The Powerful Seed of God's Word

[Below is the message from both of today's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You also will find live stream video of both services. I hope you find it helpful. Have a good week!]

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I want to begin with two words of promise, of gospel, for you.

First, Romans 8:1: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…”

Second, Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

If, by the power of God’s Word, given to you by the Holy Spirit in Scriptures and in Holy Baptism and in Holy Communion, you trust that Jesus, by His death and resurrection, has conquered sin and death for you, you are saved for life with God that never ends.

As the old hymn puts it, “The strife o’er, the battle done!”

You belong to Jesus!

I begin this way because I want to inoculate you against the second-guessing of your salvation that so many preachers, including this one, may have planted in your minds over the years in our preaching on today’s gospel lesson. In fact, I became so convicted about this that last night, I deleted all the sermons I’ve preached on this text from my blog. (I think I got them all.)

So, I want you to know that if you believe in Jesus, you can know that you have been saved–justified–by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. You need not doubt that!

We will then take great care in considering the parable in our gospel lesson today because our familiarity with it may prevent us from understanding it and because the parable deserves careful consideration.

The parable Jesus that teaches there, along with the explanation of it that He offers privately to us disciples, is familiar. Matthew says that Jesus tells the parable not in “the house,” that is the Church. Instead, He goes out by the lake and climbs into a boat in order to preach to the crowds surrounding Jesus. This is key to understanding the parable.

The crowds to whom Jesus goes to teach aren’t following Him out of conviction. They do so from curiosity or in the hope of getting something out of Jesus. They want blessings without discipleship; salvation without repentance; assurance without faith. They want to keep their options open in case some other savior comes along with a better offer.

Most in the crowds will hear Jesus’ story, yawn, and move on.

In fact, the truth that may shock you is that Jesus intends precisely this reaction from those who refuse to listen or believe in Him. And while Jesus teaches the parables with the desire that some would have their curiosity piqued and might come to repent and believe in Him, He doesn’t teach them directly, but obliquely, symbolically, in this parable. That’s because, as He puts it elsewhere, Jesus doesn’t throw pearls to pigs. Those who do not want to hear Jesus usually won’t.

Later though, Jesus freely explains the parable to the Church, to the disciples, to those in whom His Word creates a desire to hear His saving Word.

In Jesus’ parable, there is a Sower. This is Jesus Himself or any disciple who seeks to share His Word–the seeds of life in God–with others.

And the soil, the dirt? That’s me and you.

Now, our Old Testament lesson for today, from Isaiah, reminds us of the power of God’s Word: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

God’s Word always does what it sets out to do. There are no exceptions.

According to Genesis, God unleashed His Word on chaos and brought life into being. In New Testament days, Jesus, God the Son, the Word of God, gave His life as the sinless sacrifice for our sin and rose from the dead so that He could by His crucifixion and resurrection, speak eternal life into all who repent and believe in Him, into you and me.

Now, remember that God speaks two words to us, as you know:

His law that convicts and condemns sinners and

His Gospel about Jesus that sets sinners free of condemnation now and forever.

Keep that in the back of your mind.

In the parable, a sower liberally scatters seeds on the dirt.

Some seeds fall on the path and are immediately eaten by birds. Jesus later explains that the birds represent Satan.

Many people have never heard the good news of new and everlasting life through Jesus because Satan, still desperately at work in our world, sweeps it away from them before they ever have the chance to have the gospel about Jesus grow into faith within them.

And I have seen this so many times. So many times, I’ve been with people who were spiritually-disconnected, who did not know Jesus Christ. They’ve known I was a Christian and a preacher and they ask me what the Christian faith is about. And just as I’ve been ready to tell them about Jesus, something happens. A phone rings. A child screams. Some distraction comes along. When that has happened, it was never an accident. Satan is always trying to distract unbelievers from hearing the Word of God that might save them from sin and death.

This is why we need to be consistent and persistent–all of us, clergy and laity–in sharing the gospel and scattering its seed everywhere.

Every time we scatter that seed, it may not grow. But we need to keep on spreading the good news of Jesus because people need Jesus, don’t they? They need Jesus for everlasting life!

And Satan is our implacable enemy.

