Clothed With Garments of Salvation

Clothed With the Garments of Salvation     

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

     As many of you know, this is my last Sunday here at Zion as pastor.  This will be what some people would call my farewell sermon.  As you have come to know over the years, my sermons have never been centered in some kind of political or social agenda.  My task as a Lutheran pastor has always been to preach the Word.  The motto of Concordia Theological Seminary where I studied for the pastoral ministry was “Preach the Word.”  I have always taken that very seriously.  When I began preparing for this Sunday several weeks ago, I took a look at the Scripture readings appointed for today and I had to smile.  I don’t know if you caught it when they were read before but there were some lines that would seem to lend themselves well to my situation today.  The Epistle lesson started off with the words, “When the fullness of time had come.”  That would seem to speak to a time to retire.  The Gospel lesson has the words of Simeon when he saw the Christ Child, “Lord now you are letting your servant depart in peace.”  This one also could be applied to a final sermon.  However, to do that with either of those lessons would be taking them out of context and twisting them to fit a different set of circumstances.  To use Scripture out of its context is never a good thing and it is not something I want to do today or any time I have the privilege of preaching the Word.

     Instead, I have chosen the Old Testament lesson for today.  It expresses the joy that is in the heart of one who has come to understand and appreciate the blessings of salvation that God has given to His people.  It expresses the joy that is in my heart and I pray that you have that same kind of joy in your heart on this Sunday after Christmas and throughout the year and throughout your life.

     The prophet Isaiah had the privilege to speak for God to call the people of Israel to repentance but also to encourage the people in their times of difficulty.  As he did that, he also was inspired by the Holy Spirit to prophesy about the coming Messiah and what that would mean for the people of God.  This text starts with the words, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”  Think of what that means.  The picture language is not too hard to figure out.  You know what it means to be clothed.  You know what it means to be covered.  This should be the cry of every believer.  I greatly rejoice that I am clothed with the garments of salvation.  I am covered with the robe of righteousness.  That truly is reason for rejoicing. 

      The problem is that in our world, even often in the church, the reason for our rejoicing is not quite understood.  To really understand what this means you have to consider the opposite of what Isaiah is saying.  If you are not clothed with the garments of salvation, you are left on your own. You would have to stand before God with all of your sin showing.  The excuses that you try to make about your sinful behavior can not cover up the reality of your sin.  All the denials in the world will not cover up your sinful nature.  The only thing that will allow you to stand before God is the garment of salvation that has been purchased for you by your Savior, Jesus.  Unfortunately there are many people who don’t understand that.  Human reason would tell you that you have to stand before God on your own merits.  Even if they are not perfect, your good intentions ought to stand for something.  Your hard work ought earn you a few points.  There’s not much comfort in that kind of thinking.  You would never be certain that you had done enough.  When there is no security, there is no joy. 

     Often there is no real appreciation for the great gift that we have been given in that garment of salvation.  That fact becomes obvious when you observe people who have no joy in their life.  One who does not appreciate the gift of salvation is often one who is not willing to show love and forgiveness to others.  This shows itself in holding grudges, ignoring those in need, and insisting on having your own way.  There is also no rejoicing in a life that is self-centered because others are always disappointing you. 

     If you saw a bit of yourself in ether of those descriptions, you realize that you are still a sinner.  If you didn’t see yourself in those descriptions you are probably not being honest with yourself because we are all sinners.  We all need to hear the message of Law and Gospel that reminds us of our sin and then brings us the sweet message of love and forgiveness that is ours in Christ Jesus.  By His perfect life and His death on the cross, we have been clothed with the garment of salvation.  You have to remember that when this was written, most people wore an inner garment and an outer garment that covered a person completely.  That is a good picture of the kind of garment of salvation that Isaiah describes.  Our sins are covered over completely by Jesus.  To make that even more clear, Isaiah, is a way that was typical of Hebrew poetry, continues by saying that God has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.  The robe of righteousness covers over our imperfections with the perfection of Christ Jesus.  Think of how a bridegroom and his bride adorn themselves.  For a brief time they appear before one another looking better than they ever have in their lives.  It is done to give the appearance of wealth and beauty when perhaps there wasn’t much to start with.  The robe of righteousness covers our unrighteousness but it is not just for a brief time.  It is for eternity.  Covered in Christ’s righteousness we can stand before God and He sees us as righteous because Jesus has done all that is necessary to make that possible.  When you understand and appreciate how wonderful that blessing is, you can’t help but be joyful.

     With Isaiah you can rejoice greatly.  That joyful spirit will be evident in the way you live your life.  First of all, you will live with a thankful heart.  Your thankfulness will show itself in the way that you are willing to share with the Lord your time, your talents and your resources to help carry that message of salvation out to the world, a world that does not understand or appreciate the great blessing that comes from the gift of the garments of salvation in which God has clothed you. 

     Secondly, your joy will show itself in your willingness to serve the Lord and His church with talents that each has been given for the building up of the church.  Not all are gifted the same way but in every church, the gifts are there to do the Lord’s work of expanding the kingdom of God through the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention those Means of Grace as the ways in which the Holy Spirit works to brings you to faith and keeps you in the faith and empower you to do the good works that God has prepared ahead of time for you to do. 

