"God Keeps Us Ready" (1 Corinthians 1:3-9 | Advent 1B 2016)

Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Date: November 26 & 27, 2016

First Sunday in Advent, Year B [New Hymnal Lectionary Test]

1 Corinthians 1:3–9 (EHV)

3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

4I always thank my God for you because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus. 5You were enriched in him in every way, in all your speaking and all your knowledge, 6because the testimony about Christ was established in you. 7As a result you do not lack any gift as you eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8He will also keep you strong until the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God is faithful, who called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

God Keeps Us Ready

Happy New Year! That might feel like an odd greeting for late November, although perhaps we’ve already heard the songs being played around us that wish us both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. But our new year’s greetings today do not come from an over-zealous nature that would have us skip over almost the whole of December to focus on Christmas and January already. No, our new year in fact means just the opposite.

Today we begin a new season of the church year (despite my goof in the bulletin that didn’t list it as such in the front). Today we begin the season of Advent, a season that focuses us on being ready for Christ’s coming. Whether we think of celebrating his first arrival as Bethlehem’s manger-laid baby, or especially his second coming as King of kings and Lord of lords, we are right to think that we need to be well prepared for his arrival. We get ready through repentance and rejoicing in all that God has done for us. But the apostle Paul will remind us this morning that our getting ready really doesn’t happen by our own effort. Like all things, even our preparedness is a gift from God.

Our lesson for this morning comes from the very beginning of Paul’s first letter to the Christians living in the Greek city of Corinth. Well, it’s the first of the two letters that the Holy Spirit preserved for us. It seems likely that it’s actually the second letter he wrote them, the first letter having not survived to us today. From the inferences we can make in this letter, we can assume that Paul’s first letter was written to address some issues in the congregation. A reply came back from the congregation with questions, and perhaps a little bit of an authority-challenging edge to it.

So Paul writes to them this letter that we know of as First Corinthians. The section before us is the initial greeting Paul used to begin the letter. He starts out with a phrase that we can easily skim over because we’ve heard it or a variation on it so many times in our lives. But let’s not skim over it today.

Paul begins: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! When Paul tells the Corinthians that God’s grace is theirs, he saying a lot in that little word. Grace is not just a rather empty “church-speak” word that has no real meaning for us today. Nor is grace a special power that God gives us to enable us to do his will, as some churches would teach. No, grace is a word that can only be used to describe God’s love for mankind. It is a love that loves even when it is not loved back. It is a love that loves even though the person who is loved (the Corinthians, you and me) doesn’t deserve it. In fact, it is a love that gives exactly the opposite of what the person deserves.

And that’s where grace and peace intersect. The load of sins that the Corinthians and that you and I carried before God were our end. Our sins mean unending war with God which we actively choose to continue. It means that we deserve hell, eternal death and torment, as punishment. Because of our sins, that’s where we should be, and we should be seeing the Christians in Corinth and even Paul himself there as well.

But, Paul says there’s peace now. How? Because of God’s grace. God’s undeserved love for us meant that he didn’t want us to face what we truly deserved. So, he sought to change that. Paul continues on in his greeting: 4I always thank my God for you because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus. 5You were enriched in him in every way, in all your speaking and all your knowledge, 6because the testimony about Christ was established in you. Paul is so thankful for God’s grace to the Corinthians, because he knows that grace means everything. The grace, Paul said, was given in Christ Jesus.

Jesus is the fullest, most tangible expression of God’s undeserved love for us. We couldn’t do anything for ourselves so God did it all for us. Jesus came, not to show how to get ourselves to heaven, but to get us there himself. We contribute nothing to our forgiveness; Jesus did it all. He died on the cross and suffered the punishment that you and I deserve. That is grace in its clearest form. We sinned again God; God allowed himself to be punished for the sins we committed against him. We deserved hell, Jesus gave us heaven. We have received the opposite of what we deserve.

This is not something that can disappear like the fog of breath on a mirror, though. This is something that is foundational and long lasting. Paul says that the testimony about Christ was established in you. That word translated “established” has the sense of something that is deeply and firmly anchored. When God created the faith to believe what Jesus has done for you, he didn’t do so in a temporary way. He established it to last and endure through eternal life. God worked through his Word and Baptism to create that faith, and he continues to work through his Word and the Lord’s Supper to reinforce that faith which clings to Jesus as Savior.

The problem in all of this comes, not from God, but from us. There are people in this world who couldn’t care less about what God has done for them, and thus they will never benefit from it. But those of us who have heard this truth for months, years, or decades are not immune from having this be of no benefit to us. Because of our familiarity with it all, we can run the risk of letting it become blasé and old hat. We’ve heard it all before and we’ll probably have the chance to hear it all again, we reason. So we’re tempted then to let Jesus and this grace take a backseat in our lives. We’re tempted to leave God behind until we think we need him. But Jesus warns that if take that lackadaisical attitude toward him, it may be too late before we realize we needed that grace to rescue us.

