Pentecost XVI (Proper 20 A) [Matthew 20:1-16] (24-Sep-2017)

This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 10.30am.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.

Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, send us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to all of us that we may hear well. Amen.

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus tells the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. In the first part of our reading we read: The kingdom of heaven is like master of a house going out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ HE said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

Now from this parable, we learn some wonderful things. We can see God our Father like a master of a house, and we Christians are the labourers in his vineyard. We learn in this parable how God goes about calling people. We also learn what kind of a master he is, and we also learn about what he calls us to.

So how does God call us? He calls us through his Word. We see the master of the house in this parable constantly and regularly going out and calling more and more workers into his vineyard. God the Father constantly does this. He is always sending out his Word, and he is constantly calling people. In fact, we read in the Scripture that God the Father sent his Son into the word to do exactly that. We read in John 3:17: God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Then Jesus sent out his apostles, and says: As the Father sent me, so also I am sending you. And then there are pastors who are called to carry on this teaching work of the apostles. And in fact, all Christians—wherever God has called them—are sent into the world as people who carry His word in their hearts and on their lips. You can see that God the Father is always sending people, Jesus is sending, the Holy Spirit sends. And what does He send people for? To speak his word. In Luke 24, after Jesus had risen from the dead, he told his disciples that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. Also St Paul says about himself and his fellow workers: We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of God, be reconciled to God. You also might know that parable of Jesus, where he tells of a king calling people to his son’s wedding banquet, and he constantly sends out a servant over there, another servant over here, and so on.

Can you see? God wants his Word to go out. And if anyone is a Christian, it is because we have heard the Word of God. God has send his Word out from heaven to be spoken on earth, people like you have believed it, and that is a wonderful gift and privilege of God.

Now, also, we learn here how wonderful God our heavenly Father is. He is constantly making an effort to save us, just like the master constantly goes out to gather more workers. He is constantly calling us, he is jealous for our souls and he doesn’t want them to belong to anyone else. And at the end of the day, he promises a wonderful reward. He says: Go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you. He is a faithful master, and he looks after us, cares about us, and wants to shower his gifts upon us.

We also learn from this parable what God calls us to. We are called into his kingdom, into his vineyard, onto his own property, and we are also called into his service. Now, if we were a labourer and we were looking for a job, it would be a wonderful privilege to work in a famous vineyard, like Penfolds, and be involved in making Grange Hermitage. (Of course, you might have to move to a place like South Australia to have such an honour!) In the same way, it is simply a wonderful privilege to be on God’s own property, to be in his vineyard, and to be one of his workers. This is the wonderful joy of our faith, to have been called by God through his Word!

But also, God has called us to work. In a vineyard, there are many jobs to do. The grapes need to be inspected for diseases and pests and ripeness. The grapes might need to be treated. When the time is right, the grapes need to be harvested, and put into presses, and crushed. The fermenting process needs to happen and to be monitored, and the finished wine needs to be bottled and sold. There can be no lazy workers in a vineyard.

And so in the same way, as Christians, God calls us into his service, and he calls us to work. Our faith is not simply a tree that is stuck in the ground and does nothing, but it produces all kinds of fruit. Faith is something that is productive. In Galatians 5, we read: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We also read that wonderful passage in Ephesians 2, where St Paul says: By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. These are the verses that many of us know, but then he also says: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Now the fruit of our faith, and our works as Christians, are not things with which we earn God’s grace, or his favour. He has already called you into the vineyard. He is not holding auditions to see who the best and hardest workers are, before he employs you. He has already called you. Our works have nothing to do with earning our way to heaven. Our works are simply what we do as Christians—just as working in the vineyard is simply what the labourers do once they are called, and it is their joy and the privilege to work. We don’t boast of our work, but as Jesus says: So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’

So you can see how it’s a natural thing for us to be productive and fruitful as Christians. In our Gospel reading, the master doesn’t want anyone standing around in the marketplace on some everlasting smoko being idle. Even John the Baptist pushes us very sharply, and says: Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. We are not saved by being fruitful, but we can lose the faith by being unfruitful.