     In verse 2 of chapter 62, Isaiah mentions that the nations shall see your righteousness.  People will notice the rejoicing that is in your life when you understand and appreciate the garment of salvation and the robe of righteousness that you wear.  They will see the difference that is made in your life.  May that be an opportunity for you to witness to your Savior Jesus who came into the world when the fullness of time had come.  May it also be a time for you to say with Simeon, “Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace.  My eyes have seen Your salvation.”  It has been my privilege to proclaim that to you here for nine years.  It is my prayer that you will continue to joyfully proclaim that message of righteousness and salvation in your lives until the Lord calls you home.   Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, Ohio

1st Sunday after Christmas 

God Is Love

God Is Love

I John 4:7-16

     What a night!  This is a night like no other night in the whole year.  There is excitement in the air.  There is an anticipation of special things that will take place this night that will bring joy to everyone’s heart.  I have a question for you.  What is the one word that describes Christmas?  I suppose there could be all kinds of answers to that question.  Some of the answers would depend on how old you are.  The younger ones might say “presents.”  Some might say, “Music.”  Some might say, “Decorations.”  Some might say, “Family.”  Some might say, “Savior.”  Some might say, “Jesus.”  After hearing the Epistle lesson from I John 4, I think we might have to conclude that the one word that describes Christmas is “Love.” 

     If you listened carefully to the reading of the Epistle lesson, you probably heard the word love used sixteen times in those nine verses.  If you count the word “beloved,” then it goes up to eighteen times.  Just from that it’s hard to argue against “love” being the word of the day.  The love that the Apostle John is describing is a love that is very special.  It is a love that comes from God.  It is a love that knows all about the one being loved and loves in spite of the sin and rebellion that are a part of our nature.  John describes how that love has shown itself in several of the verses of our text.  For example, in verse 9 he says, “God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.”  In verse 10 He says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son as the propitiation for our sins.”  In verse 16 we hear, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him.” 

     Through God’s love, we have new life.  The old is gone, the new has come.  If you have never thought about that before, you may wonder how all that works.  Apart from God and His love, your life is an endless search for meaning and purpose.  You seem drawn to satisfying all your human desires but it seems like you never really reach that level of happiness and fulfillment that you are looking for.  In fact, earthly happiness always seems to be just out of reach.  You find yourself thinking that there has to be more to life than this endless quest for self-satisfaction.  Love can be fleeting.  It seems to change with time.  It never seems to be returned in the same way that it is given.  You may begin to wonder what love really means.  That almost sounds like a song title and it probably is because most of the love that you hear in popular songs is a physical, earthly kind of love that can be very elusive. 

     But God’s love is different than the love we generally hear about in popular culture.  God’s love is a love of action.  It is founded in His nature.  God is love.  He loved us so much that in His great compassion for our fallen condition, He sent His only Son into the world to save us from the consequences of that fallen condition.  In order to do that, the Son needed to come down to earth to be like one of us.  Since the Son was true God from all eternity, it would take a miraculous birth to make it all happen.  God sent the angel Gabriel to a virgin named Mary, a young girl living in the town of Nazareth of Galilee.  It seemed like an out-of-the-way place but it was foretold by the prophets that the Messiah would come from Galilee.  There was a slight problem in all of this.  Mary was betrothed to a good man named Joseph, a local carpenter.  They had not begun their life together as husband and wife and so there were some questions in his mind when Mary was with child.  Again an angel appeared to him in a dream to explain the whole situation.  The child was the Son of God.  He was also to be born of a human mother so that He would be true Man.  This was necessary so that He could live under the Law and keep it perfectly. 

     Because of the Roman census, Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem, their ancestral home because they were from the family of David.  It was there that the child was born in rather unusual circumstances.  The census brought crowds of people to even the small towns like Bethlehem.  It is that birth of the child, announced by angels to simple shepherds, that we celebrate tonight.  That birth was all according to God’s plan.  We can say that because the prophets of old had foretold it, and the specifics were announced by angels, God’s messengers. The coming of the Son of God was a big thing, even though it went relatively unnoticed by the rest of the world.  Now it is still a big thing but the real meaning of this celebration is downplayed by the rest of the world. 

     He also had to be a true Man so that He could carry out God’s plan for our salvation.  Only as true man could He could suffer and die as the punishment for our sins.  Yet He had to be true God so that suffering and death and resurrection could be the satisfaction or propitiation for the sins of the whole world.  That is real love.  That is the love that God demonstrated for you and for me and for the whole world. 

     John then adds an important point as we consider the love that God has shown to us.  “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”  As you consider the tremendous blessing that you have because God took this action on your behalf, you are moved to show that some kind of love to one another.  When I say “the same kind of love.” I mean that your love for one another should imitate the love that God has shown to us.  That is a love that knows all about the one who is loved, sins and faults and imperfections, and loves anyway.  It is a love that is a giving love.  It is a love that expects nothing in return.  It is a love that is unconditional.  There are no “ifs” or “whens” or any other qualifications before that kind of love is shown.  That can be really hard sometimes for you when you are still influenced by your sinful nature but with the power of the Holy Spirit you can overcome that selfish nature and show that special kind of love to others.  John speaks to that in verse 13, where he says, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.”  The Spirit works in us through the Means of Grace. Through the Word and the Sacraments, we are given the power of the Spirit to show the love that has first been shown to us. 

