The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, Part 27

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[Below you'll find the text of yesterday's Palm Sunday sermon as well as live stream video of both worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

John 12:12-19

When it comes to disasters, natural or humanly-made, it has been an eventful week.

Tornadoes and high winds ripped through many parts of the country, including our own area, leaving some dead and many homes damaged or destroyed.

A mass shooting at a Nashville school resulted in six people being murdered, including three children.

Putin’s war on Ukraine rages on.

We gather on this Palm Sunday morning, palm fronds before us, and call out to Jesus, “Hosanna!,” which means, “Save us!”

Our cry is understandable. We need to be saved.

But the problem is that all too often, our reading of what we need to be saved from is fixed on the symptoms, rather than on the deeper issue from which all of us need to be saved.

The real issue–the deeper problem–from which we need saving is stated by the apostle John in a verse where he describes two things Christian disciples know. “We know,” John writes, “that we are children of God [that is, we have been claimed by Christ in Baptism and we have been brought to faith by the proclamation of the Gospel Word about Jesus and so, know that we are are children of God], and [we know] that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” (1 John 5:19)

That second statement–”the whole world [or the whole cosmos] is under the control of the evil one,” the devil, may surprise some people.

Of course, the God we meet in Jesus Christ is in ultimate control of the universe. Even when Jesus went to the cross, He was in control of the moment and circumstances by which that would happen.

Of course, God created the cosmos and has died and risen to take it back and set it free of sin and death.

Of course, evil has already been defeated by Jesus Christ.

But until the day when the risen and ascended Jesus returns, the devil and the sin into which he lured our first parents (and lures us) and into which you and I are born, will have the upper hand in this fallen creation. This is why in his hymn, A Mighty Fortress, reminds us that on earth, the devil has no equal and that Jesus Christ has come to be our Champion Who fights for us and saves us from the devil.

Nonetheless, this world is now under the devil’s control. This is why the devil was able to offer Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world” if Jesus would bow down and worship the devil. (Matthew 4:8-9)

Right now, this world and we ourselves are born in bondage to sin, incapable of freeing ourselves. Even baptized believers in Jesus Christ will continue to wrestle with the sinfulness that fills us and is around us until the day we die to this world.

This is the deeper problem from which all of us need to be saved. Human beings, first created in the image of God, have been decimated, our identities, personalities, and desires completely infected and controlled by, sin and the death to which it inevitably leads. That includes you and me. All of us.

If we are going to be saved from our real problem of sin and death, the half measures you and I might try will never do the job.

We may find ways to mitigate or lessen the impact of inclement weather.

We may find the proper formulation of public policies and private actions that decrease the numbers of gun killings in our country.

We may find a way to get Putin out of Ukraine.

I pray that all of these things will happen.

And the human race actually has a decent track record when it comes to solving what I would call secondary problems like these. Polio and COVID-19 were conquered. Hilter, Mussolini, and Tojo were defeated. In little more than one-hundred years, human beings have learned to fly, light up cities, farm with incredible efficiency, and even land on the moon.

But even when God answers our prayers for protection from the weather, safety for our kids, and Putin’s removal from Ukraine, as I believe will happen, the fundamental human problem will not have been solved. No human effort ever could solve our basic human problem.

The day after these issues and others like them are resolved, the ratio of human birth to death will still be 1:1.

New outbreaks of chaos will occur.

And we will continue to run up against the intractable reality of sin and death.

All our human efforts toward saving ourselves amount to little more than putting lipstick on a pig or spraying Febreeze in a garbage dump! The pig will still be a pig and garbage will still stink.

Our continuing impulse will be to worship ourselves or things in the creation–money, power, comfort, success, sex–rather than to worship God Himself. We’ll still want to break free of any accountability to God, parents, spouses, families, friends, church, government, community, country. We’ll still dislike others who rub us the wrong way to the point of murder, whether in fact, speech, or thought. We’ll still commit adultery, whether physically or in our minds. We’ll tear others down, still covet what others have.

Our biggest problem is us.

My biggest problem is me.

Your biggest problem is you.

The crowd that greets Jesus on the first Palm Sunday five days before His crucifixion seems not to have any notion that what they most need saving from is their own sin and the death it brings.

Many know about, some actually saw, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

Most know of the miracles Jesus has performed.

They sense Jesus is some sort of conquering king.

Maybe, they figure, Jesus can save them from paying taxes to the Romans, from poverty, from the authority of foreign overlords.

These kinds of things are all they have in mind–it’s often all we have in mind–when shouting, “Hosanna! Jesus, save us!”

It’s no surprise then, that many of those celebrating in today’s Gospel lesson will, in a few days, disappointed that Jesus hasn’t “saved” them as they want to be saved, call for Jesus’ crucifixion.

Just like the Palm Sunday crowd, we want a king who will do exactly what we want him (or her) to do for us and not be critical of the sins we like doing.

We want kings who will save us from what we think we need saving from and leave our favorite sins alone.

We want kings who don’t call us to go to the cross with Him so that we can be saved from our old selves, so that our old selves can die on Jesus’ cross, allowing the new self to rise.

