Trinity 6 [Matthew 6:20-26] (15-July-2012)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (11am) and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Bairnsdale (3pm).

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

Text: (Matthew 6:20-26)

I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

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.

Our Gospel reading today is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is written down in Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7. At the beginning of this sermon, Jesus teaches his listeners the famous words: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Later on, he teaches about giving to the needy, the Lord’s prayer and fasting. He teaches about not being anxious, and tells the parable about the wise man who builds his house upon the rock and the foolish man who builds his house upon the sand.

There are many things in this sermon of Jesus that are familiar. But the section that we are reading today is about righteousness.

Jesus says: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

There are two things that Jesus teaches us here: first of all, if you want to enter heaven, you have to be righteous. If you’re not righteous, you will not enter heaven.

The second thing that Jesus teaches us is that there is such thing as a fake righteousness. This fake righteousness will give you a fake heaven, but won’t let you into the real one. This fake righteousness is taught, promoted and lived by false teachers—in this case, the Pharisees and the scribes.

Jesus puts us face to face with a reality: there is such a thing as fake religion, false religion, false righteousness, false teachers. Jesus teaches us that we shouldn’t believe everything we hear.

So he says: I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

So what was it that the scribes and Pharisees were actually teaching people? In the previous verse, Jesus says: Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

The funny thing is this: the Pharisees were some of the strictest Jews alive at the time. They weren’t people who seemed to be “relaxed”. But at the same time, Jesus accuses them of “relaxing” God’s commandments.

But let’s just step back a moment, before we think about the detail of what Jesus is saying.

Firstly, I want you to think about the people who were listening to Jesus on that mountain that day. Who were they? What sort of people do you imagine that they might have been?

We read that Jesus went up the mountain, sat down and his disciples came to him.

Now why were these people chosen to hear these words of Jesus and not other people? We might say that they just happened to be there at the right time. But the fact that they just happened to be there is God’s work—he allowed them to be there on this day on the mountain. He was working all things together for the good of those people who had come to hear Jesus. He also worked it in such a way that Matthew the evangelist was able to write down what Jesus said so that we could read it ourselves today.

Proverbs 3 says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

Here we have a group of people who are listening to Jesus, a group of people who just happen to be there on a particular day. They are trusting in his words with all their heart, and they are not leaning on their own understanding. And just think how thankful they must have been to have heard Jesus speak—how things worked together just so that they could be there. They could acknowledge God in all their ways, they could look back on the day, the week, the year, and see God’s hand moving to gently bring them to the feet of Jesus.

This is exactly the way it happens for us. God has worked all sorts of things together in such a way that he can reveal his righteousness to you today. Firstly, he inspired the evangelist Matthew to write these words down. Then, he enabled and allowed the writing of Matthew to be copied and published and preserved together with the rest of the New Testament for 2000 years. Through empires and kingdoms, he allowed Christianity to flourish and make a great impact on the world, which we are still feeling today, from the mediaeval times and before. Also, he brought you here to this little church in Gippsland to hear these same words that Christians have been listening to for centuries. How did he bring you here? Maybe you had Christian parents and a Christian family—maybe you met a Christian later in life, and you converted at a later age. Maybe going to church for you is a good habit that you got yourself into, and enjoy the company of the people here, and like singing, and it makes you feel good.

Whatever your reason, here you are—and you can look back and acknowledge God in all your ways. You can see that God has provided you with all that you need to support this body and life. You can see that God defends you against all danger and guards and protects you from all evil. You can see that he has done all of this only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in you.

But here’s the crunch—every person that is born on this earth is born a Pharisee and a scribe. When you are in the presence of Jesus Christ, you always learn something new which can only be learnt from him. Every person that is born on this earth wants to be saved by fake righteousness. Every person is born lost from God’s narrow way. Every person is born condemned by God’s law—helpless and crushed. Every person is born in sin, and every person’s heart is inclined to worship idols, and if they are going to be righteous in the eyes of the one true God who made heaven and earth, the only way it is going to happen is that God himself comes to you, speaks to you and declares you righteous. The only way that you will be righteous is that God himself allows you to enter heaven, God himself teaches your heart the truth which otherwise you would never know. And so when God teaches us something—even when it is uncomfortable for us—this is his love at work. God speaks the truth in love to us.

