We will ignore the Gospel today — the Gospel reading anyway, and, even then, only until the end of this homily. Instead, let us, somewhat appropriately, begin with the first reading:

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, / and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,

Before we turn to the Christian understanding of this verse, let us look at how a Dispensationalist or a so-called American ‘Evangelical’ might interpret it. First, they will typically conflate Zion and Jerusalem — this is sometimes permissible and so of only minor concern. Second, they will interpret both terms as referring to physical locations: the city of Jerusalem and the hill on which David built his city. This is the heart of their error, but they go further. Third, they will restrict both of these terms by making them refer explicitly to the Jews. This, of course, gives away the game even more obviously than the second point: They are simply rank Judaizers.

From a little earlier in Isaiah:

It shall come to pass in the latter days / that the mountain of the house of the LORD

The Judaizers would have us believe this is a literal, physical mountain. Well, we have survey data and satellite imagery. How tall is ‘Mount’ Zion? It is a hill outside Jerusalem and it is approximately twenty-five hundred feet above sea level. There is a peak nearby, under which the Appalachian Trail passes; that peak, Clingman’s Dome, is the tallest peak in Tennessee, and it is six thousand, six hundred, and forty-three feet tall. It is more than two and a half times the height of Mount Zion, which the Judaizers would tell us is literally the tallest literal mountain. I have included in the written (which is to say online) version of this homily a picture of my dog from one of my camping trips with him; the picture was taken on a rock outcropping just north of Big Baldy, which is the same height in meters as Mount Zion is in feet, which is to say that Big Baldy is more than eight thousand feet tall. The claim of the Judaizers is laughable, but is is even more pernicious. If the Old Testament is meant merely for the Israelites — the ‘Jews’ —, then it is not actually good news at all. But the Old Testament is good news and it is not the ‘book of the Jews’ or any other such nonsense. Was Adam a Jew? Was Noah a Jew? Was Japheth a Jew? Was Job a Jew? Was Abraham a Jew? The answer for all of these is, of course: No. The Gospel was first delivered to Adam and Eve (and Satan, but it is not good news for him, or for his children); neither Adam nor Eve was a Jew.

When Scripture speaks in terms of promises and ultimate things, ‘Jerusalem’ is the true city of God — the heavenly Jerusalem, the new Earth. Similarly, ‘Zion’ is the gathering of all believers into the presence of God; where God is, there Zion is. These terms are, thus, somewhat interchangeable, even if there is a difference in nuance. As a Christian, you should find comfort and truth in the Old Testament; and you should read the Old Testament with the sure, certain, and firm faith that the promises therein contained apply to you as an adopted son of God. We, the Church, are the true Israel of God, the promises have always been ours and will always be ours.

Thus, let us turn to the twin issues of adoption and inheritance. A central part of the Christian religion is the adoption of Christians as sons of God. Now, there are some very important differences between Roman adoption (the context of Scripture) and modern adoption (a false lens), but I will write more on that in the near future. For our purposes, it suffices for us to recognize that what is in view is inheritance. To be an adopted son of God in Christ is to inherit eternal life. This, of course, is the heart of the Gospel. Christ’s work, His life, His death, and His resurrection are good news because they enable us to become adopted sons of God and inheritors of eternal life in Paradise — in Zion, in the new Jerusalem.

But what do we say to those who would draw some distinction between Israel and the Church? On the one hand, we should not forget that mockery is a Christian option, but, on the other hand, we should also give a substantive answer, if not to the Judaizers, then at least for our Christian brothers. One of God’s names in Scripture is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For now and here, I will not focus on why this is one of God’s names; rather, I will focus on what it means, in the context of Scripture, to be a ‘son of Abraham’. Hear the words of Christ as recorded by St. John:

“If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.

He calls those Jews sons of Satan instead of sons of Abraham, and He says that true sons of Abraham would follow in his works. Now, we must remember that the works for which Abraham is praised were undertaken in faith — only those works undertaken by the faithful have any value. But let us turn to the great Epistle to the Galatians to see what Scripture says about the ‘sons of Abraham’:

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; / break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!

Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

It is not those who are born “according to the flesh”, sondern those who are “born through promise” who are these true sons of Abraham. How is one born through promise? Look no further than the baptismal font. To be born through promise to be born again — it is to have faith. It is those who believe whom Scripture calls sons of Abraham. But what of the physical, blood descendants of Abraham who have no faith in Christ? Christ Himself calls them ‘children of their father, the devil’. For Christians, then, the matter is closed. Christians (i.e., those who believe in Christ) are children of Abraham according to the promise, and the Jews are children of Satan.

But let us look at another aspect of this. Naturally, adoption and inheritance are matters of headship and to be children of Abraham means to be inheritors of the promised Seed (i.e., Christ), but the promise did not come first to Abraham. The promise traces to the Garden:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.”

It is to Adam — the father of us all — that the Gospel is first delivered — from the very mouth of Christ, no less. We speak often of ‘the old Adam’, but we would do well to remember that there is also ‘the new Adam’, which is often used to refer to Christ, but is also true of Father Adam. Adam was no dullard — he heard and believed the promise of God spoken in the Garden. Adam believed; Adam was and is a Christian. With regard to this new, reborn Adam, you and I and all Christians are sons of Adam — both literally by blood descent and according to promise, for Christ is His head as well as ours. Adam in his day was prophet, priest, and king and he taught the faith to his sons; not all were faithful, but the one true faith was preserved down the line to faithful Noah, who taught his sons: faithful Japheth, faithful Shem, and faithless Ham. (We could draw, here, an interesting parallel: Satan took one-third of the angels with him and one-third of man found damnation in Ham’s wickedness, but let us leave that aside for now.)

We — and I mean my European brothers and sisters — are true sons and daughters of Japheth, for we share his faith. It is no less correct to call ourselves sons of Japheth than to call ourselves sons of Abraham, for the promise was for Urvater Japheth no less than for Shem, the father of Abraham.

When we are brought to faith, we are restored into the godly line that descends from Adam through Noah to his sons and then into all the world where believers may be found. The believing Shemite may look to Shem as a true father of his great race. The believing Hamite may not be able to look to wicked, faithless Ham, but he may look to Grandfather Noah. And we, sons and daughters of Japheth and Europa, may look both to our many faithful ancestors before the fall into paganism and after the restoration of Christianity. None has a spotless genealogy; even Christ must count the pagan, the unbeliever, the apostate, and the prostitute among His ancestors. We do not honor our ancestors — a demand of the Fourth Commandment — by following in their unfaithfulness, but by faithfulness to the one true ancestral faith — Christianity.

When we are adopted as sons of God, we do not cease to be lineal, blood descendants of our forefathers — the African remains a Hamite and the European remains a Japhethite; rather, we return to the faith of our godly forefathers. The Christian is no rootless cosmopolitan, sondern one who honors both God and his forefathers. God does not play with dice and God does not make mistakes; He Who formed you in the womb and knew the number of your days even before you drew your first breath is also He Who set the times and the boundaries of the nations. What God does, He does not do idly or without purpose. Scripture tells us that the kings of the nations will bring the glory of the nations into the new Jerusalem. You were born into a body, a time, a place, a nation, a people. Your blood is neither accident nor incident, but essential and immutable. If you were born a man, then you will be a man in and for eternity; if you were born a woman, then you will be a woman in and for eternity; and the same holds for German, French, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and American. Faithful sons and daughters do not deny or denigrate their ancestry or their ancestors, and Christians are true and faithful sons and daughters, for this is commanded by God:

Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother [that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long upon the earth].

Let us end, then, as promised, with the Gospel reading, or, more accurately, a (very close) paraphrase of a portion of it:

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy Word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the nations and the glory of Thy people Israel.

We end our Service of the Sacrament with these words, for they express the hope of all Christians: To depart in peace and grace, having seen and believed the promises of the Lord. We see these promises every Sunday in the Sacrament and we confess our belief every Sunday in the Creeds. It is the Gottesdienst, the Divine Service, that prepares each and every one of us for death. God knows the number of our days, but we do not; the Christian takes from this comfort instead of fear or anxiety. I am Christ’s and He is mine. And the Good Shepherd has never yet — and never will — lose one of his sheep. He is the Light to lighten the nations and we are His people — the true Israel. Whenever — and however — death may come — and it will certainly come for each of us —, we know that Christians depart in peace, for our eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord, and will behold His face when they open on the other side of the veil of death, for our God has defeated death and the grave.