But Jesus will not be a king on our terms.

He won’t save us from little things and leave us dead in our sin, separated from God forever.

So, Jesus comes to you again this morning.

He comes to you in His Word and in the bread and in the wine.

He comes to save you.

He invades this sanctuary the way He once invaded Jerusalem, the King of all kings, come to claim all that has been lost to Him through sin.

He comes to save you from condemnation for your sin.

He comes to save you from your love of sin.

He comes to save you from death and the dominion of the devil.

He will say shortly after the events recorded in our Gospel lesson today: “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.” (John 12:31)

The devil and sin and death have no power over those who, by the power and at the prompting of the Gospel Word about Jesus delivered to us by the Holy Spirit, turn from sin and turn to Christ, the Saving One!

As we cry our Hosannas to Jesus today, He takes all our sins upon Himself. He walks in here among us as He once walked into Jerusalem and He takes all your sins–all our sins–on Himself.

And then He goes to the cross, taking the cross we deserve and the death we deserve so that sin and death have no power over us any longer!

Sin and death have no power over you at all! Not even just a little bit! Jesus Christ died and rose to make you righteous, free of sin, clean. And when Jesus says you are clean, you are clean, fit for life with God now and for all eternity!

Jesus saves us from ourselves, moving us from the darkness and futility that marks our path on even the best and healthiest and most joyful days in this world this world can offer. And He promises that we will be with Him in the perfection of the new heaven and the new earth!

Friends, Jesus hears your cries of Hosanna–”Lord, save me!”–even when you yourself don’t fully understand what it is you need to be saved from.

Because of what He did for you on the cross, when He said, “It is finished,” I can tell you, as He commissioned His whole Church to proclaim, “Your sins are forgiven.” (John 7:48)

Your old self has been crucified and is being crucified each day as you walk with Jesus.

All your sins are forgiven, conquered by Jesus on the cross, His victory confirmed by His resurrection.

Jesus has come to us once more today to answer your prayers to be saved.

He assures you that you are saved.

You are forgiven.

You are His.

As you take refuge in Him, know that you are saved now and eternally.

Amen

Am I Saved?

Here's today's online worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Have a good and blessed week!

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Acts, Chapter 10

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Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Acts 2:29-3:26

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Romans, Chapter 10

Ten Healed, One Saved

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio on Sunday, October 13.]

Luke 17:11-19

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 17:11-19, is particularly well-known among Lutheran Christians, I think because it often serves as the text for our Thanksgiving celebrations.

The lesson does talk about being thankful.

But if we come away from this passage thinking that if we’re thankful, Christ will save us from sin and death, we completely miss the point. 

Such an interpretation would turn Jesus into a lawgiver who demands that we earn salvation. 

But, good Lutherans that we are, we know that we cannot be saved and will not be saved by anything that we do. Nor can we be made holy by anything that we do. 

To those tempted to think that we can be saved by works, the Scripture speaks clearly. 

Romans 3:21-22, for example: "But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” 

Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

If we could be saved from sin, death, and futility by good things that we do or by the attitudes we adop, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to go to the cross to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. 

And we would have no need of the Word that makes it possible for us to trust in Him or to be claimed by Him in Holy Baptism, where the Word of Jesus meets the water, or to receive Him in Holy Communion, where that Word meets the bread and the wine to yield the body and blood of Jesus Himself. 

Christ has done everything needed to save you and me from sin and death in His own death and resurrection. 

Then the Holy Spirit, preaching the Word about Christ to us in the Word and in the Sacraments, brings us the gift of faith, the capacity to believe that Christ did this even for you and me. 

This is how we are saved and how we are set apart to grow as people of God: by God’s grace through a faith in Christ constructed within us by the Holy Spirit. 

Listen: God doesn’t need our thanks. 

God doesn’t need our faith in Christ. 

But when we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ, we will be thankful. 

Thankfulness to God will be present in those who have been saved from sin and death, saved to live with God for all eternity.

I remember seeing this movingly exemplified in a man at a funeral visitation years ago. I watched him as he showed particular empathy to a young widow whose husband had died suddenly and tragically. Later, this man and I talked. He himself was a widower who had lost his wife about ten years earlier. He had been a devoted husband and her death had devastated him. But he had the hope of the gospel. I remember him telling me, “Pastor, every night before I go to bed, I kneel down on my bedroom floor and I thank God that He loves me and saves me even though I’m a sinner.” 

This man wasn’t trying to earn brownie points with God (or me). He wasn't abasing himself and serving up a fake humble pie. His words were the expressions of a man in whom God’s great grace given in Christ had created a great faith in Christ that resulted in great thankfulness to Christ.

