A Free Gift

A Free Gift 

Romans 6:12-23

    One of the most often used advertizing gimmicks is the offer of a free gift, just for stopping by.  Time shares, car dealers, magazines, even churches, offer you a free gift if you just come in the door.  Of course there is the small print that you have to watch out for but the enticement of something free gets your attention.  It doesn’t take long and you find out that the old saying is true, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”  We can become very skeptical about something that is presented for free.  That is why many people have rejected the true Christian message over the years because it sounds too good to be true.  It couldn’t be that simple.  Even many churches that bear the name Christian have had a problem with the idea that salvation could  be free and as a result they added things to the basic message that, in the end, added so many extra burdens that the real message of salvation by grace for Christ’s sake through faith has been lost. 

     That is why it is so important for us as people of God to recognize the true message of the Bible.  It is a message of Law and Gospel that must be proclaimed in the proper balance.  To proclaim only the Law, which, by the way, some people like to hear because it helps them to feel superior to the really bad sinners out there, would only leave you in despair.  To only proclaim the Gospel without the Law never confronts people with the reality sin.  If I don’t realize that I am a sinner in need of rescue, I will go along through life thinking that I’m just fine and I don’t need anyone’s help.  The suffering and death of Jesus becomes meaningless in that case.  You need to hear both of the great teachings of the Bible and you need to hear them often to keep you on the right track when it comes to understanding your relationship with God, a relationship that is based, not on human thinking but rather on the truth of God’s Word.  It is the responsibility of a faithful pastor to proclaim Law and Gospel in every sermon.  The passages of Scripture that are chosen for use in our worship services each week reflect that balance of Law and Gospel when they are correctly understood. 

     Paul’s letter to the Romans is a particularly good example of the proper balance of Law and Gospel and our Epistle lesson for today has one of the great passages in all of the New Testament because it contains both the Law and the Gospel in one sentence.  Paul’s conclusion in this section of the letter pulls together what he had been explaining about the consequences of sin and the free gift of God.  “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  The Law and the Gospel are clearly presented in this one sentence.  “The wages of sin is death.”   This takes us back to Adam and Eve.  When they doubted God and disobeyed His command, they began the process of dying.  They passed that punishment on to all mankind.  Not only would they die, their lives would be filled with sorrow and disappointment.  The influence of the devil’s trickery and lies would cause them and all those who followed them to become slaves to sin.  That sinful nature that was passed down keeps sinful mankind in that slavery to sin.  Instead of living to serve the Lord, the sinful nature looks to serve itself at the expense of others.  One sin leads to another and you find yourself in a dangerous cycle that is impossible to break without God’s help.

     Paul uses the word picture of producing fruit to further explain the consequences of sin.  Sin produces fruit, bad fruit.  It drags down you and makes you miserable with your life and you look for something that will make you feel better.  The trouble is that the things that promise relief from your sinful, miserable condition only make it worse in the end.  Alcohol, drugs, or instant gratification, only make matters worse. When the temporary fix wears off you haven’t found any real solution to your dilemma.  The bonds of slavery to sin just get heavier and it becomes more difficult to travel that road.

     When you realize that there is no hope in the things of this world, it is then that the Gospel needs to be heard.  The Gospel is the good news that there is rescue from that fallen condition, that slavery to sin.  That rescue comes in the free gift from God.  It sounds too good to be true, but it is true.  It was foretold by God’s prophets down through the ages and it came in the form of the Son of God who took on human flesh and blood and came to earth to be one of us.  He lived under the Law of God and kept it perfectly for us.  He then took the punishment that we deserved to the cross and gave up His life for ours.  The eternal punishment that we deserved was on His shoulders and he died in our place.  He showed His power over sin, death and the devil by being raised to life on the third day.  He sent the power of the Holy Spirit so that the message of repentance and forgiveness could be proclaimed and believed.  Through Him, we are reconciled to God. 

     It is truly a free gift because there is nothing that you can do to pay for your salvation   There is nothing you can do to earn it for yourself.  There is no way that the blessings of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life can be inherited from your family.  Even the power to believe, to have faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, comes as a free gift through the work of the Holy Spirit in the Means of Grace, the Word and the Sacrament.  That is the Gospel, plain and simple. 