Amen.

I assure you, the balance of the homily will be in English, but:

Mit ihrem heil’gen Wetterschlage,

If you will permit me, an English approximation, also in rhyme:

Necessity, with bolt and thunder,

Surely the day of the Lord swiftly approaches, and, just as surely will all flesh stand before the Lord and give account. As the plans of princes perish with them, so all the plans — whether they be the construction of a utopia or the construction of a new hell — of all mankind pass away with the passing of this creation on that ultimate Day of the Lord. And yet there is not one day of the Lord. Yes, if we capitalize “Day” or emphasize the definite article, then, certainly there is but one Day of the Lord, for that is the Last Day (of this creation) — the great and terrible Day of Lord, the Last Judgement —, but there are many (lowercase, indefinite) days of the Lord, for every day in which the Lord visits judgement upon a man, a family, a tribe, a nation, a race, is, indeed, a day of the Lord.

I may not live to see the Day of the Lord; you may not live to see the Day of the Lord; no man knows the day or the hour, and, personally, I refuse to speculate on such things (and I suggest you also refrain from such speculation). It hardly matters anyway — whether we are raised from the dust or merely changed on that day, we will certainly stand before the Judge and Lord of all things, and we are all always only a moment away from that day. I could drop dead here and now (although, as I am writing and recording this homily, and not delivering it live, it would be fairly unlikely you would read or hear any of this if I should die before I finish writing, recording, et cetera). You are neither more nor less mortal than I. We are all but a moment — but a heartbeat — away from the great and awesome Day of the Lord. But we are also some unknown period of time away from any number of other days of the Lord. How long will God ‘tolerate’ our worship of Moloch — abortion and hormonal ‘birth control’ — before He destroys us as He did the Canaanites and the Carthaginians? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our not mere acceptance but promotion of sodomy and all manner of sexual perversion before He wipes us away like Sodom and Gomorrah? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our worship of Mammon before He destroys us with a foreign foe as He did the Northern Kingdom with the Assyrians or at least takes us into captivity as He did the Southern Kingdom with the Babylonians? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our obstinacy before He sends upon us plague and desolation as He did with the Egyptians? How long will He ‘tolerate’ our impenitent, high-handed wickedness before He gives us up to our sins as Romans 1 warns? There have been many days of the Lord and there will undoubtedly be more before the end finally comes. Or are we such fools that we hold to some sort of theological version of the secular foolishness that is the ‘end of history’? ‘Oh,’ the fool says, ‘God may have judged and intervened in ages past, but surely now, in these modern days, He no longer does so.’ Do you not know that God kills each man who dies? And I do mean ‘man’ in the general sense, for He surely kills every woman and child as well. Were you operating under the delusional belief that death is a part of nature? Hear the Word of the Lord:

»Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned[.]«

Death was not part of God’s good plan, part of His good ordering of Creation; rather, death entered the world only through and as a consequence of sin. God hates sin and God hates sinners. Without sinners, there would be no sin, and you are not a sinner because you sin, but, rather, you sin because you are a sinner — it is an inborn and inescapable (in this life) corruption of your nature. You are inwardly tempted by your fallen and corrupt nature — this we term concupiscence; even when you do not actively sin, you still desire to sin, and that desire is itself sin. The Gospel is good news precisely because we cannot avoid sin in this life. We are born under an irremovable death sentence, and God will carry out His perfect justice just as surely as He has, does, and will uphold each and every one of His promises. In Adam, as the federal head of all mankind, we all fell, and so our status, from birth until death, is sinner, and God will kill every sinner, for God will see all sin destroyed. For those of us who are being prepared for everlasting glory, this means that, having already passed from death to life in the waters of Holy Baptism, we will never taste the second death, which is the eternal and inescapable fires of Hell. The perfect justice of God requires atonement for sin. Christ’s work on the cross (and during His perfect earthly life) atoned for all sin — not just the sin of the Elect, not even just the sin of men. Why, then, are not all men saved? Because it is possible to reject this free gift. If I were to ship you a nice bottle of wine, you could refuse shipment, and you would, therefore, not be able to enjoy said wine; this would not in any way change that I had paid for the wine. Similarly, the refusal of any man to believe is not in any way relevant to the fact that Christ redeemed all things in and by His work.

And let us take heed lest we fall: Those who believe may fall away. Look to the Parable of the Ten Virgins. Did the five foolish virgins have fake fire? Certainly not. They had true fire — saving faith — and they allowed it to die. ‘If you were of your father Abraham, then you would do his works.’ ‘Faith without works is dead.’ ‘Show me faith without works and I will show you my faith by my works.’

Are you saved by works? Yes. You are saved — as are all who are numbered among the Elect — by the works of one Man, Christ. Your own works surely cannot save you — cannot contribute anything to your justification —, and yet sanctification is synergistic — in sanctification, we coöperate with the Spirit. Or we do not coöperate and we permit our faith to die. All ten of the virgins were given faith (the fire) and yet only five of them kept that fire alive (i.e., produced works — the oil). A living faith will necessarily produce good works. A bit of grammar and philosophy: It matters where we place the modifier and what the modifier is. If someone says that ‘works are necessary for salvation’, then he is a heretic; if someone says that ‘works are necessary to salvation’, then he is being dangerously vague, and should be corrected; if someone says that ‘works will necessarily flow from saving faith’, then he is speaking the truth, for he is just echoing Scripture — a living faith will produce works. To be abundantly clear: Your works will not save you, but, if you have been given the gift of faith and it is a living faith, then it will necessarily produce good works. The good news is that your good works will not save you (in isolation, this certainly sounds like bad news), but Christ’s good works will save you — through faith. You are accounted righteous via the attribution to you of the alien righteousness of Christ; His righteousness is not yours by nature or by right, but by the grace of God, Who applied this righteousness to you when He claimed you as His own in the waters of Holy Baptism. Baptizatus sum ergo salvatus sum — I am baptized, therefore I am saved. If just those two works — Baptizatus Sum — were on my headstone, they would surely be sufficient. Now, Baptism does not destroy or change our nature — I am still male, German, and pertinacious — my Baptism changed none of these things, for they are my nature, and God made my nature, just as surely as He made me —, but Baptism is, in this life, your most important attribute, for it is Baptism that marks you as a child of God. As a great Christian king once said:

I think more of the chapel where I was baptized than of the cathedral where I was crowned king. So the dignity of a child of God which was bestowed on me at Baptism is greater than that of the ruler of this kingdom. The latter I will lose at death, the other will be my passport to everlasting glory.

The great and the small alike take nothing with them when they leave this world, but your Baptism is your ticket to everlasting life. Your works may demonstrate that your faith is living — and God will reward you for them —, but you cannot plead them at the Judgement. Like your wealth or your intelligence, your works contribute nothing to your justification, which will be the matter at issue when you stand before the Judgement Seat; it is only Christ’s blood that you may plead, and you were washed in His blood in Holy Baptism. Your pastor did not baptize you — God did, using your pastor’s hands.

Thus, on the ultimate Day of the Lord, we must all plead sola gratia sola fide solo Christo — by grace alone through faith alone for the sake of Christ alone. With empty hands, but white robes, we will plead only the blood of the Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world: ‘I know that there is nothing good in me, that is in my fallen flesh, but I know beyond all doubt that He Who dwells in me is my righteousness, my justification, my salvation — and He has promised to confess me before the Father as I have, in faith, confessed Him before men. I plead Christ and Christ alone.’ This is the Gospel. Or, in the words of Christ from the cross: “It is finished.”

