Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Oct 5

5 October 2021

Text: Matt 8:18-34

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Early in our reading, our Lord’s disciples are afraid that they will drown.  At the end of the reading, the demons enter into a herd of pigs who drown.  And this is a lesson on faith.

The disciples are in a boat, and when “there arose a great storm,” our Lord slept calmly through the turmoil.  The disciples “woke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing.’”  Our Lord calms the storm, puts everything aright, and asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”  The disciples are still trying to figure out who Jesus is: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and sea obey Him?”  They still lack real knowledge of who Jesus is.

But the demons have no such deficit of knowledge of Jesus.  They know that He is there to “torment” them, knowing that the “time” of their destruction is coming.  Our Lord casts them out into a herd of pigs, and the pigs drown themselves.  Our Lord does not tell the demons that they have little faith.  For faith is not knowledge.  The demons have knowledge, but the disciples do not.  And yes, the disciples, in their fear, demonstrate a deficit of faith.  But the demons have no faith at all.  For faith is not merely believing in God, or even believing in Jesus.  Faith is believing the Word and promise of Jesus, that it applies to you.  That promise is forgiveness, reconciliation, communion with God, and everlasting life.

As James says, the demons believe – in the sense that they recognize Jesus – but they “shudder.”  To believe in the sense of faith means to not only know the facts, but to take them to heart, to “fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”  To have faith – the faith that saves – is to confess the truth of who Jesus is, and also to believe what He does!  And this faith often struggles against our senses and our reason – even as storms, literal and figurative, rage, as the world taunts, as the devil lies, and as our sinful nature betrays.  Through it all, faith clings to Christ, to His cross, to His word, and to His promise. 

And when the storms rage, even a little faith is by far greater than the sure knowledge and the kind of belief displayed by the demons.  Unlike the people of the town, let us not pray to Jesus to “Leave [our] region,” but rather, like the disciples of little faith, let us pray to Jesus to “Save us!”

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Sermon: Trinity 18 - 2021

3 October 2021

Text: Matt 22:34-46

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

When Jesus was making His way about the countryside preaching, healing, casting out demons, and gathering disciples, there were two groups who were at one another’s throats: the liberals and the conservatives.

The liberals were called the Sadducees.  They were often temple priests.  They read the Scriptures, but didn’t really believe much of what was in them.  They didn’t believe in angels.  They didn’t believe in the afterlife.  They certainly didn’t believe in “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Jesus told these liberals “You are wrong, because you neither know the Scriptures nor the power of God.”  He used the Word of God and reason to make them look foolish.

And so their rivals, the conservative Pharisees, “gathered together” after our Lord embarrassed the Sadducees.  They decided to take their shot at Jesus.  But the Pharisees, who did believe in angels and the afterlife, did not believe in God’s grace.  They had a made-up religion not based on Scripture, but rather on being rewarded for doing the rituals that they and their rabbis just made up.  Jesus went out of His way to ignore their artificial rules and to call them out for their hypocrisy.

Jesus did not side with either the liberal Sadducees or the conservative Pharisees.  Both of them were wrong, and both needed to hear the truth from Him who is “the way, the truth, and the life.”  Both were sinners in need of a Savior.

So when the Sadducees challenged Jesus, they did so based on the resurrection (that they denied).  When the Pharisees challenged Jesus, they did so based on the Law (that is, the Ten Commandments) – which they believed a man could keep and earn salvation for himself.  Of course, to pull this off, the Pharisees had to reinterpret the commandments in such a way so as to look like they were actually keeping it. 

And so when they heard that Jesus “had silenced the Sadducees,” they made their move and questioned Jesus about the Law.  In fact, one of them, a lawyer in fact, “asked Him a question to test Him.”  And when lawyers ask questions, they’re not really asking questions.

So the Pharisee lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  The lawyer probably had a refutation to throw at Jesus no matter what answer He gave.  But our Lord gave Him an answer that He didn’t expect.  He talked about love.