And this is exactly what happened that day, when Jesus preached to his disciples the Sermon on the Mount. He revealed to them the wisdom from heaven that they would otherwise never be able to work out or come up with for themselves.

The Pharisees wanted to teach the people how to be righteous by using the 10 commandments as a checklist. They could say—“tick! I’ve done this one. I’ve done that one. I haven’t committed murder. Great! I’m on my way to heaven.”

And now Jesus gets out his surgeon’s knife and cuts right to the heart of their false teaching.

He says: You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

So here are the Pharisees running around saying, “I haven’t committed murder. But it’s my right to be angry. It’s my right to tell those good-for-nothings what’s what! It’s my right to put them in their place. It’s my right to insult them, and blast the blow-torch of my mouth all over those people—they deserve it! Look how much damage those people are doing, look at how those people are corrupting our world, our society, our youth! It’s my right to insult them, it’s my right to kick them where it hurts, it’s my right to push them down, make them writhe, hurt their feelings, make them feel uncomfortable!” –isn’t it? I can tell you that I know that these sinful thoughts constantly spring up in my mind day after day.

What does Jesus say?

He says, “Everyone who is angry at his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Jesus is not speaking in abstract here. He is talking right to those who are listening to him. Speak, Lord, your servant hears, as Samuel said. Jesus is our teacher, but he is also our judge. And he lays open the hearts of all who hear his words—he doesn’t just give them some good advice for the future. Jesus shows them where they have failed every day of their lives up until now. He can’t save you, until the Pharisee in you is killed, stoned to death, crucified and buried. And these stones he throws one by one: you will be liable to judgment, the council, the hell of fire.

This is what God’s law does to us. We want to relax the commandments. We want to tick all the boxes and think that we’ve done everything that God requires. But Jesus uses God’s law like a knife and comes and finds the hypocrite in each of us, and puts it to death so that we despair completely of ourselves, our thoughts and our own actions.

St Paul says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.” That’s what every pastor needs to say from the pulpit—that they are the chief of sinners and know their sins better than anyone else. But much more importantly, that Christ died for you—Christ is your righteousness. His conception makes your sinful conception clean, his birth makes your birth holy, his suffering, his death and his blood makes your body forgiven and whole, his resurrection makes you alive. And his church on earth, by opening the bible and speaking the words of Jesus to you, speaks this truth to you, baptises you, preaches to you, absolves you, and feeds you with the body and blood of Christ, so that by this and through these things that happen in the church,  God himself justifies you and speaks his judgment of complete and total forgiveness of all your sins to you. That’s Christ’s righteousness. That’s the righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees and exceeds the righteousness every false teacher in the world today, throughout Australia, Victoria and even Gippsland, where there are plenty of false teachers to be found in abundance. Christ’s righteousness is the only righteousness by which you will be saved.

And now in the last part of our reading, Jesus gives a little case-study and a little life-application if you like. He preaches the fifth commandment to us, “You shall not murder”, he preaches against anger and insults, and now he draws our attention to the altar. He says: “Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

Here Jesus is talking about the Jewish faith where people offered a burnt offering to God in the temple. The tradition of altars goes right back to Cain and Abel. You remember before the temple and the tabernacle, people built altars. Jacob built an altar when he woke up from his dream about the ladder. And just as angels ascended and descended on Jacob’s ladder, so also Jesus teaches his disciple Nathanael at the end of John chapter 1, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

And so, we Christians throughout the centuries have built altars, not as places of sacrifice, but as places where Christ is truly present, where he has promised to come and preach his word to us and to baptise us and give us his body and blood. We build altars in the place where we call upon the name of Jesus and where the angels ascend and descend upon him.

In our churches, we always have an altar. Throughout the history of the Lutheran Church especially, many people have had a family altar where they call upon God’s name in their home. For many people, this has been the kitchen table.

The altar is the place where God brings his forgiveness from heaven to earth. The altar in the church is the place where God speaks his righteousness to us. We are not saved by something that happens to us while we’re walking down the street, we’re are saved by the gifts that God gives us: baptism, the preaching of the gospel, the sacrament of the altar.