     It is that love that we celebrate tonight.  We do it with all the joy that is in us.  We do it with special decorations and special worship.  We celebrate the fact that God loved us so much that He sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.  We celebrate because we have been the recipients of that love and joyfully and confidently confess our faith in Jesus as our Savior.  John concludes in the last verse of our text: “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.”  What a wonderful blessing to know that in and through Jesus, God abides in us.  He is in us not only when we feel the love in times like this, but also in the times when our sin weighs us down, in the times when we don’t feel all that great.  He is there because He is love and His love for us never fails.  It is strong enough to overcome our weakness.  It is strong enough to pull us back when we seem to wandering.  It is strong enough to see us to our life’s end.  His love is eternal.  It is strong enough to reflect from us to others as we share the love that we have first received from God.  Truly, He showed that love when He sent His only Son to be your Savior.  May your celebration reflect that love not only tonight be throughout your life.  Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, Ohio  

Christmas Eve

Sanctified

Sanctified                                                        II Thessalonians 5:16-28

      Imagine for a moment you are the Apostle Paul.  You had close relationship with the believers in Thessalonica but were forced to leave because of persecutions.  Now some time later you wanted to write a letter to them to encourage them to remain firm in their faith and to be a strong influence for the Gospel in the whole region of Macedonia.  As your letter was drawing to a close, you would want to leave them with some solid words of advice.  What do you suppose you would want to say to them? 

     The words of our text, the Epistle lesson for today, show us just what Paul had to say to his dear friends.  His words of advice pick up in verse 16.  “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  Think of that.  This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.  When you understand the blessings that you have from God in Christ Jesus, the blessings of the forgiveness of sins, a blessing that you certainly don’t deserve, the blessing of reconciliation with God by His grace and the sure and certain hope of heaven through Jesus Christ, you can’t help but rejoice always.  You can give thanks in all circumstances, not just in the good times but in the difficult times as well.  He says in all circumstances.  Pray without ceasing.  When you think of prayer as talking with God, you can understand what Paul meant by praying without ceasing.  You have the opportunity to be in constant contact with God through prayer.  Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of that golden opportunity? 

     He continues with some good advice when it comes to hearing God’s Word.  “Do not quench the Spirit.”  Do not try to put out the fire of the Spirit that purifies the heart and strengthens your faith.  When you think about the importance of the Holy Spirit in your faith and life, you can see how important it is to keep the Spirit’s flame alive in you.  “Do not despise prophecies.”  Prophecies come from one who is speaking for God.  Because there are many false prophets out there, it is important that you test what you hear.  Those that are consistent with what God has revealed to us will be good.  Those that contradict the clear message of God will be evil.  One of the tricks of the devil is to proclaim that something is from God when it actually is intended to draw you away from the truth of God’s Word.  That is why it is important to test what you hear against what God’s has already made known. 

     Those words of advice come from a heart that cares deeply for the spiritual welfare of those who are to receive this letter.  The point that is made over and over is that you need to let the Spirit do His work in you.  The work of the Holy Spirit is called Sanctification.  That’s a big word that has as its root a word that means holy.  Sanctification means to make holy.  It is something that is done to you.  You are made holy, something that you can not accomplish on your own.  Because of the inherited sin that is a part of every one of us, you could never make yourself holy.  It is something that the Holy Spirit does in you.   That is why St. Paul can say, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

     That word “completely” indicates to us that the whole work of making us holy is the work of the Holy Spirit.  It begins by bringing us to faith in the first place.  In most cases, that happens through the blessing of Baptism.  It continues throughout life as the Holy Spirit works through the other means of grace, namely the Word and the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, to keep us in the true faith.  The Spirit also works in us through those same means to strengthen your faith and empower you to live a God-pleasing life as you wait for the time when Jesus will come again.   That’s what it means that He will sanctify you completely.

     The reason that Paul includes this in the last part of His letter is that it is so contrary to what your human nature tries to tell you.  Your human nature tends to want to take all the credit for the things that only the Holy Spirit can do.  Human nature, which tries to figure everything out logically, would rather have you think that you come to faith through your own will.  It tries to tell you that you become a follower of Jesus when you let down your defenses and decide to give yourself to the Lord.  That makes your faith not a matter of sanctification, but rather your own work.  Sanctification, remember, is a description of something that is done to you.  If it is thought of as something that you can do for yourself, then you would also have to say that keeping your faith strong is also a matter of the things that you do in order to remain firm in the faith.  You would then be convinced that you would have to work hard at keeping your faith strong enough so that you don’t fall away.  If you would fall away, it would be because you didn’t work hard enough at it.  The logical extension of that is that you can live a God-pleasing life through your own good works and as a result, God should be pleased with your good effort and reward you for all your hard work.  The error of that kind of thinking, which is quite common in our world today, just as it has always been, is that you are never sure if you have been good enough or worked hard enough to earn God’s approval.  It rejects the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification and, worst of all, it ignores Christ’s work of redemption.   Our human nature can be a dangerous thing, especially when it interferes with God’s plan of salvation that is clearly taught in the Scriptures.  That’s why it is so important for us to stay close to God’s Word.  There we find the truth.  There we find what we need to know and believe about our relationship with God in Christ Jesus. 

