Forgiven and Free

[Below you'll find videos from both worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio and the message prepared for the services on November 19, 2023.]

Matthew 25:14-30

As we delve into the meaning of the parable Jesus tells us this morning,I want to use something C.S. Lewis writes in his classic, Mere Christianity as a kind of prism through which to view it.

“There are,” Lewis says, “only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy [that is, life with God and His people in the kingdom of heaven…No soul that seriously and constantly desires that] will ever miss it.”

This is a word of reassurance that Christians often seem to need. More than once, I’ve had people ask me, “How can I be sure I will be with Jesus in eternity?” I can tell them with confidence, “The fact that you want Jesus indicates to me that you will be with Jesus in eternity. If you didn’t believe in Him, you wouldn’t even be interested in the question.”

Today, in Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus tells us about the two kinds of people identified by Lewis: Those who cherish and thrive in the gracious will of the giving God of the universe and those who take death and condemnation because they think of God as a hard deity who is loathe to give us anything.

The parable is familiar to you. A master, representing God, about to go on a journey, calls in three servants. The word used by Jesus for these three men is δούλους, literally meaning slaves. This gives us a good understanding of their low standing in the world.

Our translation makes a hash of what happens next in the parable, talking about bags of gold. In fact, what Jesus does say is that, based on the individual slaves’ abilities, the master gives πέντε τάλαντα (five talents) to the first slave; δύο τάλαντα (two talents) to the second; and ἕν (or, one talent) to the third.

These numbers would have caused Jesus’ original hearers’ eyes to pop out. Remember that a common day laborer earned one denarius for a twelve-hour workday. A talent was the equivalent of 600,000 denarii. Whether the master gave you five or two talents or just one talent, he would be giving you, not just a servant but a slave, an enormous amount of money, Warren Buffett-kind of money. Can you imagine?

After disbursing the funds, Jesus says, the master “went on his journey…” (Matthew 25:19)

After a long time, the master returns, just as the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus, God the Son, will one day return to this world.

You remember what happens next. The man to whom the master had given five talents says, “Master,...you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’” And the master responds, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’” Similarly, the slave given two talents reports that he has made an additional two talents with the master’s gift. The master tells him, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:19-23)

Then comes the third slave. “‘Master,’ he says, ‘I knew that you are a hard man [well, he didn’t know that; that was simply what he thought of his master], harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed [notice the accusations hurled by this third man against his master, calling the master lazy and unfair]. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’”(Matthew 25:24-25)

The master takes in the third slave’s whininess and accusations and tells the slave, in effect, that if he had such a low opinion of him, the master, thinking that he harvested where He hadn’t planted seeds and reaped where he’d done no work, the slave should have done more than just give back his talent! He then orders the talent to be taken from the man and to be sent into darkness, where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth, here clearly symbolic of someone being sent to hell and eternal separation from God.

Now, I ask you to listen very carefully to what I’m going to say in the rest of the message.

In the past, I would have said–and even preached, that what Jesus is saying was, “Get busy. Use the blessings of God in ways that please God.”

Friends, this is not what Jesus is telling you today!

If you could earn a place in the Kingdom of heaven or if you could earn a better place in heaven, Jesus would not have needed to suffer and die for you.

As it is, no work you and I might do, no amount of goodness we might display, could ever compensate for our sinfulness and unrighteousness.

Only Jesus taking our sins at the cross and taking the punishment you and I deserve could ever pay the debt we owe to God for our sin.

It is only by God’s charity or grace that sinners are justified or made worthy for eternity with God and that gift does not come to us because we’ve kept busy or properly used God’s blessings: We are truly justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

It is Jesus’ goodness and not ours that saves us.

The goodness of Jesus sets us free to live new lives.

So what is Jesus telling you today?

First of all, the talents the master gives his slaves are what we call absolution, God’s forgiveness of all our sins.

There is nothing the three slaves did to earn, merit, or deserve the massive sums of money he conferred on them. Nor is there anything we can do or need to do to gain God’s absolution, forgiveness.