And so, what kind of work is there to be done in the Lord’s vineyard? Where should we start? Jesus gives us a wonderful word of encouragement when he says: The harvest is plentiful and the labourers are few. Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his vineyard. Jesus does not call us to panic and fret and madly rush around, but to pray. Prayer sounds like such an easy work and almost sounds a bit uninteresting. But it is hard work, and rewarding work. How do we learn the trade of working in a vineyard, if we don’t talk to our master about the trade? He has to show us the ropes. The most important work in a vineyard is all that inspecting. The harvest is a big flurry at the end, but how do you know if it’s the right time to pick, how do you know if your grapes are all growing nicely and healthily if you don’t go and inspect and check that everything is going right? Prayer is a bit like that – we go and look at things, and then we tell Jesus about it. We give him a little report, and he—like a master winegrower—then shows us exactly what he will do about it. We inspect our own faith, and we ask him to strengthen it. We look at our fellow Christians, and we ask Jesus to strengthen them, and we try to encourage them and we build our fellow Christians up. We see our neighbours who are unbelievers, and we tell Jesus about them too, and pray for their conversion, and we pray that their hearts and ears might be opened, and that we might have an opportunity and the courage and the words to speak a good word to them. And so, we work with our heavenly Father, we work with our Lord Jesus, and we work with the Holy Spirit, and we learn the family trade, the family business, and it is a privilege to be associated with their label, and their brand.

We now come to the next part of our reading. Jesus says: When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the labourers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

Here in the reading, there have been some workers who have worked all day, and they see that the ones who were hired at 5pm get the same pay as them, and they get a bit ticked off! We read: They thought they would receive more. They grumbled at the master of the house.

Now, let’s step back a moment. Let’s say someone has a regular everyday job, working at Bob Jane T-mart, or McDonalds, or Aldi, or whatever, and they do a day’s work. That pay-cheque that they receive at the end of the day is a gift from God. You might have worked hard, but your income is still a gift. And so, what a privilege it is, that while we work at Bob-Jane, or McDonalds, or Aldi, or as a nurse, or teacher, or whatever, we are working for God, and then we are paid not simply by our employer, but by God through our employer. Or if we have our own business, we should remember it is not our business, but it belongs to God and it is for him to grow and expand it and make is successful. Apart from employment, we might also be a father or a mother, a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter, a grandpa, a grandma, and in just simply doing what Christians do in those callings, in those vocations, we are working for God, and what a privilege it is.

Now, what happens in our reading, is that the workers who have worked hard take their eyes off the privilege of being a worker there, and they turn their eyes to the quality and strength of their own work, and what they think they deserve. It’s not about the wine label any more—it’s simply about their pockets. Can you imagine a well-paid worker at Penfolds complaining about his pay? People would say: Hey! You’re at the top! You work for Penfolds. Or a well-paid mechanic who works for Lambourghini complaining. All the other mechanics would say: I always dreamed of working for Lambourghini! These workers in God’s – own – vineyard—listen to that!--think they deserve more, because they worked harder, even though at the beginning of the day, they entered into a work contract that they thought was fair. They were happy to work for a denarius. But now they are angry, and they grumble against their master.

Now there are many people who grumble against God. They think God is unfair. People say to Christians: Are you saying that if Adolf Hitler after a lifetime of killing half of Europe became a believer in Jesus in his last dying moments, and if Mother Teresa after a life-time of hard works decided to pack in the Christian faith and give it all up at the last moment, that Hitler would be saved and Mother Teresa wouldn’t? And we would have to say: Yes, that’s exactly what we believe. Because you see salvation is not about works. Good works are good, because they’re good. They don’t make us good. God saves us by faith even though we are bad. People think this is not fair, but if God were only fair, if he were only just, then all of us would be condemned, and none of us would be saved. The fact that God is also good and gracious and merciful means that we can be saved after all, despite our sin and our failure.

You might remember when the prodigal son came home and his father put on a wonderful banquet for him, and celebrated, what did his older brother do? He grumbled. He thought his father was unfair. And he sulked. But his father said: Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. Let those words sink in: Your heavenly Father says to you, My son, my daughter, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. You might have worked hard in the Lord’s vineyard all your life, and endured many sufferings for Christ, and carried many burdens and ridicule and even persecution. But what happens if someone receives Jesus as the Saviour minutes or hours or days just before their death? If God wants to kill the fattened calf for them, shouldn’t we celebrate? If the whole of heaven rejoices, shouldn’t we join in? If the angels rejoice over one sinner who repents, shouldn’t we?