     There is something else that Paul mentions in his final words of this first letter to the Thessalonians.  He prays that your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Being kept blameless is also part of the work of the Holy Spirit.  You are blameless because God declares you blameless because of what Jesus did for you.  He lived the perfect life that you could not live because of your sinful human nature.  He then died as the punishment for your sins.  Because of God’s grace you are then declared righteous or blameless.  You are kept blameless through the work of the Holy Spirit.  Paul then adds, “He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.”  He doesn’t say, “Come on now, work hard and you can do it.”  He says that He who called you is faithful and He will do it.  What a difference!

     You are kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is that reference to the coming of Jesus that makes this an important Advent Scripture lesson.  You are waiting for the second coming of Jesus.  You can’t forget that in all of the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season.  We celebrate that God sent His only Son to the world to bring about our salvation through His life, death and resurrection, but we can’t let that overshadow the reality that one day, He will come again.  He calls you to be prepared.  He calls you to give thanks for the Father’s love, for the Son’s work of redemption and the Spirit’s work of sanctification as you wait for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.   Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

December 14, 2014

The Third Sunday in Advent  

     

Come to Save Us

Come to Save Us

Psalm 80:1-7

     Christmas time is a time of traditions.  The songs of the Christmas season bring back memories of Christmas celebrations often when we were children.  The tradition of giving presents reminds of the great gift that we have through the gift of the Christ Child.  We are also reminded of the gifts that were brought by the Wise Men to the young child Jesus.  Of course, one of the great traditions of Christmas time is the food that is prepared from recipes that are passed down from generation to generation. 

     One woman told her pastor as she was leaving church on the First Sunday in Advent that when she hears the words of the Collect for that Sunday, which begins with the words of our text, “Stir up your might, O Lord and come,” she knows that it is time to start baking her Christmas cookies.  The pastor looked a bit confused so she explained that when you say, “Stir up,” it’s time for me to stir up my ingredients.

      All of the Christmas traditions help us to remember Christmas celebrations of the past and they tie us to the generations that have gone before us.  They also have special meaning because they generally have some connection to the real meaning of this time of the year.  We are starting a new church year and we are focusing on the birth of the Christ Child.  This was the fulfillment of the prophecies about the coming of the One who would bring salvation to the world.  To really appreciate the significance of the coming of the Son of God into the world, you have to look at what the people of the Old Testament thought about God’s promise of a Savior.  It was something that God’s people had been looking forward to for centuries so a passage like the Psalm that we read together this evening helps us to see what they thought.  It shows us how God was preparing their hearts for the time when the Savior would come.  As we consider these words for a few moments tonight, may we come away with a better understanding of what the coming of Jesus meant for the people of ancient times but also what His coming means for us today as well.

     Back to the words, “Stir up your might (or power) and come to save us.”  This was the cry of the people of Israel to be saved.  At first that might sound strange to us when we think of the children of Israel as God’s chosen people.  Why would they need to be saved?  The truth was that even though they were God’s chosen people, their hearts were far from the Lord.  They had fallen away from Him.  They had adopted the pagan worship of their neighbors.  They were a rebellious people.  In order to bring them back to their senses and to the worship of the true God, they were punished as God sent foreign powers like the Assyrians to conquer their land.  The Psalm mentioned the tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.  These made up the Northern Kingdom of Israel and they were the ones who were conquered first.  Some of the people had fled south to Jerusalem and it is thought that this Psalm came from that time period.  They were asking God to stir up his might and come to save them.  It is a fitting passage for the Advent season because it calls upon God to come and save us.  The coming of the Lord is what the Advent season is all about.  We celebrate the coming of the Savior with repentant and joyful hearts because we know that His coming meant that God’s plan for our salvation had been carried out when His only Son came down from heaven to save us.  Our Christmas joy is meaningless if it is not grounded in the fact that God heard the prayers of His people and sent His only Son in power and might to defeat sin, death and the power of the devil. 

     This 80^th Psalm is still an appropriate Psalm for the people of God to use as a prayer.  Even though you might consider yourself part of  God’s chosen people by virtue of your Baptism, you still may find yourself in situations where you need God’s help.  You still may find yourself straying from the truth of God’s Word in favor of the philosophies and practices of the world around you.  Isn’t it interesting how in every age, the ways of the world seem so attractive to God’s people that they are tempted to follow after them.  That’s how the devil works.  For the children of Israel, it was the practices of the pagans who lived around them that seemed like so much more fun than the constant bringing of sacrifices to make atonement for their sins.  Today, it always seems to us that the unbelieving world has a lot more fun that those who try to follow God’s ways.  Philosophies are planted in our head through the various worldly media that you deserve to have fun.  Go to Sin City because what happens there, stays there.  If you hear that often enough, you tend to start believing it.  Soon you have new priorities in your life and you find yourself farther and farther away from God.  When God’s law speaks to your heart, however it comes to you, it convicts you of your sin and you find that you are helpless on your own.  The words of the Psalm continue to apply in our time as it describes how your enemies laugh among themselves because of you.  The devil and his crew are overjoyed that they have been able to entice you away from God.  You then cry to the Lord, “Stir up your might and come to save me.” 