I think most of us probably lock our house and our car with some regularity. Why do we do that? Because we never know when a thief might try to come in and steal something that belongs to us. So we lock the doors of the car before we go into the store and we lock the doors at home before we leave or go to bed to make sure, as much as we’re able, that things are safe.

Jesus described in our Gospel how uncertain we were about when he would return. We simply do not know when the end will come, and anyone who claims to know is either a liar or has been deceived himself. So what is Jesus’ advice? Keep watch! In another discourse on this subject, Jesus compares the coming of the Last Day with that of a thief breaking into a home. If you knew when he was coming to steal you’d make sure to be ready, but since you don’t, that doesn’t mean you just give up on the whole thing. No, you make sure you are continually ready with locks and perhaps security alarms.

Would we not do well to keep watch as well for our Savior’s return as we do for a potential thief? I wonder if we can’t train ourselves, every time we lock a door or set a security alarm, to think about how the end of this world may come like a thief, and thus keep that at the forefront of our minds in little ways every day.

If we do that, or have something else that keeps us reminded of the fact that he is coming—and soon!—what do we do with that? Being mindful of his return isn’t the sole goal. We want to have the whole of his message to us in mind: our sins, his grace, and the promises he’s made. The great comfort is, that like forgiveness and faith before it, this readiness ultimately doesn’t come from us. Paul explained to the Corinthians: 8He will also keep you strong until the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God is faithful, who called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

God is faithful; God will keep you strong. He’s the one who continues to work through his Word to get us and keep us ready for the end. We want make time to be in that Word where he gives us that readiness. That’s what makes church, Bible class, devotional time at home, all so important, not just in the lead up to Christmas or around Easter, but every day. There in his Word is where God makes us and keeps us ready for our Savior’s return and our time to spend eternity with him.

Are you ready? Keep watch! You are in God’s grace so you have nothing to fear and everything to look forward to. Thanks be to God! Happy New Year! Amen.

"The King Guards His Flock" (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 23-24 | Last Sunday of the Church Year A)

Sermon Text: Ezekiel 34:11-6, 23-24
Date: November 19 & 20, 2016

Last Sunday of the Church Year, Year A

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 23-24 (EHV)

11For this is what the Lord God says: I myself will seek the welfare of my flock and examine them carefully. 12As a shepherd examines his flock when he is with his sheep that have been scattered, so I will examine my flock and rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land. I will shepherd them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys, and in all the settlements of the land. 14I will pasture them in good pasture, and their grazing land will be on the high mountains of Israel. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and they will pasture on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15I myself will shepherd my flock, and I myself will let them lie down, declares the Lord God. 16I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured. I will strengthen the weak. I will destroy the fat and the strong, and I will shepherd them in justice.                     

23Then I will raise up over them one Shepherd, and he will tend them, my servant David. He will tend them, and he will be their Shepherd. 24I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David will be the Prince among them. I, the Lord, have spoken.

The King Guards His Flock

The people were waiting anxiously for what was going to happen. What would the new leaders be like? How would things progress for them and for their children? What was going to happen in the days, weeks, and years ahead? God would work good from this—but how? Everything seemed so up in the air.

We’re not talking about America in 2016 after a perhaps surprising election, but the nation of Israel at the time of the prophet Ezekiel. Not long before our lesson for this morning, God had finally done what he had threatened to do. His people had been unfaithful to him time and time again. They had worshipped other gods, false gods, gods made of bronze or wood or stone, that could do nothing for them. They thought their pagan revelry would somehow save them—or at least make them happy. But God is angry enough—and loves them enough—to make it explicitly clear that these pretend gods could neither save them nor make them happy. God uses the tools in his arsenal to get their attention; he sends the then-world super power of Babylon to come in, nearly level Jerusalem, and carry his people to Babylon in captivity.

Now God’s people were faced with uncertainty. How angry was God? Was he ever going to bring them back? What would these foreign kings—kings they had no connection to—do to them? They had gone from being a majority in their own land to a miniscule minority in a foreign place. They were scared. They were uncertain. What was before them was totally unknown.

And yet, it really wasn’t. God had said that he was going to do exactly this. He had told them through the prophet Jeremiah this was coming, and that it would last 70 years. But they seemed to have ignored that or forgotten that.

And so the prophet Ezekiel, a man whose ministry was both in Jerusalem before the exile and in Babylon after the exile, was tasked to bring a message from God, with insight as to what would happen now.

The words before us come just after a scathing rebuke of the leaders of God’s people. God lambasted them for only looking out for themselves and not the people entrusted to their care. They had totally forsaken the work they had been called to do. They had exalted themselves at the expense of the sheep they had been told to protect. Their negligence was a reason that the whole nation was in the garbage situation they now found themselves in. God was very clear in the verse just prior to our lesson, “I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them” (Ezekiel 34:10, NIV84).

Perhaps we sympathize a bit with the people of Israel—or at least see ourselves in them. How often haven’t we strayed from God? How often haven’t we looked out for our own good rather than good of others? How often haven’t we done what we wanted to do and ignored what we knew what right? We’ve all deserved exile from God, but not just being thrown into another country. Because of our sin, we’ve deserved to be cut off from God forever in hell. That is what our words, actions, and attitudes justly bring about.

But notice what God promised to his people in their exile. God is going to take the reins here and do something different. God says that rather than entrusting the work of shepherding to selfish people, he’s going to take the job on himself. At the beginning of our lesson for this morning he says, “I myself will seek the welfare of my flock and examine them carefully. 12As a shepherd examines his flock when he is with his sheep that have been scattered, so I will examine my flock and rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land.”

God is going to rescue his people from their exile. They wouldn’t be in Babylon forever. Within the life time of some who were carried off into captivity, they would begin to return home. They would rebuild Jerusalem, its walls and temple, and settle again in the land God had promised them.

But that’s only scratching the surface of what God is promising here through the prophet Ezekiel. He goes on: 14I will pasture them in good pasture, and their grazing land will be on the high mountains of Israel. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and they will pasture on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15I myself will shepherd my flock, and I myself will let them lie down, declares the LORD God. 16I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured. I will strengthen the weak. I will destroy the fat and the strong, and I will shepherd them in justice. 23Then I will raise up over them one Shepherd, and he will tend them, my servant David. He will tend them, and he will be their Shepherd. 24I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David will be the Prince among them. I, the LORD, have spoken.

God is going to bring these exiles home, but he’s also eventually going to do something so much greater. He’ll raise up a special servant, David, to shepherd his people. King David had been dead and buried for about 500 years when this prophecy was spoken. In fact, after the exile to Babylon, we will never see another king of Israel in the ruling sense that they had before the exile. From here on out, they will continually be a servant-state of another nation, be it Babylon, Persia, Greece, or Rome. No, God is not exclusively talking about bringing back his people to the land of Israel; he’s talking about bringing them to the real Promised Land he’d promised to all people. He’s promising eternal life.

That “servant David” is the one who was a descendant of David, and yet had no regal splendor around him. We saw that weak-looking man on trial before Pilate in the Gospel. “Hail, King of the Jews!” the soldiers mocked as the needle-thorns dug their way into his head. This was no king. This was a man treated like a criminal, a despised man who was condemned for crimes he didn’t commit. To the outside observer, there is so hope or joy here. This is no Prince, as God had promised. This is no one to shepherd God’s people. This is a weak man who is about to be killed.

Or so it seems.

What is the chief job of a king or any governmental leader for that matter? To protect his people. What to us, humanly speaking, looks like the ultimate weakness, spiritually speaking was the ultimate strength. As Jesus is mocked and ridiculed by those soldiers, he’s about ready to go to his death. While they make fun of him for supposedly being a king, he’s doing what we needed our King to do—he’s taking our enemies on directly. As he goes to the cross, Jesus dies for the sins that you and I committed. He suffers hell in our place and defeats Satan who had such clear plans for our eternal punishment with him in hell. Those who wanted our eternal destruction, our enemies, are destroyed. Jesus defeated them for us, because that’s what a king, a real king, our eternal King does.

What is the result of our King’s work for us? Paul made it clear in our Second Lesson for today: For since death came by a man, the resurrection of the dead also is going to come by a man. 22 For as in Adam they all die, so also in Christ they all will be made alive. When Jesus died, he defeated death. Because our King lives, that means you and I will live. Because our King lives, that means that he will lead us like a shepherd throughout lives and to eternity. Because our King lives, we never need to have a fear about what will happen to us. Our sins are gone. Eternal life with our heavenly Father is ours. Our king reigns. The King guards his flock.

That doesn’t mean that our lives won’t be filled with uncertainty. It doesn’t mean that that uncertainty won’t at times be distressing. But it does mean that we know that ultimately, our King will shepherd us through harrowing times. No matter what our relationships with our coworkers, friends, neighbors, or family are, our King takes care of us. No matter what the political climate in our nation is, what the amount of relative peace or relative unrest might be, our King reigns. No matter what threatens us—up to and including hell itself—we know that our King has conquered our enemies and we know that in him we are free.

God himself watches over you. God himself tends to you. God himself is your Savior. God is your King today and forever. Amen.