     Yet there are people all over, outside the church and inside the church, who feel that they have it all figured out and if they do this or that or follow a certain pattern of life, they will have done enough to earn their place in heaven.  Either the Law has never touched their hearts to convict them of their sin or they have never really appreciated the power of the Gospel.  You might be tempted to nod your head in agreement with what I just said because you know people like that  who think they have it all figured out and they can do it alone without anyone’s help.  That may be true but the reality is that they are really you.  Each one of us still has to deal with the influence of the devil, the world and your sinful nature all the time.  You are constantly being tempted to let down your guard, forget your Christian principles, go along with the ways of the world because everyone else is doing it.  You probably heard your parents’ warning about that when you were young but it still applies to all of us today.  Because you were confirmed does not mean that you are immune from temptation and sin.  In fact you are the devil’s target.  You also need to be reminded of the power that Jesus gives you to fight against the old evil foe. 

     Each day of our Vacation Bible School this past week gave us reminders of how we are strengthened for our struggle against the evil forces that try to keep us slaves of sin.  The first day our Take Home Point was, “Jesus Calls Me.”  He calls me through the Word and my Baptism.  I become a part of His family and He provides me with the Spiritual blessings that I need as His child.   The second day we heard that Jesus Teaches Me.  Just as He taught the people near the shore of the Sea of Galilee, He teaches me through His Word.  There you find the truth about the free gift of salvation.  On day three our Take Home Point was “Jesus Keeps Me Safe.”  Just as Jesus rescued His disciples during a storm on the Sea of Galilee, He keeps us safe from the attacks of the devil, the world and our sinful nature.  His power is greater than all of that and He rescues us out of His great love.  On day four the Take Home Point was “Jesus Saves Me.”  The greatest news we could ever hear is that Jesus saves me from eternal punishment because of my sins.  Even when you become fearful, like Peter when Jesus allowed him to walk on the water, He picks you up when you sin and promises you full and free forgiveness.  On Day Five we were sent off with the Take Home Point, “Jesus Provides All I Need.”  Just as He provided a meal for His disciples after His resurrection, Jesus continues to provide us all that we need through the power of the Holy Spirit in the Means of Grace.  He gives us the forgiveness of sins and the sure promise of eternal life when He calls us from this life.  What more could we need!  In a very deliberate and enjoyable way, the Law and the Gospel were proclaimed during the week of Vacation Bible School.  The Law and the Gospel continue to be proclaimed each time we come together for worship.  It could truly be said that a free gift is offered anyone who comes here. What more could you need?  Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, Ohio

The Second Sunday after Pentecost    

In the Name

In The Name

Matthew 28:16-20

    When you think of today as Father’s Day, probably the one thing that comes to mind, whether you have your father here with you or you have to remember the times that you spent with your father, is the word relationship.  You develop a relationship with your father that is unique in the family.  It’s different from the way that you relate to your mother or your brothers and sisters.  A relationship with your father is something that you can cherish and learn from the rest of your life.  For a young man, the relationship with your father can serve as a model for you as you become a father.  For a young woman, the relationship with your father plays a role in the kind of person that you will look for in a husband.  This is assuming, of course, that the relationship that you have is a positive one.  We know that because of sin, all people have to deal with their sinful nature inherited from their parents just as they inherited it from their parents and so on down the line.  We are all less than perfect, but in spite of that, the relationships that are built in the family play an important part in molding and shaping who we are and how we will react in our own families later on in our lives. 

     In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus is talking to His disciples during that period of forty days between His Resurrection and His Ascension into heaven.  He is preparing them for what will be ahead of them when He is gone.  He had built a relationship with them in the three years that He taught them through His words and the signs and wonders that indicated to them that He was truly the Messiah, the Son of God and Savior of the world.  They would need that because He was giving them a tremendous task.  In the words of our text, they were to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  It is that statement about baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that makes this an important text for this Trinity Sunday, a Sunday in the Church Year when we emphasize the nature of the true God, the Triune God, the Three in One.  Jesus, Himself, makes this statement and in so doing answers a question that has been confusing people for generations.  What is the nature of the true God? 

     Human wisdom will try to explain the nature of the Trinity and, by itself, human wisdom will get it all wrong.  That was happening in the early church.  It became necessary for the leaders of the early church to come together and make a clear statement, based on Scripture alone, about the true nature of God.  It is clear that there is one God, yet in describing this God, it also becomes clear from the Scriptures that there are three persons in one God.  Again, human reason has a hard time understanding this and as a result, finds itself straying from the truth that gets the relationship all wrong.  It was then that the church leaders put together a confession of faith that clarified the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity and it became known as the Nicene Creed because it was presented and adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.  About 150 years later, another document was adopted that helped to clarify this relationship and it became known as the Athanasian Creed, in honor of Athanasius, a Christian leader who was an important spokesman for the truth when the Nicene Creed was written and adopted. 