     Your only hope is to look to God and His mercy to be saved from the downward spiral that will eventually leave you in the deepest depths in hell.   In God’s plan for your rescue, He did send down His only Son to become like us.  He took on human form so that He could live under the same law that God had established for His people.  Because He is true God, the Son could keep that Law perfectly for you.  He endured all of the temptations that you face.  He was tempted by the same basic temptations that come to all people.  Yet He resisted them in order to do the Father’s will.  He truly did lead a perfect life in your place.  He then allowed Himself to be brutally beaten and nailed to a cross as the punishment for your sins.  Then in His almighty power, He rose from the grave to demonstrate that the power of the grave could not keep Him.  As a result, His victory becomes your victory and you are saved. 

     You are saved because your heavenly Father declares you righteous.  You are justified by God’s grace, His undeserved love for you.  He does this because Jesus came down and lived that perfect life and died on the cross in your place.  The blessings of all of that become yours through faith, through believing and trusting that what Jesus did was for you.  Even the faith to believe and trust comes from the power of the Holy Spirit.  Remember the words that Martin Luther used to start the Explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed,  “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”  He did stir up His might and power and come to save you.  You also need to remember that He will come again some day in all His power and glory and will judge the world in righteousness.  He will take all believers to their heavenly home.  That is why we can still pray the prayer in the Psalm, “Stir up your power and come to save us.”

     As you prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus once again this year, may you keep your mind focused on the blessings that Jesus came to bring.  May you resist the temptation to let the things of this world became so important that you forget that you are still waiting for Jesus to come down again.  May His second coming be a time of joyful anticipation as you look forward to the eternal peace and unending joy that will be yours in His presence.  It is all possible because of what was accomplished for you at His first coming.  That gives you hope.  It gives you peace.  It gives you joy as you celebrate with your family and friends at home and in church the coming of the Lord to save.  Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, Ohio

December 3, 2014

Mid-Week Advent Service

      

Shall We Be Saved?

“Shall We Be Saved?”                                                      Isaiah 64:1-9

     We have come to the beginning of the New Church Year.  I guess I could say “Happy New Year!”  As you know, the Church Year does not follow the calendar year.  Instead it follows the major Church festivals.  Seasons of the Church Year are related to the celebrations of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.  Since Jesus’ birth seems like a logical place to start, then a season of preparation for Jesus’ coming would seem reasonable.  There are really two main themes for the Advent season, which gets its name from Latin and means to come to.  We prepare our hearts for Jesus to come to us.  His first coming has already happened of course so we can’t really prepare for that but we can consider what that coming means for us.  While we do that, we also have to remember that Jesus will be coming again and we need to prepare our hearts for that time when He will come to judge the world and take His people to their heavenly home.  That theme carries over from the last part of the church year when we also talk about the end times.  Advent is a time for us to consider all of what Jesus did for us and what He will do when the final promise is fulfilled through His second coming. 

     Through it all, Advent is considered one of the penitential seasons, a time for repentance as we consider what Jesus did to bring us back to the Father.  Our Old Testament lesson for today calls us to join with God’s people in a prayer for mercy.  When we consider our sin and how it is an offense to God, we may ask the question that we find in the text.  “Shall we be saved?”  That question often comes to mind when we are faced with the reality of our sin.  Can I be saved?  Have I been too rebellious?  Could God really love me after all I have done?  Thankfully there is a positive answer to that question and as we consider the message of Isaiah the Prophet, may we see how that will have an effect on our Advent preparations.

      In our text, the prophet leads the people of Israel in a prayer that acknowledges their sin.  For a long time the people of Israel had put God’s mercy to the test.  They had followed after false gods.  They had mixed pagan worship with the God-given acts of worship and just generally had been a rebellious people.  The only way that they would be shaken from their spiritual slumber would be if God would suddenly come down and bring some kind of destruction on them.  During the time of Isaiah, that destruction came from foreign powers that came in and destroyed their land and carried many of the people off into captivity in Babylon. 

     While the destruction and the captivity was a drastic call to repentance, it was necessary in order to remind them that God was still in charge.  In the words of verse five the people cry out, “Behold you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been along time, and shall we be saved?”  The lament then continued in the next verses where they spoke of being unclean.  Their righteous acts are even like a polluted garment.  “We fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.  There is no one who calls upon your name who rouses himself to take hold of you.”  Those are the words of a people who know that they have sinned.  They have admitted their sin and that is the first step in repentance.  They look to God even though they know that they don’t deserve anything from Him but punishment. 

     Hearing a cry like that ought to make you feel a bit uncomfortable.  It shouldn’t be hard for you to relate to the sins of the people of Israel during Isaiah’s time because they are the sins of people of all time.  The inherited sin that brought about all of those sinful behaviors is in each of you.  Left to yourself, you would have to say right along with the people of old that you are also unclean, your righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.  You may wonder if you will be saved.

