Are You Tired Yet?
Notes
Transcript
Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church 249. Statements Made by Luther in 1538 and 1545
In his remarks of 1538 on Matt. 11, 25. 26, Luther says: “Christ speaks especially against those who would be wise and judge in religious matters, because they have on their side the Law and human reason, which is overwise, exalting itself against the true religion both by teaching and by judging. Hence Christ here praises God as doing right when He conceals His secrets from the wise and prudent, because they want to be over and not under God. Not as though He hid it in fact or desired to hide it (for He commands it to be preached publicly under the entire heaven and in all lands), but that He has chosen that kind of preaching which the wise and prudent abhor by nature, and which is hidden from them through their own fault, since they do not want to have it—as is written Is. 6, 9: ‘See ye indeed, but perceive not,’ Lo, they see, i.e., they have the doctrine which is preached both plainly and publicly. Still they do not perceive, for they turn away from it and refuse to have it.
Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed. Make it a Word of power and peace to convert those not yet Your own and to confirm those who have come to saving faith. May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
Humans love knowledge. An old saying goes, “Knowledge is power.” While the Scriptures do not stand against this notion, they do offer a limitation.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”
Today, many, especially in positions of authority - derivative authority, I might add - talk and act as if they have been God’s counselor. They are not alone, of course, for when we ignore God’s Commandments, despise God’s righteousness, ignore God’s free offer of pardon through Christ Jesus via the Gospel, we are no better than the government or business leader who acts as if his or her word is of divine origin. We have forgotten the wise exhortation of Solomon:
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
We think that we can justify wrongdoing on the pragmatic basis of results, offering that “the ends justify the means,” looking at our acquisition of wealth or influence as the proof that we are in the will of God, when what we have done flies in the teeth of what God has said in His Word.
In that regard, we all stand accused,
as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
If we took those words to heart, we would not hesitate to make haste to the altar, we would run, not walk, but run to make our confession and receive absolution. We would seek the Lord’s table as often as it were available, and would wish that it were available, as it was in ages past, daily, or at least weekly.
How many of us are functional sacramentarians? We come to church, partake of the Lord’s Supper, but in our hearts neither believe that God works through it nor that we have need of it? We are like the person who gets baptized at the end of every church service because he likes the water and enjoys the attention, but think that he does not demean the promise of God attached to the water in Holy Baptism - that we are united to Christ in His death, and that our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake.
So too, we say that we believe in the love of God, but do not look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, when situations threaten us and seek to make us anxious. Jesus said,
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
When we act as if that only holds true on Sunday and on the church grounds, but everywhere else is Satan’s domain, When we seek to order our lives as if God were not present, when we treat our neighbor as everything but our neighbor, a person for whom Christ died, we are guilty of calling Jesus a liar when He said these words. It is the Lord who sends promotion. It is the Lord, who provides for our needs of body and soul. It is the Lord who protects us from hurt, harm, and danger, and keeps us from sin.
When we forget that we are His, purchased “with His own blood,” as the Apostle Paul said in Acts 20:28, we act as if we are our own lord, our own creator, or, even worse, we give to another creature the glory and honor that rightly belong only to “God, the Father Almighty, and to Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, and to the Holy Spirit” - when we run around “running our lives,” we make a mockery of everything we say and sing about on Sunday.
We are guilty of the body and blood of our Lord when we despise His vessels of honor just because they are currently under the bonds of corruption, forgetting that “this corruption must put on incorruption” in the Resurrection. There will come a day when we will stand before the judgement seat of Christ, as it is written:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
Do you make it your aim to please Him, or do you live only to please yourselves? In the words of the Winan’s song, “Payday,” you may get by, but you won’t get away.
There are only two ways that we can please the Lord; Jesus did the first one, living a life of perfect obedience to the Father:
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
For the rest of us, all of our righteousness is as filthy rags. We break a Commandment without even noticing, and forget that,
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
God is gracious for the sake of Christ, accepting His shed blood as the propitiation for our sins, and Jesus Christ graciously offers to us His Body and the cup of the New Covenant in His blood, shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. “the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.”
Paul Timothy McCain, ed., Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 330.
It is because of God’s love for us that we are able to stand in this place blameless, because of His love for us that we are able to love one another, as it is written:
We love because he first loved us.
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
We cannot know how it is that all are not saved, nor do we need to. We need only know that Christ is for us, that He longs for us, that He desires us to be delivered from our guilty stains. He wants to free us, and therefore withholds nothing that pertains to life and godliness from us, but as it is written :
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jesus can heal our pains, breakdown our walls and restore what the devil has stolen from us. His blood has the power to remove the sins that separate us and the scars that remind us of the pain that we have received by the sinfulness of our neighbor. By His blood, we can forgive, and we can seek forgiveness. In Him we obtain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is no other way. We cannot browbeat our neighbor into loving us. We cannot manipulate absolution by writing laws to cover our crimes. We cannot cheat God.
But we can repent, turn around, and love those whom we hated before, through Christ, the years that the locust has eaten can be restored. God gives us peace, not as the world gives, but as He alone gives, through the Cross.
So let the peace of God, that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.