that put him in this position. And so Jacob finds himself wrestling with his Lord and what does he do? He doesn’t try to scheme or lie, but he asks for a blessing which shows he recognizes the man as at least being from God and that Jacob has faith. The man asks Jacob his name. And this is important because Jacob’s name identified him as one who schemes, lies and cheats to get his own way.

    But now he is given a new name; Israel because he had striven with God and with men and prevailed. That whole wrestling match was God giving Jacob a new name. And it didn’t happen through scheming or lying but through faith. When Jacob was finally at the point where all he could do was ask for God’s mercy that was when God finally gave him the name that would always be an indicator of relying on God in faith; Israel. God could have prevailed, but instead He had mercy, even with taking Jacob’s hip out of joint He was still showing mercy. He was driving Jacob all the more to where all he could do was trust and rely on God’s mercy.

    So also the persistent widow in the Gospel lesson was at a point where all she could do was rely on God’s mercy. As a widow she would have been among the most vulnerable people. She was poor. She was oppressed and the unjust judge whom she kept pleading to clearly cared nothing about her. But she continues to plead to the judge; not because of her faith in the judge but because of her faith in God.

   She reminds us that as we wait for Christ’s return we can and indeed should continually pray in the midst of the attacks on God’s truth, just as the widow continually prayed in the midst of oppression. We are to cling to God’s mercy revealed to us in Christ through scripture. Jacob’s injury as well as the reality of the widow continuing to have to live under the rule of the unjust judge provide us with a foreshadowing of Jesus appearing with His wounds after the resurrection, after He had defeated sin and the devil through His death and resurrection. They remind us that though we are still under attack, though we still deal with sickness, death and oppression like the widow, God is still merciful to us and Christ Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this. As God was faithful and merciful to Jacob and the widow so He is to you.

    You are marked with the cross of Christ. As the cross meant suffering for Christ so it means suffering for you. And as the Father was faithful to His Son Christ Jesus in His passion so He is faithful to you in the midst of the attacks of sin and the devil. And so this period of waiting is not a time for passivity, it is a time to heed Paul’s words to preach the word and be ready in season and out, to be sober-minded and do the work of an evangelist. For it is not with power and might that we fight the forces that oppose the church but with the Word and promise of Christ. With Jacob and the persistent widow we know that even in difficult times God is our friend and not our foe; that He is faithful and trustworthy and that He desires that you would be with Him for all eternity. So you can pray and not lose heart. He hears your prayers and answers them. He blesses you with the forgiveness of sins and He has overcome your enemies of sin, death and the devil.

Amen

   

Sermon Sunday October 13, 2013

Luke 17:11-19  and 2 Timothy 2:1-13

Brothers and sisters,

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This healing of the ten lepers is a truly impressive miracle. These lepers stand at a distance from Jesus because they have been cast out from their community and so they have to shout to get Jesus’ attention. And their request is simple as can be: “Jesus master, have mercy on us” they ask. And Jesus knows exactly what they want. And He doesn’t even so much as lay hands on them but rather He tells them to go show themselves to the priest. It was the priest’s job to confirm when a healing had been done  so it is implied that if they go forward trusting in Jesus, they will be healed.

    Generally the healings and miracles of Jesus were intended to confirm Jesus’ authority. But there is more to this one. There is a lot to this healing: gratefulness to God, sickness, sin, forgiveness. But underneath all of this, this is about getting close to Jesus.

    To see this you have to look at the way the faith of the lepers reveals itself. They go to the priests so you can see they trust that they will be healed. But only one leper goes back to give thanks to Jesus. And he was a foreigner which would have been outlandish. But in this foreigner you see true faith. True faith receives the healing and returns to the giver with praise and Thanksgiving. True faith believes and is then connected and united to Christ. To be connected to Jesus, as if at His feet, is the true outcome of forgiveness.

    Paul had true faith. And he encourages you to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. He urges you to have a constant reflection upon the death and resurrection of Christ. In Leviticus God promises “But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.” God promises to be faithful and proves this faithfulness even when we are faithless. And Christ Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this faithfulness of God. Christ Jesus is as the author of Hebrews declares, the exact imprint of God’s nature.

