Michael Guards God's People

St. Michael and All Angels

Observed on

September 28, 2014

Daniel 12:1

Michael Guards God's People

†

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I.

Satan and his evil angels are always most active when time is short.

When Jesus walked the earth, Satan's activity increased dramatically. Think of the many demon-possessions with which Jesus and His disciples dealt. Remember the direct temptations that the Devil brought before Jesus in the wilderness. He knew that he was running out of time to stop Jesus from going to the cross, where He would die for the sins of the world.

And now in these last days, our old evil foe is active like never before. The Devil seems to control most aspects of the world around us. He does this not by spiritually possessing the bodies of politicians or journalists or educators or your children or your parents. Instead he uses peer pressure to never ever speak of Sin with any authority or conviction. No voice will be tolerated who says, "Love God and love your neighbor." And because no one is allowed to speak this essence of the Law to anyone anymore, we are in a time of great distress. Without the damning cry of Love, of which we always fall miserably short, we live now with extreme pressure to live without the Savior. This is the world in which Satan is content to live.

God help us! And He does. He sends messengers to proclaim the Law and the Gospel to our stressed-out souls. He takes our minds that our bombarded by shifty lies and leads us to His unchanging promises.

¹³Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed. ¹⁴The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised Spirit through faith. Galatians 3:13-14

II.

And He sends us Michael, the chief of the guardian angels. Guardian angels are real. We often limit their protection to earthly safety, especially if you have to cross the I-74 bridge during rush hour. But they do so much more than protect us from distracted drivers!

Sent by God, Michael leads his army of good angels against the Devil and his forces of evil angels. And the good news is that they have already won the war in heaven.

⁷And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. ⁸But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. ⁹The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. Revelation 12:7-9

St. John went on in his revelation to reveal that the evil angels were hurled down to the earth near the beginning of time. Since then they have been attacking God's people to this day.

So we pray, "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." And we pray, "Deliver us from evil." We pray that God would keep hurling Satan and his evil demons downward. They were thrown down from heaven to earth. Dear Lord, keep throwing them down, down into the bowels of hell. But until the Last Day arrives without warning—probably and hopefully sometime today—the war continues here on earth.

¹At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Daniel 12:1

This prediction was made to Daniel, but it applies to our time also. We are living in the end time, the last days of this world. We are living in a time of great distress. The Devil and his evil angels are more active than ever. They corrupt the minds of so many in the name of tolerance and progress. And so we have the terrible privilege of witnessing how terrible the world and its lovers have always been.

In Christ we are strong, because in Him we have already won. The legions of faithful angels that He refused to use to take Him safely away from the false accusations of the Jews and the torture and cross of the Romans, He uses instead to protect you. He sends Michael and his holy angels to guard you because your name is written in the Book of Life, written in His blood for the forgiveness of your sin.

God's messenger angel assured Daniel and he assures us,

“Don’t be afraid, you who are treasured by God. Peace be to you; be very strong!” Daniel 10:19

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Mercifully Sacrificing for Sinners, even for a Tax Collector Named Matthew

St. Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist

September 21, 2014

Matthew 9:9-13 & Romans 12:1-3

Mercifully Sacrificing for Sinners, even for a Tax Collector Named Matthew

_________________

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I.

Tax collectors were cheats, liars, and scoundrels. They deserved no place in the kingdom of God. And no one knew this better than Matthew the tax collector. Jesus said,

¹⁵If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. ¹⁶But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' ¹⁷If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. Matthew 18:15-17

Tax collectors were viewed with suspicion and contempt. Tax collectors made their money by charging their clients more than necessary. The Romans wanted one dollar for their purposes, but these tax collectors took two dollars, one for Caesar and one for themselves.

And so Jesus used a tax collector, reviled by his own people, and a person everyone assumed was reviled by God, to demonstrate His mercy.

⁹To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' ¹³But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' " Luke 18:9-13

And so Jesus had mercy on Matthew the tax collector.