And yet we must return to those other days of the Lord. What are we to do about those? Here we return to sanctification and works. God was pleased with Abraham because he had a living faith from which good works flowed; on the other hand, God was (and is) angry with the Jews because they did not have a living faith and thus did not do the works of Abraham. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament; the God of the New Testament is the God of the Old Testament; the God Who walked in the Garden is the God Who hung on the tree is the God Who will judge both the living and the dead. If you have ever said ‘that was the Old Testament’, then you had best be certain that it was in reference to the ceremonial law, the civil law, or some basic fact, and not in regard to the Moral Law, for the Moral Law flows from the nature of God and is, therefore, unchanging, and to deny the Moral Law is to deny God. The God Who cast Adam and Eve from the Garden is the God Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and to Abraham at the oak of Mamre; the God who burned Sodom and Gomorrah to ash — so thoroughly that the location can still be identified today — is the God Who walked with fishermen and tax collectors along the Sea of Galilee; and the God Who guided Old Testament Israel through the desert is the God Who will judge you from His holy throne. He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever. If your god does not slaughter the wicked, open the earth to swallow the apostate, close the heavens to starve the impenitent, send plagues to punish sinners, and actively hate evil, then he is not the Lord God and you are no Christian. God is as active today as He has ever been or will ever be, for God does not change. The faithless and the wicked are still punished; the faithful and the righteous are still rewarded. Children and rain alike are still gifts from God. Plants still do not grow without His good pleasure. He is the God Who raises up and no one breaks down, Who tears down and no one rebuilds, Who sets the boundaries of the nations, Who brings nations into being and destroys nations for faithlessness, and Who holds all things in the palm of His hand and together by His power. Your next breath is contingent on His good pleasure and your every cell division relies upon His guidance. If your god is any smaller than this, then I do not know who he is, but he is not the Lord God. If you do not hold that He blesses the faithful and punishes the wicked, then you accuse Him of hypocrisy and mendacity. Yes, the wicked may flourish for a season, and, in the words of the Psalmist, it may seem a wearisome task to understand this, but we can be absolutely certain that not only does God always settle accounts, but He does so perfectly and at the perfect time. For God, kairos is simply the perpetual and eternal state of things. He sets the wicked in slippery places that their fall may be the more poignant and the more damning — that it may serve as warning and blessing to the faithful. During the (brief) period of Old Testament Israel’s faithfulness, God blessed them both spiritually and materially — and the same holds true for us today. Both we and our fathers have sinned, and so we find ourselves persecuted and in the most desperate of straits in these evil days, but God promises that He will avenge Himself on those Who persecute and harm His sheep. How, then, do we benefit from such promises? By being His sheep — by obedience.

It is overlooked by many — perhaps most — these days, but many of God’s blessings are phrased conditionally — ‘If you will obey my voice, then I will…’ The Jews believed that they would be blessed without faith and without the works of Abraham; God disabused them of this with exile, subjugation by the Romans, destruction of the Temple, expulsion from the land, and many other such signs. Are we truly such fools that we believe we will be blessed if we are faithless? Look at the state of our nation, our country, our civilization, and tell me that we are not cursed, but blessed. Surely God must be close to removing our lampstand entirely, for we are a wicked and faithless generation, an apostate people, a rebellious nation.

And so our task is twofold: We must implore God not to sweep away the righteous (i.e., the faithful) with the wicked and we must endeavor to return our nation to God. The Christian faith is not a matter of quiescence or pacifism — both of which are sin; rather, the Christian faith is an active faith, seeking the conversion of all nations to Christ. The Lord is a Man of war, and we, His servants, must do His work while it is yet day. Christianity is neither a death cult nor a faith that calls upon us to abandon or to accept this wicked world. We are sheep with regard to the Shepherd, but we are soldiers with regard to this, His war. The powers and principalities are most certainly defeated, but we must announce this victory, this good news, this Gospel, first to our brothers according to the flesh and then to the whole world. All of His enemies will be crushed under His feet as He has already crushed the serpent, and it is, in the words of the Psalmist, ‘the glory of His chosen ones’ — of us, the Elect — ‘to strike our feet in the spilt blood of His enemies’. If you do not have one, sell your cloak and buy a sword.

Some will tell you that Christians are called to be ‘meek’, but they will never tell you what meekness actually is. To be meek is to exercise control over one’s strength. Christ is meek; the weak cannot be meek, for they have no strength to control. To be meek is to know when to restrain and when to employ one’s strength; so, yes, let us be meek in the proper sense of the term: Kind and caring toward the sheep, but ruthless to the wolves. Let us, again in the words of the Psalmist, see that ‘our dogs have their portion from the foes’, portions won by our ‘two-edged swords’. Just as we are not to tolerate false doctrine or false teachers in the Church — the Kingdom of the right hand of Christ —, so we are not to tolerate the wicked in the State — the kingdom of the left hand of Christ. As Christ owns both His hands, so He owns both kingdoms, and we, His servants, serve Him best by rendering unto Him what is His. But surely this raises the question: What is God’s? The answer is simple: To the Creator of all things belong all things. Everything is God’s. Thus let us render unto God what is God’s: Heaven and Earth and all that is therein contained.

Amen.

The Jews were incensed: ‘We have never been enslaved.’ How could this Man tell them that He could set them free if they were not slaves? Surely some heard His words as holding the promise of deliverance from Rome — surely a sentiment with which we can nearly commiserate on Reformation Day. Others seemed to call to mind more literal, physical chains than those that bind Satan in the pit. Undoubtedly, they recalled to mind the slavery of their ancestors in Egypt, but they had never — themselves — been slaves. How could this Man set them free from a slavery they had never known?

"Truly, truly, I say to you everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin." Christ immediately clarifies the matter for them. They are not slaves in irons — at least not physical ones; they are spiritual slaves — slaves to sin. All men are slaves to sin. This is what the Law — as mirror — shows us. Lex semper accusat. (Do carefully note that that is semper, not sola — always, not only.) As slaves, we could not remain forever in the house — in this case, the Kingdom of God. The Son remains forever, and we must be reborn — adopted by the Father through the blood of the Son — to remain in the House.

‘We have never been enslaved.’ He went to His own people, but they received Him not. The Jews rejected the Messiah — they still do so today. They were judged temporally for their faithlessness in AD 70 when Rome sacked Jerusalem and burned the Temple. Could the symbolism be more clear? The curtain rent in twain upon Christ’s death — He bridged the divide between God and man; the Temple destroyed in AD 70 — God dwells in the hearts of believers, not in a house of stone, and the apostate Jews are judged and condemned. To this temporal judgement will be added eternal damnation for all who do not repent and believe.

And yet, do we not hear the same refrain from many today? ‘How can you set me free? I have never been a slave!’ Ah, but you are a slave. Irony upon irony, many, today, who are slaves are slaves to ‘freedom’, to ‘liberty’. But let us be more specific: Many today are slaves to the idea, to the concept, to the abstraction of freedom or liberty. There is nothing of freedom or liberty in what many advance as an unfettered good. Is it freedom to believe a lie? Is it liberty to be damned for eternity? Fool, do you believe that the laws of men will carry any weight in the Courts of God? ‘Lord, Lord, did we not preserve ‘freedom of religion’? Did we not uphold ‘freedom of speech’?’ You who would elevate the laws of men to idols, who would raise the Constitution above the Second Commandment may one day pay the price for your sins.

‘How can you set me free? I have never been a slave!’ Fool, you are enslaved to a thousand desires, serving a thousand different masters. You are a slave to the device in your hand and the views in your heart. You are a slave to your unbiblical ideology and your venal desires. You are a slave to worry, doubt, fear, anxiety, and despair. You do not trust God as you ought. In what do you place your hope and your trust? What do you fear, love, and trust? Those are your idols. It is from those that Christ would set you free.

‘How can you set me free? I have never been a slave!.’ When you think of slavery, you almost certainly think first of irons and slave ships. You are a product of the Enlightenment and you do not even realize it. Search the Scriptures for a condemnation of chattel slavery — you will not find one. Do you believe that chattel slavery is a moral evil? You expose your slavery to the spirit of the age. Fool, would you set the things of men above the things of God? His thoughts are higher than your thoughts and His ways higher than your ways, and yet you would elevate your ways and your thoughts above His? What you call ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ God calls slavery, and the slavery you call a moral evil God does not condemn. The sons of God have a different Spirit from the spirit of this age. Which one do you have ears to hear?

