A, Commemoration of the Reformation - John 8:31-32, 34-36 "Get the Message Right, Get the Message Out"

31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free…34 I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:31-32, 34-36)

Get the message right; get the message out. 

There’s a mindset occurring in the church today that threatens the very life of the whole church.  This philosophy is one that says, ‘we’re all Christians, it doesn’t matter what we believe; we’re all going to the same place’.   And although there is an element of truth to the statement; at the core, stands the same ideals and beliefs that led to the building of the Tower of Babel.  Did God bless that project?  No!  We must ask ourselves why? 

God gives us the message and the message is one a small child can get right.  The message we’re talking about is the gospel of our salvation, the message of redemption in the Word of God. 

To the believing Jews, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32) 

The first half of this verse can be translated in a number of ways: If you remain in my word; if you abide by my word; if you dwell in my word – you are truly my learners; or, you are my disciples indeed.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.  Get the message right!  Why is it so difficult for us to keep that message right?

The fundamental difference between the unity language cheaply tossed around in the church today and the unity that Christ calls us into is this: Christ’s way is centred on him, rather than focusing on the acceptance of other people’s ideas and words in a bid not to offend them.  Unity in Christ listens to Christ alone and not to the ideas of people.  So, in the text we hear that if we look to Jesus and abide by what he teaches us we are his disciples.  And having held onto his Word as the truth, it makes us holy, and it sets us free.

The sad fact today is that most people in the churches are all too willing to accept what someone else believes because they don’t really know what they themselves believe.  Christ is no longer at the centre and the message is no longer right.  They neither examine nor become learners of what their own church believes nor what the other churches teach. 

Most of us don’t even know the subtle differences which we, as Christ centred Lutherans, should reject in other church’s teaching, nor do we know the strengths that these other denominations might offer us and the greater church.

Most denominations are Christ centred, but their doctrines are being rejected in favour of a shallow, pop, pleasure cultured, me-centred theology; where “god” is the person seeking, “Lord just” prayers are the way to coerce Jesus Christ with our self-righteousness yearnings, and our ‘thou art God speak’ just makes us sound churchy.

Unfortunately, the message of the Gospel gets turned back into Law.  All the things that Christ gives us and has called us to hold at the fore – don’t get rejected outright, but have the importance taken off them in favour of things that appeal to the sinful heart.   The things that Christ has set in place and have been proven over time in the church are misplaced in favour of self-righteous feel-good things.

Such as: Corporate belief and understanding of God’s Word, or a church’s doctrine and theology, are replaced in favour of the life one must live.  The means of Grace or the things Jesus personally put in place for us to receive him and the Holy Spirit, are replaced by a public declaration of personal faith, most often expressing itself in the statement, ‘I made a decision for Jesus Christ, my personal Lord and Saviour’. 

‘Lord’ is turned from Redeemer or saviour into someone I must fearfully obey to be good enough to gain eternal life.

‘Grace’ is not God’s death on the cross in our place, but rather grace is reduced to a template for moral living, and salvation is only obtained if we live as Christ did. 

Ironically, nobody could live as Jesus did when he was here!  He walked to the cross alone!  So, what makes anyone think they can do it now? 

The  preaching of the Gospel, commanded by Christ, and passed on by the Apostles, Jesus’ first disciples or learners, is put aside in favour of group sharing sessions usually fuelled by worldly ignorance of God’s word. 

Liturgy is deserted in favour of free unscripted prayer; the Lord’s own prayer is rejected as dead in favour of the prayers that come from the heart.  If Christ and his prayer are rejected from the heart, one must ask, “In what condition is the heart to pray a free prayer anyway?” 

In fact, ritual is seen as bad, even though every one of us needs ritual.  Why do you think babies become unsettled if they don’t have a regular pattern of living?  All humans need ritual for stability and reassurance; it’s the same in the church for Christians!  

And finally, the church or the assembly of the saints, the gathering of all who confess and believe in the Triune God is moved to one side, sacrificing things such as repentance and forgiveness, through confession and absolution.  In its place conversion experience becomes more important than God’s justification.

