Sermon Tone Analysis

Sermon delivered by Pastor Finn Sunday, November 3, 2019 WELCOME HOME (Week 2)

Text: “Welcome Home: Where You Are Free To Be Yourself”

We’re back in our “Welcome Home” series today.

Last week we focused on how God sent His Son, Jesus, to become our Brother, to bring us into his family.

Today we want to see our church home as a place where you’re free to be yourself.

So what does that mean…free to be yourself.

There’s a lot of confusion these days about what true freedom really is, especially here in America.

For many freedom means the ability to do whatever you want.

Christianity with all its rules and limitations seems more like slavery to them than freedom—can’t drink too much, can’t get high, can’t spend my money the way I want, or have sex before marriage…can’t watch whatever I want on TV or look at whatever I want on my phone…that doesn’t sound a lot like fun at all.

It makes me think of the old Billy Joel song that said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints, cuz sinners are much more fun.”

Freedom, here in America, is usually viewed as the freedom to do whatever you want.

The old evil foe we sang about in the hymn--who “now means deadly woe”--he has so deceived people that they can’t even imagine God’s will and happiness going together at all.

Unfortunately, apart from God’s grace, free to be yourself is only the freedom to follow your sinful nature.

But that’s not anything we’d really call freedom, is it?

What did Jesus say? “The soul that sins is a slave to sin.”

Some of the most important words Martin Luther ever wrote in his Small Catechism were these ones when he said, “I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him.”

If “free to be ourselves,” means only the freedom to be what we are by nature, then we’re the worst kind of slaves of all—by nature we prefer the shackles of sin—we don’t want to do God’s will, cuz that’s no fun.

On this Festival of the Reformation, what we’re really celebrating is the way that God’s powerful Word sets our hearts free from sin and enables us to finally be free to live the lives God intended us to live.

When and how does this happen?

In short, God makes this happen by his powerful Word.

Throughout the Book of Jeremiah (and also everything in Luther’s writings), you this phrase again and again, everywhere: “Thus says the Lord.”

You see that phrase several times already just in this chapter.

“Thus says the Lord.”

Without God’s Word, there is no church.

There is no people.

There is no such things as a place we call our church home or any kind of life worth living.

Only slavery to sin.

And it leaves God absolutely beside himself with grief and righteous indignation—He’s absolutely beside himself because of the way he did everything for his people—he was absolutely faithful to them, and yet, despite it all, they chose to be unfaithful to him.

You see this in the verses before us.

“Though I was a husband to them!”

Even though God led them out of slavery in Egypt and brought them to Sinai—there he entered into a special covenant relationship with them.

A covenant is a promise or an agreement.

He hadn’t chosen to do this with any other nation—and it wasn’t as though they were somehow special and deserved this treatment either—they were a stiff-necked and rebellious people, like all the rest—yet in his grace he had chosen them (much like he has chosen us and made us his own in Holy Baptism—more of that in a little bit)—but here at Sinai, God made a solemn promise that He would continue to be their God and they would be his people—the only condition he placed on that was this—if you love me, keep my commandments—then I will be your God always, and you will continue to be my people.

But even after God had done everything for them, even though he was like a husband to them, and promised to bring them into a good and spacious land, where the Savior would come--they still broke God’s covenant.

Even before the ink was even dry on that agreement, the Israelites proved themselves unfaithful--even before Moses got down from Mt. Sinai - with the 1st Commandment glaring out, “YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS,” the Israelites were down on the bottom of the mountain worshiping a golden calf.

It’s a sad story indeed.

Sound familiar?

This old covenant that God is talking about--it should not seem that foreign to us.

God has given us his Ten Commandments with the same threats and promises attached to them for us.

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and throughout the Bible—He expounds on his holy Law--He gets us to see what our relationship with Him is supposed to be like—He’s been like a husband to us, setting us free from the slavery to sin by our connection to his cross through our Baptism—we’re to be His submissive wife—we’re supposed to treat Him like our King of kings and Lord of lords, willingly obeying him and not doing anything without His permission.