‘How can you set me free? I have never been a slave!’ And that is the problem. Παῦλος δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. Can you, with Paul, declare — truthfully, honestly, earnestly — that you are a slave of Christ? (Let us not engage in the modern nonsense of "bondservant".) Of course you cannot, because you believe slavery to be a natural evil. How could you possibly be a slave of Christ if slavery is an inherent evil? Fool, you have chosen slavery to the world and her ‘god’ over slavery to the one true God. His yoke is easy and His burden is light, but the devil and the world appeal to your sinful flesh with the appearance of wisdom and promises of pleasure. Our culture has chosen ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ over God, lies over truth, and Hell over Paradise. What we see around us today is only the beginning of the judgements to come. The Israelites were not special — the Jews are not special. Jerusalem was not special — no city build by human hands is. Do not fall to idolatry in believing that your tongue or your hands will save you — vain are the works of men.

Lex semper accusat. Hear the voice of the Law and tremble. See your sins and despair. Recognize the wickedness of our culture and fear. God will not be mocked and His patience can be exhausted. How long do you think He will bear with a nation that murders tens of millions of children, that produces countless hours of pornographic so-called ‘entertainment’ (and it matters little whether such is sexual, violent, or both in nature), that pursues foreign policies that are — at best — at odds with Scripture, that sexualizes and mutilates those children it does not outright murder, that not only tolerates but promotes — at home and abroad — all manner of sexual and other perversions, that deifies freedom and liberty, that tolerates an endless array of false teachers, that calls evil good and good evil? Do you presume upon the mercy and forbearance of God? The axe is laid to the root of the tree and the fire is kindled — repent, turn, and live, or follow our culture into the abyss, into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Do you tolerate false teaching? false teachers? Our culture — under the old refrain of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ — calls this good; Scripture would call this a violation of the Law. Tolerance is not a moral good. God alone is good, and God is Truth. All false statements — all lies — about God’s Word or God’s Creation are pernicious, vile sin, and to tolerate such sin is to become complicit in it. Do not fall for the siren song of our culture; do not follow the devil and the world into the pit; do not obey your sinful flesh; do not enter into the fire that does not consume; do not choose eternal death.

The lies of the world seem, at first, pleasant. ‘You can be free.’ ‘You can be liberated.’ ‘You don’t have to be a slave.’ ‘You can forge your own path.’ Ultimately, all such lies boil down to one central, false claim: ‘You can be your own god.’ or, in the original Snake: ‘You [can] be like God.’ A truly ridiculous lie. God is the one true Infinite; you are a finite. He is the Creator; you are a creature. You would make more progress trying to extinguish the sun by spitting at it than you will make if you try to elevate yourself to God’s level. What became of the last creature to mount such an attempt? »"I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven."« The last creature to attempt to rise to God’s level was cast down from Heaven — and took many with him. It was for Satan and his fallen angels that Hell was constructed, but many — most, even — men will join him where the fire does not consume and the worm does not die. There is only one God, and you are not He.

We are fallen; we are sinful; we are doomed to die; but thanks be to God that we are men and not angels, for Christ has died for us. By the Passion and the blood and in the waters of Holy Baptism we are made sons of the Kingdom, coheirs with Christ, our one true Head. Do not reject the gift of faith, do not neglect the Word or the Sacraments. Christ comes to you as He has chosen to do so — in Word and Sacrament. Many listen to the devil, the world, and the sinful flesh, but the sheep hear the voice of their Shepherd. Do not attempt to work your way to God, "[f]or by the works of the Law no man will be justified in His sight[.]" Yes, you must do good works, but these flow from faith — they do not justify you. In fact, you cannot do good works except in faith. Hear the words of Christ: »"Apart from Me, you can do nothing."« And do not make the Roman mistake — good works are not such things as pilgrimages, monastic life, and other such nonsense. What does Scripture say of good works? ‘God has prepared them beforehand that we should walk in them.’ God, in HIs perfection, does not need our good works — He is never hungry or cold or in prison, but our neighbors are. Feed the hungry; clothe the cold; house the homeless; visit those in prison. Do these according to your vocation and your means. Talents, abilities, gifts, resources are not distributed evenly, and this is according to God’s wisdom; use what you have been given to serve your neighbor — and ‘neighbor’ does mean neighbor, the man beside you. If you have been given the ability to teach, then teach the things of God, teach the truth. If you are a parent, then raise your children well and instruct them in the things of God. If you are a tradesman, then do good work for a fair wage or a fair price. If you are a magistrate, then seek justice and do not show partiality. If you are wealthy, then care for the poor and provide for the Church. Do according to your station, your abilities, and your resources. Serve your neighbor, and, in so doing, serve God.

Above all else, hold true to God — uphold all truth, for all truth is one. Do not teach falsely and do not tolerate those who do so. Remember your Baptism — you are a child of God, a sheep of His pasture. The Good Shepherd laid down His life for His sheep; by His blood you have been cleansed, you have been made whiter than snow. »"It is finished!"« There is nothing you need do for your salvation: "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law." He was perfect because you could not be; He performed the work you could not. That is freedom and that is liberty. You are no longer a slave to sin, death, and the devil. You are a child of God, so: »"Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His Judgment has come, and worship Him Who made Heaven and Earth, the sea and the springs of water."«

Amen.

Perhaps I am not prudent. On who is prudent shows a great deal of care and thought for the future. As our Old Testament reading states: Those who are prudent will often hold their tongues in an evil age — the implication that speaking the truth may be futile or even harmful (most likely to the speaker). And we are to walk as the wise, not as the foolish. And yet, we must, as Christians, speak the truth. Although the days are evil, to us falls the imprudence of speaking the truth.

God is Truth. To deny the Truth is to deny God. Those who deny God before men will one day answer before the Judgement Seat. Praevaleat veritas ruat caelum — let the truth prevail though the heavens fall. We are not permitted to deny the truth; we are not permitted to look to the consequences and then decide if we will speak the truth. The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, but for us it is the truth and power of God.

Now, we must be careful to distinguish what is and what is not truth, in the sense we are employing here. I have a Golden Retriever — this is a true statement. If I tell you that I have a Chihuahua, then I have lied to you (and, God willing, that will forever be the case), but I have not denied the truth. The truth is something more than mere correspondence with reality, mere accuracy. On the other hand, if someone tells you that men and women are the same or that men can become women or women become men, then that person has denied the truth.

Truth is fundamental; it flows from the nature of God. Truth also pervades Creation — dogs are not cats, men are not women, light is not darkness. Simple lying is not a denial of the truth — if a murderer asks if your wife and children are home, it is your duty to lie. (n.b., the Eighth Commandment is "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.", not ‘Thou shalt not lie.’)

We live in an age when people do not even echo Pilate: ‘Quid est veritas?’ — ‘What is truth?’; instead, we are surrounded by those who simultaneously deny the existence of objective truth and advance clear lies that ‘must’ be believed. Worse, so very many Christians simply go along with these lies. You may lose your job for speaking the truth, but would you rather lose your soul for holding your tongue? The wise of the world hold their tongues to preserve their hides, but we fools for Christ gladly proclaim the ‘foolishness’ of the Gospel — and all the rest of God’s truth — for we know that to die for Christ is gain.

In a worldly sense, it would have been prudent for Martin Luther to remain silent in the face of Rome’s errors and lies. Instead, he took his stand upon the only firm ground of truth — the Word of God. He brought down upon himself the wrath of the secular authorities — both pope and Emperor. For much of his life, he was a wanted — and even a hunted — man, but God preserved him through to the end, and he died of old age in bed. God may have another end in store for you — you may not die comfortably in your bed — but praise Him and give glory to His Name in all things. Remember your Confirmation oath: You sword to ‘suffer all, including death’ before you would fall away from our shared Confession.

The times are evil, and they are certainly not getting better. However, we are not required to win the battles God gives us; we are merely required to fight. So, stand for the truth no matter the cost. Do not deny God in word or deed. Run the race to win; hold your original confidence firm to the end. If we are faithful, the Lord may yet turn to use and be gracious to us.

God willing, we may live to see a resurgence of the Church, and of our people. But nothing in this life is guaranteed — we may not even live to see tomorrow. We must always remember that we are sojourners here, and this is not our true home. Nevertheless, there is work to be done while it is still day.

Part of the good works you render to your neighbor as service to God is speaking the truth. To partake of — or, worse, to advance — the lies of our evil age is to fall below the Christian duty of care. Every person who speaks the lie further entrenches it; every person who fails to speak in opposition to the lie weakens the resolve of others and thereby strengthens the lie.

