"Chief of Sinners" 1 Timothy 1:8-17

Grace, Mercy, and Peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Amen

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

In the Name of Jesus

Ever wonder why certain products that you can buy have such ridiculously obvious warnings on them?  Like a box of matches with the warning: contents may catch fire!  Or a bottle of pepper spray that warns: Never aim at your own eyes!  How about a rain gauge letting you know that it is suitable for outdoor use?  Perhaps my favorite is the side effect of a sleeping aid: may cause drowsiness. 

Why?  Why would one need to be warned of these things?  Aren’t they just stating the obvious?  After all how often do you buy matches without the intent to light its contents on fire or a rain gauge to measure the amount of rain that falls inside your house?   It seems so ridiculous that it is funny to read. 

Why do we need those reminders of what not to do?  Why do we need rules and regulations?  It would seem that all we need is a little common sense and these issues would just go away.  Why do we need civil laws?  Who are these laws for?  It’s for those who do not know how to behave on their own.  It is a way to keep peace and order in society.  Sometimes it is for our own good.  Other times it seems to be a bit ridiculous.  It is easy for us to make the case that these laws aren’t for us.  We know how to act in public.  We know how to act towards each other.  But we can also say that there are definitely those who need theses instructions.   

What then can we say about God’s Law?  Why do we need it?  Why do we need to have the pastor seemingly shove it down our throats each week reminding us about how bad of a person we are?  Why do I need to be reminded of God’s Law, the 10 commandments, when I have never killed anyone, I haven’t cheated on my wife, and I am in church every Sunday.  Pastor, why don’t you just save those words for people who really need to hear about it.  Go visit so and so who needs to be reminded of how horrible they are and that they have sinned against God.  Just please let me live my life.    

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners.  It is a good thing we all fall in the just category isn’t it.  How much worse would life be if we had to be reminded of our evilness and be read the Law of God and be told how horrible we are.  Praise God we are good Christians who aren’t in need of that. 

If we indeed are so well behaved, why do we even need the law?  Could we live without the Law?  Of course!  Some might even argue that life without the Law would be a happy one.  How many of you are willing to admit that you are a sinner?  Clearly Paul was in touch with reality in our Epistle reading.  He says of himself and his actions concerning Christ and the church,  .  It is a hard thing to come to grips with.  But then we are reminded of the words we just spoke already this service: If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  Of course we are sinners.  Deep down we know that even if we don’t really want to believe it.  We know it because of the second use of the Law, using the Law as a mirror.  When we place our lives up to the Law we can see how we have sinned against it.  How we have not loved God with our whole heart or our neighbor as ourselves.  We need the obvious warnings to call us away from this life.  We are all those for whom the law was written.  We are just as much as Paul, the chief of sinners.    

Warnings, like those talked about at the beginning of this sermon, are for those who can’t help themselves.  It is for those who, even though it’s all spelled out for them, are still susceptible to being enticed into danger.  Jesus is the warning for the Law.  He is the one who teaches us of the effects of the Law.  He teaches us through his word about the consequences, namely hell.  He teaches us also by his actions, by enduring the punishment for sin.  Here is your thought for the week.  When Jesus went to the cross he did so bearing the sins of the whole world.  Paul thought he was the chief of sinners?  No, that title belonged to our Lord.  He became sin for us.  He bore every single sin of the whole world.  That means became, for us, the worst murder, the worst adulterer, the worst gossiper, the worst criminal so that he would bear the death, pay the price reserved for us. 

Watch any movie or TV show and you know, the good guy always wins.  The cop always catches the killer.  So it is in life.  The Gospel always prevails.  The Gospel overpowers the Law.  It was good versus evil on the hill that was called, the place of the skull.  The evil seemed to be gaining the upper hand.  But with each strike of Christ’s body, with each hit of the nails that entered his body, evil was only killing itself.  IT was through those marks that evil was ultimately and eternally defeated. 

When Paul wanted to make his point clear, when he wants to really emphasis it, he starts with the saying words that mark is special, Paul’s version of hear ye hear ye.  So we have that in our epistle.    

Jesus came to save sinners.  That was his sole purpose.  He saves us first by pointing out our errors, our sins, and showing us how we have failed miserably at keeping God’s Law and then he swoops in and becomes the sacrifice.  Friends in Christ, see yourselves in Paul and in our Old Testament and Gospel readings.  We are the lost sheep that the shepherd goes after.  We are the coin which the widow turns up the entire house to find.  We were lost in our sin.  But Christ rescued us.  He sought us out to be his prized possession.  It is over each one of us that Christ and the angels have rejoiced when we repented, when we were baptized, when, after being lost, were found and brought home. 