And so in our reading, these workers who had worked all day, complain about the fact that the master made the last worker equal to us. But didn’t they know? Those workers were always equal to them. If you are a hard worker in God’s kingdom, you are still equal insofar as you are a sinner with every other sinner in the world. And sometimes we forget that, and we think that we are so good and so worthy, and those people over there are so bad and so unworthy. We think we are without sin. And those who are without sin, always want to throw the first stones!

So, we learn here that those of us who work hard can fall. It is possible to lose the faith, and look at God’s goodness with an evil eye. Even our hard work can become a dead false god that we start to worship instead of the living God. And we also learn here those of us who are fallen cannot earn God’s grace at all. It is all God’s gift, and God’s gift alone. St Paul says: There is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

And so we learn that we are chosen by God not because our goodness, but because of his goodness. God has chosen you, he has elected you, not because he saw ahead of time that you would believe and trust in him, and then chooses you because of that. Actually, he does see things ahead of time, but he does not choose you because of the goodness that he knows he is going to see in you. He chooses you because of His goodness and His grace.

And so in our reading the master says: Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or is your eye bad because I am good? So the last will be first, and the first last.

Listen to these words: I choose to give. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Our whole salvation rests on these words.

God chose to give you his Son, and to give him up in death for your sins. He chose to give. He chose to baptise you and to call you through his word. He chose to pour out on you the Holy Spirit. He has chosen to give you the body and blood of Jesus in the holy Supper. He has chosen to give you the forgiveness of sins, and the promise of the resurrection of the body and everlasting life. All these things belong to God. And isn’t God allowed to do what he chooses with what belongs to him! Let’s thank our heavenly for his choosing, for his grace, and for his goodness. Amen.

Heavenly Father, what a privilege it is to be called into your vineyard. Strengthen us in faith, and help us to be useful workers in your service. Teach us to thank you and praise you for your wonderful gifts of grace, which you have given to us through Jesus. Amen.

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Hello readers... I've decided to try a new format: instead of having a separate post for audio, I've decided to put everything in the one post. I hope everything works as it should. Please contact me if it doesn't work. Stephen.

Pentecost XV (Proper 19 A) [Matthew 18:21-35] (17-Sep-2017)

This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 10.30am.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

The servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant forgave him the debt.

Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, send us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to all of us that we may hear well. Amen.

I.                   We are reluctant to forgive people.

We sinners don’t find it easy to forgive people. We are reluctant to forgive people. Last week, in our gospel reading we were reading about Jesus’ advice to his disciples about how they should go about reconciling with people. 

And in today’s reading, we read: Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.” In other words, Jesus is saying to the person, forgive the person, and don’t stop. Don’t count. Just keep forgiving, again and again.

Now this is the topic of our whole reading today. Jesus is talking about forgiving other people. And this topic comes up in the Lord’s Prayer, where it says: Forgive us our sins [or trespasses], as we forgive those who sin [or trespass] against us. And so as Peter looks at his own capacity to forgive—maybe he’s prepared to forgive seven times at a stretch—but Jesus sets the bar much higher: seventy-seven times. Jesus shows us his great capacity to forgive, but our great weakness to forgive. We do not have this capacity in ourselves to forgive, it must come to us from Jesus. Without Jesus, we can’t forgive.

In our reading today, we read about a king who forgives a servant’s debt. But once the servant refuses to forgive his fellow servant, Jesus even issues a very strict and very harsh warning at the end of the reading: We read: Then the master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

These are very harsh and very sharp words indeed from Jesus. When we refuse to forgive others, we become hardened to God’s forgiveness. Jesus even threatens us with hell here, because our debt is endless, and we can never, ever pay God off.

