"Be Your Brother's and Sister's Keeper" (Sermon on Matthew 18:15-20) | September 20, 2020

Text: Matthew 18:15-20
Date: September 20, 2020
Event: The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 18:15–20 (EHV)

15“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And, if he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector. 18Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19Amen I tell you again: If two of you on earth agree to ask for anything, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. 20In fact where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am among them.”

Be Your Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper

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There are certain tasks that we don’t like to do, but that are important, right? If you have a pet, you know cleaning up after the pet be it a litter box, an aquarium, or while out for a walk is important. If you’re like me and tend to have a chaotic desk and workspace, cleaning up and organizing it regularly, while a pain, is important to make sure you can find anything and things don’t get lost or damaged while they’re spread all over the desk or floor. Perhaps it’s cooking meals to ensure your family is fed or doing preventative maintenance on the car so that it runs well. 

Some tasks are unpleasant or tedious, but important. So it is with what Jesus directs us to today. Sin is eternally dangerous, and we have the duty to warn people about that eternal danger, especially our brothers and sisters in faith.

If you think back to the earliest chapters of Genesis, the first children born to Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. Cain was jealous of Abel and his approval from God, so he ended up murdering him. God came to Cain to talk with him, to show him his sin and bring him to repentance. God’s first question for Cain is, “Where is Abel, your brother?” Cain’s response is callous, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9).

That’s not just the response of a murderer trying to hide his sin; that might be our response to many different situations. Am I my brother’s or sister’s keeper? Surely not! They have their own lives, and I shouldn’t meddle. They make their own decisions, and that’s none of my business. They do their own thing, and I shouldn’t interfere.

And in a lot of ways, that’s true. We do well to mind our own business. But what if someone is plunging themselves into danger and don’t know it, or even if they do know it, what if you have the ability to rescue them? Shouldn’t you act to rescue them from known or unknown danger? You’re walking along a bridge and someone near you slips and slides through a broken part of the fence and is barely holding on. You’re right there. You can pull them up. Do you say “Well, that’s none of my business”? No! You stoop down and help them! Or someone is ready to take a drink from a bottle they think is filled with soda, but you know you’ve repurposed that bottle to store hazardous cleaning chemicals. Do you say, “Well, they clearly want to drink what’s in that bottle. They think it’s good for them. I’ll just keep to myself”? No! You interject yourself into that situation to rescue them from making themselves really sick or even dying!

There are a lot of things that people might choose to do that is not in the scope of what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel. Sin is not the same thing as something I disagree with. Someone might make a choice I find to be unwise in regards to a chosen career path, schooling options, books to read, movies to watch, places to live, etc. But doing something I disagree with is different than sin. Sin is not a matter of opinion; sin is disregarding what God clearly says is right and wrong. Sin is always a problem not because it makes me uncomfortable and might be something I find to be morally repulsive; sin is always a problem because it is discarding God’s will. Sin is always disastrous because sin always harms saving faith in Jesus, and left unchecked sin always leads to eternal death in hell. Even if someone feels that it’s no big deal, that it’s “not hurting anyone,” sin as God defines it is always hurting the one committing it. 

That’s why Jesus is so adamant, “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother.” If someone has sinned against you—really sinned, not simply done something you disagree with or makes you upset, but has done something that God says is wrong in his Word—you have the solemn responsibility to talk to them about it. Not talk to others about it—talk to the person about it. This is a private conversation to address the sin. And, ideally, that conversation is productive. The person recognizes their sin, apologizes, maybe even tries to do something to make up for it. And in that moment, you can assure them of your forgiveness for them and even more importantly God’s forgiveness for them. Thus, you have regained them. 

But, it doesn’t always work like that, right? Sometimes the person is resistant to the rebuke, correction, the call to repentance. They deflect and ignore like Cain did. And so, Jesus says, your work is not over. “But if he will not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ” While the initial approach is private, it begins to be slightly more public as you have to call in some help, to reinforce that this is not simply you trying to get your way, but confirming that this is dangerous sin. But perhaps the person will even ignore the small group, so then what is happening must be brought to the church: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And, if he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector.

