[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]
Matthew 25:1-13
The other day I decided, as I do every week in preparing for my messages, to check out what different Bible commentators had to say about today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 25:1-13.
One commentator's opening sentences compelled me to stop immediately. That’s because he wrote that this passage was disturbing and didn’t sound like Jesus to him.
What the writer really meant was, “In this passage, Jesus doesn’t sound like I want Jesus to sound.”
We live in an era in which people who masquerade as Bible scholars are really Bible speculators, speculating that the Bible is wrong and that they’re right when it comes to understanding what Jesus is really like.
They want to whittle Jesus, God in human flesh, down to what they want Him to be, turning the Savior the Bible calls, “the Lion of Judah” into a pet cat, making Him palatable to the masses, a benign teacher of platitudes who doesn’t disturb people.
Nowhere is this whittling, this cheapening, of Jesus more apparent than in the misuse and the misconstruction of what the Bible calls grace.
The Bible teaches, as I say obsessively, that we are saved from sin and death by God’s grace--God’s charity--through our faith in Christ. Through God’s grace given in Christ, we are forgiven and given the promise of God’s presence with us in this world and of eternal life with God in the perfect world to be.
But we must remember, as Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught, that grace is free; but it isn’t cheap.
In the eyes of the Bible speculators, grace tells you and me when we suspect we should feel guilty about something we’ve thought, said, or done, “It’s no big deal. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it; you’re forgiven.”
Jesus and the Bible tell us something altogether different about grace, though. For Jesus and the Biblical writers, grace says, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Grace doesn’t flinch from telling us that sin is wrong. Taking God’s Name in vain is a sin. Gossiping is a sin. Dishonesty in financial matters is wrong. Failing to forgive those who have hurt us is sin. Sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman is unholy in the eyes of God. Failure to honor those in authority, established in their offices by God Himself, is a failure to honor God.
Grace agrees with the law about what God reveals in His Word to be right and wrong.
But grace also says to those who turn from their sin and cling to Jesus as their shield from the death sentence their sin has earned them, “Your sins are forgiven. They are covered by the grace of Jesus Christ, Who took your punishment for you.”
Grace says, “Your sins are a big deal. They should spell death for you. But when you honestly confess your sins and trust in Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord, as your only hope for life, their power over you is destroyed.” That is grace!
Jesus gives us a true picture of grace in our Gospel lesson for this morning. Please take a look at it now.
Jesus has been talking about the coming end of this world and His return to bring judgment and to usher in His eternal kingdom for all who have trusted in Him. Now, He tells a parable, a fictional representation of the coming of His kingdom.
Verse 1: “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.”
In first century Judea, where Jesus lived, weddings, followed by days of banqueting, took place at night. A messenger would go ahead of the bridegroom’s party to let people in the bride’s neighborhood know that he was on his way and to be prepared for the start of the festivities. In the parable, the wedding feast symbolizes the great heavenly feast that Jesus will one day enjoy with all His saints.
Jesus, as in other places in the Gospels, is here portraying Himself as the groom. In doing so, Jesus isn’t just claiming to be the Messiah, as we’ve talked about recently. He is also claiming to be God. In the Old Testament, God is often portrayed as the loyal husband of His chosen people, Israel.
The twist in this parable is that the ten virgins, who all want to go to the party and celebrate with others, are the Church. They’re you and me. And like you and me, they want to be with the groom at the feast. They take up their lamps in order to wait for the arrival of the groom.
Please notice something about this verse: Everyone is invited to the feast.
God wants everyone to be at His table in eternity.
God’s grace calls everyone.
God loves everyone.
Jesus died and rose for everyone.
But, as we’ll see, not everyone responds in faith and those who refuse Jesus’ call to daily acknowledging our sin and receiving forgiveness and new life by faith in Him willfully separate themselves from Him.
And God will, at the ends of people's lives and at the end of this world's life, respect the choice of those who have rejected His invitation.
Verses 2-4: “Five of them [of the virgins] were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps.”
The “oil” as The Lutheran Study Bible puts it, “represents a faith continually sustained by the means of grace, thus able to endure until Christ’s return.”
The oil for the lamps represents things like the fellowship of Christ’s Church, attentiveness to God’s Word, receiving the Sacraments so that the light of faith isn’t taken away by the darkness of our world and of our sinful selves, a willingness to do what God wills for us.
These are the things we need to make it through this world with our faith intact, our relationship with God intact, our integrity restored.