⁹As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow Me," He told him, and Matthew got up and followed Him. ¹⁰While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples. Matthew 9:9-10

Matthew's given name was Levi. It's quite likely that he was from that tribe of Israel, the tribe of Levi. The Levites were the priests, and we can see from Matthew's Gospel account of his good education that came from his priestly upbringing. Yet somehow he had become a wealthy outcast from his own tribe.

II.

Jesus took Matthew the outcast and brought Matthew into His people. Jesus' call to Matthew created one of the great theologians of the New Testament. And Jesus promised that He would rescue Matthew and all sinners from their status as outcasts by His sacrifice on the cross. This is the heart of Matthew's Gospel: that the Father sent His Son to restore what Adam destroyed. He did this by fulfilling the Law, both its upfront demands and by paying off our failure to keep the Law in its content and in its spirit.

And Matthew became the first evangelist of this great promise. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, he wrote this account of Christ. Then church tradition holds that Matthew traveled to Ethiopia to baptize, preach, and feed sinners with Christ.

And the content of Matthew's preaching remains clear. It is Jesus' beautiful reply to the concerns of the Pharisees and the other good people of His day.

¹⁰While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with Him and His disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

¹²On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ¹³But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Matthew 9:10-13

It was a good question that the Pharisees asked. Why eat with sick people? And Matthew was sick. He was a sinner. And that's exactly why he was certain that Jesus came for him. That's why He was certain that Jesus called him on account of His mercy for sinners. That's why He was certain that Jesus sacrified Himself and died for him and for all the rest of these sick sinners of the world.

And so Matthew's life was lived in view of God's mercy for the sick. Matthew's fellow apostle, Paul, wrote:

¹Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual worship. ²Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2

In view of His mercy towards him, Matthew became a living sacrifice. Matthew used his wealth to feed Jesus and His disciples and Matthew's fellow sinners. He used his book learning to write an account of Christ's life. He used his mouth to proclaim Christ, not for the healthy righteous, but for the sick sinner. He used his hands to pour water on the heads of babies and grown-ups for the forgiveness of their sin-sick souls. He used his hands to place Christ into the mouths of worthy communicants at the Lord's table, worthy only because they were sick sinners who received His true Body and Blood for the forgiveness of their sin.

III.

In view of His mercy for us, we are living sacrifices, too. We sacrifice by staying at our posts and sacrificing where Christ has already placed us. In view of God's mercy to tax collectors and other undeserving sinners and me, parents show mercy to the undeserving child who refused to be comforted by me. In view of His mercy, spouses how mercy to the undeserving spouse who struggle to trust them. In view of His mercy, citizens shows mercy to government officials and employees who seem to be less than helpful.

Sacrifice where you are; you need not travel around the globe to be a living sacrifice. Your life in Christ, in view of His sacrifice of mercy, is a life spent serving others and their needs. This is what you have already been doing, since the moment that Christ called you in Baptism, just as He called Matthew with His Word: "Follow Me."

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Our God Is Not An "Awesome" God

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 14, 2014

Romans 11:33-36

Our God Is Not An "Awesome" God

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When you stand before Christ on that Last Day, what should you say about Him? That you're in awe of Him? That He's awesome? That He's awful? Your choice of words about Him when Time ends will probably depend on how you speak about Him in these times.

Today our word to consider is awe. It is a word that we use an awful lot in the word awesome. Awesome means someone who is awesome. It's good to be awesome. You want to be around awesome people.

When you say that someone's awesome, you're reacting to information about that person. You're reacting to an epic act they accomplished that was awesome. You're reacting to their awesome personality and their awesome kindness. There are awesome facts about them that confirm their awesomeness to you.

Is our God an awesome God? Do you want to hang with Him? Do you know of an awesome epic act performed by Him and Him alone? Yes, yes, and yes.

But consider Paul's song of praise at the end of Romans 11. Listen carefully and think about these words.

³³Oh, the depth of the riches

of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable His judgments,

and His paths beyond tracing out!

³⁴Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been His counselor?

³⁵Who has ever given to God,

that God should repay him?