     The Athanasian Creed has been an important document down through the history of the Christian Church.  It is included in the list of writings that are known as the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book of Concord, the definitive collection of Lutheran teachings since the time right after the Reformation.  It isn’t used in worship as much as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed because of its length but it is still an important explanation of the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity.  It has two parts, the first dealing with the nature of the Trinity and the second on the nature of Christ.  Both of these doctrines were attacked by false teachers in the early years of the church and it was essential that leaders faithful to the Scriptures came forward and presented this document. 

     I would like you to turn in your hymnal to page 319.  We are going to read this responsively today followed by a few comments.  As we get started, sometimes people are surprised by the use of the term “catholic faith.”  This use of the word “catholic” comes from a Greek word that means true or universal.  It is referring to the true church, those who believe in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God.  At the time that it was written there was only one Christian church and to distinguish the true faith from the false teachers that were threatening the true church, the word catholic or universal was used.  To say these words does not mean that we agree with the Roman Catholic Church and its teachings.  We will first read up to verse 26. 

     As you can tell, the emphasis in this section is on the nature of the Trinity.  There are not three God’s but one God.  Yet we do not abandon the idea that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God.  You will also notice how some of the lines of the Nicene Creed have been incorporated into the text of the Athanasian Creed.    We continue now by reading responsively the rest of the Creed. 

     As in the first section that we read, there are many similarities to the other Creeds that we more commonly use.  There is sometimes some confusion about the last part of the Creed.  In verse 39, at first glance it seems that the judgment will be based on works rather than faith as we have always taught.  A close look and an understanding of the grammar will show that there is no inconsistency with our teaching.  In speaking of the final judgment, verse 39 says, “those who have done good will enter into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire.”  The key to understand this is the word “good.”  Good is an adjective.  It describes a person, place or thing.  In this case it is describing a good thing, in other words, your faith.  That is consistent with all that Jesus and the New Testament writers said about believing and being saved by faith alone.  “By grace you are saved through faith; it is a gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.”  “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  You all are familiar with those passages.  Faith produces good works but it is faith first of all. 

    

     It’s all about relationships, even in God’s family.  He is our Father just as Jesus often said.  All we have comes from Him.  The greatest blessing is His only Son who came into the world to be our substitute under the law and on the cross.  It is the Holy Spirit who brings us to faith through the wonderful Means of Grace, the Word and the Sacraments.  It is that faith that is the good thing through which you will enter eternal life.  To the Triune God be all praise and glory now and for all eternity.   Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, OH  44077

Trinity Sunday  2014

Resist the Devil, Firm in Your Faith

Resist the Devil, Firm in Your Faith

I Peter 4:12-19, 5:6-11

     We all know that when we are young, our minds are taking in all kinds of information.  Everything is new and sometimes we learn about things that make us happy and sometimes we learn lessons that stay with us to help us avoid trouble later on in our lives.  For example, you all have grown up with some kind of picture in your mind about the devil.  Some time or another you heard about the devil and you knew right away that he was not a nice guy.  He was evil.  His name even has the word evil in it.  He is the evil one.  He is worse than the Grintch.  He wants to destroy everything that is good.  How you imagine the devil to be depends on the kinds of things you learned about the devil.  For some he is pictured in all red with horns and a pitchfork and a scary look on his face.  For me, the passage that I read before was the image that I had in my mind when I was growing up.  You have to understand that I went to a one room Lutheran School.  All eight grades were in one room.  One of the advantages of that kind of arrangement is that the younger kids could listen in on the lessons that the older kids were having.  When the school closed before my sixth grade year, I found myself well ahead of the public school students in many areas because I was curious enough to listen in on the upper grades.  One of the things that I heard was the description of the devil from this passage from I Peter 5:8.  It was Bible passage 260 on page 96 in the 1943 edition of the Blue Catechism.  Of course it was in the King James version.  “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring loin walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”  For a second grader, that was scary.  For years I lived with the fear of that lion prowling around looking for someone to devour, looking for me.  Still today, when I hear that passage, I remember being that little kid sitting in the second row of desks fretting about the devil trying to devour me. 