Don’t hear me wrong.  As good as these might seem, when they are put first before God, they become destructive in our reception of the One True God and the holiness he chooses to give through his way — his chosen means of grace.

The Reformation was all about placing Jesus back at the centre; remaining in his word; getting the message right!  The church of Luther’s day had turned from Christ and his means to other means of coming before God.  So, the church of the day had taken what was given to them as right and got it wrong. 

Jesus Christ coming down in love, was pushed out, in favour of a gospel of love climbing up to God, doing the greater good, which is no gospel at all.

Later on, others came along and rejected all things catholic (that is gathered by the Holy Spirit, according to Christ), but Luther and others who followed him stood against them.  Luther and his supporters fought against extremists reforming the church too far in the other direction which also led to Christ still being pushed out of the centre. 

As much as Luther stood against the Roman church of the day, he still recognised that through Christ-centred-catholicity (cath-o-liss-ity), God proclaimed the Holy Gospel and gave himself through the means of Holy Baptism, Holy  Communion, and the forgiveness of sins.  

Getting the message right must come first, it must come before getting it out.  If you are not focused on Christ, if you are not a learner of his, how then can you get the right message out? 

Luther reminds us in his Large Catechism in the Third Article that where Christ isn’t preached, there’s no Holy Spirit to create, call, and assemble the Christian Church, outside of which nobody can come to the Lord Christ.  Ask yourself, “When I get the message out, to where does it lead?” Jesus Christ, or something else!

Get the message right; get the message out!  When we as Lutherans place ourselves under the confessions of the church, we place ourselves under Christ and become his disciples, learning what the truth is and what freedom from the Law actually is. 

If we call ourselves Lutheran just for the sake of being Lutheran, we then lose sight of the Gospel and take what is right and get it wrong.  The great joy of being a Lutheran is that we have a confession that trusts Jesus at his Word and calls us to submission under what he did and continues to do through the Holy Spirit.  This is the truth, and it sets us free!

So, in having the right message, now we are called to get it out.  Why?  Why do we need to get the message out? 

Our Lutheran confessions are a strength to the greater church.  They rightly show us who we are as people: sinners who do sinful things, brought about by our own sinful natures.  But they also rightly show who we are once we allow Christ to rid us of the curse of eternal death, and allow the Holy Spirit to place trust, or faith, in our hearts; leading us to say, “God you are right, I am wrong, take me, do it your way and set me free”. 

Having received such grace and faith, we can trust in these things to be enough, so we can confidently say, “Yes, I am going to heaven, I have been forgiven and saved, I will be saved!”

Knowing that you have been set free from the bondage of sin, and, ‘what I have to do to get to heaven’, you can rest in the freedom of the Gospel, being blessed completely by the obedience of Christ’s death and resurrection on the cross. 

The passion of Christ’s death and resurrection for your salvation lived by Christ and the Holy Spirit in you,  put you right!  Then surely this message which put you right, will be the message you might passionately want others to have as well.  This should make getting the message out a joy, not a task!

God gets the message right, and he gives it to us as a free gift and it saves us.  Let the Holy Spirit lead you in getting this right message out, so others might live in the freedom of the Gospel too. 

Amen.  

B, Epiphany 2 - 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 "Girls, Gold, Glory"

“Each age has its own peculiar temptations!  Young fellows are tempted by girls, men who are thirty years old are tempted by gold, when they are forty years old they are tempted by honour and glory, and those who are sixty years old say to themselves, ‘What a pious man I have become!’” (LW 54 #1601)

This is a quote of Luther’s from the end of May 1532.  Notice here Luther says nothing about those who are fifty years old — humorous since Luther was just shy of turning fifty at the time.   One wonders what was tempting him at the age of fifty!  Perhaps not telling the whole story!  Or Wittenberg Bitter!

Nevertheless, he makes a good point.  There is something that tempts everyone, the young and the old, male or female, well off and the not so well off!

What temps you?  We all have our weaknesses.  As Christians we are forgiven, we are being healed, but still the sore of sin oozes and festers.  When we think sin is under control it soon breaks out again in another way.