When we come to the altar, we present our whole bodies as a living sacrifice to our living Lord Jesus. We present ourselves to him so that he may consume our sin with the fire of his wrath, and receive from him his life-giving body and blood , so that we may be strengthened and preserved in body and soul to life eternal.

We bring all our problems to Jesus. And Jesus takes them on himself and shares them with all the other Christians who come to the altar with you, so that we bear all our burdens together in love. We come to church with our problems, we leave with the problems of our fellow Christians throughout the world. We are all connected to each other through the Lord’s Supper which we eat and drink together.

And so Jesus also doesn’t want us to be fighting with each other when come. We should go and be reconciled to our brothers and sisters. This doesn’t mean mean that we stay away from the Lord’s Supper for ever and ever, so long as people have something against us, but we should do it quickly: Come to terms with your accuser quickly, Jesus says. Get it sorted before you come to the altar next time. We don’t have anything to lose by being reconciled to people. Actually, I tell a lie!—we have everything to lose, we have our pride and sinful flesh, our idolatry, our body and blood to lose, and we have the life of Jesus, his body and blood to be gained.

But Jesus doesn’t send you out to do this task of reconciling without him. You might think that you’re going to go out and speak to an enemy who will hate you for what you do, but you are always speaking in the presence of Jesus—and of all the angels that are ascending and descending on Jesus—and they are your friends. So it is a task which Jesus gives us that we are able to do in freedom, in peace, with joy, with confidence, with certainty, because he has made peace with you through his blood on the cross. It’s a task that a Pharisee can’t do, and it’s a job that can only be done when the Pharisee is rebuked and put to death, and it’s a job that can only be done in the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone, in his forgiveness, his strength and his power.

As St Peter says: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, you alone are our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and our redemption. We love you, Lord Jesus, our strength. You are our rock and our fortress and our deliverer, our God, our rock in whom we take refuge, our shield, and the horn of our salvation, our stronghold. Amen.

Nursing home devotion (12-July-2012)

This devotion was given at the Brookfield Park Nursing Home in Traralgon, 10.45am.

Text: (2 Timothy 2:8)

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, send your Holy Spirit to all of us, so that I may speak well, and we all may hear well, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

I remember once I went to visit a sick man in a hospital. While I was there, I read him something from the bible and said a prayer together and gave him the blessing. And as I was leaving the man in the bed next to him called out to me and said hello. He said to me, “I’m very sick, but I’m not a Christian, and I don’t have any faith to make me well again.”

This is a very common misunderstanding. People often think that “faith” is something that comes from inside a person’s heart. Now, it’s true: faith has to be put in a person’s heart, and it has to live people and grow there, but it never begins there.

Sometimes we Christians get this wrong too. People say, “How do you know that God exists?” And people respond by saying, “I can feel him.” Or, “he speaks to me”. And things like that.

But that sort of thing doesn’t really help anyone. People say, “Well, you have your beliefs and I’ll have mine.” Or, “what’s true for you isn’t true for me.” Or, “I’ve never experienced this—therefore God’s not true.”

Everyone has different experiences. Different cultures have different experiences when it comes to the faith. I remember when I was studying to be a pastor, one of our professors asked us, “How many of you came here to study because you thought God was telling you to do this in a dream?” Nobody put their hand up. But then the professor said, “When I go out into Central Australia to teach the Aboriginal pastors and ask them the same question, they all put their hands up!”

So you see, different people, different cultures, experience the faith differently. You can’t base faith on experiences.

One of the things that Christians say together every Sunday, and some people even say this every day, is “On the third day Jesus rose again from the dead.”

This is one of the most important things that Christians believe. We don’t just believe that anyone rose from the dead, or that to rise from the dead is possible, but that at a certain time in history, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, rose from the dead.

Sometimes when a person dies, we might say that they live on—maybe in our hearts, in our memories and things like that. That’s not what we mean when we’re talking about Jesus. When we say that Jesus rose from the dead, we mean that he was dead, and then he stood up and walked out of his tomb.

So when we talk about faith, what’s important is not that we have certain feelings, and certain experiences, but that something happened in history outside of us. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead—and that this is an historical fact, just as factual as that World War II happened, or September 11^th happened, or that Prince William and Kate got married, or that Geelong won the AFL premiership last year. (We might not like it, but we can’t argue with the fact that it happened!)