When it comes to the truth, one who refuses to yield may alter the course of nations or of history, but surely such men have a better go of things when they are surrounded by others who similarly cleave to the truth. Further, your highest duty is to God, and unflinching adherence to the truth is unwavering obedience to God.

Our present society is not founded upon Christ, but upon a collection of lies. We are under no obligation to adhere to such lies or to support those who do. To the persecutor of God and His Church, we owe only unwavering opposition, eternal enmity. We are called to hate evil, for there is no love without hate. However, it is certainly possible to hate without love.

The world will hate you, as it hated Him first. If you speak the truth, reprove in the gate, and seek justice — or even merely support those who do so — then you will be hated by the world. And let us be clear, here: We do not mean so-called ‘social justice’, for such is an evil from the very pits of Hell; no, we mean justice as commanded by God and contained in His good Law. So-called ‘social justice’ is a perversion and a denial of justice and is, consequently, a denial of God before men.

But where is the comfort in this? It is everywhere. We may be comforted knowing that God prepared our good works for us; we may be comforted knowing that Christ will not lose a single sheep from His hands; and we may be comforted knowing that the war has already been won. We are fighting a defensive action — we must merely hold out until our Lord returns, or we are relieved from duty.

Sin, death, and the devil have already been defeated. Although the times are dark and the days evil, these are but the birth pangs of the new Creation; this old world is passing away, is doomed to fire. We, however, are being saved by the Gospel, by the very power of God. In the waters of Baptism, you were united to Christ in His death and resurrection. You will not taste the second death.

Do not worry overmuch about the state of the world, for the outcome is wholly in God’s hands. Do your duty as father or mother, son or daughter, brother or sister, or neighbor. Even if the world is to end tomorrow, do your duty. As Luther put it: ‘Even if I knew that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today.’

Amen.

Adam walked with God in the Garden., and yet God says that it is not good for man to be alone. We tend to pass over this section of Scripture too quickly. Man, in Paradise, walks with God, and yet God states unequivocally that Creation is incomplete because man has no helper fit for him. God makes woman specifically for man — more, all other creatures are made from the dust, but woman is made from man. Adam immediately recognizes what God has done:

This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh[.]

And so ‘a man will leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’ This does not mean abandoning one’s parents (for those who do that have forsaken the faith and are worse than unbelievers); rather, it means a shifting of priorities. For the woman, her husband assumes the role of head that her father had theretofore held; for the man, he must care and provide for and protect his wife. The wife is the fruitful vine and the husband is the vinedresser — so also the Church and Christ.

“And the two shall become one flesh.” Now, this certainly encompasses the physical union — if it did not, then the woman could not be a fruitful vine filling the home with children — but it is more than that. However, we must get the basics correct before we can move on to more advanced matters. To be blunt: Marriage is sexual intercourse and sexual intercourse is marriage. This is why adultery is such an egregious sin — the man who lies with a married woman steals her from her husband and claims her for himself, and the woman who lies with a man who is not her husband steals and defiles her body, rejecting and violating her husband’s rightful headship. Again: Marriage is more than the physical union, but it is certainly not less — no marriage is truly valid until it is consummated.

The natural — and inevitable — outcome of marriage (barring the physical effects of sin on our world and our bodies preventing it) is children. This is by God’s design. There is no better environment for raising children than a home with their biological parents who are still married to each other. And, again, this is why adultery is such egregious sin: Adultery is divorce and divorce is adultery. Adultery destroys homes and causes permanent (in this life) harm to any children in those homes. It is to our great shame that divorce is so easy and adultery is unpunished in our society. But let us return to children.

We are told, explicitly, in Scripture, that God’s promises are ‘for us and for our children’. In the Old Testament, all males were circumcised on the eighth day. It was the duty of the head of the household to see that this was done. In the New Testament, the antitype (Baptism) has replaced the type (circumcision). The antitype is always greater, is always more complete than the type. Only males were circumcised — female members of the household were included in the covenant under their head (i.e., their fathers and then their husbands). Baptism, being the antitype, is available to both men and women, boys and girls.

Some would contend that children should not be baptized. I would, first, ask where they find such a command in Scripture, and I would, then, second, highlight that they have taken Baptism — the antitype — and made it lesser than circumcision — the type. To contend that children were included in the Old Testament, but must now be excluded in the New Testament, is not merely wrong, but actually demonic — remember: all false doctrines are ‘doctrines of demons’.

The Church has always baptized infants; the Church baptizes infants; the Church will — so long as the Earth endures — always baptize infants. But what of those who deny Baptism to children? The people brought βρεπη to Christ — that is, they brought Him their infants. The disciples attempted to prevent these parents from bringing their children to Christ and He rebuked them: ‘Let the παιδια (the children) come to Me, and do not hinter them.’ But Christ goes further: He says that the Kingdom belongs to such as those children and that no one will enter the Kingdom unless he receives it as would a little child. Some who teach falsely may be saved, but they endanger souls with their lies. We must pray that God enlightens them, and, if they will not be enlightened, that they will be struck mute. Better to enter the Kingdom with one’s tongue torn out than to enter the fires of Hell with one’s deceitful mouth intact.

The women and children in ancient Israel — even though only males eight days old or older were circumcised — were covered by the head of the household. So today — the children of believing parents should be baptized. ‘This promise is for you and for your children.’ Under the headship of their Christian fathers, Christian children should be baptized. In the waters of Baptism, we are united to Christ as our one true Head; we become part of His body — the Church. It is evil to deny to children this union with Christ on the grounds of (faulty) rationalism and enthusiasm. Satan loves unbaptized children.

There are, ultimately, two ‘prime’ heads: Christ and Satan. Those who have not passed through the waters of Baptism and, thereby, from death to life and from the devil’s kingdom to Christ’s Kingdom have Satan has their head; such persons are, as we all once were, dead in sin and trespass. We who have been baptized and believe are no longer members of the devil’s kingdom, slaves to sin and death; we have been given new life and we have Christ as our Head. Baptism is the first death and the first resurrection; those who experience the waters of Baptism will not taste the second death.

But do not tempt God and do not return to your old ways. Run the race to win — persevere to the end. Yes, you will stumble and even fall, but Christ will be there to lift you back to your feet — He will lose none of the sheep the Father has placed in HIs hands. ‘Open-eyed my grave is staring, / even there I’ll sleep secure.’ There are some Lutheran graves with two (Latin) words on them: “Baptizatus sum.” — “I am baptized.” You are a child of God — you belong to Him. Christ bought you with His blood.

In the first Adam — the head of our race — all men sinned; in the second Adam — Christ — all are offered new life in the waters of Holy Baptism. Christ is the Head of all those who have passed from death to life. He is the Head of the Church. But we are an unfaithful bride — we stray even after our Baptism and we must continually return to the Word and the Sacrament for the forgiveness of our sins and the renewal and strengthening of our faith. To the pharisees that tried to entrap Him, Christ declared that divorce was not part of God’s good plan, and that is good news for us: Christ washes His bride whiter than snow, and He will protect and preserve her. The Church will endure.

Amen.

Wealth is a blessing, but it is also a test. Will you be faithful with what God has given you? Or will the corrosion — the idleness — of your wealth testify against you at the Judgement? Do you trust in your wealth or do you trust in God? To trust in your wealth is to set it up in your heart as idol — as your god. For that in which you place your trust and to which you look for good is truly your god.

But what can wealth actually buy? A new house, a fast car, and many other such things. There are men with enough wealth that their yachts have smaller yachts moored inside them, helipads for excursions, and entire theaters. ‘Fool, tonight your soul is required of you!’ They will take none of it with them, but their excesses will surely testify against them. As will the words of those who defend such things testify against them.

Your wealth is not yours — you do not own or deserve a single penny. All you have comes from and belongs to God. The God Who can demand your soul certainly has dominion over your wealth. Just ask Job in Whose hands our material goods rest. Job’s faith is praised because it was steadfast and because he was faithful with much and with little. The poor widow still tithed.

And what does Scripture say about tithing? Yes, certainly, we are — as Christians — free to determine how much we will give (n.b., how much, not if), but we must not ignore the words of Scripture. Not only does God condemn the Israelites for not tithing, He calls them robbers. Further, God — here — invites us to test Him. He challenges us: If we faithfully tithe, He will bless us. The faithful nation receives God’s blessings and gifts; the faithless nation receives the wages of sin. One need not be a prophet to discern the sort of nation in which we live today.