If we’re to be ready for the return of Jesus to our world, or ready to face Him at the moments of our deaths, or ready simply to deal with the everyday challenges of life, we need to be stocked up on the oil of an ongoing faith relationship with Christ.
If not, we could run out, the light of our faith extinguished, our relationship with God destroyed, our only reason for hope displaced by the distractions of life.
Take a look at Ephesians 6:10-13 (page 817 in the sanctuary Bible): “...be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
The only people who will remain standing when Jesus comes to bring this world to its end, the only people who will remain standing when the chips are down and the devil and this life hit us with their worst shots, are the people who stand on Christ alone. They keep burning with faith, hope, and courage.
The five young virgins left to welcome the bridegroom, not thinking about what they needed to power their lamps. That’s like us when we make decisions or establish priorities without leaning on God. We then stand naked in the face of evil that will otherwise overtake us and destroy us for eternity.
Look at what happens next in the parable: “The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps.” [Trimmed here means to adjust the wicks so that they can burn brightly.]
Then comes the crisis: “The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’But while they were on their way to buy the oil [there must have been an all-night oil distributor], the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.”
Jesus isn’t commending selfishness when He has the wise young women refuse the request of the foolish ones for more oil.
Here’s what He is saying: No one else can have your relationship with Him for you.
We can’t rely on our parents’ faith or our friends’ faith or, God forbid, our pastor's faith.
Faith is you and I personally trusting our lives to Jesus ourselves.
Jesus told His fellow Jews in Luke 3:8: “...do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”
The only one who can ensure that our lamps are filled with the oil of enduring faith is us.
We need to keep filling up on Christ and His Word through worship, study of God’s Word, receiving the Sacrament, trusting Christ’s presence in, with, and under the bread and the wine.
These are the ways God can prepare us for the ends of our lives, the end of the world, and even for just waking up tomorrow morning. And the next morning. And the next.
Verses 11-13: “Later the others [the foolish virgins] also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”
Jesus is using a common, idiomatic saying here. He's not saying that the lord inside the house was unaware of the identities of the women trying to get into the wedding feast, any more than God Himself will be unaware of the identities of those who have let their faith lapse or turned their backs on Christ or let things other than God become more important than God. He knows every human being by name and DNA.
But God cannot in eternity, pretend that there is intimacy between Himself and those who, during their time in this world, forgot all about Him.
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'’ Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, “will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."
And, Jesus says in John 6:29: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." That means trusting in Him and seeking His power in our lives even when we think we’ve got everything under control and that we don’t need God’s help, counsel, or authority over us. That's our job: to accept grace, to receive grace with honesty and vulnerability and gratitude.
This is where the Bible speculators flinch. They want a grace without admission of guilt, without the acknowledgement of the human need of God Who is infinitely greater than we are. They want a grace without God telling us to follow Christ and Christ alone, a grace with no need to trust Jesus with our lives.
But real grace--the kind that comes...
to those who repent and believe,
who pray, “Thy will be done,”
who acknowledge that "we are in bondage in sin and cannot free ourselves," then throw themselves at the foot of Jesus Christ...
that grace, true grace, brings us the power to live each moment on this earth--the challenging and the joyous--and gives us the certainty that when the Bridegroom Christ finally appears on this earth, our faith will find us ready to welcome Him, and we will join the marriage feast that has no end. Amen
[I received great inspiration for this message from the video presentation of Dr. James Nestingen this past week.]
Showing posts with label Matthew 7:21. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthew 7:21. Show all posts
Sunday, November 09, 2014
Sunday, February 17, 2013
What Makes a Church a Church? (Augsburg Confession, Part 7)
[This sermon was shared during both the 8:30 and 10:15 worship services of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church of Logan, Ohio, today.]
Matthew 16:17-18
When I first meet people and they learn that I’m a pastor, they usually ask me the same question: “Where is your church?”
Of course, they want to know the location of the bricks and mortar associated with Saint Matthew Lutheran Church. So I tell them, “In Logan” or “On East Hunter at Orchard.” But I always feel a little badly about those answers. That’s because this building is not Saint Matthew Lutheran Church.
As we continue to look at what it means to be a Lutheran Christian through the witness of The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic statements of Lutherans’ understanding of Biblical, Christian faith, we’re going to consider what the church is.
Please turn to Matthew 16:17-18. To set the context: Jesus has been asking the twelve apostles who people are saying that Jesus is. Then Jesus asks them, who they say He is. Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”
As we’ll see, Peter doesn’t fully understand what he’s saying when confessing that Jesus is the promised Messiah or “the Son of the living God,” a phrase putting Jesus on the same level as God.
