Our Job Is to Wait

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

July 23, 2017

Matthew 13:24-30

Our Job Is to Wait

In the name of the Father

and of the 2 Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

The parable of the wheat and the weeds teaches us that it is not our job to end unbelief. This teaching is contrasted by the dogma of Mohammed and his followers. Their god demands the end of unbelievers with the sword; our dear Lord, however, takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

In the parable when the servants ask the master if they should tear up the weeds, the master says no. No, do not try to get rid of sinners. The true God has not instituted a purifying cult that seeks to create paradise on earth. Instead, our Lord teaches us to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” He wants none of the wicked to die; He wants His rule of grace and peace to come even to them.

The Lord’s prayer has been answered. We were weeds, but now we are the living proof of His kingdom. We are the wheat, the good plants that will be brought into God’s harvest. He has given us the opposite of what we deserve and from before we were born He knew us. He knew when we would start growing. He knew where we would live. He also knew all the weeds, all the unbelievers, that would grow up alongside you—childhood friends and siblings who no longer follow Jesus or carry their crosses to the glory of His name.

But the weeds aren’t just around us; they also grow inside us. Anger and doubt grow up alongside faith; greed and lust stain our lives. And so the good we want to do, we do not do; the evil we do not want to do, this we do. And we cry out to the Lord in frustration, “Why do You give us a taste of Your glory, but leave us here in our sinful flesh?”

And His answer to us is that it is not yet time. Because of His mercy, He will wait until all His chosen people have been brought to faith in Jesus. To those already in His kingdom, this waiting seems to go on forever. But to those not yet in His kingdom, they will be eternally grateful for the time.

Our job is not ending unbelief; our job is not fixing the problems of the earth. We show mercy to those harmed by evil, but we will never end evil. We know that Time itself is in God’s good hands and He will end war and greed and unbelief in His good time.

Instead, our job is to wait. We wait on our dear Lord who is gracious and works all things for the good of those who love Him and for the good of those who will love Him.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served,

but to serve,

and to give His life as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45

Christ Makes the Soil Good

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

July 16, 2017

Matthew 13:23

Christ Makes the Soil Good

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

Jesus taught His people with stories. This parable is a straight-forward story about farming, about seeds and how they grow. And the point of the story is that more Jesus is always better.

The seeds fall all over the ground. This is seed-sowing is like Jesus, whose saving death and resurrection have been heard all over the world. The seed is sown by the preaching of pastors and the prayers of fathers with their wives and children. But there are sadly many who hear Jesus, but nothing grows.

The following explanations point out, not cradle-to-grave heathen unbelievers, but instead those who at one point believed, but do so no longer.

So some seeds fall on the side of the road. Jesus said this represents those who hear Him, but don’t listen to Him. For example, what was last Sunday’s sermon about? You might think:

(1) I remember!

(2) Oh no, I can’t remember!

(3) Who cares? It’s just the same old thing every week.

This last reaction is what this roadside seed is about. They heard Jesus and they just don’t care.

Some seeds fall onto rocky shallow ground. These are those who hear Jesus, but only hear what they want to hear. This is usually the happy stuff. They load up on the John 10 and Psalm 23, the Good Shepherd Jesus; they love Christmas Eve and Easter Morning, animals, a cute baby, angels, the obviously glorious Christ. Noah’s Ark is fine as along as it’s the happy boat with smiling animals popping out.

But they never want much else. Good Friday and the crucified Christ—pass. The righteous judgment against the people of Noah’s day and the judgment that is coming also for the people of our time—skip. Jesus declares that He brings swords and division to our homes and churches—no thanks.

Other seeds fall among thorns. These are those who hear Jesus, but the world’s priorities end up running their lives. The world tells us how to spend our time, perhaps always working, perhaps always having fun. These people knew Jesus, they liked Him, but they just love the world more.

Finally there is the seed on good soil. Jesus explained:

And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.”

MATTHEW 13:23 NASB 1995

Why does the seed grow here? Because the soil is good. Unfortunately in much Christian art, drama, and music, even among things labeled “Lutheran”, the idea is that you make yourself ready for Jesus by being good soil.

Being good soil to make God like you is a theme of another story Jesus told. He told a story about a father who allowed his younger son to take his inheritance and leave home to chase wine and women. But in the end the father brought the younger son back into his home and family and threw a feast to celebrate his son’s return to life. But the older brother was furious with his father’s generosity.

“Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.”

LUKE 15:29-30 NASB 1995

Like the older brother in the story of the Prodigal, this idea that we make ourselves good soil for God by following the rules (and of course, never God’s Commandments, but instead whatever rules you can keep and are comfortable with) actually put you back into the thorns.

Christ makes you good soil. He makes you good with Himself, His Word. To use His metaphor, He takes bad soil like us and makes us alive. This is the miracle of faith. He takes dead things and makes them alive by His Word and promise.

The soil that Christ Jesus has made good produces fruit. This fruit takes many shapes and sizes and may take time to appear. Most of the life of these good plants is in the necessary, but unseen roots underground. But fruit will appear. And indeed our greatest work is listening to Jesus.

So more Jesus is always better. More Jesus at home, listening to His Word is always better. More Jesus at church is always better, too, and not necessarily longer sermons, but certainly more opportunities to receive His body and blood on Sunday morning.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. Amen!

Mark 10:45

Audio of the Sermon

The Sword of the Spirit Is Still a Sword

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

July 2, 2017

Matthew 10:34

The Sword of the Spirit Is Still a Sword

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

St. Paul finished up his letter to the Christians in the Greek city of Ephesus with a wonderful illustration of God armoring up His people against the world. Paul wrote:

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

EPHESIANS 6:16-17 NIV 1984

This battle talk here pumps us up for the fight against the Evil One, the Devil, and his allies, the unbelieving world and your own sinful flesh. But when the fight against sin comes to us, we must not forget what swords actually do.

In Exodus 32, the Levites used swords to kill 3,000 of their brothers and friends and neighbors (out of about 600,000) who had devoted themselves to the worship of their own pleasure. (The golden calf was just the flimsy excuse for their sinning. Perhaps that day you might have heard someone saying, “The gold calf told me to get drunk!”)

A sword is sharp. It cuts. It kills.

The Word of God is a sword. It’s sharp. It cuts. It kills.

Jesus said:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’”

MATTHEW 10:34-36 NIV 1984

So here’s the thing: our culture, which feels more and more like a cult every day, encourages opinions and discussion of opinions on every last thing on the face of the earth, expect one thing. If you’re thinking that I’m you can’t talk about God, you’re wrong. You can. You can say anything about God you want, except that God died and rose from the dead.

You bring that up at a holiday gathering, even among some Christians(!), and the party’s over. Anything but that. Anything but that. You can gossip, you can be vulgar, but just don’t bring up Jesus dying and the claim His life has on our lives.

A wise preacher once said that our society’s last taboo is conviction about God and His Word. Confess that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven and you are bound to be disliked . . . Protocol dictates that we look the other way as men race toward perdition, lest we should offend the damned.¹

Hell is never offended. Hell doesn’t need to be acknowledged by modern pagans. Hell doesn’t care if anyone believes in it or not. It can wait. It quietly applauds our silence.

Why do we keep silent? By faith we say that Jesus is number one—this is very good!—but in what we do (and don’t do) we show that there are things that are just as important as Jesus dying and rising from the dead. Jesus mentions what one of those god-like things is: family.

Tell your children that you love them dearly, but that Jesus loves them even more you do. You know this because He died for them and baptized them. And tell them that you love them dearly, but that you love Jesus more than you love them. And God-willing, your children will say the same to you.

When this confession of Jesus—Jesus above all—is the watch word of your home, then true love for your parents, for your children, can flourish. Certainly there are loving heathen homes, but these relationships are always expected to deliver constant happiness, treating each other as their fellow gods.

Only by forsaking the sin of Adam, who hoped to be god, and taking up the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, is true love unsheathed. Telling the truth about Jesus’ victorious death means that we no longer need our parents to be our saviors, or our children to redeem us and give our lives meaning. Jesus is our Savior; with His blood He has bought us out of the clutches of Death and the Devil.

Let us pray.

Dear Lord, thank You for times of peace in our family life when Your Word is heard continually in our hearts and frequently in our homes. Strengthen us for days of unrest, when Your sword will separate the living from the dead. Let us lose our lives for Your sake, for in Your death we live forever.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, 

but to serve, 

and to give His life as a ransom for many. Amen!

Mark 10:45

1 Reformation Sermon by the Rev’d David Petersen, Matthew 10:34, October 27, 2002. Accessed cyberstones.org/sermon/reformation-2002 on June 28, 2017.