So why did Christ show such mercy and concern of us?  Paul says I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 

There are plans for you.  Christ didn’t come to save you and not use you.  We are living, walking, breathing, examples of his mercy nearly 2,000 years after he lived.  We are to share the great news and the great joy we have in life because of the mercies of Christ.  We are to show that you don’t need to be lawless to enjoy life.  All you need is Christ.  And then, even in the midst of the suffering of the cross we face today, take joy in the fact that even though earthy things pass away, even though the world will pass away, even though we become lock and lost in sin we belong to Christ and he will take us to himself.  He daily gives us that joy that lifts our souls to heaven in the words of the absolution.  Show that joy, that confidence you have because of Christ each day.  Paul did not deserve to be saved, in his words.  You and I do not deserve to be saved, but Christ gave you glorious hope in the cross. But Christ saved us so that he could work through us.  Therefore bear his love, his forgiveness, and promises always on your lips. 

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.  Amen. 

Soli Deo Gloria

"Finish What You Begin" Luke 14:25-35

Grace, Mercy, and Peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Amen

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

In the Name of Jesus

Have you ever made a change in vocation, a change in employment, a change type of work, in your life?  What was that like?  It’s not the most comfortable at first is it.  While I haven’t made a major change in vocation, nor to I intend to do so, I have had some unrelated jobs through the years. I started working at a Lutheran camp doing maintenance.  Mowing lawns, picking up garbage, painting, pool cleaning, I even had a chance to build a covered wagon.  After that job, I went to work in retail.  Nothing from the maintenance job prepared me for what I would do in retail.  Then after a couple of years of doing inventory, stocking shelves, learning how to run cash registers, I moved into a business office where I imputed numbers all day every day.  My job choices didn’t really build off each other.  Each time I started the next job it was a clean, fresh start. 

With major job changes in life, there is more of a risk at stake.  What is it going to cost to learn the skills required?  Once the skills are acquired, how available are the jobs?  Where am I going to have to move to find said jobs?  You have to calculate every step of the process.  One wrong calculation, one missed number and the whole formula is off and failure could be close at hand. 

Our text this day is all about a life change, and a very critical one at that.  We are all familiar with the concept that is being talked about by our Lord.  Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  At face value it sounds pretty harsh doesn’t it.  Especially verse 26, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.    

But what is our Lord really saying?  Is he really calling us to denounce parents, siblings, wife, and children?  This isn’t the first time that Jesus alludes to this thought of turning from family and it is in these other verses we more about what Jesus is talking about.  He says things like My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.  He says that houses will be divided over following him.  And maybe the most important and most relevant to us this morning and our Gospel, he says in chapter 9,  As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”  And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”   To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”  And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”   Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”  Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”    

A big life change.  One that had a lot of risks, a lot of requirements involved.  The change from our sinful life to a life of picking up our cross and following Jesus is drastic and dramatic.  Let’s look at our former life, a life with which we are all still in touch with.  The life of sin is one that we know so well.  A life at which we don’t need to work at to be good.  Take the illustration into mind that our Lord uses, which you heard at the beginning of this sermon.  

We know how to build the base of a sinful life.  In fact it really wasn’t even our doing.  Because of the fall into sin, because, as David says, in sin did my mother conceive me, the sin we commit comes naturally to us.  The base, the foundation, of sin is always present.  This is the life that our Lord is telling us we need to leave.  And this life we have left.  We were all brought to the font, washed, marked, and made God’s child.  There a sledge hammer was taken to the foundation of sin and it was shattered.  But the replacing foundation, the true foundation, is much harder for us to build, indeed even we cannot. 

But when we become God’s child, when we become his disciple and pick up our cross and follow him, he himself becomes our foundation.  A foundation that we had no part in laying.  Remember our Lord’s words, you did not choose me but I chose you.  You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.   Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 

Christ bore the Cross, he bore even our crosses making it possible for us to carry them.  Because of Christ, bearing our crosses, picking them up and following him, does not mean death.  Christ came to earth to be perfect, suffer, die, and rise again and by doing so became the foundation for our faith.  The Holy Spirit is able to work faith in us because Christ has purchased and won us with his blood.  We, who once were even crushed by the foundation of sin have overcome that and now stand firm on the foundation of Christ.  It is no coincidence that we sing things like Christ is our Cornerstone or Christ is made the sure foundation or even the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.

As Christ conquered, as he shattered, smashed, the sinful force within us, he calls us to look to his cross, the cross of Calvary.  It is there that we are strengthen against sin, death, and the devil all of which he condemned to a life of torment on that tree.  Here is it that that sacrifice comes to us in, with, and under the bread and the wine.  The building blocks of faith.  The Word and Sacraments.  The Foundation given to you.                  

Yet, this is more than the laying of a foundation.  It is the building of a heavenly dwelling.  Left on our own, the foundation with sit exposed, like in the parable, and over time it would crack and become unusable.  But the Holy Spirit has built on that foundation.  He works faith in us through the hearing of Scripture.  He brings you here to get the materials needed for the building of a strong tower.  In time you will realize that you are not an independent tower, you are not a lonely believer.  Through the hearing, the strengthening, the building you will realize that you are being grafted into the ONE who is our strong, mighty fortress, our ever present help in trouble. 