But Peter’s confession is right and that elicits these words from Jesus: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah [Simon, son of Jonah or son of John], for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter [Petros, meaning Rock in the Greek in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written], and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
In these few words, Jesus tells us a lot about what the Church is. Let’s break them down a bit.
First, Jesus acknowledges that Peter sees Him through the eyes of faith. Without the eyes of faith, Peter may have agreed with what other people’s evaluations of Jesus. He might have said that Jesus was a reincarnation of John the Baptist (even though the Bible says that there is no such thing as reincarnation), or that Jesus was Elijah or Jeremiah or another prophet from Old Testament days. Most of the crowds looked at Jesus and saw Him as just a man.
Even today, people--some of them pastors, bishops, assistants to bishops, and theologians in our own denomination--look at Jesus and see only a man. They lack faith.
But through the eyes of faith, Peter saw that Jesus was more than just a man, more than just the son of Mary’s virgin womb, but also God. God in flesh appearing! The King above all kings!
As we’ve said before, faith in Christ does not come naturally to anyone. We’re born with a mistrust toward others, especially toward God, because God threatens our desire to be our own bosses, to be our own gods.
This is why Jesus says that Peter believes what flesh and blood finds unnatural and can’t and won’t see about Jesus. “Flesh and blood” hadn’t helped Peter to see Jesus through the eyes of faith. God had! “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, [Peter],” Jesus says, “but My Father [God] in heaven.”
The same is true for all of us. We can only believe that Jesus is our Savior, God, and King because God creates faith in Christ within us. First Corinthians 12:3 says, “No one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord [meaning, God and Master of the universe] except by [God] the Holy Spirit.”
Because of his faith, Jesus gives Simon the new name, Rock, Peter. And Jesus says: “On this rock I will build My Church.”
Peter was the first to see Jesus for Who He was (and is) and to confess the truth he saw about Jesus. It’s on this confession that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God that Jesus says He will build His Church.
Jesus certainly wasn’t saying that He would build His Church on Simon Peter. You can’t build anything straight or tall or strong on a flimsy foundation. And just a few moments after making his confession about Jesus, Peter showed how flimsy he and his faith were. When Jesus told him and the other apostles that He would soon go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the world, die on a cross, and then rise from the dead, Peter tried to correct Jesus. “This will never happen to You,” Peter says.
Jesus immediately upbraids Peter, you remember? He speaks the exact words to Peter that He spoke to Satan when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness. “Get behind Me, Satan,” Jesus says to Simon Peter, the rock, “for you are not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of [humanity].”
Peter confirmed how shaky a foundation he personally would be for Christ’s Church when, on the night of Jesus’ trial, he denied knowing Jesus three times.
The sure foundation on which Jesus builds His Church isn’t Peter, but the confession Peter makes that Jesus is King and God, the conqueror of sin and death, the one Who gives new life to all who believe in Him.
Christ’s Church exists wherever people hear and believe the Bible’s Word about God, Jesus’ Word about Himself: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). The first thing the church is then, is a group of people in whom the Word of God has created faith in Jesus Christ as God and King of the world.
On the foundation of faith, Jesus says, He will build His Church. The word Jesus uses that we translate as church is, in the original Greek of the New Testament, ekklesia.
Ekklesia literally means called out ones. The church is people who have been called out of the world and into the kingdom of God by the Word about Jesus that has created faith in Christ within everyone from the littlest child singing, Jesus Loves Me, to the oldest believer dying with the praises of Jesus on his lips.
Ekklesia also means assembly, gathering. And this is the second thing Jesus teaches us about what the Church is: The Church is a group of people who, together hold to the same confession of faith in Christ as Peter. There is no such thing as a solo Christian.
Whether the Word of God about Jesus that creates faith within us is given to us through a Bible left in a hotel bedstand by the Gideons, through the sermon of a preacher, through the witness of a parent, grandparent, Sunday School teacher, or friend, through the Word given in, with, and under the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of Holy Communion, no one comes to faith in Jesus apart from His Church.
And no one can keep believing in Jesus in this hard, sinful, dying, cynical, self-serving world without the fellowship of the Church.
Let's be clear: The Church is filled with sinners and hypocrites like you and me. And there’s no doubt, as Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, that not everyone who calls Him “Lord” will “enter the kingdom of heaven.”
