191006 Sermon on Luke 7:11-17 (Trinity 16) October 6, 2019 We are confronted with two tremendous facts in our Gospel reading today. The first thing that we can see is that a young man is dead. This is a dreadful fact. When it happens among us, we do whatever we can to shy away from it. We don’t want to look at the body until some makeup has been put upon it. We don’t want to say that the young man is really dead, but that the young man will live on in our hearts and memories. Much of the funeral industry’s profits are built upon the desire to not have to consider the fact of someone being finally and totally dead. The products they sell are meant to further the delusion that the person will live on somehow.This is unnecessary. We don’t have to pretend that a person continues living in some contrived sense of the word, for there is another fact that is presented to us in our reading. Jesus says, “Young man, I say to you arise,” and that is what happens. He sits up in that coffin that the pallbearers are carrying, gets out, and goes to his mother. The other great fact besides the boy being dead is that the boy is alive, because Jesus made him alive by speaking a word.These two great facts are at the heart of our religion. Isn’t it true that the two greatest days that have ever been are Good Friday and Easter? Two great facts are presented to us on these days. On Good Friday Jesus is dead. There’s no doubt about this fact. The disciples did not miss the significance of this fact. They scattered in despair. They thought that he was the Christ. They thought that he would be the king. How can he be the king when he is dead? The factuality of his death made such an impression on them that they were very slow to believe that he was actually risen from the dead. When the women reported what they had seen and heard at his tomb, the rest thought that they were indulging in wishful thinking. It seems as though hardly any of them believed until they actually saw Jesus. Their hearts were hard and slow to believe. It wasn’t really until Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them, that the disciples began to boldly testify to these two great facts as the salvation God has extended towards us.Nobody is saved through the death and resurrection of the young man who lived in Nain. Nobody is saved by the death and resurrection of the boy whom God raised through the prophet Elijah. Even these two boys weren’t ultimately saved by their own resurrection, for that was a resurrection to this life only, not an eternal life. And so we can see that two great facts of Jesus’s death and resurrection are different from these others that we hear about in the Scriptures. I’d like to consider today how there are at least three different ways that Jesus’s death and life are different from the others. First of all, Jesus is the Son of God incarnate. He has no earthly father, but was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. According to his human nature he is the seed of the woman, a son of King David, from the tribe of Judah. According to his divine nature he is the eternally begotten Son from the Father. There was never a time that he didn’t exist. He is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made. Therefore, it was not just a man who died on Good Friday. It was the one person of Jesus Christ—true God and true man—who died. The Good Friday hymn, “O Darkest Woe” has a stark and shocking line that speaks to what has taken place: “O sorrow dread, our God is dead, upon the cross extended.” “Our God is dead.” Let that sink in. No matter how deeply you think you have taken it in, you have not even begun to take it in. How can it be possible? And yet, it is a fact. Whether you believe it is possible or not won’t change what has actually taken place. The first way that Jesus’s death and resurrection are different than the others that we hear about in the Scriptures is t

190929 Sermon for St. Michael and All Angels, September 29, 2019 One of the most powerful stories that we are all taught by many different sources is that progress is marching on. We are getting better and better all the time. There seems to be a lot of evidence for this. People used to not have toilets. Now we do. People used to not have electricity. Now we do. Sick people used to die quickly. Now they die slowly. People used to have to write letters. Now they text. Who knows, then, what we might discover in the future, but whatever it is, it is going to be great.Another important part of this story of progress also has to do with religion. The story of progress says that we have outgrown religion. According to the story of progress, religion was a substitute—and a rather poor substitute at that—for science. For example, people used to not know how weather worked, and so they ascribed it to the will of a certain god. People used to not know how diseases worked, and so they ascribed it to a demon. Now we supposedly know how weather and diseases work, and so there is no longer any need to believe in gods or spirits.The story of progress has been very successful in our culture. It is in the air that we breathe, and so it has its effect on us Christians as well. We also are prone to disbelieve in the existence of evil angels and good angels. We are even more prone to disbelieve that these spirits have anything to do with our day-to-day life. If such things exist or if they actually do anything, then we want proof. Since the proof is never as good as we want it to be, it is a whole lot easier to just believe what everybody else believes. People will think that you are weird if you don’t believe what everybody else