   You are strengthened when you remember God’s faithfulness. In Leviticus God promises You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.  And this is more than merely an act of your will to hearken back. This remembering involves knowledge and vicarious experience and it is so important to our Lord He has given us His Gospel and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper that He might draw you into this remembering. This remembering is what happens when you are cleansed of your sin and joined in the death and resurrection of Christ in word and sacrament. In the Word of Christ Jesus and the sacraments that He has given you, you do not merely hear about the salvation story but you become part of the salvation story. Thus Paul writes that if we have died with Christ we also live with Him. Dying with Christ is suffering for the sake of Christ.

    Anyone clinging to the delusion that God promises a trouble-free life need only look to what Paul endured.  Jesus makes no promise of peace, harmony and paradise for the Christian life but rather declares And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.  Just look at Paul’s life. He suffered for the sake of the Gospel. He was repeatedly imprisoned, he was severely flogged and exposed to death over and over again.

    Look at Jesus’ life. The Pharisees conspired and plotted against Him. The disciples whom He called did not understand His mission. Peter denied Him three times. Even though He was completely innocent Jesus still heard the word of Pilate’s sentence: “Let him be crucified”.  And finally He faced the cross alone. Trial and struggle are nothing new to God’s people. God’s people are a people who are made to endure the slings and arrows of the devil in the midst of a world that rejects God. But with Paul and our Lord Jesus you can endure as you hold fast to God’s faithfulness and are strengthened by it.  

    Endure as you remember Christ Jesus crucified for your justification and raised for your salvation. In the midst of all the trials that Jesus faced-and they are more than we can possibly fathom-Christ Jesus continued to seek the will of the Father which was the atonement of your sins that you would be reconciled with Him. Through all of the agony of Jesus’ suffering and death God carried out His plan of salvation for you. And when He rose from the dead victory was proclaimed over the forces of sin and the devil.

    Jesus promises that in this world you will indeed have trouble but He also promises that you can take heart because He has overcome the world. Remember Paul who suffered for the Gospel and yet he still kept the faith. He faced severe trials and temptations; people deserting him and doing him great harm. Paul declares himself to be an ambassador in chains. And yet he could say to Timothy that the Lord stood by his side and gave him strength. He had learned to be content in all situations. He does not see his suffering as agony but as an opportunity to share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

    And Paul does all of this for the sake of the elect. He endures all that the devil can throw his way with an eye to the future of God’s chosen people in Christ, so that they may obtain eternal glory. Paul has the assurance that no matter what happens he will live and reign with Christ. God will remain faithful. Paul is bound but God’s Word is not. It is out and on the loose and creating believers and making them part of the salvation story.

   Paul had the assurance that comes only from Christ. But note that this assurance does not lead to inactivity on Paul’s part. He does not take it easy out of confidence that the elect will obtain salvation regardless of whether Paul carries out his ministry. He has learned to endure. He considers everything to be a loss when compared with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus.

   Of course all this talk about enduring and standing tall for Christ sounds great. But who really can? How would you do if you were ever really put to the test? If you ever faced real persecution such as what can be seen in countries like Iran and Afghanistan would you endure? What if keeping your job came down to whether or not you would bend the truth a little bit in order to accommodate? Would you endure? Would you, like Paul, see this as an opportunity to minister to the elect, no matter what it cost?

    We can each identify our own weaknesses that would make such an experience particularly difficult. But no matter what God remains faithful. If we deny Him He will deny us but He also says that when we are faithless He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself. The nine lepers who did not come back were still healed of their leprosy, though in their faithlessness they failed to come back to Jesus and thank and praise Him. They did not have the faith that brings forth praise and thanksgiving.

    The one who came back to Jesus-who also happened to be a foreigner-was able to see outside of himself. He was able to see beyond himself. The other lepers were curved in toward themselves, following their own wants and desires and so they did not have the faith that the other leper had. They did not get any closer to Jesus. They remained healed of their leprosy, but they did not have that faith that makes them well. They did not have that faith through which they receive the forgiveness of sins won by Christ Jesus. And so we can’t help but wonder what happened to them. What happened to the other nine lepers? We don’t know because it has not been revealed to us. Jesus doesn’t say so it’s basically none of our business.