This is the same thing with the resurrection. Christians believe in something historical, something factual that happened, and when we talk to people about the faith—we say, “Well, see what you think—do you think it happened or not? Is Jesus still dead or is he risen from the dead?”

So you see, faith comes from outside of us, not inside of us. Even when it comes to salvation, we don’t put our faith in the fact that we feel saved, or feel happy, but the fact that Jesus died and rose. That’s why Christians practise baptism and baptise people—it’s not so that they feel good or for them to express themselves and their faith, it’s so that Jesus can give them the Holy Spirit and that they can be confident that God has given them everything not from inside of them, but from outside of them.

But then people say, “Jesus rose again from the dead.” So what? Well, we don’t believe simply that he rose again just for himself, but for everyone, for you, so that we will also rise from the dead with him.

Let’s talk about football… I remember once I was near Geelong and I was catching the train back home, and I looked around at the train station, and everyone was dressed in Essendon colours. Now if Essendon won the game, who actually is it that won? It’s the football team that won. It’s the players. But then, when the football game is played, there’s all the supporters cheering them on, and when they win the game, all the supporters celebrate. It’s a win for everyone, not just for the players!

In the same way, when we say that Jesus rose from the dead, it’s a win not just for Jesus, but it’s a win for everyone. It’s a win for everyone who is going to die. It’s a win for everyone who is suffering and abandoned. It’s a win for everyone who is low in the eyes of the world and society. It’s a win for everyone who feels rotten and miserable. It’s a win for everyone who is a sinner—everyone who is lost, everyone who is condemned. It’s a win for the entire human race.

You can be certain that resurrection from the dead will happen to you, because it’s been done before. And if it’s been done before, it can happen again. And so we say, “On the third day he rose again from the dead.”

Amen.

Heavenly Father, teach us to remember your Son, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. We thank you for the blood of Jesus, shed in his death on the cross, which was the payment for all sin. And we thank you that he also rose again from the dead and promises to give eternal life to all who believe in him. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Trinity 5: Audio Sermon (8-July-2012)

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Trinity 5 [Luke 5:1-11] (8-July-2012)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (10am, lay reading), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (2pm) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (4pm).

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

Text: (Luke 5:1-11)

 Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!
But at your word I will let down the nets.

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.

Have you ever gone hungry? Have you ever lived hand-to-mouth? Many people in Australia (and in other western countries) don’t worry about this, but they are not prepared to lower their so-called “quality of life”.

Australia is a great country to live in. We have so much to be thankful for. God has provided for you everything that you need. He continually gives us daily bread. Even at this winter-time, when all sorts of bugs and cold and flus are going around—in the broad scheme of things, we have much better health than many parts of the world. There are all sorts of diseases that we simply don’t have anymore thanks to the advances of modern medicine.

But it’s precisely in times of hardship, in times of testing and temptation that Jesus wants to demonstrate to us the power of his word. The church today will stand or fall on this one point—do we trust the power of Jesus’ words, or do we want to do what we think is practical, instead?

Often “being practical” for most people means “doing whatever will make sure we don’t lose the most money”. But at the end of the day, when all the dollars and cents are piled high up in your bank account, when comes the day of death, you won’t take a scrap with you. Psalm 49 says: “Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him. For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed—and though you get praise when you do well for yourself—his soul will go to the generation of his fathers, who will never again see light. Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish.”

And we might look back on our life and say, “God’s been good to me. He’s protected me, He’s given me nice things, a nice home, good food, a nice family”, and that’s good. All those things are a gift from God.

But if we get a little crumb from our heavenly Father’s table—just a little taste of his generosity and mercy—then we start trying to steal from his table, and grab more and more. We start worshipping the crumbs, rather than God who can give us so much more than a few crumbs, in fact, he prepares for us a rich banquet.

We might make a lot of money in our work, but then if all we want to do is make money, and not enjoy our God-given work, then all we will have at the end of the day will be money. It’s not that we won’t be happy—we will be happy, dancing for joy and sacrificing our whole lives to a golden calf.

But will we have God? We say: I’ve got “principles”, “values”, “good morals”, “common sense”—but did we keep the commandments of God? God didn’t give you any principles to live by, any values, guidelines—he gave you his commandments. If you keep God’s commandments, you will be rewarded. If you break them, you will be punished. If you do them, you will live. If you break them, you will die.