     It is a great word picture and it has stuck with me my whole life.  As I put together a sermon like this that is going to address the nature of the devil, I still remember my teacher describing the craftiness of the evil one.  I’m sure that it has come out in my preaching over the years.  The fact is that the description of the devil is still valid.  He is prowling around, looking for someone to devour.  He will use all kinds of trickery to achieve His evil purposes.  He will get his evil angels to do his dirty work and he will use the world to try and convince you that trying to do God’s will isn’t worth all the effort.  In the past weeks, I have been mentioning that Peter’s letters were intended to encourage persecuted Christians.  Last week I mentioned some of the words that Peter used to describe what was happening.  Here, later in the letter he lists more things that the devil will try and use to destroy your faith.  He speaks of a fiery trial, insults, and suffering.  The temptation is to give up.  He wants you to come to the conclusion that it just isn’t worth all the hassle to be a follower of Jesus.  If you give in to the temptations, your life will be free of all the fiery trials and insults and suffering.  The problem with that kind of thinking is that it only concerns the here and now.  It becomes easy to forget about the eternal aspect of your existence.  Live for now!  There’s nothing after this life.  Live it up while you have the chance.  You hear that kind of nonsense everyday.  The world promotes that kind of thinking all the time.  If you aren’t careful, if you are not alert, you can begin to believe the devil’s lies.  There is a heaven and there is a hell.  The devil wants to fill up hell and does not want to see anyone in heaven.

     We shouldn’t be surprised by difficulties that we face.  Peter reminds his readers that Jesus warned His disciples that these things would happen.  In the first verse of the reading, he says, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s suffering, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed.”  The fiery trials and suffering for the faith should be expected in this world.  But it is only temporary.  You can rejoice in your sufferings because you know that when Jesus comes again, you will have joy beyond what you can imagine.  Then you can be surprised at how wonderful it is be to be in the Lord’s presence.

     In the mean time, Peter gives you some good advice about how to deal with the problems and troubles of this life.  In verse six, he begins by saying, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of

God so that at the proper time He may exalt you.”  That is a very crucial statement.  When you humble yourself before God, you are submitting to His will.  The natural thing to do when facing difficulties is to question God.  You have all heard the statements people have made.  “Why is God doing this to me.”  “I don’t deserve to have this happen.”  “If God is supposed to be loving, why do I have to suffer so.”  That is not humbling yourself before God.  That is actually exalting yourself above God.  You see yourself in a position to second guess God’s wisdom.  You need to see the bigger picture.  In His grace, He showed His love to you by sending His Son into the world to take your place.  He lived that perfect life that you couldn’t live and then took your place on the cross and died for your sins.  That is real love.  Once again, the love is not just for now but it is for all eternity.  When you realize that, you can cast all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.  What a wonderful expression of God’s love and care.  All those worries and cares about the things that you might have to face in this life can be a terrible burden.  But Peter tells us to throw those burdens on the Lord.  Give them to Him because He cares for you.  Because God cares, you can be sure that nothing can separate you from His love.  He will be there for you and will see to it that you will be with Him forever.

     You still will have to deal with the devil and all his tricks while you are in this life.  But you are not alone.  Peter tells us to be sober-minded and watchful.  Be alert for the signs of the devil’s schemes to get you to fall away.  Recognize the subtle ways in which the devil uses the world and your sinful nature to doubt God’s love.  Because Jesus died for you and rose again, He defeated the power of the devil and He gives you the power to resist the temptations.  Through the Holy Spirit, He helps you to remain firm in your faith.  That’s some powerful help in the fight against the devil.  You are given the power to resist the devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, and you are given the spiritual strength to remain firm in your faith.  Peter continues by saying, “the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself, restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”  He will restore that image of God that was lost when Adam and Eve sinned.  He will confirm the plan He has for you to be with Him in heaven.  He will strengthen you to be able to resist any attack from the evil one.  Lastly, He will establish you as a part of His Kingdom of glory in heaven.  Who then can make the claim that God is not a God of love?  Who can say that God doesn’t care about you?  Those are the lies of the devil. 

     As you live your life, waiting for the glorious appearing of Jesus, you are strengthened to resist the devil, firm in your faith.  As you do, you will be a witness to the power of God at work in your life.  You will be a living affirmation of God’s plan of salvation for the world through His Son, Jesus.  You will also be declaring along with Peter in the last verse of our reading, “To Him be the dominion forever and ever.”  As you recognize that God has dominion over all things, you truly can humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and live with the assurance that He will give you the strength to resist the devil, firm in your faith.  To the God of  all grace in Christ be the dominion forever and ever.  Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, Ohio

The Seventh Sunday of Easter