     But the prophet Isaiah continues by acknowledging that there is hope.  “But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”  What a wonderful reminder!  You are our Father.  A father loves his children dearly.  He does not like the disobedient and rebellious behaviors of his children but he disciplines them in love.  The whole purpose of punishment is to help them to see the error of their ways and bring them back in repentance.  That is why we look to God as our Father.  He has created us and He loves us with an everlasting love.  He may discipline us  for a time but it is in love that we often have to deal with suffering.  He does want us to be saved.  He wants what is best for us and that is to be brought back into His loving arms for all eternity.  He also recognizes our inability to do what is necessary for us to be reconciled to Him on our own.  We may try but all of our efforts are going to fail because of our continued sinful behaviors that stem from that sinful nature that is a part of our being. 

     At the beginning of the reading for today, the cry of the people was, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.”  Actually that was God’s plan from the beginning.  When sin entered the world, God promised that the seed of the woman would destroy the seed of the devil.  That first Gospel promise would be fulfilled when God would sent His only Son into the world.  True God from all eternity came down from heaven to earth to be one of us so that He could take our place.  He took out place under the Law and kept it perfectly.  He then suffered a horrible death on the cross as the punishment for our sins.  The Son was then raised from the dead to show His victory over sin, death and the devil.  His victory is our victory as well.  He then sent the Holy Spirit to work faith in our hearts to believe and trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior so that we could be saved from all that we deserve because of our sin. 

      Here we can recall the words of the prophet again when he says that we are the clay and the Lord is the potter.  We are the work of His hand.  He has taken us and molded us into His special people.  He is the creator and He shapes us into His own special vessels.  We are the work of His hand and therefore we live to serve the purpose that He has in mind for us.  The answer to the question about being saved is an emphatic, “Yes!”  We have been saved by God’s grace alone.  He declares us righteous because of His great love, so great that He sent His only Son to earth to take our place under the law and on the cross. He gives us the power of the Holy Spirit in the Means of Grace to believe in Jesus and respond His love. 

     That is what we celebrate as we remember Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem.  Jesus came to be our Savior.  That is what moves us to true repentance whenever God’s love is brought home to us as we hear His word.  As we hear the Advent prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, we can remember that it was God’s plan to save us.  As we hear the Advent Gospel lessons about John the Baptist calling people to repentance, that was part of God’s plan to save us.  As we celebrate the birth of the Savior, that was the fulfillment of God’s promise to send His own Son to be our Savior.  Throughout the Advent season, though, we have to remember that there is one more prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled.  We have to remember that Jesus will come again, just as He promised.  May we keep in mind that God is our Father.  He loves us and cares for us and has provided for our salvation.  Because of His great love, there should be no doubt in our minds that, yes, we will be saved.    Amen.

And the peace which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

Fall At Jesus' Feet

Fall At Jesus’ Feet 

Luke 17:11-19

     The Gospel lesson for Thanksgiving is the familiar story of the healing of the ten lepers.  As you heard, one came back to give thanks and Jesus commented “Were not ten cleansed?  Where are the other nine?”  I don’t know if you have noticed, but this is always the Gospel lesson for Thanksgiving.  The thankful leper is always a good example for us of the thankfulness that should be in our hearts when we think about all of the blessings that we have received from our gracious God.  As many times as I have read this passage over the years, there is one detail that is often overlooked in the telling of this story from the life and ministry of Jesus.  We know that the man returned to give thanks to Jesus but the text also tells us that he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.  As we think about the thankful leper on this Thanksgiving Eve, may we consider what it means for our lives of thankfulness to fall at Jesus’ feet.

     When you think about it, your thankfulness is often very shallow.  When you receive some kind of blessing from God, often through the love and kindness of others, you may have thankful thoughts.  You might think to yourself, “Wasn’t that nice,” and then you move on to the next important thing that comes up in your life.  You may say the words that express your thankfulness to God or to someone else who has done something for you.  Saying the words can be easy.  It’s like when you were young and someone had to remind you, “What do you say?”  Then you mumble some words that sound like “Thank you.” That may be good training but it can also reinforce that idea that you can say things when you don’t really mean them. 

     When you think about the other nine lepers, you see a good example of people who may have been thankful that they were healed but they were too busy to come back and give thanks to Jesus because they had other things to do.  They were busy going to the priests to begin the rituals that would validate their cleansing.  Getting back to a normal life was their first priority.  It’s not too hard to find yourself falling into that category also.  Even as we observe a national holiday that is set aside as a time for giving thanks, we find ourselves so busy that the giving of thanks becomes an after-thought because we are so busy.  It has become quite common to think of Thanksgiving as a day for the three “F’s”:  Family, Food and Football.   The order you put them in is up to you.  Now it seems there is another “F” that occupies the day: Figuring out your shopping strategy for Black Friday.  Where is the giving of thanks? 

     As think of the Gospel lesson again, the thankful leper demonstrated his thanks to Jesus for his healing.  The others were no doubt overjoyed about the healing that they experienced because it meant that they were no longer considered unclean.  They could return to their families.  They could return to their trades.  They could return to society.  They had too many things on their minds to come back thank Jesus for what He did.  There was one though, when he realized the miracle that had taken place, turned back and praised God with a loud voice and when he approached Jesus he fell face down at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.  I would guess that there were tears of joy running down his face as he came back.  He praised God with a loud voice.  His shouts of “Hallelujah” mixed with the sobs of joy touched the hearts of the disciples who witnessed this miraculous sign. 