   Jesus’ focus is the one leper who came back. He has been reconciled with God. He is back in place in a proper relationship with God through Christ Jesus. He remembered what God did for him in Christ Jesus and he was strengthened by the grace in Christ Jesus. The leprosy is not just gone but it is irrelevant for he now has the forgiveness of sins. Sin is the reason we have any sickness or disease in the world and now this leper has been delivered from sin.

   And so you have also been delivered from sin in the waters of baptism wherein you were cleansed of all of your sins. So the way that has been paved for you is the way of faith; the freedom of the Gospel. Like Paul you can focus on Christ. You have the freedom to consider everything not of Christ to be loss for the sake of the Gospel.

   Endure by the grace of God’s faithfulness. Hear God’s promise to you. Be strengthened as you hear again the good news that Christ Jesus laid down His life for you as an atoning sacrifice for your sins and that He was raised for your salvation. Remember all this that He has done for you. The Gospel is about Christ but it is also about you. Be strong in the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation. Be strong in God’s grace. Endure!!

Amen

Sermon, Sunday Sept, 29 2013-Luke 16:19-31

Brothers and sisters,

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Jesus tells a parable of a rich man and a poor man. And it should come as no surprise that the sympathetic character in this parable is the poor man. Were this story told today it might be received as an attempt to invoke some sort of class warfare for there is an undeniable element of “the haves” and the “have-nots”.

    This parable comes right after Jesus has been teaching that we need to loosen our grip on money; that we cannot serve God and money. So a story involving a rich man and a poor man seems appropriate. And as Jesus is prone to do with earthly notions, He takes our concept of the haves and have-nots and flips it upside down. 

     In one of the verses immediately prior to today’s Gospel lesson Jesus says “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.” God has given the law and the prophets (the Old Testament) for the purpose of pointing forward to Christ Jesus and also exposing the reality of your sinful nature in order to show you your need for a Savior. And those who ignore this warning are the have-nots because they do not realize their own need for a Savior, they don’t admit their own powerlessness to sin, death and the devil.  And so what they don’t have is the justification before God and salvation that comes only through faith in what Christ Jesus accomplished for sinners in His life, death and resurrection. But those who heed the warning and who hear and trust the Gospel are the haves. They have justification. They have salvation. They have eternal life in God’s Kingdom.

   And so as the story moves forward, Jesus shows that as different as the two men were from each other, there was at least one thing that they, along with all of us have in common. They both died. This is why some call death the great equalizer.

    The first of the two to die is the poor man Lazarus. And when Lazarus dies it says that the angels carry him to Abraham’s side. All we know about the rich man’s death is that he ended up in Hades. We also know that Jesus does not appear to know the rich-man’s name as He just refers to him as a rich-man; this perhaps is an indication that Jesus declared to him, depart from me I never knew you, and with that forgot even his name.  Jesus simply says that the rich man died, he was buried and that he is in torment. It was a reversal of fortune. On earth the rich man lived in comfort and opulence but in death he was in torment. Lazarus lived in squalor and despair on earth but after this life he went to a place where he was happy and comfortable.

    In Hades, the rich man pleads with Abraham to send Lazarus to relieve the torment that he was experiencing, if even for just a moment. But Abraham refuses and tells him about the big chasm between them. But the rich man keeps going and asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house so that he would warn his five brothers. But Abraham tells the rich man that his brothers have the law and the prophets; let them hear them;  if they are not convinced by the law and the prophets, they will not be convinced by someone rising from the dead.  

   And that is the heart of this story.  That is what the haves have and what the have-nots are missing; faith in God’s Word, trust in God’s promises revealed in scripture, an abiding in the eternal hope of the Gospel. But it’s not that the Word and promises of Christ are not available to the have-nots. They are. But the have-nots remain in bondage to sin and the devil who seek to convince us that we do not need a Savior. They seduce us into making our own idols of self-sufficiency, and the world just feeds into this by telling us we should never be content.