But this brings us to the second part of our sermon, where we learn about

II.                 The forgiveness of sins.

Jesus says: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

Now this is a tremendous passage which gives us some powerful comfort. Look at what the master does in this passage. There is a debt, which the servant can’t pay, which is ten thousand talents. A talent was about 20 years wages for a labourer. A labourer’s yearly wage in Australia can be around $50,000 or so—times that by 20 is ten billion dollars in today’s money. And this man’s not a wealthy man—he is just a servant. This is an impossible debt to pay off. Even selling himself and his wife and family into slavery is not even going to pay off the debt.

But the master forgives him the debt. And get this—not only is the man released of his debt, but he doesn’t receive any punishment for it. The master could have forgiven him the debt, but then put him in jail so that he won’t do it again. No—he does nothing of the sort. The man is free from guilt, and he is free from punishment.

Now, have you ever heard of people speak about a thing called “karma”? The idea of karma has its origins in Hinduism, and this is where people are always judging people when things go badly for them, and they say: “it must be their karma. They must have deserved it”. Karma is a terrible idea, and it turns people into such hateful people. If the teaching of karma had its own statue in town, I would suggest that we would daily go and throw some tomatoes, or mud, or dung at it, so that it topples over! Some people say: “You made your bed, now you sleep in it.” Some people also say: “He got his come-uppance.” “What goes around comes around”, and this kind of thing.

Now God is not like this at all. Sure, sometimes it happens that our sin has earthly consequences. But when we turn to God, we know that any earthly consequences of our sins will just melt away once we have died. And earthly consequences are not a sign of God’s curse, or his punishment. This may be our cross to bear, but it isn’t our punishment. For example, someone may become a Christian in gaol, and they will still have to serve out their sentence, but they know that their sin is forgiven by God. St Paul says: There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

When Jesus died on the cross for you, he took upon himself your guilt, your debt, but he also took upon himself your punishment. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, we read: For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin. This means that even though Jesus had no sin, and was completely and totally sinless, he took all of your sin upon himself, and died for it, just as if he were the worst sinner on earth. But then in Galatians 3:13, it says: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. So Jesus didn’t just become sin for us, but he also became a curse for us. Becoming a curse means he took on himself the punishment. So you can see that Jesus didn’t die for us in such a way that he forgives us, but still punishes us. No—he forgives us, he cancels our debt, and he sets us free, and doesn’t punish us. Our debt is on Jesus, and our punishment is on Jesus.

We also read about this in Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament. It says: He was pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. When Jesus died, he completely wiped away our transgressions, our iniquities. He brings us peace and healing. But he also takes the punishment, he is pierced, he is crushed, upon him is the chastisement, and he is wounded.

So this is a really wonderful, comforting word of God for us. It means that in the reading, there is no need any more for the servant to be sold. And we learn this from other readings in the bible too. When the prodigal son returns to his father, he doesn’t have to pay back all the money he squandered. He is received back with open arms! His father doesn’t flog his son, or belt him, or lecture him, but there is only joy, only celebrating! When then shepherd leaves the 99 sheep in the field and goes and finds his lost sheep, he comes home and celebrates. He doesn’t chain the sheep up and break its legs so that he doesn’t run off again! There is no punishment, there is only celebration. In John chapter 8, we read about a woman who is caught in the act of adultery. All the people want to shame her, and even stone her to death. But Jesus says: Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. And then, they all left. And Jesus didn’t then punish her himself, and put a ball and chain around her foot. He said: Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.

This is the real heart of our reading, that when the master forgives his servants debt, he also releases him from any punishment, or retribution. There is a big red stamp that comes down on this servant’s account, that says: PAID IN FULL. And the same goes for us. Jesus has died for you, and over the list, the account of your sins and debts to God, there is a big red stamp made with his holy precious blood that says: PAID IN FULL. And paid means “paid”. In Isaiah, we read where an angel comes to the prophet with a burning coal and says: Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.

Now, we come to our third part of our reading, which is about

III.              Forgiving others.

We read: But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

Here we see the servant has been freed from his debt, but now that he is let off the hook, he thinks to himself, “That was a close call! I better make sure that I never have to go through all that again.” A debt of hundred denarii is a very small debt compared with the 10,000 talents.