³⁶For from Him

and through Him

and to Him

are all things.

To Him be the glory forever!

Amen. Romans 11:33-36

Do these words sound like He wants to hang around with you?

No, they don't. You've never searched God's judgments and figured them out. You've never found God's paths and mapped them out. You don't know His mind or ever given Him good advice. He doesn't owe you a thing. He created the galaxies and the constellations. He created lightning and oceans. He created mountains and canyons. He created all these things that can kill your body. And He has given us His good, just, and awful Law that condemns you to die, body and soul.

God's perfect otherness forces you away from Him. We will never find His ways by our own ways, by our clever methods, or by our efforts to grow.

But He has found you. He has searched and traced you out and He knows your mind. Yet in His mercy He has chosen to be your Redeemer and sent you His Counseling Spirit to save us. We have never given God anything good, yet He gives us all good things. Above all He gives you His Word and Sacrament. He gives you Himself.

Our God is an awe-inspiring God. Awe is both the awful knowledge that you are a wretched sinner and the awfully wonderful comfort that God sent His Son to only die for wretched sinners.

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Grafted into Christ

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 7, 2014

Romans 11

Grafted into Christ

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If you have six kids, how should you buy toys? Do you buy one toy and teach the kids to share? Or do you buy six toys? Or should you never buy them toys and wait for them to grow up and move out?

The answer, of couse, is none of the above, because no matter what you do, they are going to fight over toys. Those six kids could have six hundred toys each and they'd still fight over them. They'd fight because they're sinners, and when a sinner sees a toy that they just stepped on to get to their other toys, all it takes to get them grabbing is to see another kid with that old toy.

St. Paul hoped that some of this envy would kick in for the sake of his fellow Jews.

¹³I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry ¹⁴in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. Romans 11 niv

The Apostle Paul knew about people. He knew that jealousy is powerful. He reckoned that if the Jews saw the non-Jews being embraced by Jesus as His newly chosen people, the Jews would get jealous or curious or both, and start grabbing for some answers.

Just a bit earlier Paul wrote,

¹¹Rather, because of [the] transgression [of Jews, that is, their demand that Christ be crucified], salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. Romans 11 niv

Like trust-fund babies, these jealous Jews only cared about what they couldn't have. So instead of acting like a dismayed parent who only knows how to bribe their spoiled children, Paul shrewdly realized that it was better to cut his fellow Jews off and turned his attention to the adopted kids, the Gentiles (or as Jesus said, the family dogs!).

So Paul told the Gentiles—the adopted kids, or as Paul wrote here, the ingrafted branches—that he hoped the Jews would get jealous and get curious and get Christ and get saved.

Paul knew people. He also realized that even adopted kids can use their special position as a weapon against the natural-born children. And so Paul warned the Gentile, non-Jewish, believers not to get a big head.

¹⁷If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, ¹⁸do not boast over those branches. Romans 11 niv

Paul used the image of a tree. He mentioned broken-off branches; by these he meant the Jews who had rejected Jesus as the Savior. He also talked about the wild olive shoots; they are the Gentiles who trusted in Jesus Christ. They had been grafted into the tree by Holy Baptism. Before you graft on a dirty branch to a clean tree, you need to clean it first. And in Baptism, Christ cleaned them up and attached them to His tree.

From that moment on, these Gentiles believers enjoyed the nourishing sap from the olive root. By this Paul meant the Gospel Sacraments, the preaching of forgiveness in Christ and the eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of our sin.

In verse 26 Paul wrote,

²⁶And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. Romans 11 niv

By all Israel Paul meant the entire tree of life to which all believers are attached, whether Jew or Gentile by human blood. By the blood of the Deliverer all Israel is saved. By His blood He turns godlessness away from Jacob's children.

Whether you are one of Jacob's children (a Jew) or not (a Gentile), we all have turned away from the true God and—depending on the person—mindlessly or carefully worship ourselves. But Paul wrote,

²⁹God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. ³⁰Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, ³¹so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. ³²For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Romans 11 niv

Christ loved these broken-branch Jews and these sticks-in-the-mud Gentiles. He wanted them to be saved.

