This sermon was preached at St Peter’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Public Schools Club, Adelaide, 9am
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Now, whenever we talk about good works, there’s always a danger that we start to think that we somehow earn our salvation before God because of works, or that we are justified before God because of our works. However, our good works give a witness to our faith, that is already there. Our good works are actually never perfect in this life, but are only begun and never finished. Our salvation, and the promise of eternal life, is always perfect in this life, because it is not only begun, but completely and totally finished by Jesus, as he said when he was on the cross: It is finished.
And so, because of our sin, we have an incredible debt and burden which we owe to God. There is no way that we can earn our salvation, by making up for it with good works. Even in an everyday human court, things work like this. For example, if a person is on trial for committing some terrible crimes, the person cannot say to the judge, “Listen, I’m not going to commit these crimes anymore and I’m going to do good things from now on.” The judge can’t let them off the hook on this basis. A crime has been committed, and it needs to be dealt with and a sentence needs to me pronounced, no matter what the person might do in the future.
What happens in God’s court is that Jesus actually stands in our place, and says, I have taken the punishment, I have paid the debt which this person owed. Jesus has actually perfected begun, carried out, completed and finished the whole law, and fulfilled it perfectly. And also, he has suffered and died for your sin, standing in your place. And so, you are free to go, and on that basis, your debt is cancelled. Nothing is owing before God by you, because of what Jesus has done for you.
And so, God pronounces in his court that our sins are forgiven, the record against us is torn up, and we are free to go. And in the church, what God has pronounced and decided in heaven, we speak on the earth. In the pulpit, the church preaches the forgiveness of sins. At the baptismal font, the church applies this forgiveness of sins to each person personally, and they are made a child of God, through water and the Spirit, and are washed with the washing of renewal, by water and the Word. At the altar, we receive the body and blood of Christ given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. In the absolution, whether it is spoken here at the beginning of the Divine Service, or privately, is the wonderful gift where in the church we speak this judgment upon a repentant sinner, which says: I forgive you all your sins, and that this word is just as valid and certain as if God himself had spoken it himself straight out of heaven.
And so, now, because of what Jesus has done for us, we are free, forgiven people. Jesus says: You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Let me explain this with a little picture. Often, at the moment, I have to drive by myself at night time, and where we live is near the hills. When we drive at night time, and we drive up into the hills a bit, we often see a wonderful view of the city, where everything is dark, but we see all the lights of the city. I remember an Aboriginal Lutheran pastor spoke to me and made a wonderful comparison. He spoke about how God took Abraham outside and made him look at the stars, and said: Thus will your offspring be. In the same way, Jesus says to us: You are the light of the world. Just as the night sky is lit up by stars, so also Christians light up the night sky of the ground, in the world, as a kind of mirror. It’s a bit like the city lights on the ground. The city lights are only a picture for us. It reminds us that actually so much of the world is in darkness, but it’s so important for us to shine our light brightly.
So, as forgiven people, freed from the curse and the sentence and condemnation of God’s law, we are called to shine our light brightly. And in our Gospel reading, Jesus gives us some instruction as to how we do this and go about it.
He says: Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.
Jesus says here: Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. There are so many situations and circumstances in our life where God has been merciful to us. There are so many times, when we might have worried about something going completely wrong, that actually didn’t, and that God turned around in the other direction. Actually, in the Lord’s Prayer, when it says: Give us this day our daily bread, the next word is: “And”. And forgive us our trespasses, or forgive us our sins. These two things are joined together.
Actually, there are so many situations where God could have easily withheld our daily bread from us, because of our sins. Even there are many things that we didn’t even ask for, and God gave them to us anyway. And when he gave them to us, we didn’t even notice, and we didn’t even thank him for it.
Luther gives a wonderful explanation in the Small Catechism, where he says: We pray…that our Father in heaven would not look on 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 surely deserve nothing but punishment. Do you see? Actually, God has given us so much by his grace, and if he only acted towards us in terms of what we deserved, we would have nothing. And so, in all of these situations, we learn to receive what God gives us, for our bodies and souls, with thanksgiving.
