Matthew – Confident.Faith

Yesterday, with ashes imposed upon your foreheads, many of you were forced to confront your fallen, sinful state and the mortality that flows from the same: ‘For thou art dust, and to dust shalt thou return.’

Death is the end of all flesh, the end of the whole of this creation that has been subjected to futility. In Adam, all men sinned. Original sin is "that horrible, dreadful hereditary sickness by which the entire human nature is corrupted." Original sin is not your nature — for your nature was created by God and is "very good"; rather, original sin is a disease that clings to your nature — it is a disease that is always fatal. You will die from original — and your own actual — sin. This is the end of all flesh.

When God descended in His glory as a devouring fire at Mount Sinai, He delivered unto Moses and the Old Testament Israelites the Law, and the Law proved to be death. Adam and Eve failed — they ate of the fruit; Old Testament Israel failed — they rebelled and whored after other gods; and you and I fail — we sin daily, constantly, unceasingly. Does your mind wander when you read or hear the Word of God? Do you trust — absolutely and without any doubt — in every promise of God? You have failed to keep the First Commandment. You worry because you do not trust God; you grasp because you do not believe His promises; you do not tithe and give of your blessings because you do not trust His Word. He tells you to turn and be healed, but you continue in your stubbornness and your rebellion. Adam and Eve chose death in the Garden; Old Testament Israel chose death in the desert and in the Promised Land; and you and I choose death every day.

If we were to rely upon ourselves and our own efforts, then there would be absolutely no hope. We cannot fear, love, and trust God as we ought and our hearts are forever seeking idols before which we can prostrate ourselves. Those ashes on your forehead were not a mere reminder — they are a promise: for the wages of sin is death.

"Yet even now." Yet even now, turn and He will heal you. Rend your hearts and not your garments, for the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. And yet you could not have turned from your evil ways. In sin and trespass, you were dead, and the dead do not turn. And yet God is generous and merciful beyond measure and abounding in steadfast love.

The Church Year is divided into three parts: the Time of Christmas, the Time of Easter, and the Time of the Church. Ash Wednesday marks the end of the Time of Christmas and the beginning of the Time of Easter. In under six weeks, we will be celebrating the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, but let us return, for a moment, to the just-concluded Time of Christmas and then refocus on Lent, because there is no Easter without Christmas and there is no life without His death.

In His steadfast love, God sent Christ to the little town of Bethlehem, to a humble birth in a manger to a virgin betrothed to a poor carpenter. The eternal Word, Who was with and Who is God, became flesh. That same child just a few decades later would be nailed to a cross for your sins. Christmas leads to Easter, but only through Lent, just as death leads to resurrection, but only through the Cross.

‘Yet even now, turn.’ God knew that you could never turn on your own — the dead do not act — but death cannot stop Christ. "For our sake, He made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." Although those ashes on your forehead were meant to remind you of sin and death, you must also remember that your sins were nailed to a cross in Jerusalem — just outside the city — nearly two thousand years ago. The Son of God and Son of Man — true God and true Man — died so that you might live.

The ashes remind us of the price paid — the blood that has bought us. Christ crucified for sinners is our only hope. He did what we could not do; He kept the Law — He lived a life without sin. And what is death? The wages of sin. So death could not hold Him, for death has no claim on the One Who was without sin. So, on the third day, He rose again from the dead, leading a host of captives in His train. Christ is the death of death and so in Him we have new life.

You need not turn and be healed, for Christ Himself came to you in Word and Sacrament. In your Baptism, you were drowned to this world — to sin and to death — and raised again in Christ. As we confess in the Nicene Creed: ‘We acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.‘ He is ascended, but He is not gone. He meets us in Word and Sacrament, just as He promised to be with us to the very end of the age.

So serve your Lord with fear — for great are His works — and rejoice with trembling — for wondrous is His mercy and steadfast His love.

We are to repent and not to receive the grace of God in vain, and this is precisely what He has enabled us to do. We love Him because He first loved us; we worship Him because of His awesome power and His unfathomable works; and we rejoice because He brought us from death to life. The disease of original sin yet clings to us, but we no longer fear death, for He conquered sin, death, and the grave. He stormed the gates of Sheol; He bought us with His blood; and He gave us the right to call God our beloved Father, for we are now sons and daughters of the Kingdom. When God sees you, He sees the atoning work of Christ, He sees a beloved child. Your sins will not be remembered; you have been justified — declared righteous — for the sake of Christ and His work.

We now rejoice in the Law for its sting is gone. Our treasures are no longer here where rust destroys, moths consumes, and thieves steal; our treasure is in Heaven — imperishable and secure. The Son of Man was raised from the dead, and so we, too, shall rise to a new life. Although He found us in dust and ashes, dead in sin and trespass, Christ has clothed us in white, wiped away our tears, and welcomed us as brothers and sisters with the words: "Rise, and have no fear."