Some seeds fall onto rocky ground. Jesus says this pictures those who receive His Word and initially believe, but when they go through tough times or opposition to their faith, they leave Jesus and His gospel behind. They figure this whole gospel about Jesus is a made-up thing because it doesn’t prevent the hard realities of this world from falling onto them. But, in fact, the gospel gives us the power to face life’s hard realities: to face grief, to face death in the certainty that beyond grief and death, all who believe in Jesus will live with Him in His perfect kingdom forever.

Some seeds fall onto thorns. This describes people who initially receive the Gospel Word with faith but then let this life’s distractions or wealth lead them away from life with God.

Finally, Jesus says, some seeds fall on good ground. Some people receive the Gospel, the good news of how Jesus, God in the flesh, died for their sins and brings forgiveness and everlasting life with God to all who trust in Him. They receive the gift of faith. God lives in them, Jesus says, and through them, God blesses not only them, but all the people whose lives they touch. He even uses them to spread the seeds of His gospel to family members, friends, and others.

Now, when we hear that parable, the first thing we’re likely to think is, “I hope I’m good soil. I don’t want damnation and hell. I want to be with God forever. I hope I have a saving faith.”

And preachers, like me, God forgive me, have even preached sermons on this text in which they–and I–end the sermon by saying, “Be good soil.”

Now, friends, let me ask you a question: Can soil change itself?

The answer is, No!

So, why does Jesus tell this parable?

The first disciples wonder the same thing.

In the verses that fall in Matthew’s gospel between the two blocks of verses in today’s lesson, Jesus answers that question: Why does He tell these parables?

Jesus quotes words spoken by God to the prophet Isaiah back in the eighth century BC, when He first called Isaiah to be a prophet.

God tells Isaiah that He’s calling Isaiah to preach His Word, to call people to turn from sin and to trust in God, and then He tells Isaiah that most people to whom he gives God’s message, the vast majority of Isaiah’s hearers, will never repent and never believe. “Isaiah,” God effectively says, “I’m calling you to be a prophet and you are going to be an abject failure!”

Now, as I approach the end of my time as a full-time pastor, I sometimes wonder, “What have I accomplished in the past forty years?” I have to tell you that when I think about that question, I haven’t been able to even list the first accomplishment.

But the reason for that is simple. I wasn’t called to accomplish great ends. I was called to preach the Word of God, in season and out of season, to scatter the seeds of the Gospel and leave the results to God.

Churches, as well as pastors, get hung up on all sorts of programs and activities rather than focusing on its one mission: making disciples by sharing the Word of God.

And so, God tells Isaiah at the beginning of His ministry as a prophet to proclaim His Word and to know that most people will reject the Word he preaches.

God says to His unwelcoming people through Isaiah (and Jesus quotes these words in that section between the two blocks of Scripture that make up our gospel lesson): “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” (Matthew 13:14-15; Isaiah 6:10-11, LXX)

During his ministry, Isaiah would, in words we cherish in the Church today, often call people to repent and believe in God, to turn to the God we all now know in Jesus and live with God forever. Some did so. Most didn’t.

Listen: The only thing that can turn exposed, rocky, thorn-infested soil–the only thing that can turn the hard-hearted, the self-obsessed and the worldly, the worried and the self-satisfied–into good soil, into sinners receptive to the grace of God given in Jesus Christ that makes us saints…the only thing that can make us good soil is the Word of God.

You can’t make yourself good soil.

But God’s Word can and does!

Your being good soil and your salvation doesn’t depend on you. It depends wholly and completely on the Word of God that you receive from outside yourself.

If, friend, you believe in Jesus, you know that God’s Word has made you good soil, that God is living in you even when you don’t perceive Him, and that He is doing good, God-honoring things through your life.

The miracle of new and everlasting life belongs to you because Word and Sacrament empower you to say, “I believe Jesus is my God and Savior!”

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus told parables to bad soil in the hope that some might turn to Him and live, but also to speak a condemning Word, a Word of Law, to those who refused to believe.

God’s Word never returns empty!

His Word of Law condemns the unrepentant.

And His Word of Gospel gives everlasting life to those who receive it with faith!

Friends, by the power of the Gospel Word, I get to tell you again this morning what I love to tell you, that in Jesus Christ, your sin is forgiven and you have life with God that never ends. It belongs to you.

Certain of this truth, I urge you to scatter the gospel liberally and indiscriminately and trust Jesus and the Holy Spirit to do with that seed what He wills.

Amen

You Are Loved By God (Your Neighbor Is Too)

[Below, you'll find live stream video of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You'll also find the prepared text of the message shared during both services. Have a blessed week!]

Matthew 9:35-10:8

Dear friends, this morning Jesus Christ, God the Son, wants you to know that you are deeply loved by God.

You are the apple of God’s eye.

It’s your sin Christ bore on the cross to set you free from condemnation and death.

It’s for you that He died.

It’s for you that He rose from the dead.

The God we meet in Jesus isn’t One Who turns up His nose at our sinful, selfish natures or our sinful, selfish thoughts, actions, or lives.

He doesn’t turn away.

He doesn’t abandon you.

Instead, God the Son wears human flesh with sinless perfection.

And He does this not to taunt you for your imperfections nor to damn you for being His betrayers.

Or for worshiping at the altars of false gods like our egos.

Or for hearing His Word with contempt or indifference.

Or for murdering others with our words, committing adultery with our minds, or stealing from others in our fantasies.

Instead, Jesus comes into our world to save us.

He sets us free from the condemnation of God’s Law that none of us measures up to.

He gives us life with God that never ends.

He comes to us to make us righteous–innocent, justified, fit to live in God’s presence for all eternity.

That’s why the apostle Paul writes: “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:4, English Standard Version]

And, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9, NIV)

Paul isn’t saying that if you’re a Christian, you have a free pass to sin unrepentantly. He is saying that when you daily take refuge in Christ, trusting Him to justify you by grace through faith in Him, sinner though you are and sinner though you will be until Jesus calls you from the grave, God’s Law will not condemn you and you will be saved for life with God for eternity.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is going around the villages and towns of Galilee, loving people in three ways. These are three ways He is loving you this morning too.

First, He teaches in their synagogues. As Jesus worships God the Father with His fellow Jews, He teaches them. Jesus doesn’t teach them the Law. They already know the moral law of God that is written on every human being’s heart. It’s likely rather that Jesus teaches them, as He did the people at His home synagogue in Nazareth, what God had revealed about a Savior Who would be the Messiah or the Christ, God’s Anointed King: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” [Luke 4:18-19]

Next, Matthew tells us this morning, Jesus proclaims the good news–the gospel–of the Messiah’s coming, of Jesus’ coming, by saying, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) Jesus is the Gospel. Jesus is our good news. He is the promised King Who makes all who, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in His Word, believe in Him, part of His everlasting Kingdom.

Third, Jesus heals every disease and sickness, or more literally every illness and weakness. This doesn’t mean that those to whom Jesus restores health and strength will live forever in their sins in this sinful world. Poor old Lazarus, who Jesus raised from the dead, tells us that. Ever after he’d died and been brought back to life, he had to go life in this sinful world and death all over again. What Jesus healing every illness and weakness does mean is that He gives to those who believe in Him the power to live through the challenges and even horrors and death of this world to live with Him in an eternity with God where there will be no more mourning or pain and every tear will be wiped from our eyes. (Revelation 21:4)

This is the Gospel of love Jesus gives to you this morning.

But Jesus’ love isn’t just for you and me.

It’s for everyone.

For family members who have hurt you.

For people in the other political party who drive you to distraction.

For those who lead unrepentantly sinful lives.

Jesus loves them and everyone else as much He loves you. He wants them with Him forever no less than He wants you with Him forever. 

We know this today when we hear what Matthew tells us: “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion [The word here is ἐσπλαγχνίσθη, more literally meaning Jesus’ gut was stirred to pity] on them, because they were harassed and helpless [literally, flayed and cast off], like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)

All around Him, Jesus sees people in distress, wandering far from God.

Some are flayed, vexed, gutted, by the horrors of a world in which nobody has taught them about God’s love for them and so, view life as a succession of meaningless events interspersed with occasional thrills and laughs, leading only to death.