We see this very phenomenon happen in a seemingly unlikely person in today’s gospel lesson. Take a look at it, please. Verse 11: “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’”

In those days, you know, lepers were forced to move away from their families and communities for fear that others might be afflicted with the same often disfiguring skin condition. They lived in colonies on the edges of towns, dependent on people who, from a distance, might bring them food or other necessities. This particular colony of ten included both Jesus’ countrymen and at least one Samaritan. Samaritans were, as you know, often hated and disdained by Jesus’ fellow Jews. But when people go through common horrors, the petty prejudices we stoke when we don’t feel vulnerable often evaporate. I have often seen bigoted people with loved ones hovering on the point of death in hospital ICUs bond with the families of other ICU patients despite differences in their colors or religions that would have, under different circumstances, have had nothing to do with each other. When life knocks you down and reacquaints us with the fact that we are not invincible, it’s easier for us to see that we are all human beings made in God’s image. So, it was with these lepers all desperate for Jesus’ help.

Verse 14: “When [Jesus] saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.” Jewish ritual and civil law required that a priest had to certify that a leprous person had been cured before she or he could resume their normal lives or be in worship at the temple or the local synagogue. That’s behind Jesus’ directive to the men.

But more to the point of today’s gospel lesson, we should ask ourselves, “What exactly did the lepers do to deserve to be healed?” 

We might all ask: “What did I do, what could I do to be saved from sin, death, and darkness?” 

I could ask myself a similar question: “What did I do that God spared me from a heart attack that should have killed me?” 

The answer to these questions and others like them that we might ask is the same: NOTHING! 

There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s grace, His undeserved favor, or any of His blessings. 

As the ten lepers should have learned that day on the frontier between Galilee and Samaria, the blessings God gives through Jesus are not deserved and cannot be earned.

Ten lepers were cleansed--or healed--that day. But only one of them, it seems, came to believe in Jesus as God the Son, the One and the only One we need for salvation from our sins and life with God that starts now and goes on in perfection beyond the grave. Nine seemed to view their return to normalcy as only their just due, taking good health as something God or the universe owed them, even though this is a fallen world in which ill-health or tragedy or difficulty can strike any person at any time. But one man had a different perspective.

Verse 15: “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’”

Those last words of Jesus in this passage are the key to understanding the whole thing. 

Jesus tells the Samaritan first, “Rise…” Here, in the original Greek in which Luke and the other New Testament writers composed their works, Jesus tells the man, “Ἀναστὰς…” This is a variation on a noun commonly used in the New Testament, anastasis. It often means resurrection. Jesus is telling the thankful Samaritan more than to rise up from the ground. “Rise,” Jesus is telling him, “from sin and death and futility. Rise!” And then Jesus says, “go,” go about your new life.

Now comes the absolutely most important thing Jesus says in this whole passage: “your faith has made you well.” 

Now, we may think, “Weren’t the other nine made well too?” 

No, they were only purged of their leprosy. 

The word Jesus uses of the end to all ten men’s leprosy is ἐκαθαρίσθησαν, meaning they were made clean. But when Jesus tells the grateful Samaritan man “your faith has made you well,” He actually says, “Your faith has saved you.” The word our translation renders as made you well is sozo, which means save. 

Friends, you can bet your whole life on this fundamental truth: WHETHER YOU ARE IN GOOD HEALTH OR BAD, WHETHER YOU LIVE OR DIE, YOUR FAITH IN CHRIST SAVES YOU!

Ten of the lepers were healed, but only one of them was saved. 

Ten received grace; one had faith. 

Ten heard the saving Word of God in Christ; one believed. 

Ten had the kingdom of God come to them; only one entered that kingdom. 

The thankful Samaritan wasn’t saved because he was thankful; he was thankful because Christ had saved him by giving him the gift of faith. He came to faith in Christ the same way we come to faith in Christ: His Word comes to us and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we believe!

Thankfulness is a hallmark of all disciples of Jesus. The Samaritan was so overwhelmed by God’s grace and goodness that not giving praise to God and falling at Jesus’ feet would have been unthinkable to him. 

Is it that way for us? I know that it isn't always for me.

In speaking of Psalm 147:12, which directs God’s people to “Extol the Lord...praise your God,” Martin Luther observed, “We have to be yelled at before we start praising the Lord. Even animals don’t live that shamefully! Pigs recognize the person who gives them their food. They’ll run after her and cry to her. But the world doesn’t even recognize God, let alone thank and praise him…”

It was based on these words of Luther that we used to tell our kids that the reason we prayed at mealtimes was so that we wouldn't be less than pigs. One day when our kids were about seven and four, we were out at some restaurant. The server brought us our food and Ann and I set out, as you do with younger kids, to cut up their portions and just get them generally ready to eat. Then we dove in. At that point, Philip, the older of the two realized we hadn't prayed and said, "We're pigs!"
When the Word of God came to the leprous Samaritan, he was desperate enough, helpless enough, and vulnerable enough, that when God’s undeserved grace came to him through Jesus, he proved to be precisely the kind of good soil that Jesus says elsewhere is needed for the seed of faith to take root and grow. 

The gift of faith in Christ made him thankful for being healed and that faith made him well; it saved him. 

May we always be desperate enough, helpless enough, and vulnerable enough for faith to take root in us, to grow in us, to make us eternally well, right with God. 

And may we always be thankful. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]