Amen.

The great ‘promise’ of the Law is ‘if…, then…’. “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, / who walk in the Law of the Lord!” “Blessed are those” who are “blameless”, “who keep His testimonies”, “who seek Him with their whole heart”, “who … do no wrong”, and who “walk in His ways”. But what are His testimonies? The Jews contend that there are six hundred and thirteen mitzvot — commandments — in the Torah, but let us not concern ourselves with such enumerations, for God Himself provides us a full statement of His Law in the Ten Commandments.

You may be thinking ‘So far, so good. I have neither murdered, committed adultery, nor borne false witness against my neighbor.’ Surely blessing and abundance will be ours for our great obedience! But wait. Does not Christ speak of these commandments?

Matthew 5:21–22 (ESV):

How fares your obedience to the Fifth Commandment?

Matthew 5:27–28 (ESV):

How fares your obedience to the Sixth Commandment?

Have you divorced or married a spouse who was divorced?

Matthew 5:31–32 (ESV):

How fares your obedience to the Sixth Commandment?

Matthew 5:33–37 (ESV):

Have you ever failed to keep your promises? Have you ‘merely’ failed to do what you said you would do? perhaps even failed to do what you told God you would do?

How fares your obedience to the Eighth Commandment?

Perhaps you yet believe that you have kept one of the other commandments. But what does Christ command? ‘Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.’ The law demands perfect obedience. The ‘promise’ of ‘if…, then…’ is no promise at all, for the “if” is “if you are perfect”, but ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ and ‘none is righteous, no not one’.

Therefore, the cry of the psalmist is practically a lament, a cry for mercy:

Psalm 119:8 (ESV):

The Law always kills. You will find neither peace in nor comfort under the Law.

Romans 2:12 (ESV):

Romans 3:20 (ESV):

Romans 3:21–25 (ESV):

You are not under the Law, for the Law held you captive only until you died to the Law. In Baptism, God drowned the old Adam and brought forth the new man in Christ. You have been set free from the condemnation of the Law by Christ’s atoning sacrifice.

You could never have kept the Law, for the standard of the Law is perfection, but you do not need to keep the Law, because God sent Christ to do so in your place. All your sins and your every failure to perfectly keep God’s perfect law were nailed to the Cross with Christ. We are now free to rejoice in the Law, which is perfect and holy, because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. You were dead in sin and trespass, but you are now alive in Christ and the Spirit.

In Christ, the blessings of the Psalms are ours; in Christ, we can stand before God with an upright heart. In this life, there will be trouble; there will be jealousy and strife. But we know, that for the sake of Christ, we have a gracious God. As we move from milk to meat, as we grow in our faith and trust in God, we know that it is not our efforts that will give the growth, but God Who will give the growth. He gave us the faith that grasped justification and received salvation, and He comes to us in Word and Sacrament.

Under the Law, all the promises of God were — every ‘if…, then…’ was — “No.”, but in Christ, all the promises of God are: “Yes.” You are a child of God, an adopted son of the Kingdom and co-heir with Christ. Should the world, the devil, or your flesh trouble you, should your conscience doubt or your faith waiver, do not look to yourself, do not seek within for answers or assurance; instead, point to the Cross. If your flesh should tempt you, flee to the Cross, for Christ says that He will lose none from His hand. If the devil should inquire, “Can mortal man be in the right before God?”, point him to the Cross, tell him to drop his accusations, for you are baptized into Christ. If the world should bid you doubt God’s goodness, His love, or His promises, point to the Cross, for He Who did not spare His Son, but gave Him so that you might be saved will surely withhold nothing good.

And yet there is real suffering and real pain in this life, and believers are not immune — do not believe anyone who would dare to tell you otherwise. But do not despair. The trials and the tribulations are the Father working on you; He reprimands you out of love, and refines you with fire — not the fires of Hell, for those you will never see, but the fire of sanctification. Although you will never achieve — become — perfect in this life, you will slowly be conformed to the image of Christ, and pain, suffering, and tribulation will all pass away in the twinkling of an eye when you pass on to glory, or when Christ returns.

In this life, cherish the knowledge that all things work together for good for those who love God, and we know that we love God because He first loved us. So, Christ the death of death Who became sin for us as the propitiation, Who took upon Himself the curse because we could never pay the price of our redemption, has brought us from death to life, has defeated sin and its curse (i.e., death), and has welcomed us as true sons and daughters of God, partakers in the blessings and in eternal life. In Christ, the “if” of the Law has passed away and only the blessings and the promises of “then” remain. Therefore, God is your life and your length of days, both of which shall be eternal and forevermore.

Amen.