Jesus also sees other people who are helpless. Their only “knowledge” of God is the Law of Moses, the law of right and wrong and because, even though they they may have spent their whole lives in churches, have never encountered the Jesus Who embraces sinners, are lost to God. This is the Jesus Who wants to tell them: “Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:40)

Jesus wants all people, starting with the descendants of Abraham, to be set free by this good news.

So, Jesus tells His first disciples and you and me, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matthew 10:37-38)

According to Jesus, all the vexed, gutted people and all those people convinced that God will never have anything to do with them–all the cynics, atheists, and Christian legalists, all the narcissists and hedonists, all the hopeless who think they aren’t and can’t be loved by God and all the spiritually indifferent–are harvest.

All people are ripe for hearing, receiving, and believing in the gospel.

Ripe for being told God loves them.

Ripe to hear what Peter told the Pentecost crowd: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved…” (Acts 2:21)

Dear friends in Christ, God loves you with a passion, depth, and commitment you and I could never have imagined, but which we can see in the crucified and risen Jesus. Jesus has already done everything needed to save you now and forever for eternal life with God!

Jesus loves your neighbor too. You, who have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus, are called to pray that God the Holy Spirit will send Christian disciples–believers in Jesus–into the world to share our good news so that God can create saving faith in the ripe harvest of people out beyond the walls of our church buildings.

And if what Jesus does in today’s Gospel lesson when He calls twelve of the disciples to be His apostles is any indication, He may even call you to share His Gospel with others.

If so, may you be so moved by gratitude for God’s grace and by compassion for your Christ-less neighbor that you tell God, as the Old Testament prophet told Him long ago, “Here am I, [Lord]. Send me!” Send me! (Isaiah 6:8) Amen

[Graphic from Sola Publishing, used by permission through their SOWER subscription service.]

Life for the Journey

[Below you'll find the live stream video of this past week's Maundy Thursday service with the people ad friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and the text of the message.]



Luke 22:7-20

On Maundy Thursday, we remember two things about the meal Jesus shared with the twelve apostles on the Thursday before His crucifixion.

First, we remember the new commandment, or, as in the Latin from which the word Maundy comes, a new mandatum, a new mandate, that Jesus gives to His Church on Thursday of the first Holy Week. Jesus commands, mandates us to love each other with the same self-sacrifice with which He has loved us. If that commandment doesn’t alarm us and drive us to repent for our sin, asking God to love others through us, we’re living in a state of denial. That’s because none of us can fulfill this commandment in our own power or goodness. We need Jesus, remembering that He tells us the total truth when He says, “apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

The second thing we remember on Maundy Thursday, the topic that will occupy us this evening, is Jesus’ institution of the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Holy Baptism, of course, is the sacrament by which Jesus gives us new life, Holy Communion is the sacrament by which Jesus sustains us in our life with Him. After Jesus was baptized at the Jordan River, He was led by the Spirit to face temptations in the wilderness. After you and I are baptized, until we die and are called from the dead by Jesus to live with Him in a sinless eternity, we still live in this world, wrestling with the temptations and tests thrown at us by the devil, the world, and our own sinful selves. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that after Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, God sent angels to minister to, to take care of, Jesus. (Matthew 4:11) In Holy Communion, Jesus ministers to you and me directly and personally. He gives us His own sinless, eternally triumphant self. “This is my body given for you…,” He says. And, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19-20)

Our Gospel lesson for tonight begins with Jesus sending two of His disciples–Peter and John–into Jerusalem to make preparations so that He could celebrate the Passover Seder with His disciples. In sending Peter and John, we see that Jesus is bringing both the fulfillment of the old covenant and instituting the new covenant. Under the old covenant, the one between God and His people, the Jews, it was customary for two men from a family to go to the outer courts of the temple in Jerusalem so that the Passover lamb their families would eat during the Seder dinner could be slaughtered. They would then take the slaughtered lamb back to the homes or inns in which the meal would take place. But, in a break from tradition, Peter and John weren’t sent to do this on behalf of their biological families. Jesus would have this meal with His new family, the family of God called together by His Gospel Word, the Church. You’ll remember Jesus once said, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.” (Luke 8:21) Here are Peter and John putting Jesus’ Word into practice, preparing to celebrate a meal that encompasses not just one’s relatives, but all people who believe in Jesus.