God’s Word tells us, “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:8)

Before you even knew you needed God’s forgiveness or that you were born dead in your sin and could only be made alive by Christ acting for you, Jesus went to the cross to save you. This is His extravagant gift to you!

The second thing Jesus is telling us is this: Jesus died to save all people from sin, death, and the eternal anguish of hell. But not all people will enter the Kingdom of heaven.

It all hinges on Who you think God is: an inflexible lawgiver or, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you believe that God is a dispenser of undeserved grace,  whether you think of God’s forgiveness as a gift or as something you must earn.

The first two slaves in Jesus’ parable understood they were the beneficiaries of undeserved grace. They didn’t see the new life their master had given them in these vast fortunes as a test or a trap. They saw the talents for what they were: treasures of grace, a chance to live without fear of failure. The master commends them both for being “good and faithful”--that is, believing, servants. They trusted that their master and his gifts to them were good. (And let’s be clear that even had the first two slaves lost every penny given to them by the master, he still would have commended them for faithfully using his gift of grace.)

Friends, when you were baptized into the Triune name of God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–you received the gifts of all the forgiveness, life, peace, and hope that an eternal God can bestow on you.

You can live your life to the full and know that whether you fall or rise, fail or succeed, live or die, you have life in the eternal kingdom of heaven that cannot be taken from you.

As you do that, God will work in your life to make it useful to you, your neighbor, and God.

That’s God’s gift to you.

It’s the same gift He gave to Mary Magdalene (once filled with seven demons), the woman at the well (who had lived in one adulterous relationship after another), the apostle Paul (who had breathed murderous threats against believers in Jesus), and Thomas, the unbeliever.

If the God we know in Jesus Christ can give absolution and freedom from death or fear of failure to them, He can give these blessings to you too!

The third slave viewed what his master gave him as an obligation he had to preserve by playing it safe. When people view forgiveness as something they must earn by playing at religion, turning the God revealed in Jesus into a grim taskmaster, Jesus will tell them, as the master effectively tells the third slave, “If that’s how you see Me and that’s how contemptuous of Me and My gifts you are, wanting to turn my gifts of grace into religious brownie points you earn, I will take My grace away and you will spend eternity learning to your regret that My love cannot be earned.”

Friends, Jesus died and rose for you.

He has set you free from the condemnation of sin and the sentence of death.

To those who receive the gift of faith in Him, He says: “God did not appoint us to suffer wrath [the very thing the third slave feared] but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9)

Today, Jesus once more gives you all the treasures of His grace–in His Word and in His body and blood–and makes you part of His everlasting kingdom.

Now, friends, live in the freedom of His forgiveness and love.

Live the life Jesus has set you free to live! Amen

The Gospel of John, November 19, 2023

[This is video of the November 19 adult Sunday School class of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The New Testament Book of James, Part 5

The Gospel of John, November 12, 2023

This past week's adult Sunday School class. After initial confusion, we tackle John, chapter 8, starting at verse 20.

The New Testament Book of James, Part 4

Ready!

[Below you'll find live stream video from worship at Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this past Sunday, and the text of the message shared during the services.]

Matthew 25:1-13

In today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 25:1-13, Jesus tells the story of ten virgins who were meant to play a role in the wedding celebrations of a bridegroom and his bride. Apparently, they were to escort the groom, his bride, and his wedding revelers to the groom’s home.

All of the women knew that the groom and his bride would appear. None of them knew when they would appear.

They simply needed to be ready whenever it happened, so that they could enter the banquet at the groom’s home, the place he had prepared for them.

The appearance of the groom and his entourage took a while. Because of the delay, all ten women fell asleep. When the announcement finally was made that the bridegroom was near, five of the women awoke prepared: they’d brought oil to keep their lamps burning. They would have the light they needed to walk through the darkness–even maybe, through the valley of the shadow of death, if necessary–to get to the celebration.

The other five women had candles in hand; but they had no oil. These foolishly unprepared women begged the five prepared women for oil.

But the five with oil, the “wise” ones, Jesus explained, could not comply with that request. If they did so, they too would run out of oil. Then nobody would be able to fulfill their part in the wedding ceremonies.