believes. Therefore, being a Christian today requires some independence. Christians have a very different story of what the universe is all about. We are not the product of progress or evolution. The heart and soul of the story of our existence is the love of God toward us in Jesus Christ. For us and for our salvation God became man. Jesus redeemed us by dying on the cross even though we have been rebellious towards God. The Creator has joined himself to us with the greatest intimacy and friendliness. God is flesh of our flesh—an unheard of thing and very intimate. He is also very friendly. All who believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Those who do not believe in him remain in their sins and are condemned for they reject the best and most important thing that has ever happened—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.Angels are not at the very heart of this story of our existence, but they are still very much a part of it. The festival of St. Michael and All Angels gives us the opportunity to look at their part in the story of the universe that is otherwise neglected or dismissed as antiquated.Angels were created by God as spirits. Spirits are unusual creatures in that they don’t have bodies like we have bodies. When they have become visible to people, it is because they have taken on a visible form, like the Holy Spirit took on the form of a dove at Jesus’s baptism. The Holy Spirit is not a dove. The Holy Spirit does not have a body. He is a spirit. That’s who the angels are too, but sometimes they will take on a visible form.Sometime after God created all the angels, there was some kind of rebellion among the angels. The Bible doesn’t tell us nearly so much about this as our curiosity might want. All that we can say for sure is that as a result of this rebellion there were thenceforth good angels (as God had originally created them all to be) and evil angels (who once were good, but then made God their enemy).The fallen angels are also called demons. The leader of the demons is the devil or Satan. It was this Satan who took on the form of a serpent, or possessed a serpent, and tricked Adam and Eve into their rebellion against God. Satan is the liar and the murderer who is ultimately responsible for

190922 Sermon on Luke 17:11-19 (Trinity 14), September 22, 2019 Leprosy was a terrible disease not just because of what it did to the body, but also what it did to a person socially. If anyone had leprosy they were considered unclean. They were shunted off to a colony by themselves. Therefore, there wasn’t hardly a single aspect of their life that was left untouched.In our Gospel reading Jesus comes upon practically a crowd of lepers. Ten men were desperately calling out to Jesus for help. Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest. The reason why Jesus says this is because this was part of the Law God gave to Moses. Leprosy made the person ceremonially unclean. They couldn’t be readmitted to society until a priest had looked them over and sacrifice was made. When Jesus tells them to go to the priest it is so that they could be checked over and return to their former lives.All ten lepers believed what Jesus said. They began to make their way to the priest. Accordingly they were healed by Jesus’s almighty power. Their situation had previously looked quite hopeless. Now they could return to the lives that they had known and loved. How happy they must have been as they looked forward to reunions and celebrations! In a sense they had been lost to their families, but now they were found. They had been essentially dead to all who loved them, now they were alive.But one of these men was not like the others. He did not go home to celebrate with family and friends. He turned back to Jesus. St. Luke says that he glorified God with a loud voice. When he came to Jesus, he fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, thanking him. And he was a Samaritan. Samaritans were not from the right church. They combined some biblical truths with a whole bunch of pagan notions. The Jews looked down on them, and at least partly, for good reason, because they were in error about many things. In spite of this, however, there the man was at Jesus’s feet on his face.Have you ever been on your face at Jesus’s feet? To some this might seem like groveling. You wouldn’t find Frank Sinatra in such a pose. He lived life his own way, and that meant that he didn’t kneel, much less fall on his face. To others who aren’t so godless this might just seem weird. “That’s not the way we thank and praise God in church. We sit and stand and fold our hands.” Still others will say, “Well, this is what’s in the Bible, so that’s how we should give thanks.” Henceforth they will lie down in church with their faces in the carpet during the Divine Service.All of these ways of looking at it, however, are only external. The attention is on the appearance. The appearance is not so important as what is going on internally. The Samaritan is filled with thankfulness. It’s bursting within him. What he does outwardly is just how the thankfulness happened to be expressed. He was not putting on a show. He didn’t do it to gain Jesus’s approval or to be seen as more thankful than others. His motives were genuine. Therefore, all his actions were natural and a joy for him and for everybody who was saw it.Jesus asks about the other nine. Where were they? Weren’t they happy? Weren’t they thankful? There’s no reason to think that they weren’t happy and thankful in a sense. But their hearts were not lifted up to the Lord. Their hearts remained firmly planted on the earth. They were glad to see their families and have their lives get back to normal. They were glad to be sleeping in their own beds and to take up those projects that they had to abandon when they got leprosy. Jesus says in another place, “Where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Everybody treasures something, or even many things. Whatever those things might be, that is where the happiness and thankfulness is focused. The Samaritan’s treasure was in the God of Israel and his Son, our dear Lord Jesus Christ. Since that is where his treasure is, that is where his heart is also.Where our heart is, where our happiness and than