Passover was the central festival of the Jewish calendar. It memorialized that moment when God’s people, then enslaved in Egypt, were set free and sent off to the land God promised them. Before the first Passover, God instructed His people to prepare for the tenth and final plague God brought on Egypt. The angel of death would take the life of the firstborn in every home and barnyard in Egypt unless the blood of a sacrificed lamb was smeared on the doorposts of those places. Blood is the means by which oxygen, the breath of God, gives life to every human being and every vertebrate animal. Blood is the means by which carbon dioxide, the toxic gas produced by respiration, is taken out of the tissues of the body. Blood then is life. When Cain killed his brother Abel in the Old Testament book of Genesis, his blood–his taken life–cried out to God. At the first Passover, the blood of the lambs, whose death was for the people who trusted in God, barred death access to the lives of the firstborn.

Another festival of the Jewish year was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, a perfectly unblemished lamb was sacrificed at the temple. The lamb bore the sins of God’s people from the previous year. After it was sacrificed, the priest would sprinkle the people with the blood of this perfect lamb. By this means, the people were covered with life from God and the toxic impurity of their sin was removed from them. The problem was that under the old covenant, the effects of the sacrifice lasted, at the most, only a year. And so year after year, God’s guilt-plagued people were called to offer yet another lamb, to be covered once again by its blood. Even at that, people would often offer sin sacrifices throughout the year.

Friends, we too, would be plagued by sin and uncertainty about our standing with God were it not for one thing: Jesus has instituted a new covenant in which we can rest. John the Baptist talked about this new covenant when, pointing to Jesus, He said, ““Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) The sin of the world, of the whole world, of every time and every place, including our sin, yours and mine.

Under the old covenant, priests daily, made sacrifices of lambs, doves, and grain to first, purify themselves of their own sin before they then offered sacrifices of people who came to the temple laden with guilt. Nothing but these constant sacrifices could assure people their sins were forgiven or carry them from death to life. But, referring to Jesus as our great high priest, the book of Hebrews tells us, “Unlike the other high priests, [Jesus] does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. [Sinless Himself] He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.” (Hebrews 7:27)

In Holy Communion, we don’t sacrifice Jesus on the cross again. That’s bad theology, intimating that what Jesus did on the cross wasn’t good enough. Controlling the timetable and circumstances ordained by God, Jesus offered the sacrifice of His innocent body and blood on the cross once and for all. This is why when biblically heedless people ask you when you were saved, you can confidently answer, “On a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago.” Jesus has already done everything necessary for your sins to be forgiven by God and for you to have life with God. As I’ve said before: When Jesus said before dying on the cross, “It is finished,” He meant it! The apostle Paul wasn’t lying when He said, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) We become Christians not because we’ve made a decision for God, but because God made a decision for us. He decided to die for us! “While we were still sinners,” the Bible says, “Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) So, friends, in Jesus Christ, our sins are already forgiven. The only question is, do we believe in Him?

This is where Holy Communion comes in. While our salvation has already been accomplished and God’s decision for us is unchangeable, even when the Holy Spirit’s Word has convinced us to believe in Jesus, we can get wobbly in our walk with God. The devil, the world, and our sinful selves constantly press us toward unbelief. They lie to us, telling us we’re not good enough, that Jesus didn’t really die and rise, that we’re too bad and the world is too bad for the good news of new and everlasting life with God through faith in Jesus to be true. On top of that, life can batter us with setbacks, tragedies, and difficulties. “Pastor, I believe in Jesus,” someone told me recently, “but my life is so hard right now.” Holy Communion happens when the word of Jesus, along with Jesus’ promises to us, meets the bread and the wine and Jesus tells us, “This is My body and This is My blood. What I accomplished at the cross and tomb was for you. Your sins are forgiven. My good news is for you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5) Though your sins are like scarlet, I make your life as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your sin from you. (Psalm 103:12) I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew 28:20) All who believe in Me will not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)”

Friends, life in this world is hard. But we are blessed that during our journey through this life, Jesus gives us Himself, body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and the wine, and fills those who receive Him in faith with life that never ends. Amen