Kids fight over toys; adults fight over much more important and foolish things. Yet Christ has mercy on you, kid or adult, Jew or Gentile, because you are one of His precious branches which He has grafted to Himself.

⁵I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing . ⁶If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered ; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned . ⁷If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will , and it shall be done unto you. ⁸Herein is my Father glorified , that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. John 15 niv

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Rooted in Christ

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

August 31, 2014

Romans 9:1-5

Rooted in Christ

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I.

The Christian Church is the collection of sinners that Christ has collected and chosen to be His people, forgiven and adopted into His family. And the Church's roots are deep. They go back thousands of years to the very first sinners: Adam and Eve. They sinned against God, and God in His mercy promised them a Son. He promised that one of their babies would be the Son of God and Man who would save sinners from their own evil selves.

A lot of babies were born between the fall of Adam in Eden until the advent of Christ in Bethlehem. As part of God's plan many of these babies were born as Jewish babies. They were sons and daughters of God's chosen people, who lived under the Old Testament.

Now if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant, then out of all nations you will be My treasured possession. Although the whole earth is Mine, you will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

Exodus 19:5-6a

This covenant or contract meant—among other laws—circumcising their baby boys, offering sacrifices at the Temple, and refusing to marry non-Jews. Above all, being born in the Jewish nation meant watching and praying for the advent, the arrival of the promised Messiah. The Messiah was the chosen Anointed One who would be a blessing to all nations, for He would suffer for the sins of all the nations. By the wounds of the Anointed Savior, sinners in all nations would be healed.

This is why Nathanael was filled with such joy upon recognizing Jesus as this long-awaited Messiah.

Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel."

John 1:49

II.

But many years later, St. Paul was filled with sadness. Some of his fellow Jews believed that they were sinners whom Jesus had rescused from sin. But many of other Jews were refusing to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah who had been promised to their forefathers, the patriarchs: Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Paul was heart-broken that these Jews who had been given so many special blessings threw away their Savior. They were the spiritual equivalent of trust-fund babies. They were born into wealth and privilege. They were given the right education and the right connections, and they threw it all away.

Take Paul's sadness and put it into one of Jesus' most famous stories, the Parable of the Prodigal. A father has two sons. The younger son demands and receives his inheritance early and wastes all of it. When he has nowhere else to go, his father receives him back as his son. The older son is furious with his prodigal father, who keeps wasting his inheritance on his worthless brother. The parable ends with the younger son alive and well in his father's house, while the older son gnashes his teeth and lashes out at his father.

The Jews who throw away Jesus, the souls that Paul is heart-broken over and desparate to see saved—which brother from Jesus' parable best fits Paul's countrymen?

When we hear how the Jews threw away their inheritance, we might want to see these Jews who reject Christ alone as their Savior as the younger brother. But in truth, the older brother's anger is the path that they are embracing.

But [the older brother] answered his father, "Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!" The father said, "My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

Luke 15:29-32

The older brother was relying on his good blood and good behavior to earn himself a spot at the father's table. He despised the truth that everything he had, had been given as a gift. When he realizes that sonship into God's family is a free gift to which our good breeding and good behavior contribute nothing, he was furious! He wanted to be the reason he got into the banquet. When a useless worthless waste of life—that wicked younger brother—gets into the banquet, he is offended deeply by what this implies: that he isn't any better.

III.

The older brother represents any Jew who believes that their obedience to the Old Testament and their Jewish blood running in their veins is what saves them. In other words, they worshipped their roots, instead of what the root produced by God's grace.

"The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which He will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.

Jeremiah 23:5-6

The roots of the Church go deep. Adam and Abraham were the human roots of our Savior and David was the stump from which Jesus was born into this world. The roots are vital, but without the Righteous Branch, without Jesus, the roots do us no good. But with Jesus alone as our Savior who sticks us on to Himself, like little branches onto the big branch, these roots—the circumcision, the worship, the laws—are wonderful arrows that point us to Him.