190915 Sermon on Luke 10:23-27 (Trinity 13), September 15, 2019 Our Gospel reading today teaches us what God considers the highest and best life. That is important knowledge. Many kings and prophets would like to know such knowledge, and here it is, right before our eyes. The best life is the one where we love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and with all our mind. We should love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This is the highest ambition a person can have, and the best possible life that a person can live.But as a way of life there are very few who take it up. The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to eternal life, and few there are who find it. Broad is the gate and easy is the way that leads to destruction. The reason why loving God and loving the neighbor is hard is because it is so contrary to the way that we are by nature. How we are by nature is that all our love is directed inwardly instead of outwardly. We want stuff for ourselves and for those who belong to us. Others can fend for themselves. Our selfish desires shape and form our ambitions.We should not think that these desires and ambitions are obviously sinful. According to our reason and according to the world’s thinking there is nothing wrong with self-gratification. Capitalists, for example, believe that selfishness is what makes the world go ‘round. Squeezing your neighbor for some extra profit is good business sense. Dumping some friends for better friends is the way to move up the social ladder. Awards and honors for one’s self makes people try and compete for the prize, and therefore is the secret to success and progress.Talking about this way of life as being bad might be confusing to you, and that’s understandable. It’s what comes naturally to us. Most people have never even considered the possibility that there is another way of living one’s life. But there is, and we are taught that today by our Gospel reading. What should motivate all our actions is love for God; love for the neighbor. Instead of trying to please ourselves, we are to please God. God is pleased when we do good things for other people besides ourselves. This is the chief way that we can love God and serve him—when we do good for others. God doesn’t need our good works. We can’t enrich him because everything is already his! God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does. Our neighbor needs those good works very much.“Who, then, is my neighbor?” This is the question that the expert in the Law asked Jesus after he heard that his interpretation of the Law was correct. Jesus said that he would live if he loved God and loved his neighbor. But the expert in the Law wanted to know whether he was in good stead. I assume that he thought that he had been pretty good to his family and to his friends. But what about other people? “Who else am I required to help?” he wondered. Jesus answered his question by telling him the parable of the Good Samaritan. The answer to the question of who the neighbor is, is whoever happens to cross your path. And how much should be done for such people that we happen to come across? The parable shows us that it is a lot. This parable forces us to see that our notions of generosity are off base. If we came across some miserable person and gave them a couple hundred bucks, boy, would we ever feel like we had done our good deed for the day! But the Samaritan does so much more than that.He picks the man up, bandages his wounds, and tries to make him comfortable. He puts the man on his own animal and walks beside him until they find a place to stay. When they get there he checks into a room and stays with the man. He nursed him along through the night. He probably didn’t sleep well with the moaning of the injured man, and the help he needed to give him. It wasn’t until the next day, after the hardest work as far as nursing is concerned was over, that he continues on his journey. That’s when he gives a couple hundred bucks to the

190908 Sermon on Romans 10:8-17 (Trinity 12) September 8, 2019 The doctrine of election is the teaching that God has chosen who will be saved from death and hell from before the foundation of the world. God has known from eternity who his own people are. He has loved them even before they have done anything right or wrong. God says, “Jacob have I loved. Esau have I hated.” Jacob was to become Israel with his twelve sons. Esau was to become Edom, a nation that was not chosen as God’s own.The teaching of election easily brings to mind many difficulties for our reason. For example, if God is the one who chooses for salvation, does that mean that he also chooses who is going to be damned? If God is the one who chooses who will be saved, then does it not matter whatever else might happen through the course of history? Can those who are predestined sin all that they want and still be saved? Can those who are not chosen not be saved no matter what? Plus it can seem as though God is arbitrary and random—“I’ll take this one and this one and