In Matthew 6:14, we read about the Lord’s Prayer: For if you forgive others their trespasses, you heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. So what does this mean? It means, that if you forgive others, it means that you have a wonderful comfort and assurance that your sins are forgiven in heaven. But we might think: Hang on… aren’t we forgiven freely, by grace, without our works? Yes, you’re right. Forgiving others doesn’t earn you forgiveness with God. God doesn’t forgive you because of your works in general, or even because you have forgiven other people. He forgives you completely and totally freely, without any conditions whatsoever, out of pure grace, because His Son has died for you, and because He has promised it. That’s it. But he wants to encourage you to forgive other people, so that when you do forgive others, this can be a little sign for you, a confirmation and an assurance, that your sins are forgiven by God. So Jesus says in Luke 6:37: Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Jesus wants to encourage us when someone has wronged us to forgive them, and when we do this, we know that this forgiveness that we pass on to them came to us from God. St John says: We love because he first loved us.

Now, at the end of the parable, Jesus says: And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

Now, I don’t know about you, but those words really cut me to the heart: from your heart. You have trouble forgiving people, don’t you? You say: “Forgive and forget”, but you know deep down that you don’t forget. In Jeremiah 31:34 God says: I will forgive their iniquities and remember their sin no more. How can we completely forget the wrongs that people have done to us?

Let me explain something here. In English, “remembering” and “forgetting” often means something that we do in our heads, or in our minds. It has to do with our memories. But in Hebrew, remembering means something that you do. So for example, when Joseph was in prison, he interpreted the dreams of two men. One man was released from prison and went to work for Pharoah, and Joseph said: Remember me, when it is well with you, and do me the kindness to mention me to Pharoah, and so get me out of this house. Remember here, doesn’t mean that the man should simply think about Joseph in prison, but he means that he should actually go and say something to Pharoah. Another example is in 1 Samuel, where it talks about the prophet’s Samuel’s parents, Elkanah and Hannah, who had wanted a child for many years. We read: Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered here. And in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. When it says, the Lord remembered her, it means he actually did something for her and made her pregnant. Another example is in the Lord’s Supper, when Jesus says: Do this in remembrance of me. It doesn’t mean that we simply think about Jesus in our heads while we eat nothing but ordinary bread and wine with our mouths. Remembering here means doing something: it means eating his body and drinking his blood in remembrance of him. Or what about the thief on the cross? He says: Remember me when you come into your heaven. He doesn’t mean think about me, when you’re in heaven and I’m in hell. He means, bring me to heaven with you! In English too, sometimes we talk like this, like if someone has a wedding anniversary. If a man doesn’t do anything, his wife will say: “Um… did you forget something today?” And he’ll say, “Yes, I remembered.” But that’s not good enough! He has to do something: he has to congratulate her, kiss her, give her a card, chocolate, breakfast in bed, flowers, or whatever else people do on their wedding anniversary. Remembering the anniversary means doing something.

So when it says that God will not remember our sins, it doesn’t mean that he has a bad memory. It means that he won’t do anything about them. He won’t act on them, he won’t punish us for them. Psalm 103 says: He does not deal with us according to our sins. And so, we might have bad memories about something that someone did to us, but forgiving them from our hearts doesn’t mean that we suddenly have memory loss, but it means that we don’t act on it, we don’t punish them for it, we don’t think up ways to make their lives miserable so that we feel better.

Luther says this really well in the Small Catechism: We pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not look at our sins, or deny our prayer because of them. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He would give them all to us by grace, for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.

Do you see those words: “gladly do good”? God gives us everything we need every day. He gives us our daily bread. But when we sin, he still gives us our daily bread, and doesn’t hold it back from us. Now we Christians also do good to those people who are good to us, but we are also called to forgive and do good to our enemies and those who hate us and those who have sinned against us and hurt us. Sometimes this takes strength that we feel we don’t have, but Jesus will provide it for you when you ask him.

Think about a person who has hurt you deeply—Jesus died them just as he died for you. It’s not Jesus’ desire to punish him—it is yours?