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Israel's Son Sees David's Son

Commemoration of St. Nathanael Bartholomew

August 24, 2014

John 1:51

Israel's Son Sees David's Son

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I.

Jacob was a twin. He had swindled his twin brother Esau out of a lot of property. Naturally Esau wanted revenge, so Jacob ran away from home. And on the way, he had a dream.

[Jacob] reached a certain place and spent the night there because the sun had set. He took one of the stones from the place, put it there at his head, and lay down in that place. And he dreamed: A stairway was set on the ground with its top reaching heaven, and God’s angels were going up and down on it.

Genesis 28:11-12

And the Lord promised Jacob, whom He would rename Israel, that He would always be with him.

The Lord was standing there beside him, saying, “ . . . All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. Look, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”

Genesis 28:13-15

Jacob escaped and the Lord kept His promise and took care of Jacob, also known as Israel. He prospered and many years later returned home and reconciled with his twin brother Esau. And Israel had twelve sons, one of whom was named Judah. One thousand years later one of Judah's offspring ruled over the land of Israel as her king. His name was David. And one thousand years after David ruled the land, one of his offspring was born. His name is Jesus Christ.

II.

Jesus is David's son. St. Matthew's first words are

The historical record of Jesus Christ, the Son of David

Matthew 1:1

Matthew makes special note of this connection between David and Jesus because the Savior had to be from David's line.

The Lord swore an oath to David, a promise He will not abandon: “I will set one of your descendants on your throne."

Psalm 132:11

The prophet Jeremiah also called attention to where the Savior would come.

In those days and at that time I will cause a Righteous Branch to sprout up for David, and He will administer justice and righteousness in the land.

Jeremiah 33:15

III.

Jesus is David's Son. And Nathanael was a true Israelite. Being a true son of Israel meant that he was waiting for David's Son to appear and bring salvation to God's people.

Then Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him and said about him, “Here is a true Israelite; no deceit is in him.”

“How do You know me?” Nathanael asked.

“Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you,” Jesus answered.

“Rabbi,” Nathanael replied, “You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

John 1:47-51

And when Nathanael, also known as Bartholomew, saw his Messiah, the Son of David, that he and his father and his grandfather had been waiting for, he confessed like a true Israelite: "Rabbi! Teacher! You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

It was a moment of discovery for Nathanael, when it just clicked. It was his eureka moment and in fact John used the Greek word that we call eureka three times at start of this exciting moment in Nathanael's life. First, Jesus found (eureka!) Philip. Then Philip found (eureka!) Nathanael and told him,

We have found (eureka!) the One Moses wrote about!

John 1:45

This One is the One. This is the One Moses wrote about,

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to Him.

Deuteronomy 18:15

IV.

Nathanael listened to Jesus. He listened to His preaching. He listened to His parables. He saw many things: water turned into wine, thousands fed with a few loaves of bread, walking on water, blindness healed, sins forgiven with finality, and the dead returning to life.

Unlike Peter, we don't hear much from Nathanael. He showed up in the beginning of John's Gospel and then turned up at the very end.

Simon Peter, Thomas (called “Twin”), Nathanael from Cana of Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two others of His disciples were together. “I’m going fishing,” Simon Peter said to them. “We’re coming with you,” they told him. They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

John 21:2-3

In the beginning Jesus found Nathanael sitting under a fig tree; He found him at the end fishing in a boat. It's fitting parallel to Nathanael's service in the kingdom of God. At first he is waiting for the Word of God to appear. And having seen Christ with his own eyes, he got to work. Our best guess is that Nathanael preached and administered Christ in India and Armenia. And in the end he was rewarded with a gruesome death: tradition says that he was martyred by being skinned alive.

In these evil days when the enemies of Christ are murdering His children, our prayers will always cling to the promise of David's Son, Jesus, to Israel's son, Nathanael: that one day soon, we also will see

. . . heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

John 1:51

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.