this one; the rest I leave behind.”Because of all the difficulties that our reason immediately throws up when it hears of this teaching, it is often neglected. I, also, tend to neglect this teaching. It seems more prudent to just leave this teaching be. It’s safer and easier that way. But that’s no good. The Scriptures clearly teach it, and I suppose that that’s enough justification for speaking about it right there. But there’s also the fact that the doctrine of election, the teaching that God has picked us for salvation, is quintessential to the Gospel. Why should you be saved? The Gospel says that God picked you. He foresaw you, predestined you, called you, justified you, and he is glorifying you. All these gifts are because of God’s good will towards you from eternity, without any reference to what you have done or left undone. God has chosen you and no one can take you out of his hand. If God is for you, then who can be against you?As for the difficulties that God’s election brings up for our reason, what we must keep in mind is that the doctrine of election has not been given to us to satisfy our curiosity. He has not revealed it so that we could master it with our reason and give our consent to God’s plans.  As the Scriptures say, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” God has revealed how he chooses those who will be saved in order that we can believe it and be drawn near to God with our trust in him. We should trust him, because he has said that he has chosen you.You might be wondering, “When did God ever say this to me? I’ve never heard him talk?” To the contrary! Of course you have heard God talk to you. It is true that he has not spoken to you directly. God doesn’t normally interact that way. He works through means instead of directly, but it is him doing it all the same. And so he has brought it about that you should hear of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, who has been sacrificed for you. You’ve been baptized. Baptism is God saying, “You are mine.” You have heard Jesus’s own words where he says that God has loved the world in this way, that he sent his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He is the Good Shepherd. His sheep hear his voice and they follow him. His sheep hear his Words in the Scriptures.  And there are also those holy and sublime words of Holy Communion, that are also Jesus’s own words. He says that this bread is his body, given for who? Given for you. And this cup is the new testament, the new arrangement between God and us, the new binding agreement. What is the nature of this arrangement? Jesus says that this blood is what has been shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins. Wherever God’s revelation of salvation is made in accordance with the Scri

190901 Sermon on Genesis 4:1-15 Luke 18:9-14 (Trinity 11) September 1, 2019 The Bible is a very useful book because it teaches us the truth about life. This always conflicts with the way that the unbelieving world looks at life. That is why the Bible is useful. If the Bible didn’t tell us so, then there would be no way for us to understand things correctly. The world will loudly tell us the opposite, and we can’t help but believe it, if that’s the only thing that we are taught.This is why it is so important for us to be educated with the Bible. I urge people to come to church every week. I do not do this because I want them to be miserable or because I want them to somehow earn their way into heaven by their attendance. I say this to people because otherwise they are not going to hear what the Bible teaches and how that conflicts with popular opinion. Without this constant training whatever is taught in the schools, by friends and neighbors, by the TV, and all the other things that take up our time, is what we will believe. And we won’t think anything of it either. It’s the air we breathe. How often do you think about the air you breathe? The fish also doesn’t notice the water it lives in. It is only when the fish is out of water that it might think about where it used to be. So also, we will not think about all kinds of things that are taken for granted until we are taught something different. This is something that the Bible will do if it is taken seriously.The teaching from the Bible that I’d like to look at today is about our human nature. What are we like? How do we act? What do we want? What happens when we get what we want and what happens when we don’t?So let’s begin with our Old Testament reading. Here is a good place for us to learn about human nature because this is where we learn about the first human being who was born in the natural way. Adam was intimate with his wife. She conceived and bore a son. They called him Cain. They thought a lot of Cain. Eve thought that he was the Messiah that had been promised. It is grammatically possible for the Hebrew to be translated as we are used to where Eve says that she has gotten a man with the help of the Lord, but I don’t think that is what she said. A very wooden, literal translation goes like this, “I have gotten a man, the Lord.” Or, “I have gotten a man, who is even the Lord.” The context also supports this translation because God had just told Eve that her seed would crush the serpent’s head. Why wouldn’t she believe that this first born seed of hers would be the Messiah? And so Adam and Eve were very impressed with Cain and even pinned all their hopes upon him. It seems that Adam and Eve were not as impressed with their second born son. They named him Abel, which means insubstantial—like a breath or nothingness. His name is from the same root word that gives you the Old Testament