Some contend that it is possible to be ‘good without God’. We may find this appealing. Surely if we loose the bonds of oppression, feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked — if we fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness cease — then God will notice our goodness and be pleased with us, no? No. We are told in Scripture that our good deeds — our good works — are as "polluted garment[s]" (ESV) or "filthy rags" (KJV), and, yet, neither of these translations is sufficient.

What is a filthy rag or a polluted garment? If you have done any work on an automobile, you may think of the combination of oil and dirt that pollutes everything it touches. Those who have raised children may think of rags used to clean up messes. (If you are thinking of dirty diapers, you have come closer.) If you are thinking of a kitchen towel, you are likely a bit off the mark. Some commentators have argued that what is in view here are the ‘garments’ — the strips of cloth — used to wrap the wounds of lepers, but the better interpretation is menstrual rags. Now, we all have the same mental image. Our good works are — our best is — as dirty, blood-soaked menstrual rags before God. Are you still feeling that maybe you want to come before God with your works in hand?

So, let us dispense with the nonsense that you can be ‘good without God’. The best person ever to live (other than Christ, of course) was a sinner through and through, and all his works were nothing. If you were to feed every hungry mouth, shelter every one of the over half a million homeless in the US, and preach the Gospel to millions, you would still appear before God in soiled, filthy rags. The original sin that has diseased our nature has wrought infinite separation between man and God; [i]t damns and brings eternal death". You cannot fear, love, and trust God as you should. Everything done without faith is sin, and the wages of sin is death.

But we know that that is not the whole story. Adam sinned and in Adam all men stand condemned, but that is contrary to God’s plan and will. You are not meant to sit in dirty rags, in the fear and hopelessness brought by a guilty conscience. You were — and are — meant to be a son or a daughter of the Kingdom, an adopted son of the Kingdom and an heir in Christ. And that is the crux of it.

Nothing you could do or could have done would bridge the divide between you and your Creator. The good news is that there is nothing you need to do. ουτως γαρ ηγαπησεν ο Θεος τον κοσμον — for God so loved the world. Christ has done the work you could not do; He has perfectly fulfilled the Law. The wages of sin is death, but death could not hold Him for He had no sin; death has no claim to Him and now death has no claim to you. Washed in the blood of the Lamb — washed with water and the Word — you no longer wear dirty, blood-stained rags; rather, you now stand before the Father cloaked in a robe of purest white and declared righteous by grace through faith for the sake of Christ crucified.

ουτως γαρ ηγαπησεν ο Θεος τον κοσμον. What did God love? τον κοσμον — the world. And what did He do? "He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life." Christ came to die for you, for your parents, for your siblings, for your children, for your friends, for me, but, more than that: τον κοσμον — He came to die for all. Christ’s Atonement was necessary and sufficient — all sufficient. Justification is universal, for Christ’s work was once for all. You are justified by grace through faith — made a true child of God and heir in the cleansing waters of Baptism.

"Child of God, I gladly say it: I am baptized into Christ. He, because I could not pay it, gave my full redemption price." No longer do we live in fear and uncertainty, for He has promised that He will lose none from His hand. You are "a child of Paradise." Come what may — we fear no bad news — we run the race to win, but in the security that we have already won, because He confronted sin, death, and the devil at Calvary, and conquered them with His blood and our certainty rests on an empty tomb and in a second resurrection.

In the forgiving flood of Baptism, which sprinkled us with Jesus’ blood, we were raised from death to life — the first resurrection — and we are now the salt and the light of the Earth. In a world of ignorance, darkness, decay, rot, and death, we have been given new life and a foretaste of what will come when we depart this life. What now of our good works?

In faith and Christ’s blood, our good works are now pleasing to God. Our works do not — cannot — save us, for Christ alone is the way to the Father — He alone is truth and life. Nevertheless, we know that God has prepared good works in which for us to walk. Good works are neither price nor guarantee; rather, they are our great privilege. God in His superabundant grace, mercy, and love sent His Son to purchase us — and we were indeed bought with a price. Now, we, like Paul, need know only Christ and Him crucified, for it is not human wisdom, knowledge, or eloquence that wins souls for the Kingdom — you did not come to believe because of human efforts (yours or another’s). The Gospel is foolishness to the perishing, a stumbling block to human wisdom, but for those who believe it is the very power of God. And how do we come to believe? ‘Faith comes through hearing’, ‘given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins’, ‘Baptism now saves you’. Word and Sacrament.

Man does not seek out God. For who has ascended into Heaven to bring Christ down? Rather, God seeks out fallen men and gives them the free gift of faith. It is all of grace. Let us then rejoice, for we know the end — Christ has won — and we know our place in it — we are children of Paradise. For God so loved the world, for God so loved us, for God so loved you.

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

Amen.