But when Jesus talks about lusting, hating, and turning the other cheek--we blush as if we’d been caught in the act—playing around with sin like we do, we deserve to be cut off without ever having the chance to be brought back to him and to live life as He meant it for us, but instead to suffer forever in His judgment in hell.

But then God comes with his powerful Word and says, () “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.

32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God, and they will be my people.

34 No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord.

…“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

What a miracle of God’s power and grace when he announces the terms of this new covenant with his people—Instead of showing them what they are to do, God promises to do it all—this kind of covenant was unheard of in the ancient world—it’s a completely one-sided agreement--Instead of leaving the knowledge and obedience of the law dependent in the actions of the Israelites - God said that He would put His law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

He would fill them with a seeming “natural knowledge” of Him.

With this new knowledge, everyone from the least to the greatest of them would naturally know God’s law in their minds and their hearts and they would do it—and they would share this knowledge with their neighbor!

What a strange covenant indeed!

Whoever heard of knowing God’s law without studying it?

Whoever heard of being able to have God’s law in our hearts without inviting God into the heart?

How can God just declare that “I will be their God and they will be my people!”

Notice in all of these declarations, the Israelites have no choice in the matter.

This is the way it is going to be!

This is offensive to a majority of people.

They want a free choice in the matter - and here God makes them out to be helpless - mere recipients in this new covenant.

It makes it seem as if God forces Himself into the heart and the mind off a hapless people - and climbs into her heart and mind - She has no choice in the matter!

It’s all by grace.

“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

It’s like Martin Luther explained in his Catechism, “The Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts and sanctified me in the true faith.”

What a simple way of describing God’s covenant love in action—

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We’re back in our “Welcome Home” series today.

Last week we focused on how God sent Jesus to become our Brother, to bring us into his family.

Today we want to see our church as a place where you’re free to be yourself.

Welcome Home.

Today we want to see our church as a place where you’re free to be yourself.

There’s a lot of confusion out there about what freedom really is, especially in America.

Freedom is usually viewed as the ability to do whatever you want.

Christianity with all its rules and limitations seems more like slavery than freedom—can’t drink too much, can’t get high, can’t spend my money the way I want, or have sex before marriage?

Can’t watch whatever I want on TV or look at whatever I want on my phone?

That doesn’t sound a lot like fun at all.

It makes me think of the old Billy Joel song that said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints, cuz sinners are much more fun.”

Christianity with all its rules and limitations seems more like slavery than freedom—can’t drink too much, can’t get high, can’t spend my money the way I want, or have sex before marriage?

Can’t watch whatever I want on TV Or look at whatever I want on my phone?

That doesn’t sound a lot like fun at all.

Remember that old Billy Joel song that said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints, cuz sinners are much more fun.”

has deceived the whole world (including you and me at one time or another) into thinking that happiness is found not in holiness of living but rather in sin.

Remember that old Billy Joel song that said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints, cuz sinners are much more fun.”

can’t have sex before marriage, and have to remain faithful to that one person all my life?

Can’t get high?

The old evil foe we sang about in the hymn, who “now means deadly woe,” has people so deceived sometimes that they can’t imagine holiness and happiness going together at all.

Remember that old Billy Joel song that said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints, cuz sinners are much more fun.”

The old evil foe we sang about in the hymn--who “now means deadly woe”--he has so deceived people that they can’t even imagine holiness and happiness going together at all.

But what did we hear Jesus say earlier?

“The souls that sins is a slave to sin.” Slavery is when you can’t do what you want, go where you want, or do what you want.

Your whole life is determined by someone else.

Remember that old Billy Joel song that said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints, cuz sinners are much more fun.”

The question is: who’s really free out there?

Is any life outside of Christ really free?

Money and sex bring temporary happiness, but nothing more than that, and usually a lot of unintended problems and emptiness.

Revenge never satifies.

L’ook into the eyes of an alcoholic or drug addict and ask how badly That person does not want to do what he is doing.

The ability to make that choice in nowhere in them.

That’s not freedom.

What we may not realize though, is that you may as well be looking into the eyes of any sinner.

You try it sometime.