We are richly blessed, certainly, but our wealth has become for us a snare and we are spiritually bankrupt. Or do you think that we live in a faithful nation? We are more decadent than Imperial Rome at her height. We sacrifice more children than all of Canaan combined. We are more depraved than Sodom and Gomorrah before the fire from Heaven erased their evil from the Earth. The Amorites took four hundred years for their wickedness to be complete; if nothing else, we are efficient — our wickedness will surely be complete before we hit three hundred years.

Are we really such fools that we think God will simply overlook our sins, our manifest crimes, our deep and abiding evil? Yes, if we repent, God, in His infinite mercy and grace, will forgive us. But we do not repent — we are a nation of prideful, high-handed sinners. The entire calendar is slowly being taken over by celebrations of sexual degeneracy, and even pastors — let alone laity — seem unwilling merely to voice Scriptural truth. There is an ongoing — and worsening — epidemic of transsexualism, and the Church is largely silent. Aborted fetal tissue is used for medical experimentation and drug production, and the Church is largely silent. Those who fail to condemn evil become, thereby, complicit in the evil.

If these are not the true End Times, then it will surely take a miracle to salvage the shipwrecked and sinking vessel that we call a country. Do we have a single faithful man in a position of power in the left-hand kingdom? Not a single one comes to mind. Perhaps there is a faithful man serving as city dogcatcher somewhere. Nations often receive the rulers they deserve.

You may think: ‘What about freedom — of religion, et cetera — and liberty?’ You wicked servant. Who empowered you to relax the commands of God? ‘But surely,’ you may think, ‘there is a separation of Church and State?’ You illegitimate child of Satan and his ‘Enlightenment’. Where does Scripture separate the kingdoms in such a fashion? Where do the Confessions do so? The authors and signers of our symbolic books certainly did not believe in or advance such a separation, for it is wholly foreign to Scripture. Our Confession was presented to the Emperor by princes.

Faithful rulers are a great blessing from God. Yet we find ourselves ruled by demons. In no small part, we have done this to ourselves. What battlefield have we not abandoned? For nearly a century, now, we have ceded the left-hand kingdom to evil men. Have we suddenly become Anabaptists? And the right-hand Kingdom fares hardly better. We are surrounded, inundated, overrun by heretics and the heterodox. Sects and schismatics alike proliferate, and we even export them abroad. We are, as a nation, a font of idolatry, false doctrine, faulty theology, and enthusiasm. And our own Synod is not immune.

"[I]f the foundations are destroyed, / what can the righteous do?" A great many Christians have, historically, met deaths that the world would consider untimely. You should expect nothing better than martyrdom, and you should — with Job — thank and praise God in all circumstances. We have — in Christ and His Passion — already won the war, but we will not win every battle. But you need not worry, for the God Who created you from nothing and recreated you in the waters of Holy Baptism with His Word will just as easily raise the saint who goes to the lions or to the fire as the one who dies peacefully in his bed and is buried.

We live in a fallen world, and it is seemingly occupied, at present, with attempting to find the nadir, but, of course, there is no bottom, no floor when it comes to sin. Things can always get worse. But they can also get better. We are called to make things better. Run the race to the end, serve faithfully, and hear Christ’s words: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’

As Lutherans, we know better than to fall for the Anabaptist lies of quietism, pacifism, and the avoidance of public offices. If Christians do not occupy public offices, then surely someone else will. We are the Church Militant. We are Christ’s body. It is incumbent upon us — it is our duty — to advance the Kingdom. Those who grow up in a Christian nation are — much like those who grow up in a Christian home — more likely to remain in the faith. Christ crucified for sinners is the heart of our faith — His blood washes us white as snow. But it may be our blood He uses to advance the Kingdom. May we not be found wanting.

Amen.

You may be operating under the belief that our reading from James does not apply to you. ‘I am not a teacher.’ you may say — ‘at least not a teacher in the Church’ you may think. And that may be true, in a strictly limited sense, but the proper understanding of Scriptural warnings and duties is seldom the strictly limited one. Are you a husband? You are a teacher with regard to your wife. Are you a parent? You are a teacher with regard to your children. The central issue for the teacher is the duty to speak the truth, and that is certainly not limited to religious matters.

All truth is one. To teach falsely with regard to any truth is to become a false teacher and invite the stricter judgement. Certainly, it is a more egregious violation to stand up in the Church and lie about God or His Word, but do you for a second believe that God will ignore it when you lie about Him elsewhere? The God Who watches as a false teacher preaches works righteousness is the same God Who sees you put pronouns in your bio on social media. Or did you think that God would simply ignore Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok?

And do not for a second believe that you will escape scrutiny by declining to take up the task of teacher. If you are a husband or a father — and you had best be the former if you are the latter — then I direct you to the undertitles in the Small Catechism: ‘As the head of the household should teach.’ Just as abortion does not preclude a woman from becoming a mother, but merely makes her the mother of a murdered child — of a child she murdered — so failing to properly teach your wife and children does not prevent you from becoming a teacher, but merely makes you a failed one. And mothers? You are also teachers of your children — God will require their souls from you no less than He will require yours from your husband.

And so what does it mean to be a teacher? It is nothing more than to have a duty to instruct someone in the truth. This duty may be — to some degree — assumed, but is more often simply acquired. If God has given you the gift of intelligence, then know for a certainty that He will require from you that you put that gift to proper use.

Of all the gifts God bestows, intelligence may be the most dangerous — although it could be debated how precisely the curve interacts with the danger. God does not bestow gifts randomly or without purpose. If God has blessed you with an agile mind, a keen intellect, or a sharp wit, then He has done so for a reason — and it is incumbent on you to make good use of your gift. Failing to use your gifts is just as much sin as is misusing them: From him to whom much has been given will much be required.

You may be thinking ‘thank God I barely passed by classes’ or ‘good thing I got all Cs’, but, leaving aside the matter of the correlation between grades and intelligence, you should not be so quick to presume you have not fallen afoul of this duty simply because you are comfortably average, or even if you are significantly below average. To attempt to exercise a gift you have not been given is just as much a sin as failing to use a gift you do possess. If you are not a prophet, then prophesying is sin; if you are not called o teach, then teaching is a sin. And do not neglect the fact that a call to teach one person is not equivalent to a call to teach another. Wives, you are to teach your children; you are not to usurp your husband’s headship and attempt to teach him, nor are you to teach in the Church.

Do you enjoy arguing on the Internet? You may be teaching — best make sure you are teaching the truth. Or do you think that you will evade God’s rules on a technicality? The Jews hang special ‘cords’ — called an "eruv" — to — per their rules, not God’s — delineate certain public spaces as private in an attempt to circumvent their fundamentally disordered understanding of what it means to keep the Sabbath. ("What does this mean? We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.") A sizable chunk of New York City is actually encompassed by an eruv. A reminder: God will not be mocked.

And so what are the respective duties — teachers to students and students to teachers? The duty of teachers is simple — if by no means easy: teach the truth; do not mislead your students. Yes, it is a greater sin to lie directly about God, but lying about His Creation is still egregious sin. Do you hold that there are more than two genders or that they are not biologically determined? You are a false teacher. Do you adhere to Neo-Darwinian Evolution? You are a false teacher. Do you deny the reality of the nations? You are a false teacher. To deny any truth is to deny Truth. God’s Creation is a reflection and a product of His Nature; to deny the nature of Creation is to deny the Nature of God — is to lie about God. Teachers, you must speak the truth, no mater the consequences. Praevaleat veritas ruat caelum.

The duty of students is to be teachable; in the words of our Isaiah reading, the student must be neither rebellious nor inclined to retreat to his former (incorrect) ways. But this is not a hapless or a mindless credulity — use what gifts and resources God has given you. Hold your teachers to the Word of God. Ultimately, it is the Scriptures that are your one infallible teacher and you must hold all other teachers to the standard of Scripture. This is not ‘me and my Bible under a tree’ — we are not Schwärmer; we stand in a long line of faithful teachers God has raised up to instruct and to protect His Church. We hold to the Confessions because they are faithful to Scripture, because they guide us along the strait and narrow. If you believe a teacher is in error, demonstrate the error from Scripture or the Confessions — if necessary or helpful, enlist the aid of other teachers. The wise teacher will thank you for the correction; the false teacher will reveal himself.