This is how God’s law works. It cuts to the heart, it’s the hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. Thank God that we are not saved by works, but that He sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins, so that we can receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation through him.

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And so in our reading today, Jesus shows to these simple fishermen the power of his word. He wants them to know that he is trustworthy, that they can trust him. Note here, first of all, that he doesn’t go to demonstrate this power to the powerful in the world. He doesn’t take the kings, the queens, the rich, the powerful, the educated, the respected on a cruise and do this. They might have peered through their binoculars as Jesus did this and clapped him politely when he caught the fish, and thought that it was marvellous little trick that Jesus was performing.

No—Jesus goes to the simple people, the poor people, the nobodies, the lowly, the meek, the humble, those who are mourning, who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness. By the way, Jesus does not show partiality here. Some Christians think that it’s fine not to read the bible and it’s fine never to read a Christian book, because Jesus chose simple fishermen. That’s not the way a humble person talks, but a stupid person! Jesus didn’t choose Peter because he was an idiot. Remember Jesus also appeared to St Paul, who was highly educated—one of the most educated men alive at the time—and used him for his purposes. But Jesus also gave Paul much suffering—prison, shipwrecks, blindness, floggings, you name it.

So even though Jesus chooses the little people here, he calls everyone—rich, poor, educated, uneducated, high, low. St Ephrem the Syrian from the 4^th century said: “Jesus caught twelve fishermen, and with these he caught the whole creation.”

And so right at the beginning of our reading we see Jesus teaching people. We don’t know what he said, but it’s enough for us to know that it was His Word. It was any word that he spoke.

We read: On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

And now we see that Jesus wants to demonstrate the power of his word. This is a word that never lets one of the least of his little ones go without a cup of water. This is a word that they can hang their hat on for the rest of their lives. It’s a word that created them, it’s a word that will throw them in a grave at the end of their life and in the meantime, it’s a word that will keep them fed, clothed, sustained and alive every moment of their lives and into eternity.

And so we read: And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.

Jesus gives them a command. These fishermen weren’t putting themselves out looking for a word from Jesus to drop out of the sky. He just happened to be there with them and he told them what to do. He says: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”

And here Peter gives us a wonderful example. He protests but he also obeys and submits. He says: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”

He acknowledges before Jesus that what he is being asked to do doesn’t make any sense. We’ve already toiled! We’ve worked hard, we’ve sweated, we’re tired. We toiled all night! We already worked at the best time for catching fish. It’s not much use putting out the net now! And we caught nothing! We’ve tried this, and it’s failed. We’ve tried again and again, and it hasn’t worked.

But still Peter says: “But at your word I will let down the nets.”

Yes, Lord, I will do the crazy thing, the stupid thing, I am happy to be foolish in the eyes of the world to let the wisdom of God be revealed. I will not be ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to those who believe. At your word I will let down the nets.

We can go through all the commandments of God and we can see the temptation to break each one of them, because we think it’s not practical, and it doesn’t work.

For example, the second commandment “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord, your God.” We should call upon God’s name in every trouble. But instead, when we’re in trouble, we want to solve things ourselves, and don’t ask God to fix the problem.

The third commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” So often we don’t sit and read the bible, because we’ve got something more important to do. So often we don’t come to church, because we’ve got something that we need to finish off, or reward ourselves with a nice sleep in, because it’s the only morning we’ve had for three weeks to do it.

The fourth commandment: “Honour your father and your mother.” Yes, we know that we should respect our parents, politicians, bosses and leaders, but if we decide we don’t like them, we can suddenly say whatever we like about them.

The seventh commandment: “You shall not steal.” When we’re poor, it’s not the time to steal, it’s the time to ask, to beg from God. He won’t let you go hungry.

The eighth commandment: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.” So often we justify ourselves by saying we told a “white lie” so that we don’t get ourselves into trouble, or so that people will like us.