     The action of falling at Jesus’ feet though demonstrated his true, humble submission to Jesus as Lord.  He recognized Jesus as a merciful, gracious and powerful Lord.  All the blessings that he would experience as a result of being made clean from the leprosy began to flood over him and he was overwhelmed with gratitude to the point that simply saying thank you was not enough.  To fall at Jesus’ feet acknowledged that he knew that all he had and all he was came from God’s almighty and gracious hand. 

     When you think about your thankfulness, not just because it is Thanksgiving time, is it the kind of thankfulness that causes you to praise the Lord with a loud voice and fall at Jesus’ feet?  Of course it would be difficult for us to actually duplicate what the thankful leper did but do you really demonstrate your thankfulness to Jesus for all of the blessings that you have.  I don’t think any of you have had leprosy and had to live a life isolated from your family and friends because you were considered ceremonially unclean.  But you share a common affliction that can only be cured by Jesus.  That affliction is sin.  You have been carrying around that sickness since you were conceived.  There is nothing that you can do to get rid of it but Jesus has done what was necessary to remove that sickness from you.  Your sins have been forgiven by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as your substitute. The cross has become for you a symbol of the washing away of your sins.  The blessing of that washing is yours through faith.  As Jesus said to the thankful leper, “Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well.  He demonstrated his faith by humbly submitting himself to Jesus, lying face down at Jesus’ feet. 

     It is Jesus’ love for you that causes you to fall at his feet in humble submission to His will.  That could include daily worship through prayer and hearing of God’s Word.  It would include regular worship with God’s people where you have the opportunity to praise God with a loud voice as you recognize the great blessings that you have received, namely the blessing of the forgiveness of your sins, reconciliation with God, and the assurance of eternal life in heaven.  In the bigger picture of things that you experience in your life, there is nothing that can compare to the eternal blessings that you have through the merciful and gracious hand of God.  The thankful leper could look ahead to the many earthly blessings that would be his as a result of being cleansed of his leprosy.

       We don’t know if he understood the eternal implications of his encounter with Jesus, but we do know what they are.  You have to ask yourself if you have truly been thankful for the blessings that you have received.  Have you, in a sense, fallen at Jesus’ feet to show your thankfulness?  My guess is that you have fallen short of that kind of humble submission to Jesus in response to His love.  If you are honest with yourself, you would have to admit that your thankfulness has probably been a bit lacking.  It is then that you need remember that the reason for your thankfulness is that Jesus came into the world to give His life for you so that by His suffering and death on the cross and His resurrection, your sins could be forgiven, even those sins of taking His blessings for granted.  Jesus died for all sins.  He has given you the Holy Spirit so that you can believe and trust in Him for the forgiveness that you need.  That power of the Spirit then moves you to show your thankfulness to God by acts of humble service to those around you.  You can’t literally fall at Jesus’ feet like the thankful leper, but you can humbly submit your life to Jesus as you help to bring healing, both physical and spiritual to those around you. 

     I would guess that the thankful leper and probably the other nine had some pretty good stories to tell about what happened to them along the road between Samaria and Galilee.  After they went to the priests and began appearing in their home towns cleansed of leprosy they talked about the man who told them to go and show themselves to the priest because they had been cured of their terrible disease.  They had been cleansed.  Well guess what?  You have been cleansed of your sin-sickness.  You have been forgiven.  You have the gift of heaven to look forward to.  Is that important to you?  Of course it is.  Are you thankful for that gift?  Of course you are.  Then fall at Jesus’ feet and thank Him for all He has done.  Rejoice at the words that Jesus says to you.  “Rise and go your way.  Your faith has made you well.”  Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, Ohio

Thanksgiving Eve

"Let Earth Receive Her King"

“Let Earth Receive Her King” 

Matthew 25:31-46

     When you noticed that the sermon hymn was going to be “Joy to the World”, your first thought may have been, “Oh no!  First it’s the stores that are pushing Christmas so early, then the radio stations have started playing Christmas music already.  Now the Pastor has us singing Christmas songs before Advent.  What next?”   Actually, I’m not jumping the gun by choosing this hymn this weekend.  Earlier this year, my Sunday morning Bible Class did a study of several hymns, looking at the background and taking a close look at the words of the hymns.  “Joy to the World” was one of the hymns that we studied.  In looking up the history of the hymn, I found that Isaac Watts, who wrote a new hymn almost every Sunday to fit the Scripture readings, actually wrote this hymn for the Last Sunday of the Church Year.  It wasn’t intended to be a Christmas hymn at all.  Over the years, churches began to use it as a Christmas hymn and now it is one of the favorites.  It didn’t start out that way though.  To sing it this weekend on the last Sunday of the Church year is very appropriate.  If you look carefully at the words, it talks about receiving the King.  It talks about a time when no more sins or sorrows grow.  It talks of a time when the nations will be made to acknowledge glory of His righteousness.  That all talks about things that will happen when Jesus comes again.  There will be great rejoicing at that time for the people of God.  For the believers it will be a time to repeat the sounding joy. 