God has provided us with a wealth of resources to guide us through this life, and we must make use of them — instruct your children from the Catechisms, read from the Scriptures with your spouse, attend Bible studies, listen to (good) podcasts. There is no excuse for ignorance. Never before in history have we had such a wealth of resources. Yes, there are dangers — false teachers who would lead astray — but God has not abandoned us and the Spirit will lead us into all truth using the Word and faithful teachers.

Above all, hold true to the core of our faith: Christ crucified for sinners. Do not fall for the siren song of Gospel reductionism — do not deny the Law or the nature of reality — but boldly profess that all truth is one. The same God Who shed His holy, precious blood for you on the Cross is the God by, for, and through Whom all things were created. Do not deny Him by denying His Creation or His Nature. God will not be mocked.

Amen.

For God shows no προσωποληψία — a word that appears only four times in Scripture: in the verse in Romans just quoted, in our reading from James, in Ephesians 6:9, and in Colossians 3:25. A curious word in Greek — if we take the ‘literal’ meaning, then it would be something like ‘face taking’, which sounds quite odd until we actually think about it. To commit the transgression of προσωποληψία is to regard that which is not relevant, or, as our study Bible puts it: ‘to judge unfairly on the basis of worldly criteria’. In our reading from James, this partiality is demonstrated by way of an example — the preferential treatment of the wealthy.

But it is always morally wrongful to show preferential treatment to the wealthy? Would not such a blanket condemnation condemn such things as VIP tickets, private jets, luxury vehicles, expensive restaurants, and a whole host of other such things? If the prohibition is not properly understood, yes. But it is not a blanket condemnation, for we must look at the context: The condemned partiality is being shown in the Church with regard to irrelevant, worldly criteria. The wealth or poverty of an individual should not decide where he may or may not sit in the Church, and the poor should not be made to feel unwelcome.

And yet the pastor stands before the congregation where others are not permitted to stand, and speaks words others are not permitted to speak. Ah, but that is not according to irrelevant, worldly criteria — the pastor is called and ordained, and so stands before the congregation properly and not due to any partiality. Similarly, we may provide preferential parking, seating, et cetera, to the old or the infirm. The issue is the appropriateness of the criteria we are employing as warrant for our actions. And so, in the words of Leviticus, we rise before grey hairs and honor our elders, but we do not permit the large donor to have his own parking space or a reserved pew, at least not because of his wealth.

As you have undoubtedly noticed, this is a matter primarily of the right-hand Kingdom in our reading from James, but the rule applies in the left-hand kingdom as well. We are prohibited from perverting justice — we may favor neither the rich nor the poor. All truth is one, and to subvert justice is to pervert truth. The propriety of any of the aforementioned forms of special treatment afforded the wealthy is a separate matter — the central issue is justice (when dealing with the left-hand kingdom). But let us return to the right-hand Kingdom.

In our Gospel reading — and do carefully note that — Christ calls a woman a ‘dog’. Or does He? The Greek word for ‘dog’ is κυων, but Christ calls her κυναριον, not god, but the diminutive ‘little dog’ or ‘puppy’ — the term you would use of a household pet. Perhaps His disciples missed His point, but the woman did not, and she answered Him in kind, saying that even the family dog feeds on the scraps. But what point was Christ making? He was testing her faith and instructing His disciples. There is nothing special about Jewish blood — the blood descendants of Abraham are not saved by their blood. There is only one Blood that saves, and it was spilled on Calvary, and we receive it in the Sacrament.

Christ was not insulting the woman — He was teaching. He commends her for her faith while simultaneously making a polemical point against Jewish conceptions of how one is saved. Again: This is the Gospel reading.

When Christ came, He healed the blind and the lame as our reading from Isaiah prophesied and the mute and the deaf as the second half of our Gospel reading related. And yet the Jews saw but did not see, heard but did not hear. Trusting in their lineage, many of them rejected the clear teaching of Scripture that we are saved by faith alone. And yet Judaizers persist to this day. Some take the form of ‘Messianic’ Jews, who insist on keeping the ceremonial law — a righteousness of works — by which none is saved — instead of faith. Others take the form of Dispensationalists and ‘Christian’ Zionists, who insist that the Jews are special in some way — a significantly more egregious partiality than that shown to the rich man in our reading from James.

You are not saved by your blood — whether it is German or French or Dutch or Jewish or anything else; you are saved by His blood, by the holy, precious blood that Jesus Christ shed to cover the sins of the world. If you would be saved by your blood, then you will die in your sins. Solo Christo — by Christ alone — are we justified, washed in the blood of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.

It is God Who sets the prisoners free, opens blind eyes and deaf ears, heals the lame and the sick, and makes us white as snow. Do not be deceived by false teachers who would preach another gospel and another righteousness — whether of the blood of men, the Law, or anything else. Outside Christ, there is no salvation. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus — by grace through faith we are made members of the Body of Christ, His Church. With God, there is no partiality. Amen.

It is always darkest before the dawn, and things in our society certainly seem quite dark right now. We live in an apostate nation in an apostate time, and matters are certainly not — presently — trending upward. We undoubtedly commiserate with the psalmist in today’s reading:

»O LORD God of hosts,

We are flooded with images and stories of suffering, depredation, and outrageous sin on a nearly constant basis. The misery rectangle in almost everyone’s pocket — or maybe even in your hand — hardly makes matters better. Our culture is full to overflowing with sins — open and notorious — that would make Sodom and Gomorrah blush. At the Judgement, the antediluvians will surely ask God why He spared us for so long. Assuredly, all that stands between our civilization and a watery grave is the rainbow.

The state of the world may bring us to cry to God like Isaiah, to implore Him to “rend the heavens and come down”, to touch the mountains and make them smoke, to make “the [them] … quake at His presence[.]” We groan with the Creation, longing for the renewal of all things; we look for the awesome deeds of the Lord. And yet we must not allow our sinful flesh to use the wickedness of our country, our neighbors, and the times to excuse, to diminish, or to conceal our own wickedness. As the reading from Isaiah teaches of man in his natural, fallen state: “There is no one who calls upon [the name of the Lord].”

As we confess, we are sinful and unclean; we sin in thought, word, and deed; and we justly deserve both present and eternal punishment. We are just as deserving of punishment — both temporally in this life and eternally in the next — as the rest of our fallen race. There are no righteous men. It is only God’s mercy, patience, and forbearance that keep this world from being swept away in an instant. God has promised never again to flood the entire world, but He has also sworn that this world will end by fire.

We may be tempted, given the state of the world, that these are the End Times, but we must remember that only God knows the day and the hour. And yet the wages of sin is death, and so we, as mortal men, are never more than a few moments away from death — and it is appointed for man but once to die and then the Judgement. For us mortals, then, all times are end times.

So what are we, as Christians, to do in times such as these? Two things:

First, we are to do nothing. No one calls upon the name of the Lord because all are dead in sin and trespass, and the dead do not act. And yet we, Christians, are no longer dead. In the opening of First Corinthians, in his greetings, which comes just before our reading for today, Paul describes himself as “called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus”, and, lest there be any confusion, shortly afterward (and in our reading for today) Paul calls the Christians of Corinth, to whom he is writing, “called to be saints”.

There is only one kind of Christian — the called, the Elect. If you believe today, it is not because of anything you did, for no good thing dwells in man’s fallen, sinful flesh; rather, faith is the free gift of God, bestowed via the Word and the Sacraments. You were chosen in Christ before the foundations of the Earth were laid. The faith brought forth in your heart and the regeneration of your soul are no less miraculous than the creation of the Universe. God spoke and there was light; through HIs words He brought for creation. God spoke and you were brought from death in sin and trespass to new life in the Spirit; where you were first given faith through hearing the Word proclaimed or through the water and the Word in Holy Baptism, it was the power of God that brought forth the miracle of faith in your heart.