The greatest commandment of all is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  Jesus quoted this from the Book of Deuteronomy.  And our Lord added, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  He quoted this from the Book of Leviticus.  Jesus is using the Books of Moses (that the Sadducees considered authoritative) to argue against the Pharisees, who themselves used tradition and the utterances of rabbis to argue their point.

And combining the two, that is, the command to love God and to love one’s neighbor, our Lord said, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” 

This was sheer genius.  For the Pharisees read the law in a loveless way, using the Ten Commandments to aggrandize themselves.  Jesus said that the point of the Ten Commandments is love – and love is directed outwardly.  So if you “love the Lord your God,” you will not have other gods before Him, misuse the name of the Lord your God, and you will indeed remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy – not just going through the motions like the loveless Pharisees.

And, dear friends, if you love your neighbor as yourself, you will honor your father and your mother, you won’t murder, or commit adultery, or steal.  You won’t give false testimony against your neighbor, covet your neighbor’s house, or covet your neighbor’s spouse or other people.  If you focus on love, you will keep the commandments.

And so our Lord has silenced both the liberal Sadducees and the conservative Pharisees, teaching both of them the truths that they deny.  And both groups were angry at Jesus, enough to conspire together – two hated enemies – who were willing even to collaborate with the hated Romans to ensnare Jesus, so that He could be silenced by being killed.

But once again, they are the ones who fell into the trap, for it was at the cross that our Lord purchased our resurrection denied by the Sadducees, and perfectly kept the Law unlike the hypocritical Pharisees who played lawyer’s games with words and only pretended to keep the Law. 

And Jesus did this all out of love.  He even died for every Sadducee and every Pharisee.

The Pharisees again fell into our Lord’s trap even as they tried to trap Him.  Our Lord asked them, “What do you think about the Christ?  Whose son is He?”  They knew the Scriptures well enough to answer correctly, “The Son of David.”  Unlike the liberal Sadducees, the conservative Pharisees did believe the Bible and its supernatural claims.  But our Lord makes the Pharisees ponder the mystery of the Messiah (and He does this as the very Messiah who is talking to them).  So now Jesus asks a question: since David refers to the Messiah as “Lord,” how can the Messiah be both David’s Son and David’s Lord?

The Pharisees were so wrapped up in using Scripture to justify themselves, to prop up their man-made religion, and to use the Bible as a weapon against their enemies, that they did not know how to apply the Scriptures to the Messiah.

And perhaps this is why they did not believe in Him, in spite of His miracles, His powerful preaching, and His fulfillment of prophecy.  They were blinded by their pride, and they could not see the Messiah with the very eyes of faith that Jesus longed to give them.

At any rate, the Pharisees were outsmarted.  But instead of humbly asking Jesus for an explanation, instead of praying for guidance, they, like the Sadducees, were simply silenced by Jesus.  They shut down.  For “from that day” nobody would “dare to ask Him any more questions.”

In fact, the Pharisees and the Sadducees plotted to silence Jesus, not by the Word of God and reason, but by a traitor, by lying witnesses, and by the brutality of the Roman cross. 

Even as our Lord taught them about love, they willingly perverted justice to torture an innocent man to death.  All the while the Pharisees boasted about how they kept the commandments, and the Sadducees boasted about how important they were to the now useless temple sacrifices.

Dear friends, let us know the Scriptures and let us know the power of God.  Let us know the love of Jesus by seeing in His life and ministry and death and resurrection the very things spoken of in the Old Testament – the Law and the Prophets. 

Let us be neither skeptical Sadducees nor hypocritical Pharisees.  Let us be humble and willing to learn.  Let us strive to love God and our neighbor – not for the praise of men, and not trying to impress God.  Let us love because we have first been loved: by the Triune God who created us, redeemed us, and called us, by the God who ransomed us by His blood, and who speaks to us even today in His Word.  Let us love our neighbors by telling them and showing them the love of Christ, who fulfills the Law and the Prophets by pure love, and whose love assures for us “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” 

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.