But just as surely as a limb sawed off from a tree will die, so will the faith and eternal lives of Christians die if they sever themselves from the Word of God about Jesus that’s preached, taught, and given through Christ’s Church.
That’s why the preacher says in Hebrews 10:24-25: “...let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not neglecting the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the Day [of the risen and ascended Jesus‘ return to this world] approaching.” The second thing the Church is then, is the assembly of people called to faith by the Word of God. And the church is the only way anyone receives or keeps hold of saving faith in Jesus. It's for the sole purpose of sharing the Word of God about Jesus that Jesus has called the Church into being.
In His words to Peter and the other apostles Jesus also says of His Church: “...the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” “The gates of Hades” or, as is mentioned several times in the Psalms in the Old Testament, “the gates of death” are expressions that refer to anything that might cause a person to enter hell or eternal separation from God.
Jesus is saying that His Church, the fellowship of believers built on faith in Christ will never die. The Church is eternal.
Jesus promises all of us who trust Him when He says that He is the way and the truth and the life and that no one comes to God the Father except through Him (John 14:6) that He is “the resurrection and the life” and that all who believe in Him, though they may die, will live with Him now and in eternity (John 11:25).
The worship, service, and honor we offer to the God we know in Jesus Christ imperfectly here in the Church on earth will continue in perfection for those of us who are part of the Church in eternity.
Three truths Jesus teaches in Matthew 16 then, are that:
Less than forty miles from here, there is a pastor in our ELCA, highly thought of in our denomination who once told me about what, to him, seemed to be a rewarding experience. He had read and discussed a book by Marcus Borg, a theologian who was raised Lutheran and is now an Episcopalian. The book is called, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. In it, Borg argues that Jesus wasn't born to a virgin, wasn't God in the flesh, didn't rise from the dead, and can't save us from sin and death. Borg has become all the rage in the ELCA, appearing often to give lectures at ELCA colleges, seminaries, and pastoral retreats. A number of our bishops and theologians approve of his ideas, which veer about as far from the confession of faith in Christ on which Jesus says He builds His Church as one can imagine. This pastor told me with evident satisfaction that after he and members of his congregation had read Borg's book, a member of the discussion group said, "I'm so glad I don't have to believe that stuff any more."
Such rejection of the revealed truths of God about Jesus Christ to instead embrace a religion that gives us license to believe whatever we want to believe--even that Jesus was only a man and not also God, that He died but didn't rise, and that He won't return one day to judge the living and the dead--is increasingly accepted and encouraged in our ELCA.
I pray almost daily about the sad state of our denomination and I wonder whether if it will long be possible to be either a Christian or a Lutheran in the ELCA. I wonder whether it doesn't make more sense for those who seek to be faithful to Christ and to the Lutheran confessions to leave the ELCA, as hundreds of other congregations have done since 1999. I think that those are questions worth your spending time to pray about too.
There are many congregations today that may look like churches. But appearances can be deceiving.
That’s why it’s essential in this day and age when there are so many wolves in sheep’s clothing for God’s people to remember what it means for a church to be a church.
The Church exists where the truth is told about the Gospel--the good news of Jesus--and where the Sacraments are administered according to the will of God.
The Church is the fellowship of people with faith that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, the only crucified and risen Savior Who can forgive sin and give eternal life.
The Church is the only fellowship in the world in which we receive faith and can have that faith strengthened.
The Church is the fellowship of Christ that will last for all eternity.
Remembering these truths and living in accordance with them are truly the difference between life and death. Amen
Matthew 16:17-18
When I first meet people and they learn that I’m a pastor, they usually ask me the same question: “Where is your church?”
Of course, they want to know the location of the bricks and mortar associated with Saint Matthew Lutheran Church. So I tell them, “In Logan” or “On East Hunter at Orchard.” But I always feel a little badly about those answers. That’s because this building is not Saint Matthew Lutheran Church.
As we continue to look at what it means to be a Lutheran Christian through the witness of The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic statements of Lutherans’ understanding of Biblical, Christian faith, we’re going to consider what the church is.
Please turn to Matthew 16:17-18. To set the context: Jesus has been asking the twelve apostles who people are saying that Jesus is. Then Jesus asks them, who they say He is. Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”
As we’ll see, Peter doesn’t fully understand what he’s saying when confessing that Jesus is the promised Messiah or “the Son of the living God,” a phrase putting Jesus on the same level as God.
But Peter’s confession is right and that elicits these words from Jesus: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah [Simon, son of Jonah or son of John], for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter [Petros, meaning Rock in the Greek in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written], and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
In these few words, Jesus tells us a lot about what the Church is. Let’s break them down a bit.
First, Jesus acknowledges that Peter sees Him through the eyes of faith. Without the eyes of faith, Peter may have agreed with what other people’s evaluations of Jesus. He might have said that Jesus was a reincarnation of John the Baptist (even though the Bible says that there is no such thing as reincarnation), or that Jesus was Elijah or Jeremiah or another prophet from Old Testament days. Most of the crowds looked at Jesus and saw Him as just a man.
Even today, people--some of them pastors, bishops, assistants to bishops, and theologians in our own denomination--look at Jesus and see only a man. They lack faith.
But through the eyes of faith, Peter saw that Jesus was more than just a man, more than just the son of Mary’s virgin womb, but also God. God in flesh appearing! The King above all kings!
As we’ve said before, faith in Christ does not come naturally to anyone. We’re born with a mistrust toward others, especially toward God, because God threatens our desire to be our own bosses, to be our own gods.
This is why Jesus says that Peter believes what flesh and blood finds unnatural and can’t and won’t see about Jesus. “Flesh and blood” hadn’t helped Peter to see Jesus through the eyes of faith. God had! “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, [Peter],” Jesus says, “but My Father [God] in heaven.”
The same is true for all of us. We can only believe that Jesus is our Savior, God, and King because God creates faith in Christ within us. First Corinthians 12:3 says, “No one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord [meaning, God and Master of the universe] except by [God] the Holy Spirit.”
Because of his faith, Jesus gives Simon the new name, Rock, Peter. And Jesus says: “On this rock I will build My Church.”
Peter was the first to see Jesus for Who He was (and is) and to confess the truth he saw about Jesus. It’s on this confession that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God that Jesus says He will build His Church.
Jesus certainly wasn’t saying that He would build His Church on Simon Peter. You can’t build anything straight or tall or strong on a flimsy foundation. And just a few moments after making his confession about Jesus, Peter showed how flimsy he and his faith were. When Jesus told him and the other apostles that He would soon go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the world, die on a cross, and then rise from the dead, Peter tried to correct Jesus. “This will never happen to You,” Peter says.
Jesus immediately upbraids Peter, you remember? He speaks the exact words to Peter that He spoke to Satan when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness. “Get behind Me, Satan,” Jesus says to Simon Peter, the rock, “for you are not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of [humanity].”
Peter confirmed how shaky a foundation he personally would be for Christ’s Church when, on the night of Jesus’ trial, he denied knowing Jesus three times.
The sure foundation on which Jesus builds His Church isn’t Peter, but the confession Peter makes that Jesus is King and God, the conqueror of sin and death, the one Who gives new life to all who believe in Him.
Christ’s Church exists wherever people hear and believe the Bible’s Word about God, Jesus’ Word about Himself: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). The first thing the church is then, is a group of people in whom the Word of God has created faith in Jesus Christ as God and King of the world.
On the foundation of faith, Jesus says, He will build His Church. The word Jesus uses that we translate as church is, in the original Greek of the New Testament, ekklesia.
Ekklesia literally means called out ones. The church is people who have been called out of the world and into the kingdom of God by the Word about Jesus that has created faith in Christ within everyone from the littlest child singing, Jesus Loves Me, to the oldest believer dying with the praises of Jesus on his lips.
Ekklesia also means assembly, gathering. And this is the second thing Jesus teaches us about what the Church is: The Church is a group of people who, together hold to the same confession of faith in Christ as Peter. There is no such thing as a solo Christian.
Whether the Word of God about Jesus that creates faith within us is given to us through a Bible left in a hotel bedstand by the Gideons, through the sermon of a preacher, through the witness of a parent, grandparent, Sunday School teacher, or friend, through the Word given in, with, and under the water of Baptism or the bread and wine of Holy Communion, no one comes to faith in Jesus apart from His Church.
And no one can keep believing in Jesus in this hard, sinful, dying, cynical, self-serving world without the fellowship of the Church.
Let's be clear: The Church is filled with sinners and hypocrites like you and me. And there’s no doubt, as Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, that not everyone who calls Him “Lord” will “enter the kingdom of heaven.”
But just as surely as a limb sawed off from a tree will die, so will the faith and eternal lives of Christians die if they sever themselves from the Word of God about Jesus that’s preached, taught, and given through Christ’s Church.