word for vanity, as in “All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.”Cain seemed to be the favored son. He is the one who ended up taking up his father’s occupation. He became a worker of the soil. Abel tended sheep. When the time for sacrifice came they both offered their sacrifices. God was pleased with Abel but not with Cain. This was crushing to Cain.Here we can learn something about human nature. We all want to be recognized as someone good. We all want to be esteemed. We all want to be the best. There are many different areas in which we can be high achievers. We can be the smartest, the strongest, the best looking, the best athlete, the nicest, the funniest, the richest, the most popular, and so on and so on. Depending on our talents we all seem to pick a few different categories where we try to be high achievers. When we believe that we are good, then we are happy. We especially like it if we hear other people say this kind of stuff about us. Talk about giving a person a high! We love it and we cherish whatever good things might be said about us. We will mull them over and over in ou

190825 Sermon on Jeremiah 7:1-11 Romans 9:30-10:4 Luke 19:41-48 (Trinity 10), August 25, 2019 Wherever the Word of God is, there is a paradise, an oasis in the desert. This is because the Word of God brings to us the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. If ever we have missed a friend, if ever we have loved a child, then let that serve as the way to start to measure the goodness of being together with Jesus. Knowing God as our friend and champion is the highest and best thing that can possibly be hoped for. But we must also watch our step here. On the other hand, knowing God as our enemy is the most terrifying and awful thing that anybody can experience. So let’s not paint God as an impotent, doting grandma. There is a burning and consuming fire in the relations between God and man. This fire is inspiring, enlivening, and exhilarating for those who believe in his mercy. But to those who do not know him this fire is hellish. How can we know and believe in the God of mercy? It is the Word of God. Wherever the Word of God is, there is a paradise, an oasis in the desert.Those who have the Word of God, therefore, are so richly blessed that no comparison can do it justice. Suppose that you don’t own just a few hundred acres of land, or ten thousand acres of land, let’s say that you own the whole world. Everybody has to pay you rent. Let’s say that you are the devil himself, the prince of this world! That’s not good enough. You have something infinitely more with the baptism with which you have been baptized. That baptism has communicated to you God himself. God’s own child, say it gladly, you are baptized into Christ. The fiery yet good relationship with the eternal Creator is yours through this Word of God that has been poured onto your head—poured onto your head, I say, together with the water, lest you think that it couldn’t be for you, but has to be for somebody else.What happens, though, when we are in this paradise of possessing the Word of God and we start to be disobedient to him? We know what happened to Adam and Eve when they were disobedient to God in their paradise. Adam and Eve’s sin changed everything. Their minds were darkened and they were hostile to God. But God sought them out. God is longsuffering, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He does not take delight in the death of the sinner, but desires that all should reach repentance. That is what he did with Adam and Eve. Because God came to them with his message, they turned from their sin and believed in the promise of the Messiah.That is how it usually is. To those who have God’s Word, but are faltering, God will send yet more messengers of his Word. The messengers will reprove, rebuke, and exhort the wayward people so that they may turn from their evil ways. If God is gracious he might also send along some plagues to give that Word impressive power, for people often will not be moved by words alone. It is only when their checkbook or their body or their family has been touched with disaster that they will sober up. Where things turn out well the people will put on sackcloth and ashes. They will call a sacred assembly with all the people—young and old, even those who have just gotten married and are supposed to be going on their honeymoon. Together the people will call upon God to have mercy on them, which always brings God to his knees. He turns from his disaster and relents. Then the people are blessed with God’s Word again for a season and a time. That is when things turn out well.When things do notturn out well people reject the messenger together with the message and the one who has sent it. The particulars of what people might do is extremely variable. They might say that the messenger is not understanding God’s Word correctly. They might say that times have changed. Who does the messenger think he or she is? I say he or she because the messenger doesn’t have to be a pastor. It could be Mom or Dad. It could be a member of the congregation rightly cont