And nobody would gain entrance into the bridegroom’s home.

As you know, the five foolish virgins set out in the night to buy oil. Later on, they appeared at the locked doorway of the banquet and begged the groom, “Lord, lord, open the door to us!” But the groom refused them entrance, saying, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.”

After telling this story, Jesus says to us, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:11-13)

What is Jesus telling us in this rather sad story? The great Lutheran preacher and novelist of the last century, Bo Giertz, in one of his sermons, identified three messages we can take from Jesus’ words to us this morning.

First, Giertz says, there comes a time when it will be too late to follow Jesus.

Earlier in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus provokes the disciples to ask Him when the temple in Jerusalem and the ancient nation of Israel would be snuffed out of existence as Jesus had already told them would happen. Instead, Jesus uses their question as a way of talking about the far more important topic of this world’s end, when Jesus will return from heaven and judge the living and the dead. It’s pointless for us to speculate as to the moment of return by Jesus, the Bridegroom to His Church, which is the Bride of Christ composed of all who, by the power of the Word and the Sacraments, trust in Jesus as their God and Savior. “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” Jesus says. (Matthew 24:36)

Our call is to be ready for that moment we meet Jesus face to face, whether that moment comes at the ends of our earthly lives or, if we’re still living in this world, Jesus returns.

We will be ready to meet Jesus when we do so with oil, that is, with faith in Him.

Sometimes, the light of our faith grows weak. We become overwhelmed by life. We fall into sin, failing to love God completely or love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

But the oil in our lamps can be renewed as we regularly partake of the means Jesus has established for delivering His gracious love and salvation to you: when we remember our baptisms, when we worship with God’s people and hear His saving Word, and when we receive His body and blood, receiving the gifts of repentance, faith, and life with God.

The oil of faith will allow us to enter Jesus’ everlasting banquet even when others, who have turned a deaf ear to Jesus, are left eternally outside of His kingdom.

You and I can proclaim Christ, God the Son, as the only Way to life with God. That Word about Christ can be used by God to create faith in those to whom we tell it. But we cannot have faith for them.

As Martin Luther says, “We can shout [the gospel] into another’s ears, but everyone must himself be prepared for the time of death, for I will not be with you then, nor you with me.” For those who spurn faith in Christ, the day of Christ’s return will be too late to receive it. God-given faith in Jesus though, prepares us to meet Him and join in His joy forever!

The second thing Jesus is telling us in this parable, Giertz reminds us, is to keep watch!

Jesus tells us elsewhere, “The Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” (Matthew 24:44)

You don’t know when you may meet Jesus face to face.

You and I could be killed in an automobile crash on our way home from worship today.

We may be suddenly felled by some unexpected illness. (I certainly didn’t plan on having the widowmaker heart attack my cardiologist said should have killed me thirteen years ago.)

Jesus might return to judge the world, send the unbelieving to hell, and usher in the new heaven and new earth for believers during the Bengals-Texans game this afternoon.

You are ready to meet Jesus when you live in daily repentance and renewal. Jesus describes this lifestyle when He tells us, “​​Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

The disciple knows that saving faith in Jesus comes through hearing and receiving the Word of God as it’s given to us preached, taught, and embodied in water, bread, and wine. With Peter, we tell Jesus, there is nowhere else for us to go for life with God because Jesus alone has “the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)

Of course, God remembers that we are only dust, sinners prone to sin, living in a fallen world full of temptations, distractions, and sin.

Like all ten virgins in Jesus’ story, we grow weary.

We have to sleep, work, bathe, get kids to school, see our doctors and dentists, pay the bills, spend time on hold, fight traffic.

Just as Peter, James, and John couldn’t spend their whole lives up on the mount of Transfiguration, bathing in the glory of God 24/7, in this life, in this fallen world, we can’t be constantly receiving Christ’s Word.