When I was a young man this Corinthians text troubled me deeply.  Perhaps it still should raise concerns in me today!  Growing up as a Christian in a post-Christian culture, sex was everywhere.  It was in the media, in music and their videos, on television, in ads... you couldn’t get away from it.  Unfortunately, I failed to flee from it too.  I failed in thought, word, and deed! 

You see temptation is a sneaky thing.  It comes about and succeeds because human nature always seeks to find fulfilment in the wrong thing.  I thought if I could deliver myself from this sin, I would be a better person.  And when I couldn’t I thought I was not good enough for God!  But I also knew giving in to the lure of licentiousness and lust would also be disastrous and deadly. It seemed I was trapped. 

As I grew older I soon realised the same sin raised its head again, not through girls, but through gold, and then glory.  I see today I fall into the same trap thinking I am over sexual sins, because there is a foundational sin behind sexual sin, working me to want wealth, and harassing me to hunger for honour. 

My sin is no better, if I begin to believe, I’ve conquered sin on my own and moved on from the days of my hot blooded youth, or the go-get-em working days for wealth and the weekend.  

Yes! This text should still concern me today!  Not because of sins of the past!  No! They have been nailed to the cross and forgiven!  But rather, because of the sins of the present!  And no, not the sexual sins of today’s youth, but my sin, my temptation, and my failures before God today!

I am throwing stones in glass houses if I think this text is just about someone else’s sexual sin rather than the cause of it, and the true cause of all the various age specific sins.

You see there is just as much thought around that sex is bad.  This is just as big a sin as sexual promiscuity and perhaps partly the cause of it in our society today.

Yet we hear right at the beginning of creation, after the fall, a recount of the conception and birth of Adam and Eve’s first son.  In Genesis four we hear, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” (Genesis 4:1 ESV)

Therefore it’s good to know your husband or wife sexually.  For sure it’s private, but God is glorified in right sexual conduct.  And may I say, right sexual conduct between a husband and a wife, in the sight of God, with his blessing, is the most joyful, satisfying, exciting sex there is to be had.  Contrary to popular thought that fulfilment comes through what one might do with their own bodies.

And here is where we begin to uncover the cause of sexual sin and why Paul calls us and the Corinthians to flee from sexual immorality.  When we think of ourselves and our own sexual temptations, they occurred most likely when we were younger.  Teenagers of every generation have been the same.  Pimples and body odour occur because of what’s happening in the body; it is sexually developing.  Stopping sexual development in the body is about as futile as stopping pimples and BO! 

But learning what is happening in us while we develop as teens and young adults is crucial for fleeing from immorality when we’re young; as is fleeing from greed or self-glorification when we’re old.  In fact, many struggle just as much with their senior’s sin, because the sins of their youth haven’t been dealt with appropriately.  Rather than flee from the sins of youth, sexuality was suppressed and secretive.

But why and how does one flee from the sins of sexuality?  Not only are we developing physically when we are teens, but also socially, emotionally and mentally.  It’s at this age when the ego really begins to kick against authority.  Mum and dad no longer know anything, it becomes about personal experience and excitement.  Teenagers believe they should be bullet proof; they should know, and have everything!

Unfortunately we’re all taught to believe we must do stuff to find fulfilment.  For a teenager sexual gratification is number one for fulfilment.  Whether they do it or not is beside the point, it’s the belief of what fulfils the ego that drives the temptation.  And it’s the thought process and belief of what one must do to find fulfilment that sets up a person’s life for temptation, failure, and seeking things that never fulfil anything.

The first thing we must ask ourselves, “What is the purpose of a person?  What is my purpose?”  What will give the sum total of my being fulfilment; physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally?  Without this sorted out one will roll from various sexual sins, into greed for acquiring stuff, or seeking satisfaction in status, family, fortune, or fame.  All falling short of the very thing we seek in these things; namely, fulfilment.

“What is my purpose?” may be the first thing we need to ask ourselves. But knowing what our purpose is takes a life time to really get.  Nor do we fully get it until we’re raised to eternal rest with our Father in Heaven.