That’s why the preacher says in Hebrews 10:24-25: “...let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not neglecting the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the Day [of the risen and ascended Jesus‘ return to this world] approaching.” The second thing the Church is then, is the assembly of people called to faith by the Word of God. And the church is the only way anyone receives or keeps hold of saving faith in Jesus. It's for the sole purpose of sharing the Word of God about Jesus that Jesus has called the Church into being.
In His words to Peter and the other apostles Jesus also says of His Church: “...the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” “The gates of Hades” or, as is mentioned several times in the Psalms in the Old Testament, “the gates of death” are expressions that refer to anything that might cause a person to enter hell or eternal separation from God.
Jesus is saying that His Church, the fellowship of believers built on faith in Christ will never die. The Church is eternal.
Jesus promises all of us who trust Him when He says that He is the way and the truth and the life and that no one comes to God the Father except through Him (John 14:6) that He is “the resurrection and the life” and that all who believe in Him, though they may die, will live with Him now and in eternity (John 11:25).
The worship, service, and honor we offer to the God we know in Jesus Christ imperfectly here in the Church on earth will continue in perfection for those of us who are part of the Church in eternity.
Three truths Jesus teaches in Matthew 16 then, are that:
- His Church is founded on faith in Christ,
- His Church is His indispensable fellowship for receiving and growing in faith in Christ, and
- His Church eternal.
Our churches teach that one holy Church is to remain forever. The Church is the congregation of saints [saints are sinners saved by the grace of God through their faith in Jesus Christ] in which the Gospel [the Word that all who believe in Jesus will not be condemned to hell for their sins, as those who refuse to believe in Jesus will be] is purely taught and the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, the Word about Jesus given through water, bread, and wine] are correctly administered. For the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, that rites or ceremonies instituted by [human beings], should be the same everywhere...”The true Church isn’t defined by the buildings it owns, the kinds of hymns it sings, or the earthly denominational structures to which its people belong. The true Church can’t be identified by whether, during worship, its pastors wear robes or suits or Polynesian shirts. There are many churches in our own denomination, the ELCA, where every note played in worship is pitch perfect and the liturgy is done with slavish exactitude, but where neither its pastors or its people believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that He is God in the flesh, or that He physically rose from the dead, or that He gives life beyond the grave, or that Jesus is the only Son of God and Savior of the world.
Less than forty miles from here, there is a pastor in our ELCA, highly thought of in our denomination who once told me about what, to him, seemed to be a rewarding experience. He had read and discussed a book by Marcus Borg, a theologian who was raised Lutheran and is now an Episcopalian. The book is called, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. In it, Borg argues that Jesus wasn't born to a virgin, wasn't God in the flesh, didn't rise from the dead, and can't save us from sin and death. Borg has become all the rage in the ELCA, appearing often to give lectures at ELCA colleges, seminaries, and pastoral retreats. A number of our bishops and theologians approve of his ideas, which veer about as far from the confession of faith in Christ on which Jesus says He builds His Church as one can imagine. This pastor told me with evident satisfaction that after he and members of his congregation had read Borg's book, a member of the discussion group said, "I'm so glad I don't have to believe that stuff any more."
Such rejection of the revealed truths of God about Jesus Christ to instead embrace a religion that gives us license to believe whatever we want to believe--even that Jesus was only a man and not also God, that He died but didn't rise, and that He won't return one day to judge the living and the dead--is increasingly accepted and encouraged in our ELCA.
I pray almost daily about the sad state of our denomination and I wonder whether if it will long be possible to be either a Christian or a Lutheran in the ELCA. I wonder whether it doesn't make more sense for those who seek to be faithful to Christ and to the Lutheran confessions to leave the ELCA, as hundreds of other congregations have done since 1999. I think that those are questions worth your spending time to pray about too.
There are many congregations today that may look like churches. But appearances can be deceiving.
That’s why it’s essential in this day and age when there are so many wolves in sheep’s clothing for God’s people to remember what it means for a church to be a church.
The Church exists where the truth is told about the Gospel--the good news of Jesus--and where the Sacraments are administered according to the will of God.
The Church is the fellowship of people with faith that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, the only crucified and risen Savior Who can forgive sin and give eternal life.
The Church is the only fellowship in the world in which we receive faith and can have that faith strengthened.
The Church is the fellowship of Christ that will last for all eternity.
Remembering these truths and living in accordance with them are truly the difference between life and death. Amen
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