And in what does this faith repose trust? In what do we believe? We believe in Christ crucified for sinners. By His holy, precious blood, we are cleansed of all sin and unrighteousness. Some will ask: How do we know that we are among the Elect? Do not listen to those who tell you to look within yourself for the answer, for that is not where Scripture directs us. Scripture directs us to look outside ourselves, for God has ordained Means by which we receive Grace. We look to the Word and the Supper where the Spirit is active to strengthen faith, and we look to our Baptism. Baptizatus sum — I am baptized. In the words of our hymn: ‘Child of God, I gladly say it: I am baptized into Christ.‘ Our certainty rests entirely with Christ, not with us. In the words of our Epistle reading: “our Lord Jesus Christ … will sustain [us] to the end[.]”

As Christ’s work was necessary and is sufficient and complete, we need do nothing. No works of our own ever could or ever would save us. And yet we are saved by works — Christ’s perfect work and His perfect sacrifice.

Second, we are to joyfully do good works, not because they are necessary or merit justification or salvation, but because we have been regenerated and now, through the power of the Spirit, have the ability to participate in good works, to cooperate in sanctification. But what are these good works?

By good works, we do not mean the sort of human traditions that are lauded by many. You need not go searching for good works, for God, in the words of Ephesians, has ‘prepared such works beforehand’ “that we should walk in them”.

We look to the Ten Commandments and to our vocations and we find more opportunity for good works than we could pursue in a thousand years.

To keep a home is a good work. To raise godly children is a good work. To care for God’s Creation —of which we are stewards — is a good work. To charge fair prices is a good work. In short, to live our lives where we are — where God has placed us — and to care for those whom God has entrusted to our care is the very heart of doing good works. To paraphrase Luther: ‘God does not need our good works, but our neighbor surely does.’

We know, of course, that good works do not merit justification, do not merit forgiveness of sins, do not merit eternal life, but that is not why we do them. We do good works because we are — as regenerated believers — able to do them. This is something the unregenerate cannot do. When we were without the Spirit, we were dead in sin and trespass and all our works were filthy rages — there is nothing good in fallen, unregenerate man. But we are no longer dead and we no longer serve sin as our masters with works leading to death; we have died to sin and to the flesh and we now live to Christ. In Baptism, we were joined in His death and brought back into new life. We, who once were dead, now live.

This is not to say that we will, as Christians, now live sinless lives. Our flesh still clings to us and we will not be free of sin until we shed this mortal body, and put on a restored, imperishable, perfect body. But we need fear neither our infirmity nor death. Christ will sustain us to the end; He will complete the work He began when first we were gifted faith. When He chose you, He knew all your sins — and not just the ones you have already committed. Flee temptation and resist sin, but know that when you fall — and you will fall — there is forgiveness. There is forgiveness because He paid the price, not some of the price, not part of the price, not even most of the price, but all of the price.

And that is the Good News: Forgiveness is the free gift of God, and it comes with eternal life.

Amen.

We are all born deaf and blind. Hearing, we do not hear; and seeing, we do not see. We know God’s Law, for it is written on our hearts — our consciences accuse us when we stray. We are all without excuse. We have become futile in our thinking, for we sin in thought; we have become futile in our speaking, for we sin in word; and we have become futile in our doing, for we sin in deed.

All our suffering, every affliction, and all the evil and imperfection in this world are due to sin. No, you did not break your leg because you failed to tithe — probably. That is not how sin and consequences work. Many, however, operate under that false assumption — that individual afflictions can be traced to individual sins — but hear the words of Christ when He rejects His disciples’ presumption that the man born blind (or his parents) sinned and thereby brought about his condition. Every evil and every imperfection are traceable to sin because we live in a fallen world.

When our first parents — Adam and Eve — sinned in the Garden, they ushered death into the world, and with death came decay and degeneration. The very good creation was subjected to futility, and so some men are born blind, some are born missing limbs, and some are stillborn. Great and terrible is the suffering in this world, because great is the power of sin. And lest we think too highly of ourselves, we sin each and every day. Not only original sin condemns us, but each and every one of our innumerable actual sins. We are true children of Father Adam.

Naturally, we are sons and daughters of perdition, every bit as separated from God as the dragon in Revelation or as the snake in the Garden. Spiritually, we are conceived, born, and live in darkness, and we spread it everywhere we go. We do not love our neighbors as ourselves, and we certainly do not love God with our whole heart, mind, body, and strength. We justly deserve this present and then eternal punishment.

One must wonder what Paul who spoke of certain sins done in secret as being too shameful even to mention would think of all that is not only done in the open but celebrated in our culture. The night is wretched, dark and deep, and evil seems to never sleep. And yet we know that a still more glorious dawn awaits.

‘For at one time we were darkness, but now we are light in the Lord.’ As Christ is the light of the world, so we have become light through our union with Him. But let us return to the man born blind, whose world was one of darkness. With very few exceptions, blind men in the ancient world had to support themselves via begging. It was an uncertain and unpleasant existence.

Now see Christ stooping down to create mud with His saliva and His hands. Our text comes from John, who also wrote Revelation, but let us go to the other end of the Bible for a moment — to Genesis. Unlike all else in Creation, which God merely spoke into existence, God formed man from the dust; He, like a potter, took earth and formed it into a man — Adam, father of our race. Then God breathed the breath of life into that lump of clay and it became a living being. The mouth that breathed that breath of life in Genesis is the very mouth that spits in the dust to make mud here; and the very hands that formed Adam from the dust in Genesis here form mud to restore sight to a son of Adam.

The true Good News is Christ’s victory over sin and death and our adoption as sons and daughters of the Kingdom, but He also gave us glimpses of the physical restoration that will attend the life to come. Never before had a man born blind had his sight restored, and yet Jesus does so. The man’s blindness was a consequence of sin’s corruption of Creation. The wages of sin is death, and physical imperfection and corruption attend death. Christ’s healing of the man born blind was a little of the Kingdom breaking into the present world — a hint of what is to come.

It is easy to miss the true nature of this miracle (although its uniqueness indicates the true wonder of it). The human brain is plastic, which is to say some regions can be retasked under certain circumstances — say, if you were born blind. Not only did Christ heal whatever physical malformation made the man blind (whether of the eye, the optic nerve, or something else), but He also created the wiring in the man’s brain that is necessary for sight. This is an even greater miracle than the healing of the paralyzed.

Now, we still live in a sinful and fallen world, and so we will not always receive the healing we desire. Injury, sickness, and death are still very much part of this world we inhabit. It is a matter of ‘already’ and ‘not yet’. On the one hand, the Kingdom is already here — you were raised in Baptism to new spiritual life, the first resurrection — but, on the other hand, we are waiting for the fullness of the Kingdom that is not yet here — sin and death are conquered, but will not fully pass away until the Second Coming. As an heir to the Kingdom, you will never truly die — never see the second death, but, as a fallen human being, you will still taste death, but only of your now-imperfect body that will be raised perfect and imperishable.

Just as Christ healed the blind man and then sought Him, so will He one day call you forth from your grave. Death could not hold Him Who had no sin, and death will not hold you, as you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and made whiter than snow. At the right time, God sent Christ into the world to die for sinners, and nothing could delay or thwart His rescue.

You and I were captives, sold under sin. There was nothing we could have done to free ourselves; we could never have paid the price. But Christ paid our debt on the cross. No work of our own would have ever been sufficient, but that is the Good News: We are freely justified for His sake, due His merit. His righteousness is imputed to us. Not only have our sins been washed away, but our Father in Heaven has promised not even to remember them. Many of the pages in Heaven’s record of your life are blank, because your sins were washed away by the blood of the Lamb. You are Christ’s and He is yours, and nothing will snatch you from His hand. Your name is written in the Book of Life.

So, rejoice with David, for the Lord is your refuge, your mighty fortress, and the righteous will surround you. Yes, there will be trials, pain, and suffering in this life, but the victory has already been won. Death cannot hold you, for death has been robbed of its sting. Christ has bound death and the devil, and now we plunder his kingdom. In Word and Sacrament, Christ comes to us, and we, as children of the light, walk in the light and share with others what was freely and abundantly given us. And just as with our salvation, we need not fear when we share the Good News, for it is God Who will do the work. So let us work while it is still day, buy joyously in the security of a victory already won and a Savior Who never fails, a Lord Who guides, and a God Who loves us.

Amen.