You are brought into the family of believers, the family of God.  Look around you, this is your heavenly family.  Those who hear the Word as Jesus says.  Don’t hate your family, your earthly family that God gives you.  But put God first as he is calling us to do in our reading.  Flee from your former life, your life of sin, for is of no use to you.  Don’t look back, as hard as it is, for you can’t return.  Remain in the strong fortress of Christ.  Look to his cross, learning how to bear your own.  Knowing that he has paid the ultimate price, giving his life.

And I am sure of this, that He who has begun a good work in you, will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 

Amen

SOLI DEO GLORIA

"And Take They Our Life" Hebrews 13:5b-8

Grace, Mercy, and Peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Amen

..be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”  Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

In the Name of Jesus

Let’s face it, we live in a changing world.  Everything changes.  Look at how far technology has come and how big of a deal it was when cell phones came out, then when they got smaller, and then you could send text messages, and then they added internet, and now you can control the lights and temperature of your home while away on vacation through your phone. 

How about the landscape?  Now I am not talking about global warming, excuse me, global climate change.  Think about how much a city can change, expand, in just a short amount of time.  Fields and pastures become apartment complexes, homes, and businesses.  Pretty soon the small town you once knew, isn’t so small any more. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything just stayed the same?  If nothing changed, nothing moved, if everything was just as we remembered it to be. 

It’s crazy isn’t it?  Some of the things which give us the most pleasure in life, the things we can’t live without, are the things that change the most.  How many of us are tied to cell phones or computers?   How many of us are tied up with physical things, earthly items that change, that rust, that decay, worse yet, are taken away from us. 

Why is that though?  Why do we consume ourselves with earthly materials?  We are warned of this.  Out Lord tells us  And yet we can’t find enough space for our “stuff”.  We can’t find enough space, enough time, for our “things”, our “hobbies” which in time turn into passions and even into idols consuming all of our time, our energy, leaving nothing for family or for God. 

We shouldn’t be surprised by this.  It’s a cycle of life, or so it would seem.  Be brought to God, worship him, praise him, fall away, repeat cycle over and over and over.  The root of the problem is that we are sinful human beings.  We would rather follow our bellies than our souls.  Paul writes forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.  Only let us hold true to what we have attained.  Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.  For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.  Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. 

The sinfulness of human nature, the sinful desires of the flesh, the belly, has led many away from the very God who loves them.  How many times did the Israelites receive proof of God’s presence, witness miracles attesting to his love for them and yet they constantly and consistently went after their own gods who did nothing for them.

The same happens to us today.  Our sinful human nature longs after things which make us feel good.  We like the tangible things.  Things we can see, things we own, things we can improve by ourselves.  But do you know what the common they are temporal, is manmade, can be taken away in an instant.  Why strive after something that will disappear?  Why strive after something that moves around like the wind? 

In a world that constantly is changing, two things remain the same.  The first is that we are my nature sinful and unclean.  The second is that we have a God who loves us.  Whose words to us never waver.  Whose love for us never fades or grows weary.  It doesn’t matter if you heard of him in Moses times, Isaiah’s time, were a witness of the death and resurrection of his son, or are just learning now.  God is the same.  Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.  History cannot change.  Jesus died, he rose, he ascended back into heaven. 

And you know what is even better?  Our faith is not an earthly thing that rust or moth can destroy.  Our faith is not something man can take away from us.  Perhaps this phrase fits as persecution around the world and even around the country slowly rises.  You can take the man out of the church but you can’t take the church, the faith, God out of the man.  Name me one man, one thing that can strip you of your faith?  That’s what Paul was looking for when he asked the question, who shall separate us from the love of God?  What was his answer?  NOTHING!  Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord.  Be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” 

What is the worst thing that man can do to us really?  How bad can it be?  They could kill you?  So what.  They could take your physical life?  Tell me this, what is better living an earthly life of peril or a heavenly life of perfection?  I tell you the latter is far better.  Why fear death when death is the beginning of life?  Why fear death when you know that, by faith, you will see each other, your loved ones again.      

Martin Luther hits the nail on the head in his hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God.  He says “and take they our live, goods, fame, child and wife, those these all be gone, our victory has been won, the kingdom ours remaineth.”  Even if we lost everything in this life, even if we lost our very life, our breath, we would still be in possession of the greatest gift.  What God has given us, rebirth in the waters of Holy Baptism, the faith of our forefathers, even Abraham, Moses, and Noah, the forgiveness of our sins, and the promise that he sees us in light of his Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. 

What, therefore do we need to fear?  What a way to live, not in fear but in faith of our changeless God.  What beautiful words fill our Epistle reading.  be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”  Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.        

Some things change.  A lot of things change.  Churches change.  Their music styles, their message, what they are about change.  This church, this triple parish, will NOT.  We will be a house of consistency.  A house of repetition stemming from the cross of Christ.  What could we do to make it more appealing than it already is.  Why hide any part of it.  This church is about our changeless God.  About our Savior who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  About the Holy Spirit who teaches us and sustains us until the last day.

May God by his grace stay with us and shelter us so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this passing world, may be kept steadfast, immovable, grounded in his Word and in his changeless peace until the second coming of Christ.     

Amen

Soli Deo Gloria