Or with young people, one the greatest temptations is to break the sixth commandment: “You shall not commit adultery”, and especially when it comes to living together and sleeping together without being married. And this is especially sad, because right at the age when young people can do so much good, and have the capacity to build a home and family, they waste their best years in mistrust, slavery and heartbreak. (And that’s not to mention pornography.) And people say, But it’s so expensive to live in two separate houses. Yes, but wouldn’t you rather be a bit poor for the sake of a good conscience? God won’t let you go hungry. And we know that in poorer areas, sometimes people just sleep with whomever happens to be around so that they can have a baby and claim the baby bonus from the government. But before wealthy people start pointing the finger, they should also remember that there’s really no difference between rich kids and poor kids in terms of sleeping around. The poor kids might be financially rewarded for their wrongs, but the rich kids just have abortions. At least the 16-year-old mums with babies didn’t kill anyone.

And so we come to Jesus and we say: Master--don’t you understand, Jesus? Don’t you understand what we’ve been through? We toiled all night and we took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.

And we see what a wonderful blessing comes from the simple obedience to the command of Jesus. When they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.

What a wonderful generous Saviour we have!

But you know, the law of God, works, obedience doesn’t save. We can let down as many fishing nets at the command of Jesus as we want, we can nod our head to him and say, “Yes, sir”—but it doesn’t mean that we believe in him as our Saviour and our Redeemer.

We listen to this passage, and we could so easily come to the opinion that Jesus is simply not for us, and say: “I don’t have that sort of faith. I don’t have that sort of courage. I’m not strong enough. I’m weak. I’m useless. I’m lost and condemned.”

But this is exactly how Peter felt. We read: When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

Peter doesn’t just realise that he is a sinner, but he asks Jesus to go away because he is a sinner. He says, “Depart from me, Jesus, because I’m no good.” I can’t do your work, Jesus, I’m no use. Go away. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.

See how powerful the word of Jesus is. See how wonderful his commands are. See how much blessing comes from the obedience to the simple words of Jesus. But they are words that kill. There is an old expression in the Lutheran church: The law always accuses. The 10 commandments don’t show you how to live, they show you how the die. Peter says: Depart from me, Living One, Life-giving One, because I am dead, and I smell of death.

And Jesus now demonstrates that his word, his voice is not just powerful, but loving. The words of Jesus are not just wonderful, but they are friendly.

Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.

Jesus says: Every day from now on, will not be a day with fear, but it will be a day with me. And that’s good news. Your work might be hard, but I will there too. You might struggle from day to day, but my name will always be there for you to call. You might struggle from week to week, but my body and blood will be there for you to eat and drink.

And we read: When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.

You can see what a wonderful Saviour we have. Wouldn’t you want to leave everything and follow him too?

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, you have called us out of the kingdom of darkness into your marvellous light. Your words never lie: help us to put our trust in you day by day, and to follow wherever you lead us. Amen.

Visitation of the Virgin Mary: Audio Sermon (2-July-2012)

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Visitation of the Virgin Mary [Luke 1:39-56] (2-July-2012)

This sermon was preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram, 11am.

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

Text: (Luke 1:39-56)

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

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.

The Visitation of the Virgin Mary is such a wonderful event. And from the outsider’s point of view, nothing much happens! We have two pregnant ladies who meet together—one of the babies does a somersault, and then the two ladies tell each other how wonderful this whole event is.

That’s pretty much it!

But that’s precisely what’s so wonderful about it—not much actually happens.

But here’s what’s amazing about it: Let’s listen to the beginning of Luke’s gospel, at the beginning of the chapter. He writes: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Luke is about to tell us about something amazing. He is about to tell you about the life of a man, Jesus Christ, who changed the course of world history—but not only that, who invented world history in the first place and will eventually bring it to an end. Luke is about to tell you about what the ministers of the word and the eyewitnesses saw, so that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

And then Luke writes: In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah.

Listen to that… Luke tells you was happening in world politics at the time of all of this. King Herod was on the throne.

Later on when Jesus was born, we read the well-known text from the beginning of the Christmas passage: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was the governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town.” Once again, we hear about all the major figures of world history and politics: Caesar Augustus, Quirinius the governor of Syria.

At the beginning of Luke chapter 3, we read thee same sort of thing again: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonites, and Lysanius tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

Listen to the detail—all these great people, these world leaders, emperors, kings, governors.

And nevertheless, in the midst of all this, amid all the international politics, the Holy Spirit draws us to two pregnant women in Judah. One is a young woman—a virgin named Mary. The other is an old woman—Elizabeth.