In the end, a lack of repentance indicates that someone has cut themselves off from God’s forgiveness. They’ve rejected God’s clear directions on right and wrong and, more to the point, have rejected Jesus. They have decided that their actions are fine, that they don’t need forgiveness for this sin, and that they are fine to stand before God in judgment for it. Of course, you and I know that’s not true, and so the last option we have to warn this person of the horrible severity of their sin is to separate them from us to make clear that their actions have separated themselves from God. So, the church’s last act of love is excommunication, a final warning that says, “You’re no longer connected to this congregation because you’re no longer connected to your Savior.” It is a harrowing, gut-wrenching thing. Our prayer is that this last action leads them to see their sin as the danger it is, that they turn from it, returning to their Savior and thus also to their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Sometimes this work ends in an encouraging way—you have regained your brother! Sometimes it ends in a troubling way—treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector. But, regardless, the work must be done. So we cannot deceive ourselves. We cannot think, “I won’t talk to that person about this. It won’t do any good anyway. They won’t listen to me. They won’t change. It will always be the same.” Does Jesus say to address sin only when you assume your words will have an impact? Does he leave room for avoiding the situation and just holding on to animosity or a grudge against the person who has wronged you? No! “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you...” There’s no wiggle room here. This is not optional. This is the responsibility of the Christian to his or her brother or sister.

Likewise, we should be ready to be on the receiving end of this work. If I am caught in a sin that is enticing or frustrating, and my brother or sister comes to me concerned about that, how should I respond? In anger at them for being nosy? Should I ghost them because they are frustrating? No, I should see them as the loving brother or sister that they are, even if I don’t really understand at first what they’re talking about. I should listen to them, dig into God’s Word with them, and see if their concerns are backed by God.

We don’t embark on this work out of spite or pettiness, but out of spiritual concern for the one who is trapped in a sin. We know what it is to be besieged by sin because we’ve been there ourselves. We know what it is to feel trapped because we’ve been dead in sin as well. But we also know what it means to have our Savior wipe that slate clean. We know that every time we’ve refused to talk to the brother or sister who has sinned against us, every time that we haven’t wanted to turn away from a sin, every stumble, every fall, every rebellious act we’ve had toward God—all of these are why Jesus lived and died for us. He has removed them all.

So we go into this work knowing what it is to be rescued and brought from death to life. We reach out to the person dangling off the spiritual bridge; we slap the spiritual soda bottle filled with chemicals out of the person’s hand; we address sin. In every case, not to hold ourselves up as the be-all, end-all of doing the right thing. It’s not about us at all—it’s purely concern for the people who are killing themselves, whether they know or acknowledge it or not. It’s to show them their Savior who has rescued them from this sin, no matter what it is!

This work is difficult, regardless of whether you’re the one addressing sin or the one whose sin is being addressed. No matter what the outcome, whether joyful or disastrous, it’s important to remember that this work is backed by God. A few weeks ago in our Gospel, we saw Jesus give Peter the “keys to the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19). Here, Jesus revisits the concept and assures the disciples that this isn’t just something for one person to manage; this is the responsibility of the Christian church at large: “Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 

When we have to say to someone who is unrepentant that their sin is not forgiven, God supports us in that—whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. When we get to tell someone who is repentant that their sins are forgiven, God assures us that is true—whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. So when you do this work, uncomfortable as it may be, as an individual or if we even have to do it together as a congregation, we’re never doing it alone. God is by our side, supporting and backing this work up, work that he’s told us we need to do.

We have the solemn responsibility to address sin, but we also have the unbelievable joy to announce God’s complete and free forgiveness in Jesus to the repentant person. Lord, give us strength to carry out this task as you direct and to your glory alone! Amen.

"The Christian Life Is Sacrifice" (Sermon on Matthew 16:21-26) | September 13, 2020

Text: Matthew 16:21-26
Date: September 13, 2020
Event: The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 16:21–26 (EHV)

21From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised again. 

22Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “May you receive mercy, Lord! This will never happen to you.” 

23But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a snare to me because you are not thinking the things of God, but the things of men.” 

24Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 25In fact whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26After all, what will it benefit a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what can a person give in exchange for his soul?”

The Christian Life Is Sacrifice

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As 21st Century Americans, we have a real problem processing the idea of “sacrifice.” Attitudes and actions that are truly sacrificial are deeply unpleasant to us. They are an affront to our selfish sinful natures and our national attitude toward individualized freedom. Often, we view “freedom” as a lack of sacrifice. I’m free to do what I want when I want so that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. I never have to sacrifice any desire or good thing because I’m free!

The anniversary of the September 11 attacks this past week maybe gave us some reflection on sacrifice in a physical sense: first responders rushing into danger rather than away from it, brave people on airplanes sacrificing their lives to protect others on the ground so that the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania never reached its target. But those are extraordinary, almost mythical situations. Few of us ever face that kind of situation—thanks be to God!

This morning, though, Jesus has words of caution for us not as Americans but as Christians. We have a life in front of us that is going to be mean sacrifice, and that sacrifice is not something we should run away from, but embrace as a gift from God.

Our Gospel picks up shortly after where we left off last week, perhaps even part of the very same conversation. Last week, Jesus had asked his disciples what people were saying about him, and then he asked his disciples what they thought. Peter had the beautiful confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus praised that confession and said that he would build his church on that confession to the total destruction of every plan of Satan, death, and hell.

But then Jesus starts to become a little bit more clear and blunt with his disciples—what does it mean that he is the Christ? What had he really come to do? From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised again. Jesus didn’t come to be a popular teacher. He didn’t come to be a crowd-gathering miracle worker. He didn’t come to have a ruling position among the people. Jesus came to suffer and die. That’s what the role of the Christ was. That was what the promised Savior had to do. That was the only way to solve mankind’s problem of sin.

But, understandably, this doesn’t sit well with the disciples, and especially Peter.  We’re told that Peter had the audacity to even rebuke his teacher, rebuke the one he had confidently said was the promised Christ! “May you receive mercy, Lord! This will never happen to you.” It’s very possible that Peter had a misguided view of what the Christ’s job actually was. It was a common misconception of that e day that the Christ, the Messiah, would come and be a political Savior. He would be someone who would rescue the nation from the Romans, he would come and restore the glory of Israel as a powerful country, to relive the glory days of King David. You can’t do any of that if you are killed by the current regime in power. So it’s possible that this statement was so incompatible with what Peter knew the Christ would do, he had to correct him.

It’s also possible that Peter saw in Jesus’ words trouble for himself. As goes the teacher, so goes the disciple. If this fate befell Jesus, what would that mean for Peter himself? What would it mean for the rest of the twelve? Peter had to stop this happening for Jesus so that it wouldn’t happen to him!

A third option is simply that Peter loved Jesus and he didn’t want these horrid things to happen to him. So his care and his concern for Jesus (which was at least a factor in all the possible motivations for what he said to Jesus if not necessarily the factor) also is in the picture here.

But really, regardless of what Peter’s motives are, it’s clear how his actions are being used. Jesus is clear that Satan is using Peter’s concern for his friend (and perhaps Peter’s concern for himself) to try to sway Jesus off course. Jesus called Peter a “snare,” literally something that causes someone else to fall or even to sin. Satan is trying to steer Jesus off course here. And you can imagine that even for Jesus the thoughts of not sacrificing yourself, not dying horribly on the cross, would have been appealing. We see that clear as day sometime later when Jesus prays to his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane minutes before his arrest where he prayed that if there was some other way to save mankind, let’d do that.

But this is Jesus’ role and mission; this is what the Christ had come to do. All of mankind was lost in sin. Peter, you, and me are all alike. We have been selfish and arrogant, we have looked out for our own good not the good of others, we have not done what God has told us to do and done what he told us not to do. For our rebellion and sin we deserve death—eternal death in hell. Jesus came to change that. He came to live a perfect life for us and to endure hell in our place. It wouldn’t simply be an abuse of power on the part of the Jewish leaders or the Roman government—it would be you and me, our sins, that nailed him to the cross. He sacrificed himself to save us.

Because Jesus sacrificed himself, we are free from sin. We have no concerns that it wasn’t done correctly, there’s no leftover work to be finished up. Jesus did it all, and he did it all for us. Jesus’ sacrifice saved us. He has made peace between us and God.

Earlier we noted that part of Peter’s concern over Jesus’ well-being was that he might potentially have to follow down the same path. And Jesus seems to lend some creditability to that concern. He says, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 25In fact whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26After all, what will it benefit a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what can a person give in exchange for his soul?” That doesn’t sound like a happy-go-lucky, carefree life, does it? It sounds like a life of sacrifice that we naturally try to avoid. 

So what is Jesus saying here? What should we expect as Christians in this life? As goes the teacher, so goes the disciple. We will not sacrifice our lives for the sins of the world—that work has been done—but we will face similar backlash to what Jesus faced. The world is no more receptive to Jesus’ message of sin and forgiveness today than it was 2,000 years ago. So as we share that message, we should expect to be rejected, mocked, and run into failure after failure. 

And it may not be just embarrassment or frustration. We may find our livelihood and relationships threatened. In particularly dire circumstances, Christians even have their life on the line for their faith. So what is our reaction to those moment? To turn tail and run away from the sacrifice as quickly as we possibly can? What benefit will that be to us? If we give up Jesus, if we give up our faith, just to live more comfortably in this life, what have we done? We’ve exchanged the infinite for the finite; we’ve exchanged the eternal for the temporal; we’ve exchanged the perfect for the corrupted.

No amount of peace and security in this life is worth giving up on our Savior. No struggle we face here, no cross that we have to bear, is worse than taking the punishment of our sins back onto ourselves. It is a bad trade to give up heaven to find peace here. It would be eternally regretful to have to suffer hell forever just to avoid something temporarily unpleasant here.

The Christian life is sacrifice. We sacrifice to be Christians, to share Christ. We sacrifice as we live in this sinful world, while knowing that an eternity of perfection is around the corner. But let’s not run from the sacrifice, let’s embrace it. Let’s not just take the sacrifices imposed on us—let’s sacrifice for each other. What can you sacrifice to help your brother or sister in Christ? What can you sacrifice to serve the person you don’t even know? What pain can you endure that other might benefit? What beneficial thing might you give up that others may be comforted?

Maybe we think of being generous with our time or money. Maybe we think of the simple act of wearing a mask in these pandemic-laden days—a very minor sacrifice that could save someone’s life. Maybe we think of potentially sacrificing our pride or our standing with people to invite someone to join us for worship or to share our faith or to confess that we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God which means that by him we have forgiveness and eternal life. 

Anyone who would say that God wants us to live a life without sacrifice is misguided. Anyone who says that God wants the Christian’s life her eon earth to be full of health and wealth, earthly comfort, is lying. Jesus is clear to you and me, “Take up [your] cross, and follow me.”

As you sacrifice in this life, you give thanks to God for his forgiveness. God bless your Christian life of sacrifice to the glory and praise of our Savior! Amen.

"Not Even the Gates of Hell..." (Sermon on Matthew 16:13-20) | September 6, 2020

Text: Matthew 16:13-20

Date: September 6, 2020

Event: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 16:13–20  (EHV)

13When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 

14They said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 

15He said to them, “But you, who do you say that I am?” 

16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 

17Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20Then he commanded the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. 

Not Even the Gates of Hell…

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Earlier this week Alex and I were watching a baseball game on TV. As one of the outfielders came up to bat, the announcers said, “He came in to this series looking good, but he’s gone 0-8 since this series started. A bit of a slump.” Could the formally productive player be washed up? Was he going to have time to get out of a sudden slump given the COVID-shortened season? Well, as he stepped up to the plate he blasted a 2-run home run; his next time at bat he hit a 3-run home run. Not the pitcher, not the rest of the defense, not even his own personal struggles at the plate would stop that player from winning the game for the team.

There was some uncertainty, though. No one knew that he would pull through for his team the way he did. And there remains uncertainty. What will the next game bring? The slump could return.

Jesus in our gospel this morning makes his disciples and us promises of success for us no matter what happens. It may not feel like we can have any certainty in this life, with job, family, neighborhood, pandemic, fire, smoke heat—whatever—stress. But Jesus assures us that not even the gates of hell itself will overcome us, nothing can overcome our Savior.

Jesus was continuing his traveling, preaching, and teaching work. But in our Gospel for this morning he has a brief moment of time with his disciples. We’re going to focus on that conversation for the next two Sundays, but for today we have the first promise that Jesus makes in this lesson. Jesus begins, as they walk, with a question. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” In other words, “What are people saying about me? What’s the word that you hear?” Jesus, because he is God, of course knew what anyone was thinking about him. But he uses this question to start to probe at his disciples’ hearts.

Everyone had seemed to hear something just a little bit different: John the Baptist, raised from the dead (what an odd thought given that Jesus and John had clearly worked at the same time before John’s execution by Herod!)? Elijah, one the great Old Testament prophets, returning to continue his work? Jeremiah, another giant among the prophets who had brought God’s Word to his people during the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and their subsequent exile? Someone else from the past who was very important? 

What is clear from all of those ideas is that there was simultaneously a great deal of respect and a great deal of confusion about Jesus. He had fed the 5,000 men plus women and children with a small lunch, but then refused to do any more free-food miracles for that crowd. He taught with authority, but people didn’t always want to hear what he had to say. He clearly was sent with power, likely by God, but what were his final goals? The people were lost.

Having heard the answers from the crowd, Jesus turns the question on his disciples: “But you, who do you say that I am?” Now, we know that Peter often let his mouth get him into trouble. But, here, Peter’s impetuousness answers with a beautiful answer on behalf of the twelve: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Let’s take just a moment and unpack that. Peter doesn’t say that Jesus was some legendary figure brought back from the dead. As amazing as that would be, Peter knew that any such ideas were selling Jesus far short of who he truly was. “You are the Christ,” he says. “Christ” is a Greek term meaning “anointed one” or “chosen one.” Hebrew used the term “Messiah.” This was a technical term for the promised one, the seed of the woman promised in the Garden of Eden who would defeat Satan, the suffering servant from Isaiah who would be pierced and crushed for our sins. This was far more impressive than “just” being some miraculously-raised prophet. The prophets were important in large part because they pointed ahead to the Christ; Jesus was the Christ himself!

Peter might have had some mistaken ideas about the role of the Christ (which we’ll talk a bit more about next week), but Jesus is clearly delighted by his confession. He says, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Faith in Jesus as Christ, as Savior, doesn’t come because we do a lot of studying or are very smart or have worked really hard. Faith is totally and completely a gift from God. That you trust Jesus as your Savior is a gift from your God who loves you dearly. 

Peter’s confession is so important, that Jesus is set on building the entire foundation of the church upon it. Jesus goes on, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it.” Boisterous Peter has given Jesus an example to point. His name literally means, “Rock,” but Jesus is using a bit of wordplay here. He’s not saying he is going to build his church on Peter—grammatically, that’s impossible based on what Jesus says—but he is saying that he will build it on Peter’s confession of him as the Christ. The fact that Jesus is the Savior from sin would be and continues to be the foundation of any true-teaching church.

And it’s easy to lose sight of that, right? Churches start out wanting to do good in the world, in their communities, and that’s wonderful and important. But if a congregation becomes primarily concerned with people’s physical well-being rather than their spiritual well-being, they’ve lost sight of their foundation. If the focus is on sharing self-help tips rather than pointing to Jesus as the Christ, the Savior from all sin, they’ve lost the thread and the message they’ve been tasked with sharing. Lord, keep us from falling into this trap!

But, when we proclaim Jesus as the solution to all sin—yours and mine—then something amazing happens. Then we have something that cannot be taken away from us. Then we have a message then cannot be defeated. The promise of God is clear: nothing will be able to permanently undo this message of sins forgiven in Jesus, not even the gates of hell. The gospel message advances triumphantly, and Satan is powerless to stop it. It will and does bring comfort to the aching hearts of sinners around the world.

And that message is going to be proclaimed in some pretty direct ways. Jesus says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Jesus here singles our Peter and elsewhere gives these keys to the church as a whole. The keys Jesus speaks about are of binding and loosing, locking and unlocking, forgiving or not forgiving.

Jesus’ death paid for all sin. Everything is done. When Jesus said, “It is finished!” (John 19:30) from the cross, he wasn’t lying or exaggerating. But, you and I have the horrid ability to reject that forgiveness. We can look God in the eyes and say, “No thank you.” We do that by ignoring God’s Word. We do that by embracing and relishing sin. And that’s where Jesus gives to his church the keys, to announce forgiveness and a lack of forgiveness to people.

For the person with a troubled conscience, who is worried that what they have done will prevent them from ever entering eternal life, we have the joyful duty and privilege to bring the gospel to them, to point them to Jesus, the Christ, and say “There is your Savior! There is your forgiveness! It’s been done and won for you! Thanks be to God!” And the person with whom we share that message can be certain that it is just as valid as if Jesus himself were sharing it, “whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 

But what about the other end of the spectrum? What about the person who doesn’t care about their sin, who thinks it’s no big deal, or actually really likes it and says they will not make any effort to remove it from their life? Such an unrepentant person spurns God’s mercy and love and separates themselves from God’s forgiveness. To that person we have the solemn responsibility to warn them that they are condemning themselves because they are rejecting God’s love. They are taking the burden of their sin away from Jesus and putting it back on their own shoulders. We have to warn them that going down that path will mean no joyful entrance into eternal life, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.”

Sin, Satan, Death, and Hell cannot stand up against the advancement of our Savior’s Word. We conquer all of our enemies, because he conquered it all for us. Because of Jesus’ life and death for us, because of his promises to us, nothing can stand in our way from sharing the gospel, nothing can stop us from entering into eternal life, not even the gates of hell! Amen.

"We Have a Listening Savior" (Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28) | August 30, 2020

Matthew 15:21–28 (EHV)

Jesus left that place and withdrew into the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22There a Canaanite woman from that territory came and kept crying out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! A demon is severely tormenting my daughter!” 
23But he did not answer her a word. 
His disciples came and pleaded, “Send her away, because she keeps crying out after us.” 
24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 
25But she came and knelt in front of him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 
26He answered her, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to their little dogs.” 
27“Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet their little dogs also eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 
28Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, your faith is great! It will be done for you, just as you desire.” And her daughter was healed at that very hour. 

“We Have a Listening Savior”

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I’ve never been especially handy. I think in the 14-plus years that Karen and I have been married, I’ve improved a small amount in that regard, but doing plumbing or landscaping or woodworking has never been anything that comes naturally. And, because those things don’t come naturally the temptation is strong to avoid them completely, or give up on them at the first moment of friction or frustration. 

And yet, not bailing on something immediately can lead to great blessings righT? If you stick with a problem and try to solve it, you might figure something out, acquire a new skill, or at least learn that, yes, for sure, in the future, I should hire a professional to handle this problem. But to get to that point, you have to be persistent. 

Through the great faith in the Canaanite woman, Jesus teaches us about our prayer life and how we should bring requests to our God. He doesn't want us to give up or to question whether we have permission to ask for him help. No, Jesus assures us that We Have a Listening Savior. That's true regardless of who we are, and so we pray with persistence.

The Gospel for today takes place close to the midpoint of Jesus' earthly ministry, just after the events from the previous weeks’ Gospels coming after Jesus finding out about John the Baptist’s execution by King Herod, the feeding of the 5,000, and Jesus going out to meet the disciples on the water in the middle of the storm. At the beginning of our lesson, Jesus withdrew from Jewish region of Galilee and headed northwest, to Tyre and Sidon, two prominent cities for the Phoenicians. Jesus was now in Gentile country.

The Jewish people very often saw themselves as above the Gentiles. Despite God making clear that his promises were for all people, you rarely see the Jewish people showing spiritual concern for the Gentiles. Instead, they tended to flaunted their superiority. They were God’s chosen people after all!

That helps to add some color to the disciples' attitude toward the woman who was crying out after Jesus. They didn't want to be bothered by this woman, let alone a Gentile. Even Jesus' words, initially, can put us off a bit and make us wonder what he was doing and why he was acting that way. Despite the cold shoulder the woman was getting from Jesus and his disciples, she was still confident that Jesus not only could, but would heal her daughter. 

It was pretty brazen of her, a Gentile woman, to ask Jesus, a Jewish man, for anything. She had no right to even talk to him, culturally speaking. Yet she makes this great request of him. But there was a much bigger divide between she and Jesus than just cultural norms: she was a sinner, and she was talking to God.