We need to see in this text that fleeing from sexual immorality, is the need to flee from the self, the ego, the need to self appease that takes our focus from God and glorifies myself.  The rights of “I” need to be shifted from idolatry back to the righteousness of the great I AM!

Augustine of Hippo, a father in the church, back in the fourth and fifth century in his writing, The Confessions, said,

“Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”

Augustine was no stranger to the ways of the world.  He was raised a Christian but strayed for some years, in search of pleasure.  Also in his confessions he said of his youth,

“But I, wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of the Lord, and said, 'Grant me chastity and continence (self-control), only not yet.”

 So Augustine like so many of us are restless.  Looking for fulfilment in all the wrong things.  But bitter experience taught Augustine, Luther, and many others who have gone before us that allowing sexuality, status, wealth, reason and pride to enslave us will only leave us yearning for something more, unfulfilled and unable to raise us up on the last day.

Saint Paul says, “All things are lawful for me but I will not be enslaved by anything!” (1 Cor 6:12)  In other words he’s saying he has freedom to do whatever he pleases but in exercising his freedom he must be careful not to become overpowered by the very acts of his freedom. 

He continues, “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.  And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.  Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!  Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”  But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.  Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. (1 Corinthians 6:13–18 ESV)

Humanity was made to glorify God, to praise God, to be empowered by God.  Until we rest in God’s power, trusting in him, we have no rest. 

There are many things we can prostitute ourselves to in the name of bringing fulfilment to ourselves.  These are idols and they have no power.  God has power, it is the power of his love, in Jesus Christ crucified and raised, so he might raise us up daily to glorify him and eternally where we will be glorified with him forever.

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God! You are not your own.  You were bought with a price. We were created to glorify God in our bodies.

How do you do this?  Trust not yourself but the power of the Holy Spirit who continually works to place you under the forgiveness of our risen Lord Jesus Christ and into the loving presence of your Heavenly Father.

The kingdom the power and the glory are his.  Amen.

B, Commemoration of the Reformation - Romans 3:20-24, 27-28 "Reformation Lamination"

Shaken not Shattered

Driving the roads of Australia can sometimes be hazardous! Narrow, broken edges, long distances, kangaroos, emus, tiredness, and big trucks coming from the other direction, can make it quite risky at times.

As it happens, there was not much to look at when I found myself daydreaming and tired driving on a narrow windy bitumen road through lifeless scrub. Out of the blue on a bend of the road hidden by the bush suddenly appeared a dirty great big cattle-carrying road train.

The truck was bearing down on me at what seemed like two-hundred kilometres per hour. Our rendezvous must have taken him by surprise too as he swerved the heavy transport to the left with a sudden jolt. I did the same and headed for the hard shoulder in a bid to avoid the mass of metal and moo-ving meat.

I got past the prime mover ok, but when a road train is suddenly lurched one way the movement is exacerbated as the effect ripples back through the trailers. I was a bit worried I wasn't going to make it there for a while, as the last trailer swayed like an overweight snake on and off the road in front of me. But through the dust and debris a path appeared for me to pass safely.

I thought I was through, when suddenly, CRACK, a large stone left its lasting impression on my windscreen. Understandably, the whole event left me a bit rattled as I drove on.

Old Crystal Highways

As I drove on it led me to ponder earlier times on roads such as the one on which I had just had my near miss; times when roads were referred to as crystal highways because of the shattered glass scattered from windscreens broken along these old rough roads.

The name crystal highway sounds as if they were something beautiful, but the reality of a crystal highway was anything but beautiful. If one was a contributor to the crystals of glass scattered alongside the highway it usually meant driving to the next town with no windscreen, being wind blasted while the remnants of the old windscreen sat on one's lap and under the feet.

Then there was the wait as the local service station mechanic replaced the glass so the journey could continue. And there was no guarantee that five minutes the other side of town another stray stone wouldn't be flicked up into the path of your new windscreen, shattering it and causing the woes of travelling on rough roads with a broken windscreen to begin all over again; not only breaking the glass but shattering the spirits of those in middle of their journeys.

