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.