   The promises of God were just as available to the nameless rich man as they were to Lazarus. But the rich man was like many people in our modern culture who strive to be totally self-sufficient. They thrive on not needing anybody’s help. They long to be independently wealthy. Like the rich-man, wealth and power ultimately is their god.  The rich-man loved his money and hated God. Perhaps he simply did not spend a whole lot of time thinking about God. Why trust in God when you already have everything you need to make you happy?

     A recent study showed that happiness does increase as income-level increases. The more money a person makes, the happier they are. It would seem, to a certain degree, money can buy happiness. However this stops at 75 K. Once the income reaches 75K the level of people’s happiness no longer goes up as incomes increase. If you make 75K or more you are about as happy as you can be here on earth. And I am sure if we could ask the rich man and Lazarus about their own happiness when they were here on earth we would find that the rich man was pretty happy in his lavish robes and sumptuous feasts while Lazarus-believer though he was-was probably pretty unhappy during his life. So money can improve our quality of life.  But like everything of this world, money has limits. When you hear the doctor say that it’s cancer, when you get the call from the police that one of your loved ones was killed by a drunk driver, when your facing your own mortality, if money is your god, all it can offer is despair.

    Of course we all want to be secure, we all seek contentment. And sin, the devil and the world will tell you to seek this contentment through self-reliance and in things of the world. Bookstores are filled with how-to books, books on possibility thinking, and new-age books that teach that we can create our own reality, and even so-called Christian books that teach false-doctrines about becoming wealthy by simply naming and claiming what we desire.

   But in the lesson from 1^st Timothy, Paul speaks of a different sort of contentment. He speaks of contentment that comes not from self-reliance and ambition but from dependence upon Christ, when he says But godliness with contentment is great gain. The quest for self-sufficiency will never result in true and lasting contentment since Christ alone supplies what is necessary for our eternal welfare. In fact in Philippians 4 Paul makes it clear that his contentment is found in the complete opposite of self-sufficiency for he says that he has learned to be content in whatever situation, that he can abound in any and every circumstance and that he has learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger and abundance and need. And Paul confesses the source of that contentment when he writes I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

   Though it was too late for him, the rich man wanted his five brothers to be spared the same torment he was enduring so he asked Abraham to send Lazarus to warn them-thinking that surely they would believe if they saw Lazarus risen from the dead. But Abraham tells him that if they did not believe the law and prophets then they would not believe even if someone rose from the dead.  The rich man’s 5 brothers appear to be afflicted with the same deluded sense of self-sufficiency that their brother was. As long as they clung to their own self-sufficiency then they would never find the true contentment that comes only from trusting in the promises of Christ Jesus-the One through Whom Paul confessed he could do all things.  

    The proclaimed Word of Christ creates faith by declaring sinners righteous before God because of Christ Jesus’ giving of Himself on the cross. Salvation is bestowed through the promise of the resurrection in Christ Jesus. The holy and precious blood of Christ was shed that you would find true and eternal contentment. Even faith itself is a gift, as Martin Luther declares in the small catechism: “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him..” Jesus promises that all scripture testifies of Him; thus in the Word of God the Holy Spirit creates, renews and regenerates faith. Contentment cannot be found through your self-sufficiency.

    And when you seek contentment through your own efforts, it is not just a fruitless effort, but it is rebellion against God. It is idolatry. The law and the prophets expose this reality to you by revealing your powerlessness to sin and point you to Christ. It wakes you up to the reality that you are like Lazarus; beggars completely dependent upon the mercy of another. But in your case the other is Christ Jesus who meets you in your poverty, sin and death. He becomes poor so that through His poverty you might become rich.

   He took on your weak and sinful humanity and He lifts you up from the curb and brings you to His house. In baptism He cleanses the bruises of your sin and washes your wounds, in the Lord’s Supper you receive the forgiveness of sins and are further transformed from beggars outside of the Kingdom to friends of the King who have a place at the eternal banquet in the Kingdom and you receive not just the crumbs but the abundance of salvation. You have more than the law and the prophets, you have the Gospel of Christ Jesus. You have the Word, you have the sacraments, you have the forgiveness of sins. You have Christ. You are as rich as Lazarus. Praise be to God.

Amen