But, Giertz says Jesus is telling us, just as you remain nourished right now by the meal you ate several hours ago, when you regularly receive Jesus–in weekly worship with His people and regular encounters with His Word–you will be nourished and prepared to meet Jesus face to face even when the demands and distractions of life pile up. Jesus tells us, “​​I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:51)

One day, you and I and this world will come to an end. Jesus has prepared an eternal banquet to which He has invited you and all the world. He secured your place in it by dying for your sins and those of the whole world. He secured everlasting life for you when God the Father raised Him from the dead.

You need not be afraid to meet Jesus face to face when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you turn from sin and trust in Christ now, today and every day, before that unknown moment when you meet Him. In 2 Corinthians 6:2, the apostle Paul quotes the Old Testament book of Isaiah: “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” And then, Paul says, “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”

Friends, the door to His eternal banquet is wide open to you.

Jesus brings you the free gifts of faith and life through Him now.

He freely forgives your sin declares you innocent and fit for His eternal banquet through His means of grace.

Now, you can believe in Him.

Daily repent and turn to Him as your good God and Savior.

Then, whenever you meet Him, you can do so with peace and joy and hope.

You will be ready to meet your Lord and God and live with Him forever. Amen

The New Testament Book of James, Part 3

The New Testament Book of James, Part 2

The New Testament Book of James, Part 1

We began a new online study of the New Testament book of James this evening. This is the first installment, an introduction.

The Gospel of John, October 29, 2023

[This is video from Facebook of the October 29, 2023 adult Sunday School class from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Standing on the "Alones"

[Below, you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, yesterday, Reformation Sunday, along with live stream videos of both services.]

John 8:31-36

On this Reformation Sunday, we consider an important question: What is a Lutheran?

Lutherans have always seen Christian faith, the faith commended to us in the Bible, as having three key truths: Grace alone; Faith alone; and Word alone.

What does that really mean?

When the thirty-three-year-old German monk and priest, Martin Luther, accidentally began the Reformation movement back in 1517, he found himself addressing both a religious elite who no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own ideas and traditions, and Christian masses whose allegiance to the Church was as an institution and a habit, rather than a fellowship with the living God. No wonder that the elites hated Luther or that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that anyone who saw him was authorized to kill Luther on sight!

Luther’s witness to the justification of sinful human beings by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them control or power. 

The experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. As I mentioned last Sunday, when you read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time. Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God. Or, they would make God into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they were happy. Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities. It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people to repentance and faith in Him.

We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John. Just before our lesson, Jesus foretells His crucifixion and resurrection. Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three principles of the Lutheran movement within Christ’s Church. John tells us: "Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, ’If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31-32)

Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Confessions of our movement, found in a book called The Book of Concord or Concordia, hold that Jesus is the Truth that sets us free. We believe that people are set free from sin, death, and futility, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus doesn’t say, “Perform these deeds and I’ll set you free from sin and death.” He doesn’t say, “You’re just perfect the way you are so nothing needs to be done to make you righteous, or acceptable for life with God.” Instead, Jesus tells us that we are sinners who need to be righteous and then, on the cross, through His innocent suffering and death, does the hard work of taking our sin into His body while giving His perfect righteousness to us.

He does this as a free gift, an act of grace (or charity) from God for us. We are saved by God’s grace alone. 

Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Faith is how God delivers the grace Jesus bore for us on the cross.

Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they trusted or believed in Him, literally the original Greek says "remain in My Word."

To have faith is to remain rooted in Jesus and to draw life from Him alone. This is what Jesus means when He says elsewhere, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Faith, the gift God gives by His Word, both proclaimed and given in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, overcomes our deadliest enemies: the devil, the sinful world, and our sinful selves. As Jesus tells Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.” Then Jesus asks, “Do you believe this?”

Well, Christians, do you believe this? Do I? I mean, how is it possible for self-centered, untrusting people like us to have faith in Jesus?

The Small Catechism tells us, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel [that is, the good news message that God the Father sent Jesus, God the Son, to save me from sin and death], enlightened me with His gifts [The Bible and the Sacraments], and sanctified and preserved me in the truth faith.”

In Jesus, God not only does everything needed to save me from myself, He also creates my faith in Jesus.