You and I had the same wall separating us from God as well. And this isn't little chain-link fence that you can see through. This is a solid wall, hundreds of feet tall, covered in razor wire. It's an unscalable and unconquerable wall. We can't talk to God, we can't see God, we can't get any help. We can't do a single thing to bring that wall down.

And yet that woman still prayed and sought Jesus' help. Because our Listening Savior didn't care where she was from or who her parents were. He was concerned about her. He himself tore down that wall of sin that was between them. That was his whole reason for being here. He was to bring and be the bread of life to all people, including this humble and persistent Canaanite woman!

That gives us food for thought too. It can be easy to slip into stereotypes and prejudices. What do we think about people who are different than us? Does race change what we think about a person before we even meet them? Do socioeconomic differences change what we think about a person? Do we think someone is not worthy of our time or attention because of how different they are from us? Do we think, like the disciples might have, that they're not worthy of our Savior?

And really, that's true. They are not worthy of Jesus. But it’s not that we are and that aren’t. We are not worthy of Jesus either. In the end, there is no difference between any of us. In God's sight we were all sinners, walled-in by our willful disobedience.

Praise be to God, though, that he didn't just come to save a select group of people! Jesus came to save all people! He made that point very clear as he praised the woman's faith. Jesus’ death and resurrection is for all people, everywhere. Jesus death is for you and me, your neighbor and coworker, the person who loves you and the person who despises you—the entire world! All the things we did wrong? They're gone, nailed to his cross! All the things we should have done right? Jesus did them in our place. The wall has been broken down and we are now God's children, dearly loved by our Heavenly Father!

But there's something else striking about this woman's plea for help beyond her ignoring of cultural norms. Did you notice how persistent she is? Jesus completely ignores her request, and she keeps crying out after him. She races ahead and kneels down before him and begs. Jesus even insults her by calling her a “little dog”, a dog that would've been permissible in the house as a pet but not of any use in hunting. Yet still she doesn't swerve from her request. Her desire to have her daughter healed was that great, and her faith that Jesus could do it was that strong.

Why did Jesus behave like that? Is Jesus betraying some hostility to the Canaanite people himself? Is Jesus himself being the racist that we just warned each other against? Hardly. Jesus had a two-fold purpose to his attitude and his answers here. The first was to test the woman's faith. The second, and perhaps more important, was to teach his disciples, including you and me, how to be persistent in our prayers.

The temptation is there, in our prayer life, just as it might be for me doing home repairs: try once, and if nothing happens, give up. “I prayed about it,” we might say, “and nothing happened. God must either not want to give me what I asked for or simply wasn't listening.” How much farther from the truth could we be? God wants us to pray with confidence to him, knowing that he does indeed hear and answer our prayers.

So God didn't answer us 15 seconds after we prayed about something once? Pray again, and again, and again, and again. And then what do we do if it seems like Jesus isn't answering our prayers? We ought to examine what we are asking, and how we're asking it. Are we praying like Jesus prayed, that above all else God's will would be done in our lives? Are we praying that whatever is best for us, that's what Jesus would allow to happen to us?

We pray confidently, boldly, and persistently because God has attached such awesome promises to prayer. The apostle Paul urges us to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) because, as James wrote in his letter, “The prayer of a righteous person is able to do much because it is effective” (5:16). The power doesn't rest in the prayer itself, but in the one answering it. The prayer isn't just a good mental break and exercise for us, it's asking our heavenly Father for the things we need, or even the things we'd just like to have happen. We don't pray hoping God will hear us; we pray knowing God will answer us. James said that the prayer of a righteous person is able to do much, to be effective. That has nothing to do with our worthiness to come to God, the strength of our faith, or how well we pray; it has everything to do with God making us righteous in his sight through Jesus' death and resurrection.

And that's where our comfort lies. It doesn't matter who we are or where we've come from. God loves us. It doesn't matter what we've done or the guilt we carry with us. God's forgiven us. And it doesn't matter how unworthy we think our prayers and requests are. God will answer us. Sometimes it might be a resounding yes, sometimes a no, and sometime God might simply be telling us to wait  for something better to come. Regardless, we continue to pray persistently, with confidence, and in Jesus' name because he’s forgiven you according to his will because he loves you. How awesome it is to be heard, day or night, by our listening Savior! Amen.