When we receive absolution, and the forgiveness of sins, this absolution begins to take effect in our life. And as it takes effect, hatred begins to melt away. We are saved by faith alone, without any works of ours. But then this faith, like a tree, grows up and begins to produce all kinds of fruits. When Jesus was on the cross, he prayed: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. The first Christian martyr, Stephen, when he was being stoned to death, said: Lord, do not hold this sin against them. In other words: don’t punish them for this, he prays. And what happened? Well, one of the men there was Paul, and the Lord didn’t hold his sin against him, but appeared to him on the road to Damascus, converted him, changed his heart, and then he wrote the most wonderful books in the bible which teach us about how God doesn’t hold our sins against us, just as Stephen prayed.

Now who has hurt you personally? Or who are the persecutors of Christianity? There are many people at the moment who have a lot of hate-speech to say about Christians. Why don’t we pray for them, and for their forgiveness? Have you ever prayed about the members of ISIS who have killed many Christians in Iraq, and even crucified two-year-olds on soccer ovals? Those people need our prayers for forgiveness too.

Even when we come together as a church, one of the first things we do as a church is pray for forgiveness. Our whole life-blood as Christians is the forgiveness of sins. When we receive the Lord’s Supper, we drink Christ’s blood for the forgiveness of sins. We receive forgiveness, and our whole mission as Christians is to forgive others. Let’s pray that Jesus may help us in this and inspire and change our hearts, so that we may forgive those who have sinned against us. Amen.

Lord Jesus, thank you for cancelling our debt to us, and taking on yourself our guilt and our punishment. Let this forgiveness sink in to our hearts and inspire everything that we do, so that we may spread this forgiveness to others. Amen.

Pentecost XIV: Audio Sermon (10-Sep-2017)

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Pentecost XIV (Proper 18 A) [Matthew 18:15-20] (10-Sep-2017)

This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am (lay-reading), and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 9am.

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, send us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to all of us that we may hear well. Amen.

In our reading today, Jesus teaches many amazing things, and so many practical lessons for our everyday life. He teaches us about how to go about reconciling with others, he teaches us about how we receive the forgiveness of sins on this earth, and also he also promises to be present in the church and to be with us.

Let’s come to our first part today, where Jesus teaches us about

I.                   Reconciliation.

Today, in our reading, Jesus gives us some very helpful words of wisdom that have to do with the eighth commandment, which is: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.

In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther wrote something about this eighth commandment. He says:

What is the Eighth Commandment? You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbour, betray him, slander him or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.

I’d like us to think about a couple of things about this as we read our Gospel reading for today: In the church, one of the ways that we stir up conflicts, and can often break this commandment very badly, is through gossip. Gossip is a very terrible thing anywhere, but especially in the church. We have so many good things to say in the church—the church has been given the good news of salvation to speak to the whole creation. That’s why it’s such a terrible shame when we use our God-given mouths for the wrong purposeKing David in Psalm 120 knew what this was like, and he groaned and prayed strongly against this, and said: Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. The apostle James has a lot to say about taming the tongue in his letter, chapter 3. He says: How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness…It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

We should take these words very seriously to heart, and realise just what damage we do in the world, and to the church, when we use our tongues for evil. Thank God that Jesus uses his tongue to forgive us—and don’t we so desperately need to hear that forgiveness spoken constantly!

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus shows us that in this world—and even among his own people in the church—there are going to be conflicts. People are going to disagree, people are going to sin against each other. And so Jesus says: If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

In Australia, people have a really difficult time reconciling with each other. There are lot of people who have a falling out, there are a lot of families who don’t talk to each other, and there are many people who then go around and talk about people they don’t like behind their back.

Instead of talking behind people’s back, Jesus wants us to talk to them to their face. He says: If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. How simple this advice is, and yet how difficult it can be! It puts us in a vulnerable position, and it might require us to have a difficult conversation, but when we do this, we know we have the blessing of Jesus in doing it. Especially here, Jesus is speaking about if someone sins, not just in general, but against you. You might have hurt someone yourself, in which case it’s a wonderful privilege to go to another person as a Christian and confess it to them. But someone also might have hurt you, and Jesus encourages us to go and clear the air, and bring the matter out of the darkness into the light.

Many people don’t like to be told what to do. Many people think that what they do is their private business, even if it affects other people. This is not the case—it’s not you, or anyone else, who invents the standards for morality, ethics, or for holiness. That’s God’s job—he sets the standard. And so, it means that the way we behave and act as Christians does not come from our own ideas or feelings or minds, but it comes from God’s word. And if it comes from God’s word, it means that we often don’t know it all, and we need to learn it. We Christians are therefore called by Jesus here to teach and encourage each other. Jesus says: If your brother sins against you [or your sister!], go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Sometimes, we might think: there’s no point in going and doing that, because they won’t listen anyway. But listen to what Jesus says: If he listens. If… You can’t make a person listen. Only God can change the person’s heart, but it is your job to tell him his fault.

You might know the story of Queen Esther. She wanted to the go to the King to plead for the Jewish people. But she knew that if she went into the king’s presence, that she could be killed for doing so. But her Uncle Mordecai says to her: Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? And Esther says: I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish. And it is a special miracle from God, that the king does listen, and Esther doesn’t die after all!

The same should go for us if we have it on our mind to go and tell someone their fault, as Jesus says here. This is a wonderful thing that Jesus is calling us to do, but it is his work to open their ears so that they hear, not ours. Paul writes to Timothy: God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. When we are called upon to do this, let’s pray to Jesus that the person’s ears may be opened to hear, so that they repent. And if someone needs to come and tell us our fault, let’s pray that Jesus may open our ears too! Jesus says: If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Now, Jesus gives us some further advice, if the person doesn’t listen. He says: But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Jesus encourages us to bring someone (or a couple of people) along with us, so that you can talk to the person together. Notice, also that Jesus always wants us to deal with the person, not behind their back, but to their face again. If someone has sinned against us, the right thing to do is to deal with the matter in their presence, and to deal with the person personally.

Then Jesus says: And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Here Jesus says, only when you have tried to convince the person in private and repeatedly, do you then make the matter public. And the church can speak as a whole to the person publicly and in some official way. If they still don’t listen, Jesus says: Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In other words, treat the person like an unbeliever, they have lost the faith.

Now, how do we treat unbelievers? Do we walk on the opposite side of the street, and treat them like lepers? No—of course not! As soon as the person shows the slightest sign of remorse and repentance, then we welcome them with open arms, just as the father did to his wayward son, and runs to meet him down the road, and just as the Jesus did with the thief on the cross who asked to be remembered by Jesus when he entered his kingdom.

We learn here that we Christians need to watch ourselves, and not get lazy, as if it’s not important what we do or how we act. We need to persevere in the faith, and make every effort to lead a Christian life, and not harden our hearts when someone points out to us our faults. It’s not enough for us to stand for a moment in faith, but to walk in faith every step of our lives.

We now come to the centre of our reading, where Jesus teaches us about

II.                 The forgiveness of sins in the church on earth.

Jesus says: Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

A couple of weeks ago, we read where Jesus said these words to Peter. But in our reading today, we see that Jesus never intended for these keys to be given only to one person, but he sent out all of his apostles with the same keys, and with the same task, with the same message, to do the same thing. Jesus doesn’t want us to put our trust in a person—such as Peter—but to put our trust in the word they speak, which is God’s word.

                                                                                              

Jesus has given us an example of a situation where a person’s sin may be bound upon them, when their heart has been hardened by all correction and encouragement. This is what it means when Jesus says: Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

But then, he says: And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. What does he mean by “loosing”? Loosing means setting a person free by forgiving them their sins. “Loosing” means “forgiving”, and Jesus wants his church not just to talk about forgiveness, but to give it to people, and actually to loose their sins free from them. Being loosed means not just having one sin forgiven, but the entire library, our whole debt, completely forgiven. We are set free, completely freely. It's as if we were expecting an enormous bill from God, that we knew we couldn’t pay. But Jesus wants you to know that it is paid in full, and you are completely wiped clean. Jesus doesn’t charge anything to your account, so that you can live in peace with him. When God the Father looks at you, all he sees is his perfect Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus says: Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Now, the other thing we learn from this passage is that we need the forgiveness of sins on this earth. Jesus says: Whatever you loose on earth shall be loose in heaven. This is the reason why we exist as the Christian Church on this earth, so that people can hear the good news that their sins are forgiven. And we can say this confidently, because we know that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. This also means, that God will judge us on the basis of this earthly life that we live now. There is no second chance after we die. The time of hearing God’s word is now, so listen to it while you have the chance! But then also, we learn here that as Christians we are called to persevere in the faith, and keep going, to be sustained in faith, to keep our confidence right to the end, to be faithful unto death.

And so, how does Jesus want our faith to be sustained? He doesn’t want you to sit in your room and wait for God to send you a feeling or an angel. He wants to you to go and hear the forgiveness of sins spoken to you on earth in his church. He wants us to receive the forgiveness of sins again and again. On one hand, he sends pastors to speak this forgiveness constantly. Pastors speak it every Sunday in the absolution, and sometimes we might go to a pastor and ask them privately to speak the forgiveness for something that’s particularly burdening us, or has cut us to the heart. And a pastor’s job is to speak that forgiveness, and to speak it freely, because Christ died for all. And God calls you to believe it.

But also, we learn from our reading today, that it’s not just the absolution of pastors that is valid in heaven, but also the reconciliation of everyday Christians. Jesus says: If he listens to you, you have gained a brother. Jesus recognises this, and blesses it. If only we knew the wonderful treasures of this teaching in relating to people here in our own congregation, or in our own homes and families. Sometimes we sons and daughters need to admit our wrongs to our parents, but also, what a wonderful example of Christian life it is for we parents to admit our wrongs to our children and to ask them for the forgiveness of sins.

This  brings us to the last part of our reading where Jesus talks about”

III.              The community of the church.

Jesus says: Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. Hear we see the wonderful fruit that comes from the forgiveness of sins and from faith—agreement, harmony, unity. And it’s not just like we just sit around and look at this agreement among us, but we can do something. Jesus says that we can even go to our heavenly Father and ask something, not as enemies, but as friends, as fellow believers: If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

Look at what happened on the first day of Pentecost. After 3000 people had been baptised, and had received the forgiveness of sins, then we start to see the wonderful fruits. It says: And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Can you see the agreement and the unity they had? They were united in learning from the apostles, they were united in fellowship, in helping each other and sharing each other’s burdens—burdens of body and of soul--, they were in agreement as they broke bread and celebrated the Lord’s Supper, and they were united in prayer, just as Jesus talks about in the reading.

It is a wonderful privilege—and a strong weapon against the devil—when we pray together with other Christians, because when we agree on earth about anything we ask, it has such a wonderful promise: it will done for them by my Father in heaven. And so when we come together in church, we pray. And we can also pray at home with our families. And we can also pray with our fellow Christians whenever we like.

But there is one last thing that Jesus says, which is one of the most amazing things of all in our reading. Jesus says: For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. This is such a wonderful encouragement to us as Christians in a time when churches are becoming smaller. Jesus does not say: two or three hundred, but simply two or three. Let those word sink in!

But then also notice, Jesus does not say where two or three are gathered in my name, the Holy Spirit will be among them. If Jesus had said that, it would be true, but it’s not what he said. He said: there am I among them. We also know that Jesus is always God and man in one person. He is never one or the other. And so just as Jesus was there among his disciples teaching them, so also Jesus is among us teaching us, and blessing us. The difference is not that Jesus was there with them, but is absent from us. The difference is not that Jesus was with them on earth, but now he is in heaven. Yes, he is in heaven, but he visits us, and makes heaven and earth overlap for us. The only difference is that the disciples could see Jesus, but we can’t. For them he was with them and he was visible; for us he is still with us but he is invisible, in the flesh, in his glorified body, giving us life with his true body and his true blood, and even blessing us with the light his true human face.

And so when we are gathered together in his name, Jesus says: there I am among them. King David looked forward to this wonderful presence of Jesus in the church when he said: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. This is the same thing which he says at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: Behold, I am with you always to the very end of the age.

Amen.

Dear Jesus, search us out and show us where we are at fault, and where it is needed, use people around us to show us. Give us the ears to hear! But we also pray that you would strengthen us in your forgiveness, and loose us from our bondage. Be with us, as you have promised, and never leave us. Amen.