A Lutheran is someone who, because of God’s great grace or charity, gratefully receives the Word about Jesus that creates faith. 

Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone. Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus. The Bible, the inspired Word of God, which is about Jesus from Genesis to Revelation, points us to the life God gives through Jesus. This Word brings us life with God.

In Martin Luther’s day, the Church added to or ignored the witness about Jesus found in the Scriptures. Luther and the other Reformers said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible. Second Timothy 3:16 says: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...”

We all have our favorite sins and so we may not like the things that God calls sin. But we Lutherans believe that when the righteous, loving God of the universe and we disagree about how we should live our lives, God is right and we are wrong.

We may want to know much more than God reveals to us in Christ and in Scripture. But in the 66 books of the Bible, everything we need to know about God, about ourselves, about salvation, about how to live, and about Who can be trusted, is found.

We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism. The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work our way to heaven or to a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions. The Bible is a library of books that tells us how God reaches out to us in our sin, repents us, saves us, loves us, and wants to be reconciled to us through the Savior He sent for us. The Bible is the Word from God that has the power to change the lives of anyone who stands under its authority. The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “...the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. It was true in 33 AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all eternity.

So, what is a Lutheran? At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their eternal lives on these three  truths.

And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther who was commanded by the powers of the Church and of the State to recant or repudiate his witness for Christ, “Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to recant. God help me.” 

May God help us to be true to our Lutheran heritage, not from a commitment to tradition, but from simple faith in Jesus, the One Who has borne the cross and opened eternity for us. 

May we be true to our good confession as Lutherans that we are saved from our very real enemies–sin, death, and the devil–by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone!

Faith in the Savior Who justifies sinners, making us innocent of our sin through His death on the cross, this faith is the best way to celebrate Reformation Sunday, today and always. Amen

Love Isn't Tolerance

The desire to supplant Jesus’ lordship and to trash the authority of God’s Word still exist in our fallen world today, perhaps no more so than among people who claim to be Christians.

For example, there are Christians who want to use their faith as an excuse to act as Christian vigilantes, imposing their version of God's Law on the larger society. I've spoken against this so many times that I probably sound like a broken record. So, I won't belabor that point here.

But there are also Christians who confuse God's love for God's approval. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, they want to turn God into an indulgent grandfather who doesn't care what we do as long as we have a good time doing it.

In the name of Jesus as they want Jesus to be, these misguided Christians claim that we should forget our call to speak God's truth in love when we see friends or fellow believers veering away from God's will for us. (Ephesians 4:15) They want to forgo the message Jesus wants us to share with all: "Repent and believe in the gospel..." (Mark 1:15) (To repent means to turn away from sin and death and to turn instead to Christ Who freely forgives our sin and gives us life with God.)

What do I mean by this last point exactly?

Imagine you saw a friend or stranger about to run into a street with heavy traffic.

Would you think, "Well, the loving thing for me to do is to be tolerant of this person's idiosyncrasy. After all, if by his or her nature they like exposing themselves to unnecessary danger and probable death, love compels me to be tolerant"?

I don't think that's what you would do! (At least I hope it's not what you would do.)

At the very least, you would bellow out a warning to the person! No matter how much that person might love walking into traffic, love would compel you to warn them. Love might even compel you to try to grab and take that person to safety.

Love then, is not the same thing as tolerance.

When we see our friends engage in behavior that could sever their relationship with Christ, that finds them wandering toward contempt of the God we know in Christ, that is, when they engage in repeated, unrepentant sin, it isn't intolerant to warn them or to pray for them. It's the loving thing to do.

It's appropriate for you, as one sinner in need of repentance and faith to another sinner in need of repentance and faith, to speak God's truth in love, calling them away from sin and death, calling them to forgiveness and life through Christ alone.

In the kingdom of God given to us by Jesus Christ, that's what love does.

The Gospel of John, October 22, 2023

Here's the Facebook Live video of this past Sunday's adult Sunday School class from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. We cover John 6:6-7:9. (I know, I need to put on the gas!)