And this event that is happening in this humble little house somewhere in Judah is the most important thing happening in the world at the time. A baby doing a jump in his mother’s womb is the most significant thing happening at this time—and most likely the kings, governors, princes, emperors had no idea about it. Even the twelve disciples weren’t there to appreciate it. Most of them probably weren’t even born yet.

And this little event of the Visitation sets the entire course of Christianity for the centuries to come. John the Baptist leaps for joy in the presence of his Saviour, still in the darkness of the womb. And the Christian Church on earth does the same thing—it is overflowing with joy in the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the divine service. We come into the presence of our risen and living Saviour and we rejoice. Sometimes, we rejoice in the midst of great darkness, just like the baby John here. But we rejoice nevertheless. We rejoice in our sufferings, as St Paul says in Romans 5—we speak words of encouragement, words for the building up of faith. And we sing, just like Mary did on this occasion, singing the first Christian song ever sung, which we call the Song of Mary, or in Latin, the Magnificat. My soul magnifies the Lord, my Spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.

And for world historians at the time, this little event doesn’t even make it on the radar. But from God’s point of view, this is the most significant thing in world history to date.

And so Mary sings:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant [he has not looked on Caesar Augustus, or Quirinius the governor of Syria—he has looked at me, sweet little Mary]. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed… [and later on she says:] He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

And so, we should never think that what we do in our little gatherings of worship here in the Gippsland Lutheran Parish [is insignificant]. We know that Gippsland is by no means the centre of the universe. It is not the centre of world politics and events. It is not the world centre of education and learning. Darnum’s not the centre of the world, neither is Traralgon, or Sale, or Bairnsdale, or Yarram.

It’s not even on the radar in the broad scheme of Australian politics and news, or even on the radar most of the time in the broad scheme of Victorian politics. Every now and then, we make it onto news when we have a fire, flood or an earthquake, or when there’s some threat to jobs at the power stations.

Now—don’t be offended at what I’m saying! I’m not trying to talk Gippsland down. Remember, I’m talking as a man from Adelaide. And they say that Adelaide is to Australia, what Australia is to the rest of the world—they forget that it exists!

But all of this aside, whenever you come to a service in your old cars and utes and 4-wheel-drives, God shines his light on our little gatherings. Look at us—most of the time there’s more old people here than were there at the Visitation. A lot of the time, there’s just as many, sometimes even more babies at our divine services. And sometimes, there’s even a few more virgins.

What we are coming to do each time we gather in the divine service is to rejoice and confess the presence of our Saviour Jesus Christ. At the Visitation, Jesus is hidden in his mother’s womb. In the divine service, Jesus is hidden in the words of absolution, the reading of Scripture and the preaching of the word of God, and in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.

And the major players in world politics don’t realise this. They don’t know what’s going on, otherwise they’d all be flocking to Yarram just to be here. But those of humble estate—those who live outside of the gaze of governments, and world powers and the United Nations—we know where Jesus is hidden, and we confess that he is there to be found. And so what do we do? We sing as it is fitting and right to do when you happen to be in the presence of the living God together with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. We sing in the great tradition of Christian singing that was begun all those many years ago when Mary sung her Magnificat.

That’s what it means when it says:

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

In the 60^th year of Elizabeth II the Queen of England, when Barack Obama was president of America, and Hu Jintao was the president of China, services of the Evangelical Lutheran Church were held in Gippsland, Victoria—in Yarram, Wellington Shire.

And so Elizabeth says: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

What is spoken to you from the Lord?

Jesus died for you. He rose again for you.

Your sins are forgiven. He has baptised you. He has absolved you. He gives you is body and blood to eat and to drink.

You will rise again on the last day. You will have eternal life.

Blessed are you who have believed that there would be fulfilment of what was spoken to you from the Lord.

Let it be done for you as you have believed.

And so we say together with the words of Psalm 100:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!

Amen.

Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank you for this marvellous event so many years ago when John the Baptist leaped for joy in his mother’s womb in the presence of your Son, Jesus Christ. Give also to us the joy that comes from being in the presence of your risen and ascended Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and fill us with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Trinity 4: Audio Sermon (1-July-2012)

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