190818 Sermon on 1 Corinthians 10:6-13 (Trinity 9), August 18, 2019 St. Paul is doing something important with the Bible in our Epistle reading that we should learn from. He is taking the history that was recorded by Moses in the first five books of the Bible and he is applying it to the Corinthians even though they live in a different time, different place, and are even of a different people—for most of the Corinthians were Gentiles, that is, not descendants of Abraham. After recounting what happened with the Israelites, St. Paul says, “Now these things that are recorded in the Scriptures took place as types or as examples, so that we do not desire evil the way that they did.” And then a few verses later: “All these things that were happening to them had meaning as examples or as types. They were written down to warn us, to whom the end of the ages has come.” What St. Paul is saying here is that the history of Israel continues to be relevant and useful for the present day, because it reveals the way that God typically acts. It is quite common for people to neglect history and think that it is some kind of dessert that only nerds like to consume. And this might be true, depending on what you mean by the word “history.” History is often thought of as memorizing a bunch of facts—names, dates, and events. Here’s an example of such history: “The Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.” That is history, and even somewhat important history, but you could live a long and satisfying life without knowing such a fact as well as the countless others that are like it.Something similar can happen with the Bible and its history. The useful knowledge of the Bible does not consist in the bare accumulation of names, dates, and events. This is often referred to as trivia, and that’s a good name for it, because such knowledge, on its own, is trivial. The knowledge of these facts might make a person competent for the Jeopardy game show or for quizzes on facebook, but this will not do them much spiritual good. The knowledge of history that is relevant and useful and is even indispensable for the health of God’s people is different than just the bare facts. It is understanding the way that God has dealt with people over the centuries, how he has blessed them and cursed them, and then applying this also to ourselves. This is exactly the kind of thing that St. Paul is doing in this letter to the Corinthians. He is pointing to the people of Israel who were so freshly delivered out of Egypt. In the verses prior to our reading he goes through the blessings that God blessed them with. They were under the cloud of God’s glory, they passed through the Red Sea, they all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ. They were all richly blessed by God. But they ended up being cursed by God because of their sins as well. That is what you heard in our reading today. The wilderness was covered with the dead bodies of those who rebelled against God in many and various ways. “Now,” St. Paul says, “apply this to yourselves.” What God did to them, God has also done to us. God has blessed us by baptizing us into Christ instead of being baptized into Moses. He has fed us with spiritual food and spiritual drink. Instead of manna, quail, and water from the rock, our spiritual food and drink are the very body and true blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is how God has blessed us—even above and beyond what he did through Moses. But just as God brought catastrophe upon the disobedient Israelites, so also he will bring it upon us if we live in rebellion against him like the Israelites lived in rebellion. God dealt with his people of old the way that as we read about in the Scriptures. God will deal with us along those same lines, for he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.Understanding that the history of the Bible is relevant and useful

190811 Sermon on Jeremiah 23:16-29, Matthew 7:15-23 Two topics are prominent in our readings today. The first is the topic of false prophets. The prophet Jeremiah, in our Old Testament reading, speaks about the false prophets who were saying the opposite of what he is saying. Jeremiah was telling the people to repent because the wrath of God was coming upon them. These false prophets were saying, “Oh no, Jeremiah is overreacting. No such thing will happen.” They claimed also to have the Spirit of God, they had dreamed dreams, and who is Jeremiah to say that they are wrong? This topic of false prophets also comes up in our Gospel reading. Jesus warns us to beware of false prophets. They come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.The second topic in our readings is about the good works that must be present in those who belong to the Lord. If someone believes, then the Holy Spirit will produce good works. If there are no good works, then it is evident that the person’s faith is a sham, a self-delusion. I’ve already mentioned this with the prophet Jeremiah. He was telling the people that their turning away from God’s commandments meant that they were not the people of God even though they had God’s promises and covenants. They thought that they were believing these promises and covenants, but what was really going on was that they were enslaved to their flesh and devoted to false gods. They thought that they were believers, but they were actually unbelievers. Their ongoing rebellion against God’s commandments was proof of it.In our Epistle reading St. Paul says that those who have the Holy Spirit will put to death the deeds of the flesh. So if you are living in harmony with the sinful flesh, then you will die. But if the Spirit of God has been given to you, then you will seek after righteousness and live. In our Gospel reading we perhaps have the starkest preaching of all. Jesus says that if you are good, then you will do good. A good tree bears good fruit; a bad tree bears bad fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. It is by their fruits that you will know whether someone is genuine. It doesn’t matter if someone says over and over, “Lord, Lord,” if they are living contrary to the will of God. They will not go to heaven even if they were able to cast out demons and even work miracles in Jesus’s name. To them it will be said, “Depart from me, you evildoers.” And so the second topic that is found in all our readings is that God’s people live according to his will. True faith produces good works. The people of God, led by the Spirit of God, value and strive after the God’s will. Otherwise they are not the people of God. So the first topic is false prophets. The second topic is the teaching and keeping of God’s will. What I’d like to consider is how these two topics are related to one another. What does the warning against false prophets have to do with the requirement that God’s people live according to God’s will?In order to begin to answer this question, I’d like to recall what we talked about last week. Last week I spoke about the way that we are lawless by nature. The sinful flesh is not interested in God’s will. The sinful flesh only looks out for itself. Nobody has to teach us this. We are born this way.In order to show you that this is indeed so, I’d like to point to young children. Babies are very selfish creatures. They want everything just so. If it isn’t just so, then they will make you pay for it. It’s a good thing that we indulge infants in their selfishness because they are too young to be taught anything otherwise. But when a baby is two or three, then they can start to be taught. They can’t just take whatever anybody else has. They have to share. They can’t do whatever they want, they have to do what they are supposed to do. You might say that the Law is imposed upon them. And how do these toddlers like the Law? They don’t like it at all. It is v

190804 Sermon on Romans 6:19-23 (Trinity 7), August 4, 2019 In the Garden of Eden the serpent said to Eve, “You will not surely die.” The devil’s lie was in direct contradiction to God’s Word. God had said that if Adam and Eve should sin, then they would most certainly die. And yet the serpent says, “You won’t die.” God had made a law, but the devil said, “There is no such law.” It was the power of lawlessness that led Eve and then Adam to eat what God had forbidden with his law. They hoped that the law did not exist. They hoped that it wouldn’t be enforced. But, of course, the law did exist. It would be enforced. They were living in a fantasy land. They were living in a lie.As we well know, God was gracious to Adam and Eve. Contrary to their will he showed them that the law was real and that it would be enforced. This was contrary to Adam and Eve’s will because they would have liked to have continued on in their false hopes rather than being terrified by the sound of God coming after them in the Garden. But it was a good thing that their false hopes were demolished, because then they could build on a new foundation. They could build upon God’s own promise that he would send his Son to redeem them from their slavery to sin and the devil. Through this promised seed of the woman, there was reconciliation between God and Man. That’s because there would now be a righteousness that was not based upon the Law, upon what we have done or left undone, but upon the free gift that is given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.But the fall into sin has done its work. We are born blind to the truth. The lawlessness by which we ate in the Garden is the lie that comes much more naturally to us than the truth. Nobody has to teach us lawlessness. It is of the essence of our sinful flesh. Everybody wants to do whatever they want to do and not be punished for it. That is why Adam and Eve ate. That is why children disobey their parents. That is why we have done things that we know to be wrong. We do not think that things will go badly for us. We think things will turn out fine. The forbidden fruit looked good to Eve. That’s why she ate it. So also those things that are forbidden for us look good, otherwise we wouldn’t even be tempted to do it. The false hope that there is no Law or that it won’t be enforced is the only sensible reason why anybody would ever break the Law.Unfortunately, most people live their entire life entertaining this false hope, this lie. They hope that they will not be judged and will not be punished for their sins. There are very powerful forces that cooperate in the endeavor to keep people convinced of this. The devil is the author of this lie, and he knows well how to further it along. All the unbelievers that make up the world take lawlessness for granted. People are sinners. That’s just the way they are. So this is just what is considered normal. The only advice that the world has to offer in this situation is to make use of second chances and to try harder. This is very familiar advice to us. Try harder and never give up. Do this your whole life and then people will say nice things about you when you die. But who cares what people think? Who cares if the whole world thinks you are just swell? It is not to the devil or to our fellow sinners that we must give account. They very well might give us a free pass with a winky, winky at all our misdeeds. It is to God our Creator and Judge that we must give answer. What shall we say? … I tried? Can he possibly be convinced by such lies?And so if we want to help ourselves as well as our neighbor, then our first task must be to dispel this false hope, this lie, that God’s Law does not exist or that it won’t be enforced. The world believes that we Christians live in a fantasyland. It is actually the other way around. Christians know God’s Law and that he is deadly earnest about it. The whole Bible is testament to the existence of the Law and how God punishes those who break it. It is th