     The Gospel lesson for today is another of the lessons that Jesus taught about the end times.  Two weeks ago we heard about the wise and foolish virgins who were waiting for the bridegroom to come.  The lesson was that you need to keep your faith strong.  Have the fuel for your lamp of faith as you waiting for Jesus’ return.  Last week we heard the next section from Matthew 25 about the talents and the difference between those who saw the Master as loving and merciful and the one who saw the Master as a hard and evil man.  Today’s Gospel lesson explains what will happen in the end when Jesus comes in all His glory.  He reinforces that reality that He will be coming again.  There should be no doubt in the minds of the faithful that Jesus will return.  Even when it seemed to the believers that He wasn’t coming because it didn’t happen as soon as they hoped, they should not lose heart.  He will come again.  He spoke about it repeatedly and we know that His Word is the truth.  That is an important lesson for you today as well.  It is now over two thousand years later and He hasn’t come yet.  Should we despair and give up hope?  Not at all.  God’s people had to wait centuries for the Messiah to come the first time.  It shouldn’t surprise us that we are still waiting for Him to return.  The call to be prepared is still there. 

     The second thing that is brought out as Jesus spoke to His disciples is that there will be a separation of the people of the world when He comes.  He used an image that was familiar to people of that day.  As a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, so He will separate people.  Those who are on His right are those who will have the place of honor and privilege.  Those on the left are condemned.  The last verse of the reading tells us that those on the left will go to eternal punishment. 

     This reinforces that teaching that there will be difference at the time of the final judgment.  This is nothing new for those who had been paying attention.  Remember that this section was the final portion of a lengthy discussion of the end times.  It actually started near the beginning of Chapter 24 and continued to the end of Chapter 25.  The last three lessons that I mentioned before all talked about the difference between the faithful and the unfaithful.  The foolish virgins were left out of the marriage feast, a picture of heaven.  The servant who buried his talent was cast into utter darkness where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth, a picture of hell. 

     Now Jesus becomes clearer in His description of the difference between the sheep, the faithful, and the goats, the unfaithful.  The faithful gave evidence of their faith through acts of love and service to those in need.  The unfaithful demonstrated their lack of faith by their lack of love and service to others.  You have to be careful when you hear this passage that you don’t jump to the conclusion that this passage teaches some kind of works righteousness, in other words, the idea that you get to heaven because you have done a lot of good works.  That would be inconsistent with all that Jesus taught and with all that the other Scripture writers taught about salvation.  Interpretation of the Scriptures must always be consistent with the rest of what Scripture says.  We know that we are justified, or declared righteous, by God’s grace, His undeserved love for us, for Christ’s sake, because His lived a perfect life for us and died on the cross as the punishment for our sins, and the blessings of His work for us become ours through faith, itself a gift worked in us by the Holy Spirit.  Recall Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you are saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.”  By grace you have been saved from eternal punishment because of your sins.  Grace is God’s undeserved love for you.  The salvation through Christ has come first.  Then come the good works that are a response to God’s great undeserved love.  When you truly appreciate the blessings that you have been given by having your sins forgiven, you will respond to that blessing with acts of love and mercy toward others.  That is what Jesus was saying.  The ones who were given the kingdom were actually surprised because they didn’t think that they had done anything for the King but His response was that when they did these things for the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. Those works of mercy and kindness were simply done because they reflected the love of God in their life, the love that they had already received from God’s merciful hand. 

     Those on the other side were also surprised when they were consigned to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  Their response was, “What?  We didn’t do anything.”  Jesus came back with the condemnation.  “You are right.  You didn’t do anything.”  There was no response of faith because there was no faith.  When someone tries to base a hope of salvation on works, there may be a great deal of self-satisfaction but none of those works are enough to merit salvation before God.  Because you thought that you could earn your own salvation, there was no compassion for others.  There was no real love and concern for those in need.  There was no response to God’s great love because you figured that you don’t need it.  You thought that you could do it on your own.  You can see how all of what Jesus described depends first on saving faith which trusts completely in Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  By grace you are saved through faith in Jesus.  It is a gift from God. 

     That’s what it means to be prepared for the coming of the Lord.  That is what makes the coming of the Lord such a joyful time for the believer.  That is what makes it possible for us to look forward to the coming of the Lord with joy and not dread.  We wait with true faith in our hearts, a faith that responds to God’s love with a life of love and mercy that reaches out to touch the lives of those who are hungry and thirsty for the Gospel.  We love because God first loved us and gave up His only Son for us.  He is the one who rules all things, especially His church here on earth.  He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love.  All nations will be gathered before Him.  He will separate the believers from the unbelievers like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  It is then that all will acknowledge the glory of His righteousness that stands in our place and the wonder of His love that ushers the believers into eternal life.  For those on His left, it will be too late.  They will know what they missed by their stubborn insistence that they don’t need anyone’s help.  The believers, on the other hand, will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.  Together we shall sing the praises of our King for all eternity.   Amen.

Rev. Gerald Matzke

Zion Lutheran Church

Painesville, Ohio

The Last Sunday of the Church Year