And so, then in the Lord’s Prayer it says: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Luther explains: So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.
So, just as God has done so much good to us, and has been so merciful to us, so also, we also are called to forgive people, and to do good to them. It’s so easy for people to say things like, “I forgive, but I’ll never forget.” Or, they say, “I forgive them, but don’t expect me to do anything for them.”
That’s not actually how it works with God. He forgives us, and he is so wonderfully gracious to us, and he gives us many things, that we need and even more than what we need on a daily basis. Actually, he even does this for unbelievers too, but they don’t realise it, and they don’t thank God for it.
And so, Jesus says: Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. God has been so wonderfully merciful to us. How can we show mercy to the person that God has put in front of us? What mercy do they need? It’s like what St Paul says in 2 Corinthians: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. So, God comforts us, he leads us through the valley of the shadow of death and strengthens us. And so, then he comforts us, for what purpose? He does it so that this comfort can be shared with someone else. Sometimes, we realise that someone has gone through exactly the same situation as we went through, and we are able to help them and strengthen them with the comfort that God gave to us. This applies to all kinds of things: spiritual blessings, physical blessings. Jesus does not speak very specifically here, because he wants to leave it in a general way, so that we learn his mercy, and spread and show his mercy abundantly.
We read next, where Jesus says: Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned.
This is a very important passage, and it’s very important that we understand it correctly. Jesus tells us not to judge, but on the other hand, we are taught as Christians that we must judge certain things – we must judge between what is true and false, what is right and wrong, we must judge carefully so that we recognise false prophets when we are confronted by them, and beware of them, and all that kind of things.
Also, there are people in this world who are called to judge for a living, as part of their vocation, like judges! If you go to court, and you appear before a judge, and the judge is going to make a decision, you can’t say to them: Jesus says, judge not, and you will not be judged!
Actually, there are a number of situations where Jesus makes a general comment like this. For example, he says it one place that we shouldn’t swear by oath. But in actual fact, Jesus himself swears oaths, every time he says: Truly, truly, I say to you. It’s as if he says: I want you to know for certain that in what I’m about to say, I’m telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Now, everything that Jesus says is like this, but sometimes, Jesus makes a special point of reminding us. And so, if we’re asked to go to court and make an oath, and swear on the bible, that’s a good thing. What Jesus is talking about is making silly oaths and promises, and then thinking that we don’t need to tell the truth because we didn’t swear an oath. All this Jesus explains.
Also, for example, in the fifth commandment, it says: You shall not murder. But not all killing is wrong. For example, there are some people who hold a particular vocation, where sometimes they are required to kill, like police and soldiers. So, for example, if a terrorist walks into a large crowd and starts killing them, that is the sin of murder. But if a policemen or soldiers turn up, and kill the terrorist, then they have fulfilled their God-given duty. There are clear passages, for example, in Romans 13, where it explains all of this.
On the other hand, when it comes to unborn children, or old people or depressed people, they are not allowed to be killed. The sin of murder applies to these situations, for example, where we’re talking about abortion and euthanasia.
So, when Jesus says: Judge not, and you will not be judged, there are situations in this life, where people are called to judge, and where we are called upon to use our reason to make a judgment about things. But Jesus here is talking about when we are dealing with our neighbours, and people around us. We might see that they have sinned in some way. We might see that they’ve actually dug themselves into a hole. There’s an expression, where people say: “You made your bed—now sleep in it!”
Actually, sometimes, we are able to see quite clearly that someone has done something completely wrong. Sometimes, they might have even sinned against us in such a way, and hurt us, or wronged us.
There is a temptation then to say: Well, obviously, they’re going to hell. Or, to say, that person deserved what they get. Or, to say, that person is a real idiot.