The Pre-Reformation Church

Martin Luther lived in the Church of the Middle Ages. Some refer to the Middles Ages as the dark ages and it surely was spiritually dark for Martin Luther and many others trying to live lives as faithful Christians. Before the 31^st of October 1517 the church had sunk into the blackest of darkness.

Fifteen hundred years after our Lord ushered in the new covenant—the radiant brilliance of a new life in eternity without sin, through the spilling of his blood, his death on a cross, his entombment in the earth, and his victorious resurrection—the church had turned its back on the centrality of its existence, it had severed itself from its head, its Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The church's hierarchy had pushed aside the pure Gospel, laying God's Word in the dust, forgetting about it and in its place inventing its own doctrines of anti-gospel. The servants of the church had elevated themselves to be the masters of the church, who, instead of tending Christ's sheep, only gorged themselves with their goods and sucked the blood from the church's veins.

Before the 31st of October travelling on the crystal highway towards eternal life was oppressive for the most hardened traveller. A thousand years of silence on justification by God's grace, and the righteousness of God, given as gift, had culminated in Christians languishing in a fearful despair and anxiety.

Thousands had, in their previous predicament of sin, cried out in vain, "What must we do to be saved?" Their answer as they lay shattered beside the crystal highways of Mediaeval theology was rerouted to paying indulgences for departed saints, to human works, to their own penance, repentance, works of satisfaction and service. Christ and his fully sufficient service was silenced and the Word about faith gagged. Instead even more shattering stones were hurled at them knowing full well the impossibility of travelling along the road to glory by themselves.

Even learned men like Luther tormented themselves seeking, by themselves, to perform the righteousness that God expects of anyone who wishes to come into his holy presence.

Lamination and Reformation

Thank God for laminated windscreens. Even though my windscreen bears the scars of travelling along an old crystal highway, my journey was not halted nor was it shattered. Even though the road train rattled me, its debris didn't destroy my vision; I could still travel on.

The windscreens of the past, which once would have shattered from the impact of stones are long gone. We certainly still have windscreens but now they are laminated keeping the glass from shattering into a thousand pieces, or worse, from sending great spikes of glass back into the people in the vehicle.

These windscreens stand the test of time, the fragile glass protected from shattering by the thinnest invisible layer of laminate plastic. Sure we still see the results of what the old crystal highway might throw at us—large stars might appear on our windscreens—but they don't stop us from travelling towards the goal, toward the end of the journey.

Thank God too for the Reformation, for the reformers return to the law being laminated to Christ's vicarious action alone, for Martin Luther, and those, who, like him, were recaptured by the grace of the gospel, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Chemnitz and Jacob Andreae.

These men and thousands upon thousands have been reconnected with the love of God, through the righteousness of Christ, justification at the hand of God, day after day as they live the faith given to them in baptism, taught to them by Christ as their hearts are opened to his Word—preached from pulpits and taught by teachers—and to the faithful reception of Jesus body and blood in the elements of bread and wine, which Jesus himself instituted for us in his Word.

The rediscovery of the gospel in the Reformation is the lamination of our lives in Christ Jesus and the lamination of the church, protecting it from the evil attacks of the devil!

The Heavenly Crystal Highway

So now we no longer have a struggle with the law that ends in eternal death. There is no need to be fearful of having our vision of the heavenly goal shattered by the unattainable demands of God's holy law.

The law like the glass still exists but it is bound to Christ as is the glass to the laminate in today's windscreens. Hear God's word again for your assurance as you travel laminated and stuck to Christ and his promises in this life. First from St Paul in:

Romans 3:20 …no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and [all] are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus… 27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

This faith is ground in Christ's fully sufficient service, alone, made know to us through his word, alone, by the power of the Holy Spirit, alone, and gives us the freedom to travel with unshatterable confidence towards eternal freedom with Christ. Now hear and believe what God the Son himself says and teaches us:

John 8:31b "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." 34 [Then Jesus continues], "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

You have held to his teaching! Yes you have sinned, but faith not of yourselves has given you the ability to hold on to Christ and to faithfully endure. Faith has brought you to church, faith has enabled you to confess your sin, faith has drowned you in the gracious, righteous, justifying, death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ for you and faith has set you free! So you too will be free indeed. Amen.