Actually, if it weren’t for the grace of God, most of us would be in the same situation! And so, instead, of judging and condemning people, we’re called to forgive them and help them. God himself has forgiven us and helped us, even though we “made our own bed”, and made a complete mess of it!
And so, Jesus says: Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and your will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.
We read here, for example, where it says: forgive, and you will be forgiven. Is Jesus saying, that our forgiveness from God is only dependent on us forgiving other people? No, that’s not what he’s saying. But, when we are forgiven by God, when we are justified by faith, we are also given a new heart, and God renews in us a new heart. The fact that we are forgiven completely changes us. And so, sometimes, we might be thinking about someone, and we realise that we have a real grudge against them. We get bitter and annoyed by them. In these situations, instead of judging them and condemning them, in our hearts we should forgive them and as we have the opportunity to do good to them and help them. We are called to think about them in the way that God thinks about us: God has forgiven us, even though he knows our evil, and so we should forgive others, even when we know their evil. And so, there’s a promise for us: When we do forgive others, we know that God forgives us too. We are simply passing on to others, what God has given to us.
Then in our reading we read: [Jesus] also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he fully trained is like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is your own eye?
Here Jesus teaches us some more about what he just said before. When we are merciful, and forgive people, and give to them, or help them, and when we refrain from judging them or condemning them, it’s all about how we look at people. It’s all about how we see them.
Do we look at people with contempt? Do we look at the people as below us? Do we look at people as if we are better than them?
Jesus is teaching us how to look at people, and he teaches us this from the way in which God looks at us. Even though God sees our sin, our wickedness, our evil, because of Jesus and his atonement and his sacrifice, God looks at us with mercy and kindness and love. For example, let’s think about for a moment the event when pregnant Mary went and visited pregnant Elizabeth. This little event was such a wonderful occasion, where despite the fact that they seemed like unimportant people—they weren’t in charge of ruling the world, or a particular country, or anything like that—God looked at them, in such a way that this little event was the most important event in the world at the time.
And so, Mary sang her little song, the Magnificat, on this occasion, and she said: For God has looked, looked, looked, on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.
In a similar way, God looks upon you, not because you are so important, but because you belong to Christ, who died for you and rose for you, because he baptised you, he has forgiven you. He rescued you, he called you, he gathered you into his church, he enlightened you with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, he is making you holy and purifying you and sanctifying you with his Holy Spirit and with his grace each and every day.
But one of the most important things is how we look at other people. If we look at other people, and notice their sin, but don’t notice our own, then we are blind. It’s like we have a great big log in our eye. If we’re like this, then we are blind guides. The first thing that happened on the day of Pentecost after people heard the preaching of Peter was that they recognised their own sin. They were cut to the heart and said, Brothers, what shall we do?
And so: Jesus says in our reading: Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? Then he says: A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he fully trained will be like his teacher. Jesus is saying here, that we are his disciples, and Jesus is perfect. In this life, we will not be perfect like him. But he wants to train us. He wants to train us so that we learn to look at people the way that he looks at us, that is, with mercy.
And so, for us, as we deal with other people, and as we notice things about people that we know are wrong, we should first of all repent of our own sins, and acknowledge and confess them before God, so that we learn anew and afresh his mercy and his forgiveness towards us, so that we can share in a new and fresh way his mercy and his forgiveness towards others.
So Jesus says: Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speak that is in your brother’s eye.
And so let’s commend ourselves to Jesus, so that we may be trained in his school, as one of his disciples, so that we acknowledge our sin in the light of his sinlessness, and receive his forgiveness by his mercy and his grace anew and afresh each day. He is the Light of the world, and he calls us to shine his light in whatever corner of the world he places us. Let’s look to him for his mercy, for his forgiveness, for his kindness and goodness, so that we can be busy and useful in his kingdom as we deal with other people and serve them. What a wonderful gift is it to have such a wonderful merciful heavenly Father! Amen.
And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment