"Be Shrewd with God's Gifts" (Sermon on Luke 16:1-13) | September 21, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 16:1-13
Date: September 21, 2025
Event: Proper 20, Year C

Luke 16:1-13 (EHV)

Jesus also said to his disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager who was accused of wasting his possessions. 2The rich man called him in and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you can no longer be manager.’

3“The manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, since my master is taking away the management position from me? I am not strong enough to dig. I am ashamed to beg. 4I know what I will do, so that when I am removed from my position as manager, people will receive me into their houses.’

5“He called each one of his master’s debtors to him. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He said, ‘Six hundred gallons of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write three hundred.’ 7Then he said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘Six hundred bushels of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and write four hundred and eighty.’

8“The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of the light. 9I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings. 10The person who is faithful with very little is also faithful with much. And the person who is unrighteous with very little is also unrighteous with much. 11So if you have not been faithful with unrighteous mammon who will entrust you with what is really valuable? 12If you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you something to be your own? 13No servant can serve two masters. Indeed, either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

Be Shrewd with God’s Gifts

“Shrewd” is perhaps not a word we use often in everyday conversations, but it is a good word. To be shrewd is to be carefully discerning, able to measure a situation accurately and act appropriately, or at least in the best interest of your primary concerns. We might describe such a trait as being level-headed, able to read a room, discerning, and able to weigh the pros and cons of each individual action in a given situation.

It’s a trait that Jesus urged his disciples (and us who follow them) to have as he sent them out in their initial missionary efforts during his earthly ministry. At that time he noted and urged them, “Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Going into the world with the gospel, going into an environment that would likely be set against them, would require them to be wise and discerning, shrewd to their surroundings while at the same time innocent of wrongdoing.

This morning, we have “shrewd” applied to someone who is a bit of a scoundrel. Jesus uses that word to describe the manager in his parable. If you’re feeling a bit confused by Jesus’ parable this morning, I think it’s with good reason. This is, at first blush, one of the most difficult of all of his parables to reconcile and understand the point. It’s the only parable where the “bad guy” in the story is held up as someone, in part, to emulate. Usually, it’s the downtrodden person who is abused by others but perseveres, or someone who understands the true value of what they have, or someone simply enjoying the pure, loving comfort of God’s care. But this morning, we have in front of us a lazy, deceptive cheat from whom Jesus seems to indicate we can learn a thing or two.

We should probably retrace the story here so that we’re all on the same page. Jesus introduces us to a manager who has been found negligent in his duties and is being fired. He has a very limited amount of time to do what he can to provide a “soft landing” for himself. So with that limited amount of time and access to the books, what does he do? He gets into the good graces of all of his boss’s debtors so that, perhaps, they will offer him a position moving forward. “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write three hundred.” … “Take your bill and write four hundred and eighty.” He can then say, “Hey, remember that time I cut your amount owed by a third or half? Can you do something for me now?”

To be very clear, nothing about this is moral or ethical. And, I would question whether this would actually secure him a position with another employer moving forward when they saw firsthand his lack of scruples. But he did the best, the most, with what he had access to at the time, with the hope that it would provide a future for him. “Shrewd” is generally a positive term (although its long-standing connection to this parable in English translations of the Bible perhaps does cast a negative shade on it). Still, this manager is shrewd not because he did the right thing, but because he surveyed the available options before him and made the most of the opportunity to prepare as good a future as possible.

What are we, dear Christians, to make of this parable our Savior taught? Let me be as clear as I can be to start: Jesus’ point is not that you should cheat your employer out of what he or she is owed to try to make a better life for yourself. Nothing about this manager’s actions before or after he is relieved of his duties is commendable. Jesus, instead, would have us focus on his resourcefulness. For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of the light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings.

Mammon is an Aramaic term for wealth and property. It’s a largely neutral term on its own, but Jesus describes it as unrighteous mammon for its use in this lesson. There is no sense of this being an eternal treasure or spiritual blessings. Jesus’ focus is very much on the physical wealth and treasure that we have in this life. Much like the steward was shrewd in his use of his limited access to the boss’s books, so we too should be shrewd in how we use our limited-time resources.

But our goal is not to get ourselves a cushy position after our current one falls through. Jesus is clear that this shrewdness needs to have a much bigger, longer-lasting perspective: I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings. Jesus is not suggesting that we buy friends, or even in the more extreme case, buy our way into eternal life. No, rather, Jesus is pointing us toward the reality that our use of the temporary things in this life can have an impact on eternity. And what is the only thing that can make eternal life better than it otherwise could be? Well, if there are more people to enjoy God’s eternal home with us. Jesus says that others will welcome us to eternal life who we have, in some way, affected their ability to be there.

Here again, we need to understand Jesus’ words in the broader context of Scripture at large. How does one get into eternal life? It’s not a life well lived, money well spent, or a focus on personal piety and meditation. No, the way to enter eternal life is exactly what we heard Jesus say it was a few weeks ago; the way to enter eternal life is through the narrow door of Jesus himself.

Jesus enables us to come into these eternal dwellings because he paid for our sins. Everything that would have naturally barred the way for us to be brought into eternal life, Jesus undid by his life, death, and resurrection in our place. Jesus was perfectly shrewd—as we needed him to be—and did everything we needed him to do during his limited time here among us. He lived a perfect life, offered that perfect life as the payment for our sins, and assured us of his victory by his resurrection from the dead.

All of that paved the way. All of that is done, and no amount of earthly wealth can have any factor into that. No money can buy the forgiveness of sins, and it doesn’t need to. That is already acquired, permanently secured in the blood of Jesus shed for each of us, shed for everyone.  

How can we shrewdly use our temporary resources in the service of eternity? Not in buying it, but in sharing it. God’s Word is the way God brings faith to others, so the more we can do to connect people with God’s Word, to use our resources to share this message of undeserved but freely given love and forgiveness, then we are applying these resources as God intends them to be used, as Jesus here directs us in our Gospel this morning.

When we support home and world mission efforts through our church body, that mammon does work to bring God’s Word to people that we’ve never met. When we, as a congregation, pay our paltry $262/year to have our website be available online, and more than 15,000 people a month are connecting with us to read our confessions of faith or sermons, mammon becomes outreach for eternal life. When we give thank offerings to God that are directed at the work of our congregation at large, ensuring that we have lights on, climate controls, internet for live streaming, a copier to print matierals, evangelism materials to be sent out into the community, and a pastor to be in the pulplit, that mammon becomes a gospel, eternal light shining in dark, temporary world. When we take the time out of our day to invite someone to church with us, or to share what we believe about Jesus as Savior, or even to show kindness to someone as a possible precursor to sharing the love of God with them, that mammon (of sorts) is doing this eternal work.

All of this sets the stage for having only one master—not ourselves, not our bank account balances, but our God. We can’t be devoted to both God and money, so we do well to put God at the top and see our financial resources for what they truly are—temporary blessings from God given to be used to his glory. When we understand proper priorities and the place that mammon has in our lives, everything else starts to line up. These are my temporary blessings used to serve God, and I can do that in many ways: I can take care of the family and other responsbilities that God has given to me; I can help those who are less fortunate than me and need a helping hand; I can use them to have some fun and enjoy the time I have here as part of a peaceful life. But the best way I can use those resources, the most shrewd way to do so, is to use the temporary to acquire something eternal, to use the perishable to acquire the imperishable.

When we use the temporary resources we have—our money, skills, time, and energy—in service to sharing the love of Jesus, we’re doing exactly that. This $20 bill will not endure past this life; I won’t take this to heaven with me. But what if this $20 was spent on a few Bibles that were put into people’s hands and allowed them to learn the love of Jesus, that temporary money, by the work of the Holy Spirit through his Word, turns into eternal treasure as more souls are brought into the kingdom.

So, my brothers and sisters, how can we be shrewd when surveying what is before us? First of all, see the limited time in front of us. We’ve been stressing in our midweek Bible class on the End Times that Jesus’ return could come at any time—even today!—so we want to be prepared. One way that we prepare is by sharing Jesus’ forgiveness with others.

So, today, sit down and consider how you might be more shrewd with the gifts God has given you than you have been. Do you have more financial resources that could be dedicated to sending this gospel message more forcefully into our communities and our world? Do you have more time to devote to sharing this word with those you know or volunteering to assist in the work of our congregation? Could more of your energy be devoted to prayer for the good of God’s kingdom, that it would continue to come to us and come to many others as well? What do you have right now that will not journey with you to eternal life that could be used to see others join us around our Savior forever?

And in the end, remember the proper motivation for all of this: not shame, or guilt, or a sense of obligation. Rather, we are motivated by joy and thanksgiving to God. This is one of the ways that we show our gratitude to God for saving us from our sins—from hell itself—and bringing us to his side. These are the ways we thank him for treating us like that lost sheep and lost coin from the parables we heard last week. These are the ways we thank God for his eternal love, which means eternal life for us.

My dear friends, be shrewd as God enables you to be. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Found!" (Sermon on Luke 15:1-10) | September 14, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 15:1-10
Date: September 14, 2025
Event: Proper 19, Year C

Luke 15:1-10 (EHV)

All the tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus to hear him. 2But the Pharisees and the experts in the law were complaining, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3He told them this parable: 4“Which one of you, if you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that was lost until he finds it? 5And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6and goes home. Then he calls together his friends and his neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’ 7I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to repent.

8“Or what woman who has ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, would not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found the lost coin.’ 10In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Found!

What is your value? Where do you look to understand your value? In school growing up, there was a whole lot of talk for us about self-esteem. You have value! You are special!  You are unique and that’s wonderful! Today’s messaging isn’t so different, though usually in the context of social-emotional learning that also tends to include empathy and care for others in a way I don’t remember being emphasized a lot when I was growing up, but I think it’s a change for the good.

Because all of those things are true, aren’t they? We should care about other people. We should see our own, innate value that comes from inside of us as a unique human being. We don’t have value just because someone ascribes it to us; we have value because we are.

But what about when that doesn’t feel true? What about when you feel worthless? Perhaps you messed up that thing at work, or let that family responsibility slide to everyone’s detriment, or you bombed that test in school, or you got caught doing that thing you knew you shouldn’t be doing. What does that do to your self-esteem, to your self-worth, to your self-confidence? It’s like a bomb, isn’t it? Or it can be. Some of us struggle with this more than others (and perhaps you’re learning too much about your pastor here this morning…), but there’s a struggle inside each of us to have an appropriate self-image.

And what is that self-image that we should have? Well, there are ditches on either side of this road. On the one hand, we can have a degraded self-image that views me as worthless. On the other hand, we have an insanely inflated self-image that results in pride and a superiority complex over everyone else.

These two extremes are, on some level, at the heart of Jesus’ conversation during his teaching in our Gospel for this morning. We meet up with him teaching the crowds, but it’s not just Jesus’ followers or those who were curious about his message that were there; Jesus’ enemies were also there, and they were incredibly irritated with what they saw. The Pharisees and the experts in the law were complaining, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” The word translated here, “complaining,” is more literally “muttering to themselves.” In other words, this is not an accusation that these men are leveling at Jesus directly or even talking to others in the crowd about him. No, this is an under-the-breath complaint about this man that they view at best as their competition and at worst as a threat to their way of living and even their very lives because of his popularity. But in hushed tones, they clearly have no actual respect for him.

In a glimmer of Jesus’ omniscience, he addresses the complaint they didn’t even clearly vocalize. And he does so with a couple of parables—a shepherd seeking out a lost sheep and a woman searching for a lost coin. But to really understand the full weight of these brief parables and the point Jesus is stressing here in love, even to those who were against them, we need to clearly understand how the Pharisees and their ilk thought of themselves and others.

What is their complaint about Jesus? He’s spending time with the undesirables of society: the tax-collecting traitors to their people, the immoral prostitutes, the thieves, the lazy, the poor dregs. There was no chance for upward momentum in spending time with these people. There was only the chance to drag your reputation down. If this Jesus was really serious about being a notable rabbi in their community, this was not the way to do it. And for the religious leaders, it just confirmed one thing: Because he spent so much time with people they knew were beneath them, they also knew that Jesus himself was beneath them as well.

But who, in this scene, really had the problem? Was it the sinners who were coming to Jesus to hear him, to have him restore them, forgive them? Or was it the people who didn’t think they needed him?

Jesus’ parables make the point plain. The sheep wanders off, but does it know it’s in trouble? Maybe, but probably not. If the sheep could identify that this course of action was wrong or dangerous, it probably wouldn’t have done it. But off it goes, seeking out its own desires, ignorant of what it means for its well-being. And what is the shepherd’s reaction? Such concern grips him that he leaves the ninety-nine still in the flock and seeks the lost one.

The lost in this parable could be seen as the “sinners” coming to Jesus. If that is the case, then Jesus’ point is that religious leaders should be concerned about all people, even (and especially) those misled by prominent sin in their lives. However, I think that Jesus’ point is more fundamental to the leaders’ problems and rooted in their misunderstandings about themselves.

If the Pharisees were looking to identify themselves in Jesus’ parables, I assume they would think of themselves as the ninety-nine still in God’s flock or the nine coins still in the purse. The reality was that they were the lost sheep out on their own and the coin hidden among the dust, but they didn’t even realize it. They thought they were fine, but their self-confidence ignored the fact that they, too, were sinners in just as desperate need of God’s forgiveness as the rabble that came to see Jesus.

How easy it is for us to hold this same, distorted view of self. After all, here we are, in church on a Sunday morning. Are we not among God’s flock? Are we not the coins carefully contained, whose location is known? Unfortunately, our sin makes that thought and confidence a mirage. We are the lost and the rebellious. We are the cheating tax collector and the self-righteous Pharisee. Our sin makes us lost, alone, and doomed to eternal death in hell.

But here is where we see God’s nature shine through so clearly. God is represented in the parables by the shepherd looking for that lost sheep and the woman tearing the house apart looking for that coin. In those moments, what is lost is of the highest priority. So, too, is it for God. We are lost in sin on our own; thus, we are his highest priority.

God saved us not by putting us on his shoulders or sweeping the flood but by offering his life in exchange for ours. Our sin created a situation far more dire—infinitely so!—than the lost sheep or coin. No, the only thing that could save us from the eternal punishment for sin was the blood of the perfect Lamb of God, who took away the sins of the world.

Jesus’ search and rescue consists of reaching out to us with his Word, having us see ourselves as we really are (that is, see our sin in all its gruesome reality), and then showing us his saving love. His death rescued us, and the faith he works through his Word brings us back to himself. His Word brings us face to face with the reality of our situation and leads us to repentance. To repent is to have a change of heart about sin, to not want to do it anymore, while simultaneously trusting God’s complete forgiveness. You and I are among those people who have been found wandering the hillside and are rescued. You and I are the ones whose God-worked repentance causes great joy among the hosts of heaven.

Why does that happen? Because that’s just how much you mean to God, how precious you are to him. I won’t ever say that self-value and self-esteem are unimportant; that’s a foolish statement. But the best measure of our value doesn’t come from within ourselves; it comes from the value God places on us. You were worth the life and death of the perfect Son of God. You were worth his agonizing suffering of hell while nailed to the cross. You were worth it all, and if he needed to, he’d do it again, because he loves you so dearly.

That love continues to reach out to us. Because the truth is, this is not a one-time lost-and-found mission. No, we are continually wandering away from the shepherd and needing to be sought out, called back to him. And that calling isn’t always pleasant; that reunion isn’t always what our heart desires. Sometimes it looks very much like the scene in our Gospel! Because even in his interaction with the Pharisees—even in the preaching of the law!—there is Jesus’ love clear as day. Why is he confronting them with their misunderstandings and sin? Because those things were very dangerous, and Jesus had love, even for them. He called them to repentance, and each day he calls you and me to that same repentance, assuring us of his forgiving love where we find our true value.

Despite how much we may want to deny it or at least ignore it, there’s a lot of opportunity in us for the same misguided self-views that the Pharisees had to blossom. You don’t have to dig too far in mainstream Christianity in the United States today to sense the “us vs. them” mentality; it is often a core part of the message coming from these groups. And, I daresay, you don’t have to look too far in the Lutheran church to find these ideas, and perhaps, if we’re being really honest and open this morning, we can even see this in our own hearts. Do I, in some way, think of myself as better than the unbeliever? Better than the “worst” sinners because, even if I’m not perfect, at least I don’t do… that!

My brothers and sisters, let’s not complain and mumble to ourselves and to each other about how much better we are than other people who commit what the world calls horrible atrocities or who engage in activities that the world praises while God detests. Let us see ourselves as we are: sheep in need of rescue and coins hidden in the dark corners of the room. Let us see our value in the seeking, searching, and rescuing work our God has done and continues to do to find us. Let us find our value in our status with God, no longer lost, but now found!

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door" (Sermon on Luke 13:22-30) | August 24, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 13:22-30
Date: August 24, 2025
Event: Proper 16, Year C

Luke 13:22-30 (EHV)

He went on his way from one town and village to another, teaching, and making his way to Jerusalem. 23Someone said to him, “Lord, are only a few going to be saved?”

He said to them, 24“Strive to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. 25Once the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open for us!’ He will tell you in reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ 26Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27And he will say, ‘I don’t know where you come from. Depart from me, all you evildoers.’ 28There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown outside. 29People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God. 30And note this: Some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door

If you’re going to take a flight either for fun or otherwise, you don’t even have to tell me what your favorite part of that experience is; I already know. Above all else, you cherish the line and the TSA security checkpoint scan. Who doesn’t love putting all of their stuff on a conveyor belt and then walking through a narrow metal detector or standing in that claustrophobic scanning machine so they can see what joints inside you are now metal replacement parts? And if you’re lucky, you get to spend a few intimate moments with a TSA agent where you both get to know each other a little too well.

Of course, I’m being facetious. That whole process is annoying, and many would argue that it has questionable value to overall safety for air travel. But whether it’s a flight or entering a sporting event, concert, or some other event with a big group gathered, we’re all familiar with the concept of temporarily discarding everything we have and pushing our way through a little doorway.

Now, I don’t want to compare our entry into heaven with passing through a security checkpoint, but there are many parallels between that airport experience and how Jesus describes our spiritual journey in this life: “Strive to enter through the narrow door!” What does he want us to take away from that encouragement? And what will that mean for our day-to-day lives as we look forward to eternity?

In our Gospel, we meet up with Jesus on the “home stretch” of his earthly ministry. He went on his way from one town and village to another, teaching, and making his way to Jerusalem. This “making his way to Jerusalem” will be the last time Jesus goes to Jerusalem, because this is going to be the time that will end in his crucifixion. He doesn’t have much time left in his earthly ministry, and so we start to sense some extra urgency in Jesus’ teaching.

And so it’s probably in that context that we get a little bit disjointed reply from Jesus to the question he was asked, “Lord, are only a few going to be saved?” Jesus really doesn’t answer the man’s question. There’s no discourse on total numbers in heaven or hell; there’s no doctrinal discussion on the difference between those his death has forgiven (everyone!) and the smaller number of those who will benefit from his work through faith. Instead of conversing about the masses, Jesus immediately makes it very personal, “Don’t worry about the number of people; be concerned about yourself. Strive to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

Now, at first blush, this could seem like Jesus is pointing to our work as necessary to enter eternal life, to be saved. That is, entering through the narrow door is something we fight to do, that we’re somehow earning passage into the secret entrance of heaven or providing the secret password to get into the back door. That’s not really Jesus’ point, as we’ll get to in a moment. What is clear is how terrible it will be to not enter through the narrow door. Once the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open for us!’ He will tell you in reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ Not entering through the narrow door is to be barred from eternal life. Not entering through the narrow door is to not be known by God.

The people in Jesus’ brief parable come up with reasons why this treatment is unjust. They have all sorts of reasons why they should be let in, even after the door has been closed. ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ They are pointing to their close relationship with the master, or at least that they thought they had a close relationship with him. But notice how it is just a connection by association rather than a real one. “We ate in the same places where you ate; you taught near the places where we live.” That doesn’t speak to their actual relationship with the master of the house, but rather what they felt they were owed because of their proximity to him.

And the connection in Jesus’ immediate context is straightforward. Many of the Jewish people thought their lineage—their physical connection to Abraham—made them good with God. John the Baptist had addressed that misconception a long time before this, noting that such a physical connection was meaningless since, if he wanted to, God could turn the rocks into physical descendants of Abraham. This is one of the reasons that Jesus notes that those outside would see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in eternal life, while they were left out. The patriarchs and prophets would be in eternal life not because of who they were or who they were associated with, but because they had trust in God’s promises; they entered through the narrow door.

Now, perhaps we don’t struggle with this exact thing, especially those of us who are Gentiles through and through without a drop of Jewish blood in our veins. But where could we find a similar, misguided comfort in our association with God? Might we point to the fact that we were perhaps baptized, confirmed, married, or had any other significant life events in the Lutheran church? Might we point to the fact that we’ve maintained a constant church membership our entire life—or at least since we started taking these spiritual things seriously? Might we point to our church attendance being nearly flawless, or at least we’re in church more often than not, or we are at least more regular than most people we know? Might we stand on the fact that we always strive to be connected with a church and thus a group of Christians who value the truth and purity of God’s Word?

Do you see how all those things, while undoubtedly positive and worth celebrating, are still just this loose association with God? Taking comfort in church membership or attendance puts the focus entirely in the wrong place. It’s focusing on you, not on Jesus.

And this is Jesus’ point when he tells us to keep striving to enter through the narrow door. To strive to enter through the narrow door means not taking our eyes off that door, which is Jesus himself. The striving is fighting against apathy toward his promises or squashing pride about our contributions. Striving to enter through the narrow door means leaning completely on your Savior, casting all of the things that seemed so important in this life onto some conveyor belt never to be seen again, but instead getting into eternal life solely by God’s grace given in Jesus’ sacrifice for us.

Jesus is not the bouncer at this door, looking to keep the riffraff out; Jesus is the door. Entering eternal life through the narrow door—the only door—is to enter through Jesus. And as we keep our eyes focused on him, we know that we have the certain gift of eternal life waiting for us. Why? Because the master of the house knows you. Why does the master know you? Because he has forgiven your sins, he has given you this eternal life.

But how can you know that? Outside of God coming to you directly to say, “Yes, I know you. Welcome home,” can we ever be confident about our relationship, about our status with God? Absolutely. He’s given you a record of his love for you right here in his Word. You and I only need to walk to Jesus’ cross to understand fully his love for us. At that cross he suffered the horrors of hell for you and me, because he loves you and he loves me.

The walls of sin border eternal life, and they are impenetrable. A moat of self-righteousness sits around that sin wall; wading into those waters only means disaster. But there is a little way through, a little doorway that stands as entry into God’s house. That door is Jesus. Depend on him entirely for your salvation and eternal life, and in that you are striving to enter through that narrow door. By God’s grace, you will pass through it and be welcomed into eternal life by the God who knows and loves you so deeply.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"How Does Jesus Divide Us?" (Sermon on Luke 12:49-53) | August 17, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 12:49–53
Date: August 17, 2025
Event: Proper 15, Year C

Luke 12:49–53 (EHV)

“I came to throw fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already ignited. 50But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is finished! 51Do you think that I came to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. 52Yes, from now on there will be five divided in one household: three against two, and two against three. 53They will be divided: father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

How Does Jesus Divide Us?

There are seemingly endless ways to divide people. Even if we take our relatively small sample size gathered here this morning, there are plenty of division opportunities, even among us who would seem to have a lot in common. In some ways, you are self-divided today. Are you sitting closer to the front or the back? Are you sitting on the left or right side of the church? And then we can get more granular. We could divide our group by age, by gender, by music preferences, by net worth, by favorite food, by least favorite food, by ethnicity or family heritage—the list goes on and on and on.

But the place where we find unity is in Jesus, right? We are here this morning because we believe that Jesus is our Savior from sin and see value in being surrounded by his Word on a Sunday morning. The truth of Jesus’ objective forgiveness means that he is the one element that binds all of humanity together: every person on the face of the planet is someone for whom Jesus died.

And so perhaps it’s a bit disorienting to hear Jesus speak as he does in our Gospel this morning. Do you think that I came to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. We often think of Jesus as the peacemaker, but here he claims the opposite role. He brings division rather than unity, conflict rather than peace.

Taken out of context, we could go wild making up reasons for this, putting all sorts of words into Jesus’ mouth. But let’s take this morning to understand what Jesus is saying and why he’s saying it, as we ponder in what ways Jesus divides us and in what ways he unifies us and brings us peace.

Let’s begin with how Jesus does, in fact, bring peace on the earth. The peace that Jesus brings is not primarily between individual people, but between sinful human beings and our just God. God’s demands for us were pretty clear: perfection. There was no wiggle room for us. God’s expectations have never been and never will be that we simply try our best, that we do more good than bad, or that we stand out from the crowd with our good, generous, genuine behavior. No, perfection was and is the only acceptable standard.

That means that you and I, who have not been perfect or even close to it, have a real problem. We actually have a peace problem, because our sin puts us in conflict, sets us at war with God. And whether you’ve ever been in a fight or not, you can understand the principle that you probably shouldn’t seek out conflict with someone unless you’re sure you can win. This would apply to nations at war or students dealing with bullies.

Yet, our sin means that you and I have picked a fight with the almighty creator of the universe. This is a poor strategy that will not end well. We’ve entered into a conflict that we absolutely will lose. And that loss is catastrophic; it is eternal. The apostle Paul tells us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and that death isn’t just the physical death that we think of when we hear that word—as horrendous and heartbreaking as that is. No, the death that comes about as a result of our sin is eternal death, which is not merely the separation of the soul from the body but the separation of the person from the blessings of God forever. And this is something that no living human being has ever experienced. For as troublesome as our days might be, for as much sorrow and stress as a person might endure in this life, they’ve never truly experienced total separation from God and his providence. That will be hell in its most gruesome reality—suffering without relief, forever.

This, of course, was not ok with God. His love for us was so great that, even though this is what we deserved, he couldn’t sit idly by and let that happen to his beloved human race. So he promised a Savior to rescue us, and then followed through on that promise. Jesus, true God from eternity, took on our human nature in time to live in our place. Everything about Jesus’ work for us is substitutionary. He tags in for us under God’s law—and kept it perfectly. And then at the cross, he tags in for us as sinners; he endures that hell, that separation from God that we deserved, for us. As he takes our place, the payment is made, and God’s justice is satisfied; hell will never be something we need to endure.

That’s why we can say with the apostle Paul that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). The conflict is over because Jesus made this peace. Jesus’ perfection has been credited to our accounts to give us the perfect track record that God demanded. This is the peace promised to the shepherds at Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:14) and the peace that Jesus assured his disciples about on Maundy Thursday evening (John 14:27) and throughout his appearance to them after he rose from the dead (Luke 24:36, John 20:19, etc.).

This then brings us back around to Jesus’ startling statement in our Gospel for this morning: Do you think that I came to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. How does Jesus divide us? He tells us that, at the last day, he will divide all mankind into two groups—sheep and goats, that is, believers and unbelievers. And this is the division that he’s getting at here. Jesus acknowledges that not every human being will flock to him; people will reject him. We saw that play out during his earthly ministry, and the same thing happens even today when his Word is shared. Faith in Jesus serves as a way to divide the human race—those who cling to him as Savior and those who do not.

And this division is not just a label, not just a little factoid about someone that makes them different from someone else. No, our trust in Jesus as Savior and all the knock-on effects that has will set us at odds with people—even dear members of our own families. Jesus doesn’t want Christians to live with the delusion that because we have peace with God, we should expect an easy-going life now, a life of constant peace and harmony. No, far from it, actually.

Jesus divides us because some trust and value what he’s done, while others do not. Some agree that placing a high value on our eternal well-being is of the utmost importance, while others find that whole concept to be utter nonsense. Some will accept, understand, and even encourage the life that a Christian faith calls us to live in thanksgiving to our God, while others will be appalled that we wouldn’t support a particular worldly cause or follow in their sin-laden path.

Where does that leave us? Yes, from now on there will be five divided in one household: three against two, and two against three. They will be divided: father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Maybe you have this dynamic in your own family—one divided along differing faith lines, or faith vs. no faith. Even if you don’t have that exact scenario in your family, you know what it is to be an outcast from the world because of your faith in Jesus. And while we certainly do not want to exacerbate the division by being obnoxious, petty, or judgmental, we also recognize that even if we are perfectly speaking about our faith or living our faith with gentleness and respect as the apostle Peter directs us (1 Peter 3:15-16), we’re going to upset someone.

And what does Jesus say to that? “So be it.” He gives us this warning so that we don’t misinterpret these divisions, to assume that because someone is mad at us, that we’re doing something wrong, that because someone is offended by our faith, we need to course-correct. Quite the opposite, actually. He gives us this heads up to know what to expect and then ensure that we do not compromise on our faith to make peace in the here and now.

Because that’s the temptation, right? If my faith puts me at odds with others, then I might want to sideline or even jetison my faith to make that relationship whole again. It’s a different expression of the same principle we dealt with over the last few weeks, considering the value of earthly wealth vs. heavenly treasure. Any trade that would have us hand over our eternal security in exchange for some temporal blessings or ease of life is indeed a poor, poor trade.

So what is the Christian to do? Hold fast to your Savior. Do not look down on others who do not hold your faith, but seek opportunities to share the gospel with them. But at the same time, recognize that your faith is not likely to be something that unifies, but rather that divides. To cling to Jesus as Savior means admitting something about yourself that no one really wants to admit—that we are sinners who deserve hell. To have a Savior, we must have needed to be saved, and that is an unpleasant thought for anyone.

But even as you face divisions because of your faith, know that you have unity where it really matters. You have peace with God through Jesus’ work in your place. That means that you are a child of God and a citizen of heaven. That peace will endure through eternity. Know that divisions are here and will continue to be present, but value our unity in the peace Jesus won for us. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Do Not Be Afraid, Little Flock" (Sermon on Luke 12:22-34) | August 10, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 12:22-34
Date: August 10, 2025
Event: Proper 14, Year C

Luke 12:22-34 (EHV)

Jesus said to his disciples, “For that reason I tell you, stop worrying about your life, about what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23Certainly life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. 24Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap; they have no warehouse or barn; and yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than birds! 25And who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his lifespan? 26Since you are not able to do this little thing, why do you worry about the rest? 27Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was dressed like one of these. 28If this is how God clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith? 29Do not constantly chase after what you will eat or what you will drink. Do not be worried about it. 30To be sure, the nations of the world chase after all of these things, but your Father knows that you need them. 31Instead, continue to seek the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. 32Do not be afraid, little flock, because your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not become old, a treasure in the heavens that will not fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Do Not Be Afraid, Little Flock

How are you doing? And I know this is clearly a rhetorical question because I’m asking it in the middle of a sermon, not exactly known for its question-and-answer format. But actually, it’s a question I want you to think about and internalize and I would cherish the opportunity to hear your honest answers when we’re done here today. How are you doing? And when I ask that I mean how are you really doing? Not the standard small-talk answers of “Good… good,” or, “You know, I’m fine,” or “Busy…” but what is the realanswer?

So many things can weigh on how we’re doing or feeling at any given time. Family relationships might be strained or very energizing. Work may be a slog or a beautiful pairing of your skills to the needs in front of you. The prospect of school starting shortly can be a drag or an exciting reunion with friends and a new step on life’s path.

But oftentimes, the resources we have at our disposal can really weigh in on how we’re feeling, but a given situation or our lives in general. Is there enough money to pay the bills? The rent? Put food on the table? Is there enough time to tend to the tasks and responsibilities that you have, or are you stretched far too thin, burning the midnight oil too much, and sacrificing your health in order to try to keep your head above water? Do your teachers do a good job explaining the material in a way that connects with you, or do you feel lost, adrift on the sea of too much information without enough comprehension?

Last week, we focused on the proper place of material wealth in our lives, which often comes from the perspective of keeping greed in check. We noted that while this is not exclusively a temptation for people with greater amounts of wealth, it certainly is a danger that comes along with earthly riches.

This morning, we are looking at the same topic from the other side. How should the Christian think of scarcity? And how do we tell the difference between needs seemingly not being met and just our desires not being fulfilled (one being crucial, the other a nice-to-have)? Jesus’ words in our Gospel really center us no matter what fears, concerns, or worries plague us because they once again focus us on what is truly important: Do not be afraid, little flock, because your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.

The words of our Gospel today immediately follow the heels of our Gospel from last week and are part of the same conversation, so it would be good for us to refresh our memory of how Jesus closed that reading last week. Jesus was addressing the dangerous pull of material wealth, and told this parable:

“The land of a certain rich man produced very well. He was thinking to himself, ‘What will I do, because I do not have anywhere to store my crops?’ He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and goods. And I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy. Eat, drink, and be merry.” ’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your soul will be demanded from you. Now who will get what you have prepared?’

“That is how it will be for anyone who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:16-21).

So that closing statement is what Jesus is referring to when, in the first verse of our Gospel this morning, he says, “For that reason I tell you…” What reason? That we want to have the goal of being rich toward God rather than squirreling away treasure for ourselves. Jesus’ encouragement to his disciples goes something like this, “Don’t worry about the things of this life. Look at how your heavenly Father takes care of the creation. Aren’t you more valuable to him than flowers and birds?” And he concludes this point, “Do not constantly chase after what you will eat or what you will drink. Do not be worried about it.”

Worry is that sense that there is a problem with no solution. Worry does not mean that our concerns are fake—far from it. But worry almost always ignores God’s promises to us, to take care of us, provide our daily bread, to be our guard and shield in this life.

Worry at its core is a lack of faith, a lack of trust in what God has promised. And worrying about earthly things, what you will eat or what you will drink or anything else that is a high priority in this life, forgets or ignores that truth your Father knows that you need them. If these concerns are real, if these are real needs that we have and God himself knows that we need them and he has promised to provide for our needs, why worry?

Of course, that is easier said than done. And the cure to worry is not “relax” any more than the cure to depression is “be happy” or the cure to cancer is “be healthy.” But Jesus doesn’t just leave us scolded and then move on; he gives us a battle plan for dealing with worry and keeping it in check: Instead, continue to seek the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. Do not be afraid, little flock, because your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.

In a way, Jesus solves worry over the problems that plague us by lifting our eyes to see clearly a much bigger problem in front of us: our sin. More than debt, or poor grades, or anything else that might cause stress and worry in this life, our sin causes far greater problems, but they are difficult for you to get a hold of because we don’t see them. It’s almost like going out to dinner, and you're all excited at the start of the meal. Drinks! Appetizers! The best entrees! Dessert? Why not?! But then there is the sobering moment when the bill comes due, and now you have to pay for everything you cavalierly ordered and enjoyed.

We have some sense of the seriousness of sin. We may feel guilt, our conscience may make us very uncomfortable, but we can often put that out of our mind, ignore it, and move on. It’s like seeing the prices on the menu, knowing how this will add up, but ignoring it and doing it anyway.

So, our sin racks up a debt with God that we can never pay. And there’s no solution to it. There’s no emergency fund to dip into, no payment plan to set up, and no dishes we can wash to pay it off. Our sin creates an impossible debt that we can never pay, and the end result of that debt is eternal separation from God in hell after this life is complete.

If there was ever anything worth worrying about, it would be this. More so than anything we will ever face in this life, this is a problem with dire ramifications that we can’t even process. Eternal death in hell is so gruesome, so horrendous, that we ought not wish it on our worst enemy—and certainly not on ourselves!

Thankfully, Jesus doesn’t leave us hanging here. Not only does he provide the solution to this eternal worry, but he presupposes it in his teaching. Rather than being focused on what we will eat and drink (that is, earthly solutions to earthly problems), we should be focused on seeking the kingdom of God (that is, God’s solutions to our eternal problems).

God’s kingdom is his rule in our hearts by faith. It’s the same kingdom we pray that God would bring about in the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer. When we seek God’s kingdom, we seek faith in Jesus; for the Christian, this is a stronger, more resolute faith. We look beyond the ravens and the flowers and instead see the promises of God, that Jesus, crucified and suffering hell on the cross, is truly doing that in our place. That is suffering, and death is our forgiveness and life. He paid the debt we couldn’t touch, solved the problem that we could never address, and rescued us from eternal death in hell to bring us to eternal life with him in heaven.

What is clearly lacking in any of this is any effort on our part. We can’t work off our sin, we can’t bring about our forgiveness, we can’t even choose to believe in what God has promised. All of these are gifts from God. Therefore, like Abraham in our First Reading, our God-given faith is credited to us as righteousness, credited as a right relationship with God.

Faith in Jesus also underscores all of the other promises that he has made to us, including to provide for our daily, earthly needs. You will never find a problem that God isn’t equipped to handle, and he urges us to bring them to him. Again, Abraham serves as our model. What was happening in his life didn’t seem to be lining up with what God had promised, “LORD God what can you give me? … you have given me no offspring, so a servant born in my house will be my heir” (Genesis 15:2-3). After Abraham’s request, God addressed that concern.

So it’s not that the things that cause us to worry are foolish, and we should be ashamed of even thinking about them. Far from it! But let us approach those problems with faith and trust that your Father knows that you need them. Call on God in the day of trouble and, truly, he will answer you. Perhaps not in the way you think you need or want, but he will answer in the best way for you.

And how can you be sure of that? Look to the cross, to the empty tomb! See your Savior crucified and raised to destroy your sin and open the gift of eternal life to you! There is your hope for eternity. How will our Father not also, along with Jesus, graciously give us all things for our eternal good? He can and he will!

Do not worry, but put your trust in the eternal, all-powerful God who loves you as an individual and will bring you to his side for eternity! Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"What Kind of Savior Do You Want?" (Sermon on Luke 19:28-40) | April 13, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 19:28-40
Date: April 13, 2025
Event: Palm Sunday, Year C

Luke 19:28-40 (EHV)

After Jesus had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29As he came near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples ahead, 30saying, “Go to the village ahead of you. When you enter it, you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. 31And if anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you will say this: ‘The Lord needs it.’”

32Those who were sent ahead went and found things just as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

34They said, “The Lord needs it.”

35Then they brought the colt to Jesus. They threw their robes on the colt and set Jesus on it. 36As he went along, people spread their robes on the road. 37As he was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began to praise God joyfully, with a loud voice, for all the miracles they had seen, 38saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

39Some of the Pharisees from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

40He replied, “I tell you, if these people would be silent, the stones would cry out.”

What Kind of Savior Do You Want?

Have you been to a casual dining or fast food restaurant that has one of those CocaCola Freestyle soda machines? They’re these big machines with a huge touch screen on them, and if you want to drink soda, you have what feels like near-infinite options. But it allows mixing and matching even more than a traditional soda fountain because, in addition to the base sodas, you can add several different syrups flavors to your drink. So, if you’re not content with normal Diet Coke you can, with the press of a button, make it Orange Vanilla Diet Coke. And if you’re feeling brave, perhaps you add a splash of Dr. Pepper.

The Freestyle machines embody our desire for choices and options. Mix and match to find the right blend for you. I can express my individual preferences, and if they’re different from yours, that’s probably okay because you can just tap different buttons and fill your cup with something different.

Clearly, there’s no problem in having preferences on drinks, or food, or clothes, or whatever. But sometimes it is tempting to take that desire for individualism and apply that to other areas of our lives. Do I need to listen to my parents? Well, not if they’re telling me to do something I don’t want to or that I can’t do something I do want to do. Do I have to pay my taxes? Well, not if I don’t think the money is being used appropriately or I think the rates are wrong for me or others.

Of course, more than applying that to a drink with your lunch, applying this individualistic template to those areas of life will end in some pretty rough consequences at home and even with the government. But what about our faith? You have nearly infinite opinions regarding spiritual thought, and if you can’t find one that fits your personal preferences, you can chart your own course and follow that path! But is that the way spiritual needs and solutions work? Can you just walk up to the Freestyle machine of spirituality and press the right buttons, and dispense your spiritual “truth”? And if you did that, what would buttons would you push? What would be the mechanics of your faith system? What kind of Savior do you want—if any?

We’ve wrestled with this question throughout Jesus’ ministry, or at least puzzled over it with the crowds. What were they looking for in a Savior? Was it a bread king who could meet their day-to-day hunger? Was it a miracle worker who could heal their diseases? Or were all of those things building up to something more and bigger?

We do not have insight into the crowds’ thoughts on Palm Sunday, but here’s what we can say. When they call Jesus “the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” they are clearly identifying Jesus as the promised Messiah. Whether we think of the famous prophecy about Palm Sunday itself from Zecharaiah 9 where God promised that the king would come in riding on a donkey—on a foal of a donkey—or we think of Jesus as David’s Son, the King who would reign forever, there’s a lot in that title of “King.”

But what kind of Savior did they want? A King riding in on a donkey, despite the Zechariah prophecy, wouldn’t have been imposing. Typically, leaders would ride donkeys when they came in peace. Riding a warhorse means I’ve come to conquer; riding a donkey means I’ve come to make a deal or settle things without war.  But might there have been some confusion among the crowd, even amid their joy? We know that it was a long-held belief that the Messiah would be a political savior to restore the earthly glory to the nation of Israel. So, in this immediate context, it seems likely that many of the people cheering Jesus on would be doing so, assuming he would be using his power to get rid of the Romans and restore genuine autonomy to the nation. But, does someone who has come to do that make an entrance on an untrained, young donkey?a

The Pharisees were looking for something entirely different out of Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” If we’re going to put the best construction on this demand, they recognized that the crowd was calling Jesus the Messiah, and as far as they knew and believed, that was not true. And if it wasn’t true, Jesus would know how inappropriate that was and should want to stop the blasphemy in its tracks.

If we’re going to take a slightly more negative view of what drove the Pharisees’ demand, it would be that they could see this giant crowd forming and cheering just outside of Jerusalem and knew what that would look like to Pontius Pilate and the other Roman rulers in the area. This looked like a mob scene, the beginning of a riot. And if any whispers of someone’s hopes that Jesus would actually depose the Romans got to Pilate’s ears, it looked and sounded like something much worse—a coup. The reaction from Rome to such insolence would be quick and brutal, which is exactly what the Pharisees would have been trying to avoid for themselves and the people at large.

So the crowds might be looking for their bread king to feed the five thousand once again; they might be looking to have a Roman-free existence from here on out. The Pharisees might have been looking to defend God’s name and promises or to preserve their own hides.

What are you looking for from Jesus? What do you want him to be for you or do for you? Do you want him to patch up your strained friendships or family relationships? Do you want him to fix your money concerns or bring complete healing to that chronic physical ailment? Do you want him to bring peace among nations or within your community?

It is not out of the question that God might provide any or even all of those things. None of those requests would be out of place in our prayers—that God’s will be done in those matters. But if those types of hopes and dreams are the full extent of what we’re looking for from Jesus, if that’s the kind of Savior we want, we’re thinking way too short-sightedly. It’s so easy to lower our vision from God’s perspective to our own day-to-day perspective. So, this morning, our prayer is that God lift up our eyes beyond what is right in front of us and see what is for our ultimate good.

The kind of Savior you and I might want at any given moment ultimately doesn’t matter. What truly matters is that Jesus understood the kind of Savior we needed and fulfilled those needs precisely. There might be only one person amid this Palm Sunday confusion who knows what is happening here, but there is at least one: Jesus. He immediately demonstrates this in our Gospel by sending two disciples to fetch the donkey. He knew exactly where it would be, what attributes it possessed, what question they would be asked, and what answer to give. They found things just as he had told them.

So Jesus is going forward, not being swept up in the pageantry of this day nor being swayed by popular opinion of what he shoulddo; rather, he’s going forward on the mission that his Father placed before him. To put it bluntly, as we just sang in our hymn of the day, he’s “rid[ing] on to die” (Christian Worship 411, s. 5). Because no immediate term glory, no evident power awaits him at the end of this road. Only the cross, but only the cross for you.

This is where the conflict begins between what we can see and what is actually happening. Jesus rides in on a donkey; he rides in, looking all the part to be coming in peace. And as far as the people in Jerusalem are concerned—even the Romans!—that is true. But the most vicious battle waits for him at Golgatha, a battle for your soul and mine. There, he will face the full brunt of hell; there, he will have a final showdown with Satan. But as we said back in the Epiphany season, it’s not as if Satan and Jesus are more or less evenly matched; it’s not even close. This battle was over before it even started. Jesus will come out the other side the victor, and you and I will be conquerors along with him.

Our misguided notions about what Jesus should do for us will be crucified on that cross as well. Those, as well as all our other sins, will be forgiven in his blood shed, in his life given up for our justification.

It is fascinating to compare the words of the crowd to other words earlier in Luke’s Gospel that we are very familiar with. Luke records that among the shouts of praise from that Palm Sunday throng was this acclimation: “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” If we jump back many chapters in Luke’s Gospel, back to chapter 2, we hear words that ring with the same tones: There were in the same country shepherds staying out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified! … Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude from the heavenly army, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward mankind.” (Luke 2:8-9, 13-14). The Christmas angels announced the purpose of Jesus’ arrival to the shepherds, and here, knowingly or not, the crowds reinforce that purpose.

While, yes, Jesus is preparing for a battle at the cross, it is a battle that will lead to peace. This will not solve the Jewish people’s issues with the Roman empire. It won’t end wars between nations, make families get along, or necessarily repair friendships. But it will bring a much more critical peace—an eternal peace between God and sinful mankind.

What kind of Savior do you want? What kind of Savior do I want? What does it matter? What we have is what we need: our gentle King rides into Jerusalem to save us from our sins, to save us from hell. By this time next week, we will see our confidence in Jesus proven right and displayed in glory before us. Getting there will be a rough road, but God will keep his promises. In the days ahead, let’s share this message, invite people to hear it, and praise God for his goodness to us. If we don’t, the stones would cry out, but given that we appreciate all Jesus has done for us, I know that will not be necessary.

What kind of Savior do you want? The one you have: Jesus, who rides on to bear your sins in his body and will bring you to the heavenly home he has prepared for you. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Jesus Conquers Satan for You" (Sermon on Luke 4:1-13) | March 9, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 4:1–13
Date: March 9, 2025
Event: The First Sunday in Lent, Year C

Luke 4:1–13 (EHV)

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2where he was tempted by the Devil for forty days. He did not eat anything during those days. When they came to an end, he was hungry. 3The Devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

4Jesus answered him, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’”

5The Devil led him up to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6The Devil told him, “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, because it has been entrusted to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. 7So, if you worship me, it will all be yours.”

8Jesus answered him, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

9The Devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here, 10because it is written:

He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you.

11And,

they will lift you up with their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

12Jesus answered him, “It says: ‘You shall not test the Lord your God.’”

13When the Devil had finished every temptation, he left him until an opportune time.

Jesus Conquers Satan for You

We all would like someone to stand up for us. If you’re being bullied at school, having a classmate swoop in and tell the bully off is a relief and empowering experience. Similarly, when you're in a meeting at work and receive stern criticism for your presentation, it’s easier to deal with it when others also praise your thoughts and ideas. Holding an unpopular opinion can feel alienating, but having even one other person who agrees with you is a great comfort and encouragement.

There’s an important concept that we need to keep in mind during this Lent season (and, truly, at all times), and that concept you might see in Latin: Christus pro nobis; in English: Christ for us.  This biblical principle is that Jesus’ work is ultimately vicarious, substitutionary. Much of what Jesus does is to take our place under the demands of God’s law, to face our enemies, and even to face the punishment for sin (of which he had none, and we have seemingly infinite). So when we see Jesus doing extraordinary things that we could never imagine ourselves doing, we want to keep this “Christ for us” principle in mind. Likely, the point of what Jesus is doing is not showing you how to conduct yourself, but rather doing what you could not do for you.

This “Christ for us” principle is front-and-center in our Gospel for this morning as we meet up with Jesus facing the temptations of the Devil. While we can learn a lot from Jesus’ approach to temptation, the ultimate takeaway we want to have is that he’s doing this for us. His perfection is credited to you, to me. He makes us righteous and perfect as we should have been all along.

As we join the events of our Gospel in progress, Jesus is leaving the Jordan River just after his baptism. This account is literally the first thing he did after the official start of his ministry. Jesus is just getting things rolling, and who is there to meet him and try to derail everything? Satan.

And as true man, Jesus is vulnerable. Not just because he had the potential to sin, which he did, but also because he was in a physically weak state. Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the Devil for forty days. He did not eat anything during those days. When they came to an end, he was hungry. You likely know how you feel when you’re hungry. Perhaps you have a headache; perhaps you are quick-tempered; perhaps you make really bad decisions. So, if that’s what you feel like when you miss lunch or perhaps are late to get dinner going, imagine how you’d feel if that stretched out beyond a day! How hungry would you be and how sane would you feel if you hadn’t eaten in 40 hours? Now consider your weakness if you had been fasting for forty days! Luke’s comment on Jesus’ state, “he was hungry,” seems like an almost intentional understatement.

So it’s during this period of fasting that Satan comes to Jesus to tempt him. Satan’s tactics are all over the place because he doesn’t really care how he gets Jesus to sin, he just knows he needs to get Jesus to sin. Just one sin would make Jesus entirely ineligible to be our Savior and ruin God’s entire plan of salvation. So right here at the start of Jesus’ ministry, Satan digs in—and notably, God lets him. Remember that Jesus is in this position because he was led by the Spirit in the wilderness. This whole scene is not Jesus being victimized by Satan; this is part of his work for us; he is there willingly.

The first temptation that Luke records for us seems to hit Jesus at his physical weakness as well as at his ministerial weakness. Satan might have assumed that Jesus, the newly anointed prophet, would be eager to prove his status. So Satan tempts him to prove that he is God’s Son. Such a temptation probably worked well for Satan with many newly-minted leaders in the church over the centuries, to overextend to prove their legitimacy. And pile Jesus’ fasting on top of that! Regardless of whether this particular temptation took place on day 5, 15, or 40 of his time in the wilderness (or repeatedly during these days), Jesus would have been hungry; the stone-into-bread would have been tempting. So, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

We see a pattern in Jesus’ answers to Satan’s temptations. He doesn’t engage Satan in a lengthy dialogue, logically explaining why that action would be bad. Instead, he answers Satan’s temptations directly with God’s Word. In this case, a quote from Deuteronomy chapter 8. In what Jesus quotes, Moses encourages the Israelites to look to God for this sustenance and support as they had during the 40 years wandering in the wilderness, knowing that ultimately it’s not bread that sustains someone, but God’s providence. So, if Jesus needed bread, his heavenly Father would provide. But in this moment, the Father didn’t; Jesus wouldn’t succumb to Satan’s trap.

Satan moves on to a different tactic in the second recorded temptation. He lays out all the glory of all the kingdoms of the world. “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms,” Satan promises through lying teeth. What might have been Satan’s thought here? Again, he may be following his playbook for what might trip-up the average new prophet of God. “Wouldn’t it be better for your message and ministry to be well-known, Jesus? Wouldn’t the glory and splendor of all the world’s kingdoms be a good place to start? Wouldn’t it be good to have a global audience right from the get-go instead of fighting tooth-and-nail for every convert in backwater Judea and Galilee?” But, what’s the trade for such a head start to one’s ministry? “If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

In some ways, this temptation is more about Satan than Jesus. This is what he has always wanted. He wanted glory and recognition. He wanted to be over and above all. He wanted the glory due only to God. That was the reason for his original rebellion. If he could get the Son of God to worship him in this moment, he would have won his heart’s desire. But Jesus quickly throws a restatement of the First Commandment back at him from Deuteronomy 6, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” As far as our Gospel goes, strike two.

Finally, Satan goes for the big guns. Jesus has shown a reliance on God’s Word, so Satan co-opts it. He quotes God’s promise to be with and protect his people from Psalm 91. “If this is true,” Satan reasons with Jesus, “throw yourself off the top of the temple and let God protect you. Surely you, mighty Son of God, of all people, would be in the arms of these powerful servants!” One wonders if Satan is still salty about God’s orders to the angelic host to serve and protect mankind, orders that would have applied to Satan before his rebellion against God.

But Jesus knows that this is not the purpose of that promise. God is not saying, “Get yourself in as much trouble as possible! I’ve got you!” Instead, God’s promise in Psalm 91 is that as we go about our lives, God will be our guardian and protector. He is our shelter and protects our tents (Psalm 91:9-10). And that is made clear as Jesus quotes God’s direction through Moses, again in Deuteronomy 6, not to put God to the test.

What are we to make of this whole scene? Let us not forget the “Christ for us” principle! Here Jesus is not saying, “Look how easy it is to fight temptation! I did it on over a month’s worth of hungry days!” No, this is Jesus fighting this spiritual battle for us. He is standing up to Satan and swatting down his temptations in our place.

We need only examine the temptations and find modern equivalents for us. Have we ever valued the things of this world more than we trusted God? Have we ever made an idol out of luxury and physical security, valuing them above all things? “Tell these stones to become bread”—regardless of what God has promised?

Or what about acceptance from the world? How likely are we to jettison our faith and dedication to God if it means a welcome or even praise from those in the world? Do we seek to blend in with our friends, even doing things we know are wrong, so that we’re not kicked out of the group or thought of as weird? Do we succumb to the temptation to fit in with the crowd at work, the bar, or our other relationships so that we fade into the background or foreground? “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms … if you worship me, it will all be yours”—while you at the same time stomp all over your faith in Jesus, or at least keep it as hidden as possible, like a plant tucked away in a basement?

Do we ever distort God’s promises of protection? Do we assume that he’ll save us from any and every trouble in the way we want—and then get angry when he doesn’t? If I face the consequences for my own sin and carelessness, do I shake the fist at God rather than turning the reflection inward on my choices and priorities? Do I create promises that God has never made and assume he’ll do my will, rather than the other way around? “Throw yourself down from here”—not in faith, but in spite, daring God to save you!

To one degree or another, we are all guilty of all of these lines of thought and action. It might not play out in precisely the way we just mentioned in your life, but somewhere inside all of us is the drive to do exactly what Satan tried to get Jesus to do. And this underscores the truth that the writer to the Hebrews shared in our Second Reading this morning. Truly, we have a high priest who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus doesn’t just know this temptation, he shut it down and defeated it. He defeated it for you.

We know where Lent is taking us. Before we turn around twice we’ll be in Holy Week. We’ll be sitting here in church on a dark Friday night, hearing the agonizing screams of the Son of God abandoned by his heavenly Father. But again, that will be for us. It will be for us because we have sinned so often under temptation, when even once was too much. In that moment on the cross, the only person who was ever without sin will suffer as if he was the only person who ever had sinned, bearing the full brunt of hell as the payment for your sins and mine. Christ for us.

So, we can take some practical pointers from this scene between Satan and Jesus. When we are facing temptation to do what we know is wrong—what God clearly says is wrong—quote God’s Word at Satan. Jesus isn’t just making declarations of truth as God; he’s quoting the Scriptures, which we also have to fend off our adversary. You have the same tool, the same sword of the Holy Spirit, at your disposal. Use it and, as James says, “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

But this is not just a how-to guide for fighting temptation. It’s not even primarily such a guide. No, this is primarily Jesus defeating temptation for you and me. Jesus’ perfect life is credited to your account and my account so that, in his forgiving sacrifice and perfect crediting of his life for ours, we are the perfect people that God demands we be. In “Christ for us,” we are victorious because he was victorious in our stead, partly here in the wilderness, and ultimately at the cross.

Jesus has conquered Satan for you! Thanks be to God! Amen.  

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Love Your Enemies" (Sermon on Luke 6:27-38) | February 23, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 6:27–38
Date: February 23, 2025
Event: The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

Luke 6:27–38 (EHV)

“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. 28Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. 29If someone strikes you on one cheek, offer the other too. If someone takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt. 30Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes away your things, do not demand them back.

31“Treat others just as you would want them to treat you. 32If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? To be sure, even the sinners love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even the sinners do the same thing. 34If you lend to those from whom you expect to be repaid, what credit is that to you? Even the sinners lend to sinners in order to be paid back in full. 35Instead, love your enemies, do good and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the unthankful and the evil. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

37“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. In fact, the measure with which you measure will be measured back to you.”

Love Your Enemies

A common theme in political discourse throughout history is leaders (or would-be leaders) identifying a problem that some core part of their constituency has and then finding some group of “others” to blame it on. You see that especially in difficult economic times. Usually, the blame gets put on someone who is different than the core group—maybe a different religion, skin tone, language, or ancestry. More often than not throughout history, those claims and blames have been baseless.

Yet, why do you see that throughout history and even today? Because it works. If I’m suffering, if there is something bad in my life, I want to blame it on someone or something—and ideally that someone or something isn’t me. And whether anything changes in my life or not, just having someone leading me saying this is the person or group to blame for my problems gives me an outlet, a metaphorical (or, in more horrid terms, a literal) punching bag that I can take out my frustrations on, and perhaps think that if I do bad to them then good will happen to me.

Let’s set aside for just a moment that the vast majority of that rhetoric is utter nonsense and is spewed out just to incite mob mentality among a group of hurting people. Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that my current troubles are the result of some other person’s or group’s actions. What would be the result of my taking action against that person or group? What if I were to hurt them, take their belongings, or perhaps even take their life. Does my life get better? Are my problems solved because I’ve gotten even with my oppressor? Hardly. In fact, while the now-trite line is “vengeance is a dish best served cold,” it’s almost always a poisonous meal.

That’s not to say that we don’t have problems in our lives. And that’s not even to say that often times our troubles aren’t possibly the result of other person’s action or inaction. But what is the appropriate response to that? How do we handle being wronged in this life? How can we conduct ourselves in this life to give glory to God while also acknowledging that life in this sin-corrupted world is often awful?

Our readings for this morning build on some of what we talked about last weekend. This past Sunday, we spent time with the apostle Paul as he wrestled with God in prayer regarding his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7), which God opted not to take away from him because it served his purposes for Paul in this life. So, while God does indeed want what is best for us, sometimes what is best for us and what we want is not the same thing. And so while what we want is probably for people to just be nice to us—or at least to treat us the way that we want to be treated—that often doesn’t happen. Sometimes, you have true enemies set against you that despise you for what you’ve done or not done or for no apparent reason at all. And surely, we might recognize that our own failures are at the heart of this. Perhaps I have, in fact, sinned against someone in the past and left them hurt to the point that they are not interested in forgiving me. But how do I deal with the reality of someone making me their enemy?

In our Gospel for this morning, Jesus has direction for us that is the polar opposite of the political leader sicing his adherents against a group of “others” that have been identified as the enemy. Jesus’ words and direction are so controversial, so at odds with our sinful natural mindset, that his words might almost seem like madness to us. How do we deal with an enemy, someone who sets out to make our lives miserable? Love them. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, offer the other too. If someone takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes away your things, do not demand them back.

This “love” is not just not hurting someone or not lashing out at them. This love is real, selfless, self-sacrificing love. How often do you pray for those who are set against you—not praying about them, that is, that they stop doing what they’re doing, but actually praying for them—that things would be good for them, that God would bless them, take care of them, and biggest of all, bring them to saving faith? Naturally, those types of prayers are probably at the bottom of our list, if they’re on the list at all.

But, my brothers and sisters, we do well to consider our own relationship with God. What was our natural state with God? It certainly wasn’t friend or ally—it was enemy. Our sin put us in a war with God. Every sinful action and thought was rebellion against our Creator; every time we disobeyed was tossing a hand grenade toward the Almighty. So, what was God’s response? Did he come and wipe us out? Did he open up the earth and consume us at the first sniff of sin? Did he just send us to hell? No, he loved us.

In Romans 8, the apostle Paul sums up our natural situation well: To be sure, those who are in harmony with the sinful flesh think about things the way the sinful flesh does … Now, the way the sinful flesh thinks results in death … For the mind-set of the sinful flesh is hostile to God, since it does not submit to God’s law, and in fact, it cannot. Those who are in the sinful flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:5-8). But earlier in that letter, in Romans 5, Paul had already outlined how God addressed this sin-laden hostility toward him: It is rare indeed that someone will die for a righteous person. Perhaps someone might actually go so far as to die for a person who has been good to him. But God shows his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. … For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, it is even more certain that, since we have been reconciled, we will be saved by his life (Romans 5:7-8, 10). How rare it is for someone to be willing to sacrifice their own lives for someone they love, for someone who has been good to them! But what does God do? He gives up his life to save those who hated him because he loved us even when we were his enemies!

So Jesus is really laying out the way that God deals with sinners: love for enemies. That’s what you and I have been shown. Our whole lived, spiritual experience is that God loved us when we were. In a way that makes no sense to us, even as Christians, God saved us from hell by dying for the sins that we committed against him. Thanks be to God that it doesn’t have to make sense to us to be true. It is our certain foundation and our hope.

So, why didn’t God just take us from this life as soon as he brought us to faith? As soon as the words of the gospel hit our ears, as soon as the moisture of that baptism touched our skin, once he had made us his children rather than his enemies, why didn’t he just whisk us up to heaven at that moment? Because, as Jesus lays out for us here, you and I are to be models and reflections of God’s love to the world among those who do not know it.

Yet we do have to admit the sad reality that not only do we not do this as often as we could or should, but very often, we don’t even want to. It’s much more satisfying to the sinful nature to pay back someone evil with our own evil. We like the political message of blaming others for our problems, of responding to people’s hate with our own hate. It’s like spiritual junk food—it tastes so good, and is so very bad for you. Paul asked the question, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” What credit is there in hating those who hate us? None at all! Lord, forgive us for such shallow, thoughtless attitudes toward others!

So that means that even Paul’s quotation from Proverbs in our Second Reading—that in responding to evil with good we “heap burning coals on his head” (Romans 12:20; Proverbs 25:21-22)—is not the main point. We’re not just trying to shame someone by responding to evil with good; instead, we are trying to move them from shame to assurance of their forgiveness. Our prayer is that love for enemies—as alien and foreign as anything could be in this world—might be a window, an opening, to be able to share the joy of Christ-crucified and risen for all people. If asked why I treat someone in such a surprising way, despite how they treat me, may the answer always be, “Well, that’s how God treated me—loved me—in Jesus.”

So, Jesus’ direction is as much about sharing God’s love as it is about thanking God for what he’s done for us. When you follow Jesus' so-called “golden rule” of treating others just as you would want them to treat you, you create an environment in which you can share God’s baffling love in Jesus with those you treat well, even when they don’t show you the same courtesy.

In the end, if someone needs to be rebuked, if there needs to be vengeance laid out on someone for what they’ve done to you, that is God’s decision and God’s work. As for you? Knowing that you are fully loved, fully forgiven in Jesus’ blood shed for you, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). Amen.  

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"You're Sending Whom...?" (Sermon on Luke 5:1-11) | February 9, 2025

Sermon Text: Luke 5:1-11
Date: February 9, 2025
Event: The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

Luke 5:1-11 (EHV)

One time, while the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. 2He saw two boats there along the lakeshore. The fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. 3Jesus got into one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the shore. He sat down and began teaching the crowds from the boat. 4When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch.”

5Simon answered him, “Master, we worked hard all through the night and caught nothing. But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets were about to tear apart. 7They signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8When Simon Peter saw this, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, because I am a sinful man, Lord.” 9For Peter and all those with him were amazed at the number of fish they had caught, 10and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.

Jesus said to Simon, “Have no fear. From now on you will be catching people.”

11After they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.

You’re Sending Whom…?

I don’t watch it often, but I love the PBS show Antiques Road Show. If you haven’t seen it, the basic premise is this: people attend an event and bring in old things they have in their homes (perhaps displayed, perhaps stashed away in the attic) to have them appraised. They film many of the appraisals, and the interesting ones tend to be aired on the show. Sometimes they’re interesting because the person is sure they’re sitting on a small fortune, only to discover that what they have isn’t worth much. On the other hand, sometimes people bring something in and it ends up worth 10, 100, or even 1000x what they thought it might be.

As these surprisingly high valuations settle on the people, often you see them looking at things differently. Often, they start handling the item more carefully; some people suddenly start talking about insuring it. Because if you suddenly found out you had something worth a whole lot of money, you’d want to protect it, right? And whether you were protecting it as an heirloom to pass down to the next generation or just keeping it safe until it could be sold, you still need to consider how to handle it in the days ahead.

Whether you’ve known it for a long time or only a very short time, if you have something precious, you want to be careful with it. You don’t store a priceless painting outside or leave that fragile piece of pottery in the trunk of the car. Whether something is valuable monetarily or sentimentally, you are careful with it.

There’s nothing more valuable in this life, in the world, than the gospel message. The certainty that Jesus has removed every sin is eternally valuable, and all the world’s wealth combined can’t even touch its worth. And considering all it cost Jesus to accomplish it—his very life!—you would rightly assume that he will be careful with it and ensure that it is safe and in good hands.

And while that is true, the way Jesus entrusts this message to be shared is surprising. We’d assume that perhaps he’d take the lead in sharing this with the world. After all, who would be better equipped to share the gospel than the one who accomplished it? Or perhaps, if not Jesus himself, then the angels. After all, the term “angel” means “messenger.” After God himself, who better to share this good news than God’s official messenger force?

But then we see scenes like we saw last weekend in our First Reading where God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). And what was Jeremiah’s response? “Ah, Lord God! I really do not know how to speak! I am only a child!” (Jeremiah 1:6). In other words, “Um, Lord, you’re sending whom…? Me? Oh, that doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

We saw a very similar scene in our First Reading this morning. Isaiah takes in the scene in heaven and is terrified even to be there, never mind being a messenger for this perfect God, “I am doomed! I am ruined, because I am a man with unclean lips, and I dwell among a people with unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies!” (Isaiah 6:5). Until one of the angels intervenes with a coal from the altar, Isaiah can’t fathom how he could ever serve in this capacity.

And in our Gospel for this morning, which is our primary focus for our meditation, we see Peter freaking out in a way very consistent with Isaiah’s encounter with God. He falls in fear before Jesus at the unprecedented catch of fish, saying, “Go away from me, because I am a sinful man, Lord.”  

Scripture is filled with unwilling, terrified, and seemingly inappropriate human messengers for God. The apostle Paul persecuted the Christian church until Jesus corrected and called him on the road to Damascus. When Moses spoke to God in the burning bush, he gave God a similar line to Jeremiah’s: he didn’t know how to speak. And the prophet Jonah was so unwilling to be God’s messenger to the heathen city of Nineveh, that he got in a boat headed the exact opposite direction that God had told him to go, until a terrifying dip in a stormy sea and three nights in a giant fish’s digestive system put him back on the right track (mostly).

To one degree or another, these human reactions to God’s call make sense because God’s actions don’t make sense to us. Why is God entrusting this priceless message to fallible human messengers? Everyone he calls, willing or not, is at least a sinner and thus flawed to the very core. And many don’t seem to have the gifts one would think would be necessary for this work. Jeremiah, Moses, and Paul all mention how they’re not good speakers, and God’s answer is always the same; as God calls these faltering lips, he assures them that he’ll be with them and give them the words they are to share.

This morning’s Gospel has two epiphanies—revelations—about Jesus. The first is the most obvious one. The professional fisherman had been at their work all night (which was the ideal time to catch fish) and came away with nothing. But, Peter’s respect for Jesus is so great that he agrees to try again at the worst time of day to catch fish, even dirtying nets they had already spent time cleaning. And what happens? A catch of fish so great that it strained the nets to the breaking point and even threatened to sink two boats. Quite a change from an empty night’s work!

Jesus reveals himself, again, to be God. In a miracle not unlike the water changed into wine at Cana that we saw a few weeks ago or the healings we saw in Capernaum last week, this miracle stresses who Jesus really is. He’s not some layman who has a hunch about how these professionals can do their job better. No, he is the one who made the lake they’re on and created the fish they will catch. This is why Peter, like Isaiah, reacts in such fear before God, falling before him. For Peter, this miracle went well beyond underscoring the message Jesus taught. Instead, it made him fearful to even be in Jesus’ presence. He knew who he was, a sinful man, and that sinners cannot be in God’s presence and ever hope to survive.

And here is the second epiphany: the New Testament’s gospel ministry will be no different than the Old Testament’s gospel ministry. In the past God sent fallible prophets to proclaim his Word, only very rarely intervening directly to send an angel as his messenger. Here, too, Jesus reveals this will also be the plan: “Have no fear. From now on you will be catching people.” Peter, James, and John would trade in their nets and boats for God’s Word and come away with a “catch” that would be far more important than a ship full of fish: they would share the message of forgiveness in Jesus with the world!

Which, fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your perspective), comes back around to you and me. Who is tasked with sharing God’s Word with others? Well, look around. There aren’t any angels speaking and God isn’t making his presence visibly known and teaching that way. No, you have a deeply flawed mouthpiece here called to be your pastor. The young child hears God’s Word from sinful parents and imperfect Sunday School teachers. Your neighbor across the fence or seatmate on the airplane or train may have a gospel-sharer who makes mistakes, forgets things, and is sometimes overcome by fear and anxiety.

But this is the system God has set up. This is how he’s chosen to bring saving faith to people. He restricts himself to using the means of grace, this gospel message found in his Word and sacraments. And far more often than not, that Word is shared by faltering lips and stumbling tongues, because it’s shared by people like you and me.

We may wonder about the wisdom of God’s plan, but remember that the messengers sharing Jesus also are the ones who benefit from what Jesus has done. We know what it is to be forgiven, whereas the angels and even Jesus himself do not. This is our lived experience, and I believe you can see this choice of messengers for the gospel message as a feature, not a bug; as a blessing, not a detriment. You can share what it means not just that sins are forgiven generally or even that the people listening to you are forgiven, but that your specific sins are forgiven in the blood of Jesus. That’s a powerful advantage to bring to this work that no angel could ever provide.

So, despite all the challenges we bring to the table, God has still called us to share, invite, and call people to hear his good news of sins forgiven. He has entrusted the precious gospel to us. My dear brothers and sisters, let us work together so that we might not cower in fear at this opportunity asking God to go away from us. Instead, when God gives us the chance and in so-doing asks, “Whom will I send? Who will go for us?” may we answer, with humility and joy, “Here I am! Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8). We are forgiven! Let us throw our gospel nets into the sea of this world! Let us share that forgiveness! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Let Us Tend the Tree of Faith" (Sermon on Luke 13:6-9) | December 29, 2024

Sermon Text: Luke 13:6-9
Date: December 29, 2024
Event: New Year’s Eve (Observed), Set 3

Luke 13:6-9 (EHV)

He told them this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it, but he did not find any. 7So he said to the gardener, ‘Look, for three years now I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and I have found none. Cut it down. Why even let it use up the soil?’ 8But the gardener replied to him, ‘Sir, leave it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put fertilizer on it. 9If it produces fruit next year, fine. But if not, then cut it down.’ ”

Let Us Tend the Tree of Faith

I was listening to a year-in-review podcast last week, and one of the hosts of the show made a joke at one point along the lines of, “It’s good to know that once January 1 comes, once the clock ticks over to midnight and it’s 2025, all the world’s problems will disappear.” Truly, January 1, 2025 will not really be different than December 31, or December 29, or…

It’s one of the reasons I have no qualms about observing the New Year transition in worship today rather than two days from now. It’s not really that big of a deal. The opportunities for reflection and forward-thinking are not limited to one 24-hour period. It’s one of the reasons I really don’t like New Year’s Resolutions because, if you’ve identified something you want to do or a change you want to make, why not start it on December 29th or November 17th or whatever rather than waiting for this arbitrary point in the future.

That being said, there is a benefit to the themes of taking-stock and planning-ahead that these late days in the years provide. And while things around us may not change all that much as we turn the calendar, we can know for certainty that the God who provides for us, forgives us, and protects us does not change at all. So we move forward into a new year under the same perfect providence that he has provided up to this day. It’s a perfect providence not because our life right now is idyllic but because he is working everything for what he knows is our eternal good.

Since we know the promises and works of God and how important this all is, we do well to prioritize it no matter where in the year we fall. This morning, using Jesus’ parable of the fig tree as a guide, we’ll spend some time considering how we might better tend the tree of our faith today, on January 1, and throughout our lives.

The parable Jesus tells is very simple. There’s a tree in a vineyard that is not producing anything. The owner of the vineyard wants to get rid of it so that soil can be used for something else, while the caretaker asks for some more time to care for the tree and see if starts to produce fruit. The owner agrees—for a time.

The parable's application is pretty straightforward and very much lines up with John the Baptist’s preaching that we heard in the Advent season just a couple of weeks ago. In order for a fruit tree to be worth anything, it needs to produce fruit. Likewise, a person can and should produce fruit of thanksgiving to God—the fruit of repentance. Failure or refusal to produce such fruit in our lives points to a real problem with our faith.

And so it’s not surprising that the parable's context is Jesus preaching a message that sounds very much like the message that John the Baptist proclaimed. In the verses just prior to our parable, Jesus twice repeats the stern warning, “But unless you repent, you will all perish too” (Luke 13:3, 5). “Perish” is a much stronger word than “die.” When God uses this word, it points not to physical death but eternal death in hell.

So, a lack of repentance leads to hell. A lack of fruit causes the tree to be cut down and discarded. What are we to make of this? And how does that sync with biblical truths that we are saved by grace through faith alone?

It’s perhaps a bit of a trite saying, but I think it can be instructive: it is true that we are saved through faith alone, but that faith is never alone. Faith always has works, fruits of repentance, attached to it. The faith that trusts Jesus as Savior naturally produces good works in thanksgiving to God. A problem with thankful good works may point to a problem with faith.

But, in reality, we all have a problem with faith. None of us is entirely governed by the faith given to us by God. We all still have a sinful nature that is vehemently opposed to that faith, that fights it tooth and nail. If, in thanksgiving to God, faith wants us to go left, then the sinful nature wants us to go right; if faith wants us to go down, then the sinful nature wants us to go up. The sinful nature only wants the opposite of what God wants, often to a non-sensical and self-destructive degree.

So, part of us wants to bear excellent fruit in thanksgiving to the God who loves us and has forgiven us, while another part of us wants there to be no fruit at all. This is why you don’t always do the good things you want to do, why sin, at times, is a very tempting path—and perhaps even seems like the correct path! Even after God has created faith in our hearts, on our own, we are not healthy fig trees.

So what is the solution? Well, if we’re looking for the solution of “make there be no sin anymore in my life,” then we are going to be really disappointed. This side of eternity, no matter how genuine our faith is and how much we might want that to be the case, we won’t be able to make that happen. No, the real solution is labor, work with this tree of faith. Just as the caretaker pleaded with the owner, “Sir, leave it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put fertilizer on it,” we, too, have work to do.

What does “digging around and fertilizing” faith look like? How do we do that work? Well, just like a tree, it matters what you use. If you dig around a tree to aerate the soil a bit, you don’t want to do so in a way that damages the roots; that would be the complete opposite of what you’re trying to do! If you’re trying to fertilize the tree, you would want to use something that would actually make the soil better and thus the tree stronger. Using something that would poison or weaken the tree is the opposite of your goal.

So, too, if we’re going to tend to our tree of faith, we want to use the right tools and products and in the right way because doing this work in the wrong way could damage faith rather than strengthening it. So, what are the right tools and methods for this work?

First and foremost, tending to your faith is not an exploration of your thoughts and feelings. While our thoughts and emotions are valid and important, they’re not always accurate. For instance, on a really rough day, I may feel like God no longer cares about me. But is that true? No! No matter how deeply, sincerely, and honestly I feel that, my emotions do not dictate reality. My thinking may try to justify my actions, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

The fruitless tree can’t just will itself into producing fruit; it needs work from the gardener. So, too, we cannot just will ourselves into stronger, healthier faith. We need God to do his work on us.

And while God technically could do that in an infinite number of ways, he has restricted himself to some very specific tools. God tends to your faith and mine through his Word. That Word may be read in our homes, listened to as it’s read or preached, remembered and meditated on, or in the case of the sacraments, connected to earthly elements like water in baptism and bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper.

While God does this work,  you and I have a part to play. We can’t make our faith stronger on our own, but we can put ourselves in a position to be surrounded by his Word, to be in a place where God will do the work he’s promised. So, tending to the tree of our faith means immersing ourselves in his Word.

How will that go? Well, it’s not going to be all pleasant. Remember, we still have that sinful nature in us, and part of combating this part of us is cutting it down to size. But that’s not comfortable because that means addressing the sinful nature’s wrongdoing, which is the same as addressing our own failures and faults. God’s Word is clear what the expectations are for us—perfection—and how far we are from that. That sin is why Jesus warned the people about perishing without repentance. Sin that is cherished, loved, and embraced is poison to faith.

But, of course, the message of God’s Word doesn’t end there. If it did, that would be utterly hopeless. The gardener has to address the problems with the fig tree, but with the goal that things will be better. It is the same with God’s Word.

It’s not until we see our need as made clear through the mirror of God’s law that we can appreciate the gospel. As we noted on Christmas Eve, the message of a Savior being born for you is only significant if you have something that you need to be saved from. Well, God’s law makes clear how hopeless our sinful situation is and how much we need rescue.

So God assures us time and time again, sometimes in direct conflict with our internal dialogue and emotions, that he loves us. While, yes, we have sinned, and yes, we do deserve eternal punishment in hell for those sins, Jesus took our place. Jesus paid the price we owed. Jesus has saved us through his perfect life that he applies to us and his death on the cross that removed every single one of our sins. Now, the soil can breathe and have nutrients rush to the roots.

And what is the result? What could the result be but joyous thanksgiving to God? When we can see and appreicate how great the love of God for us is, how could we possibly respond in joy to him? To be clear, any response, any good works we do are not done to earn God’s love or forgiveness; those have been given to us as a free gift. No, the fruit we produce is the result of thanksgiving to the God who loves us.

This will be a year-long, life-long struggle. The sinful nature will want to squash that fruit and the faith God has given will want to produce it, and you will be caught in the middle. Thus, we need that caretaking that comes only through God’s Word; we need to surround ourselves with the Word and benefit from the caretaking that he, alone, provides.

What will that look like practically? In part, it will look like what we’re doing right now: gathering around God’s Word for the edification that it brings and finding encouragement in the support of our fellow Christians. It will mean digging into God’s truths in the year ahead on a personal level, watering that tree of faith with his promises and assurances.

There are many tools that can help in this end. While you can certainly read your Bible cover-to-cover, or open up to a random page and try to soak in the truths of law and gospel presented there, a more structured, organized approach might be better and longer lasting. The Meditations booklets do a nice job of presenting a daily, bite-sized dose of God’s Word to digest at any point during the day. They also have the benefit of coordinating with the readings that we just worked through in worship the Sunday before.

In addition, I have some tools laid out on the back table that I would encourage you to consider using in the days ahead. Some of these will be new, some familiar, but all have the same goal: get myself into God’s truths to combat that sinful nature and allow the joy of God’s freedom to produce thankful fruit in my life. There are a few different Bible reading plans, be they the whole Bible, the New Testament, or the Gospels. There’s a book that harmonizes all four Gospels into one cohesive narrative. And if none of those are where your interests lie, talk to me and I can get you other recommendations for digging around and fertilizing that tree of faith.

In the end, it’s not the fruit that is the ultimate concern, but the fruit is a sign of the tree's health. The good works in our life are not the goal, but they are a useful metric to gauge the health of our faith. And that faith that clings to Jesus as the only and complete Savior from sin is what is most vital. A healthy tree will produce good fruit; a healthy faith will produce thankful fruit, and we want our faith to be healthy as we look forward to the rescue from this life that God will provide.

So today, tomorrow, and into the new year, prioritize being immersed in the Word and his comforts. Seek out opportunities to express your faith in your life through those thankful fruits. You are the dearly loved child of God. Enjoy that now and always! Happy New Year! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"I Bring You Good News of Great Joy" (Sermon on Luke 2:1-20) | December 24, 2024

Sermon Text: Luke 2:1-20
Date: December 24, 2024
Event: Christmas Eve, Year C

Luke 2:1-20 (EHV)

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3And everyone went to register, each to his own town. 4And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the town of Nazareth, into Judea, to the town of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was from the house and family line of David. 5He went to be registered with Mary, his wife, who was pledged to him in marriage and was expecting a child.

6And so it was that while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

8There were in the same country shepherds staying out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified! 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people: 11Today in the town of David, a Savior was born for you. He is Christ the Lord. 12And this will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude from the heavenly army, praising God and saying, 14“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward mankind.”

15When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Now let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17When they had seen him, they told others the message they had been told about this child. 18And all who heard it were amazed by what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

“I Bring You Good News of Great Joy!”

“Can we talk?” What does that question do to you? I’ll tell you what it does for me: my heart leaps into my throat and other questions race through my mind, “What’s wrong? What did I do? What happened? Where and how big is the hurt, and for who?” Now, those questions might just point to my own wrestling with anxiety because could it not just as easily be good news as bad? Couldn’t someone want to spend a few minutes sharing something positive rather than negative, encouragement rather than criticism?

But maybe that is a familiar feeling for you, too. Knowing that there is news, something that warrants a conversation, but not knowing if it’s something you’d classify as good or bad can leave you feeling very uneasy.

The events around Jesus’ birth have several moments when someone is startled by a message (or even the messenger). We were reminded on Sunday of two occasions when the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, to tell him that he and his wife would have a son in their old age. Likewise, Gabriel appeared to Mary to let her know she would be the mother of the Savior. There, Luke records Mary’s internal response for us: The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.” But she was greatly troubled by the statement and was wondering what kind of greeting this could be (Luke 1:28-29). Is this good news or bad news? How do you respond when an angel says, “Can we talk?”

The beginning of our Gospel for this evening tells us the basics of Jesus’ birth. For as popular and romanticized as this account is, even outside of the church in popular culture, in the Bible, it’s really, really short. Just eight verses, the first three of which are really just establishing when in history this took place. Many of the details we have filled in from our imagination or works of art surrounding these events just aren’t there. Did you notice Mary did not have a donkey to ride to Bethlehem? It’s not unreasonable to think that she might have ridden one—being nearly ready to give birth and having to make a trek of more than 80 miles on foot would probably call for some assistance—but it’s not in the biblical account.

In part, that comes because you have to round it out a bit. Just five verses is not a lot of details. However, when it comes to the construction of the Gospel narrative, it makes some sense because the specifics around Jesus’ birth are just not that important. I mean, they’re not unimportant. They show the lowliness and humility that would define Jesus’ entire earthly life and ministry. They show the quiet faith of both Mary and Joseph, trusting that everything would be ok despite a really stressful situation because God had promised that it would be ok. They make clear that distinguishing mark that the Messiah would be born in the Judean town of Bethlehem, where King David was born. But when it comes to the work Jesus had to do, the details of his birth are, in some ways, a footnote.

But when it comes to verse 8, then things get interesting, because there are some sleepy shepherds out in the middle of fields near Bethlehem keeping watch over undoubtedly sleepy sheep. And then someone says, “Can we talk?” There were in the same country shepherds staying out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified! In the middle of the night, an angel from God appears to these half-asleep animal caretakers. Not only that, but even the glory of the Lord, the pillar of cloud and fire that led the Israelites through the wilderness almost 1500 years before, not only appears near them but actually surrounds them. I think you can take Mary’s troubledness and curiosity at what kind of greeting Gabriel had for her and dial it up 1000x for the shepherds. “What is going on? What is going to happen to us? What is this message being announced?”

The angel quickly puts their fears—their terror!—to rest, “Do not be afraid. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy.” Whew! Not only is this not bad news, but this is good news that produces great joy! And what is the good news the angel has to share with the shepherds? “I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people: Today in the town of David, a Savior was born for you. He is Christ the Lord.” Again, terse and to the point, but one that points ahead—a Savior (the Savior) was born; he’s arrived! The Christ—the Messiah—is here!

And yes, more details are given, but again, that is not the point. The lowly state of the Messiah—a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger—is given only as a means of identification, “a sign to you.” That a child is sleeping in a feeding trough is not the message, not the good news of great joy. But what he will be and what he will do is the focus of the angel’s brief message.

According to the angel, this good news of great joy applies to all people. The main joy is that a Savior was born for you. And this is the part of tonight that might not feel very “Christmas-y,” because the good news the angel shares and that we celebrate presupposes some really bad, even hopeless, news.

Perhaps we think of the joy of a severe disease going away, something that threatened life or at least the way of life. What rejoicing there is in that good news! The bad thing is gone! But in order for there to be joy in that good news, the bad news had to be there first. The concerns over future health and living arrangements. Sleepless nights not knowing what would come or how this would turn out. Would the medicine be effective? Were the doctors right? What was tomorrow going to look like? Feel like?

The same is true for Christmas. Good news of great joy to be sure! But that good news stands against the backdrop of the hopeless news we lived with. A Savior was born! Praise the Lord! But for a savior to be worth something, we needed something to be saved from.

The reality is that, on our own, we do need to be saved. We need to be rescued because we’ve dug ourselves such a deep, dark pit with our sin and rebellion against God that we can never get out. The whole reason that Jesus was born, the reason that God took on our human nature in this miraculous birth of a virgin, was so that he could rescue us. And his work would be a true rescue. To go back to the picture of the pit, his mission wasn’t to put a ladder down so we could climb out ourselves. No, his rescue is so complete that it meant climbing down that pit himself, putting us on his shoulders, and carrying us out. The Messiah’s mission was a complete rescue with no help or contribution on our part whatsoever.

So this child in Bethlehem’s manger would live a flawless life in our place during the 30-some years of his life, and then he would take up our sins on himself when he died on the cross. He was and is our substitute, putting himself in the place of the punishment of hell that we deserved. Death and hell are not really themes that we might want to zero in on a serene Christmas Eve, but this part of Jesus’ work is the only reason that the message of the angel to the shepherds could be good news of great joy.

This evening, we rejoice, we celebrate, not just over the birth of a child in wild, surprising, and miraculous circumstances. We rejoice and celebrate because the one who would rescue us from eternal punishment in hell is here. The one who would give our life for ours and then rise from the dead, triumphantly proclaiming his obliteration of sin, death, and hell—that long-promised Savior—has arrived!

Do you want to see him? On this silent night, follow the angel’s directions: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. … He is Christ the Lord. My sisters and brothers, your Savior is here! Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Repentance Produces Joyful Fruit" (Sermon on Luke 3:7-18) | December 15, 2024

Sermon Text: Luke 3:7-18
Date: December 15, 2024
Event: The Third Sunday in Advent, Year C

Luke 3:7–18 (EHV)

So John kept saying to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Therefore produce fruits in keeping with repentance! Do not even think of saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ because I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. 9Even now the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

10The crowds began to ask him, “What should we do then?”

11He answered them, “Whoever has two shirts should share with the person who has none, and whoever has food should do the same.”

12Tax collectors also came to be baptized. They said, “Teacher, what should we do?”

13To them he said, “Collect no more than what you were authorized to.”

14Soldiers were also asking him, “And what should we do?”

He told them, “Do not extort money from anyone by force or false accusation. Be satisfied with your wages.”

15The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Christ. 16John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But someone mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing shovel is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor. He will gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

18Then with many other words, he appealed to them and was preaching good news to the people.

Repentance Produces Joyful Fruit

When young children are first being introduced to the idea of receiving gifts, what do parents often have to instill in them? Showing their thanks. Now, that doesn’t mean they aren’t thankful or appreciating for a present or other kind gestures, but a parent will help the child learn how to express that to the gift-giver. Are you thankful? Say, “Thank you!” For children (or even some adults), this concept can be a bit of a foreign one, and it’s only with modeling and direction that it starts to become ingrained and automatic (though, hopefully not thoughtless) to thank the person giving you something or who has done something kind for you.

This morning, we will be spending time with John the Baptist again as he’s teaching some of the crowd about thanksgiving, not to people, but to God. We are building on the concept of repentnace this morning, and focusing on the fruit of repentance, the things we joyfully do because God has taken away our sins.

The opening verses of our text might sound a little rough, might sound a little harsh. John calls the group gathered before him “offspring of vipers.” It’s even harsher sounding in the more standard English translation, “brood of vipers,” indicating that the people he's talking to are vipers themselves.

However, John’s point seems more about the parentage than the offspring. While it’s completely logical that vipers produce vipers, this dressing down seems aimed at the parents rather than the children, and in this case, it is aimed directly at the spiritual parents—the religious leaders of the day. “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

The assumed answer to that question is, “No one,” because the religious leaders tended to focus on what the people should do to be worth something to God. They directly tied the people’s value to the Almighty with their actions. The Pharisees felt pretty comfortable in their own behavior and thus their status with God. But in a message that is all, “Do better! Do more!” there is no sense of repentance of that U-turn we talked about last week. There is no call to examine your life and acknowledge that there are places where you have sinned, places where you have failed and should do different and better.

It's almost as if the religious leaders lumped people into two groups: those who were doing great and those who were beyond hope. The ones who were beyond hope were the outcasts of society, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the “sinners.” And so John, in his message of repentance, is calling on the people to examine their lives. He wants everyone, no matter their social status or occupation, to recognize that they haven’t been good enough for God because they have been perfect and, just as importantly, to recognize that there is forgiveness for all of those failings from God.

That is repentance: sorrow over sin, trust that it’s forgiven, and a desire to change your ways. This morning John is taking us on the next step of that spiritual journey, to the fruits of repentance. What comes aftewr true, God-worked repentance? The life the rejoices in what God has done! And John doesn't want the people to fall into that false sense of security that the Pharisees may have led them to think that just because now I'm repentant, well, now I must be good with God. Just because Abraham is my father, I must be good with God. There’s no confidence in that! God can generate biological children for Abraham from stones! Being in Abraham’s family line has no impact on eternity.

And in fact, John says, “Now the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees.” A life lived in rebellion to God, a life lived in rejection of repentance, a life lived without the fruits of repentance ,will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

With this solemn warning, the crowds began to ask him, “What should we do then?” And I think we do well to take this not as a question of fear, but as a question of legitimate desire for direction. This is not a request of frightened people trying to make God happy with them. This is people who understand the imporance of all of this, and desperately want to live a life filled with the fruits of repentance, to respond properly to God’s love and forgiveness. And so they come to John for some specific direction and guidance

John’s responses are, perhaps, surprisingly… normal? Even boring? There’s no grand spiritual journey and high-falutin ceremony to perform. No, what does it look like to have the fruits of repentance in your life? “Whoever has two shirts should share with the person who has none, and whoever has food should do the same.” The unremarkable direction continues when some tax collectors and Roman soldiers, two groups that would have been reviled by Jewish society then, ask John the same thing. John’s answer to them? “Collect no more than what you were authorized to … Do not extort money from anyone by force or false accusation. Be satisfied with your wages.” Just do your job honestly; that is a life filled with the fruits of repentance.

John addresses this idea of the fruits of repentance vocationally. What does it look like to have a life filled with the fruits of repentance and the joy of knowing that we are forgiven? Well, that will vary depending on the places God has put us in and the opportunities he has set before us. Parents have opportunities to produce fruits of repentance as they raise and nurture their children in youth and contnue to provide stability and direction for them when they're grown. Workers will have the opportunity to do their job faithfully, regardless of what industry or specific occupation and vocation they have. Everyone can be a good, kind neighbor to those who live near us or even to perfect strangers—yes even the person that cuts you off on the road or makes that long flight across the country uncomfortable as your seat-mate.

Living our life in a way that pleases and thanks God in every circumstance is a life filled with the fruits of repentance. Because those works are done not just out of a sense of obligation or because it’s the “right” thing to do but because you know you have a God who loves you, has freed you from your sins, and will bring you home to eternal life. These are actions that we take in joy, in celebration, rejoicing in knowing our sins are forgiven, that the Lamb of God, Jesus, has taken away not only the sin of the world but my sin; my personal failures are gone because the promised Savior came and lived and died for me; he's done exactly the same for you.

Of course, as John started his work and gained popularity and notoriety, there was a little buzz about him. He was a bit weird. He lived in the wilderness; he didn't wear conventional clothing or follow a conventional diet. And so all these things combined with his powerful preaching and teaching made the people wonder if John might be the Christ. Might this be the promised Savior? Might John be the one who came to save us? And John is very quick to deflect and shut down those rumors. “I baptize you with water. But someone mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

We could spend a lot of time this morning trying to parse out the different options of what it means that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. But let’s focus on one option this morning. In this brief discourse, we have fire mentioned three times. The first is what will happen to those fruitless trees that get cut down. The last is the separation of the wheat from the chaff, the good grain from the worthless leftovers. The fruitless tree and the useless parts of the plants are burned up. And then we are also told that that Messiah will come and baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

I would suggest that the difference between the Holy Spirit and fire in Jesus’ baptism is the difference between faith and unbelief at this preaching and teaching. The Holy Spirit comes to anyone who hears God’s Word, his promises, and the work that has been accomplished for us. For some, the Holy Spirit stays and creates and strengthens faith in the hearts of those who hear. For others who reject the message and the Holy Spirit, fire replaces him. The heart that refuses to have fruits of repentance, that refuses to acknowledge joy or see anything special or good in what God has done for us is going to be that tree that's cut down and thrown into the eternal fire of hell, the chaff that's burned up with that unquenchable fire, the one that that our coming king will send to that eternity of abandonment by God, baptized with fire, not in a spiritual or refining sense, but in the sense of condemnation.

But my brothers and sisters, you and I are not destined for that fire. By God's grace, we cling to our Savior as the solution to our sin. We know that we couldn't do anything on our own, and he has done it all for us. So now we have that joy because we have been baptized with the Holy Spirit. We have that faith that God has produced in us, whether through our literal baptisms, preaching or hearing and reading his Word, and strengthened by the Lord's Supper. Here the Holy Spirit, given by Jesus, does his work to keep us forever in the true faith.

Your sins are gone. How do you want to live your life? Joyfully, in rejoicing and thanksgiving to the God who loves you. The end is coming. We still have Judgment Day in view here in the latter part of Advent. But that need not be a scary thing. That need not be a fearful thing for us. Instead, it will be a joyful thing because that will be the fulfillment of our forgiveness, the fulfillment of our redemption. And in heaven, we won't need fruits of repentance because we will have nothing to repent from. At that point, sin will be but a distant memory.

Until that rescue, until that day, what should we do? What does it look like to have a life filled with the fruits of repentance? Perhaps Paul’s direction to the Corinthians best summarizes John the Baptist’s teaching. Whether you eat or drink, or do anything else, do everything to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord" (Sermon on Luke 1:39-55) | December 22, 2024

Sermon Text: Luke 1:39-55
Date: December 22, 2024
Event: The Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year C

Luke 1:39-55 (EHV)

In those days Mary got up and hurried to the hill country, to a town of Judah. 40She entered the home of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41Just as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42She called out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44In fact, just now, as soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy! 45Blessed is she who believed, because the promises spoken to her from the Lord will be fulfilled!”

46Then Mary said,

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
47and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior,
48because he has looked with favor on the humble state of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed,
49because the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
51He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52He has brought down rulers from their thrones.
He has lifted up the lowly.
53He has filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he has sent away empty.
54He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy,
55as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever.

My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord

Well, we’ve reached it. The Fourth Sunday in Advent, the last Sunday before Christmas, finally has a Christmas feel to it. It’s still Advent; we’re still firmly in the preparation phase, but with readings focused not on the end, not on John the Baptist’s ministry, but firmly on prophecy of the Savior’s birth and reaction to the upcoming arrival of the Savior. We’re almost there; the preparations are nearly complete.

Our Gospel for this morning takes us to the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah, a childless couple blessed with a son in their old age. Their son was John the Baptist, whose adult ministry we’ve focused on for the last two Sundays. But for today, we take a step back in time, still three months or so from John’s birth. The angel Gabriel had announced this unexpected pregnancy to Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband. Because he doubted God’s promises, Zechariah could not speak throughout Elizabeth’s pregnancy and wouldn’t have that ability restored until it came time to name the child.

During these exciting and undoubtedly chaotic times in their home near Jerusalem, Zechariah and Elizabeth have a visitor—one of their relatives from the north, from Galilee. Mary arrives not long after her own angelic encounter, where Gabriel also appeared to her to give her news about another miracle birth. Of course, this birth would be even more jaw-dropping than Elizabeth and Zechariah naturally having a son in their old age. Mary, a virgin, was told that she would bear a son. But not even just a miracle child, but the miracle child—the long-promised Savior. Gabriel described how it would happen in the verses just before our Gospel: Listen, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end. … The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Listen, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age even though she was called barren, and this is her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible for God (Luke 1:31-33, 35-37).

Mary was undoubtedly and understandably overwhelmed with this news, and given that the angel had told her that her relative, Elizabeth, was in at least a related situation, it made sense that Mary would make the journey south to visit her and Zechariah. It’s clear from the moment Mary first speaks that God is doing something incredible here. As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the yet-to-be-born John the Baptist leaped in his mother’s womb and Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit. As soon as Mary entered their home, Elizabeth knew what was happening: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Both of these women were basking in God’s graciousness to them. Not only did he love them and promise to remove their sins and bring them to eternal life with him, but he actually blessed them by allowing them to play incredibly important roles in his plan of salvation. Elizabeth was the mother and caretaker of the promised messenger to prepare the way before the Messiah; Mary was the mother and caretaker of the Messiah, God-come-in-the-flesh, true God and true Man, for our salvation.

Mary responds with what we have traditionally referred to as Mary’s Song or the Magnificat. These words show that the enormity of this moment and these events was not lost on her. Let’s take a few moments to walk through her Spirit-inspired words, and let them find application not only for her and the people of her day, but for us as well.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior, because he has looked with favor on the humble state of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed, because the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. Her first sentence gives us the whole point of what she’s doing and feeling in the moment: her very spirit within her can’t help but broadcast the greatness of the Lord. And what is she looking to share? That God, her Savior, had looked with favor on her.

Now, we could certainly zero in on the specific blessing of Mary being the mother of the Messiah. But there’s more here than just that. In calling God her Savior, she’s seeing not only the great privilege and honor that God has placed on her, but her very need of it. She was going to be the mother of the world's Savior, yes, but more to the point, she would be the mother of her own Savior. The child she would bring into the world would pay for her sins when he was taken out of the world. His death would save her as it would save all people.

And we don’t want to miss this critical point about our final preparations here today or our celebrations later this week. We’re not just observing a tradition. We won’t just be singing familiar songs or perhaps enjoying special food. We won’t just give and receive gifts with bows, tissue paper, and shiny wrapping. No, this preparation, this celebration, is for a purpose infinitely beyond all of that.

Because the true gift that we have received, the true reason for celebration, is that here is God’s mercy and God’s promise come in the flesh. Here is what God had meant when he first promised that Satan-stomping champion in the Garden of Eden. Here is God putting things into motion what his people had been waiting for for millennia.

And the effects of all of this are crucial for us today. Because salvation and forgiveness were not just for Adam and Eve or Elizabeth and Mary, but for you and me as well. This forgiveness of God—long promised and taking so long to fulfill—is still our confidence of better things to come, even at this late date in history. Those better things are not necessarily here in this life (which is in many ways a deceitful charade, as Mary will explain in a moment), but we are looking ahead to better things in eternity. Jesus took your sin and mine on himself so that even though you and I do not participate in the actual execution of God’s plan to save the world, we can join Mary and say, “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name,” because he has rescued us from hell and will bring us to himself in heaven, forever.

Mary continues: He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones. He has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he has sent away empty. In a world where political and socio-economic standing and power seem to be the only things that matter, the only ways to really get things done, Mary reminds us of the truth hidden behind that façade. Is the ruler of a nation in charge of things? Is the one who holds all the wealth in charge of things? Is the one who promotes themselves and exalts their own importance in charge of things? NO! God is the one with the strong arm that works his will. God is the one that accomplishes what he knows needs to be done. God is not limited by any earthly political power or wealthy influence. He cuts through it all.

In fact, God is so much in charge that he uses those who think they are in charge. The Romans thought that they were in control at the time of Jesus’ birth. The emperor, Ceasar Agustus, declared a census. The rules dictated that families had to go to the origin point of their family lines. This meant Mary and Joseph would need to make that trek down south to Bethlehem Ephrathah, so small among the clans of Judah, but the promised birthplace of the Messiah. God saw to it that the Savior in the line of King David would be born in David’s birthplace and used that as a sign to confirm, in part, who Jesus was.

As we prepare not just for Christmas and not just for the end of time but for anything this next week or the new year might bring, we do well to keep Mary’s reminder in mind. The Lord is in charge of all. That little baby still forming in his mother’s womb whom we’ll see in Bethlehem’s manger? He’s King of kings and Lord of lords. He is, right now, ruling all things for your eternal good, and no one can wrench control away from God. No one in a national or community scene nor even someone in a more local family scene—can oust God as the one who watches you, protects you, forgives you, and will bring you home to himself.

And that’s where Mary leads us: His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. … He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever. That phrase, “remembering his mercy,” looms so large. To be clear, this is not God going through the events that I’m so familiar with: sitting somewhere, perhaps working, perhaps relaxing, perhaps sleeping, when all of a sudden, the memory of that thing you forgot to do comes crashing into your mind and, in a panic, you race to try to get it done before it’s too late. God doesn’t forget; nothing slips his mind. But when God “remembers,” he is keeping his promise; he’s making clear that he didn’t forget.

From Adam and Eve to Noah to Abraham and all the children of Israel, God had promised our ancestors in the faith to save all humanity in the Savior’s work. Here, he keeps the promise. Here in the mission of Gabriel to speak to Zecahariah and then Mary, here in the working of humble faith in Mary’s heart that trusts these promises will be fulfilled, here is our hope for eternity.

Let us all follow Mary’s example, and let us all proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Maybe we won’t burst into poetry or song in the home of a loved one, but those fruits of repentance we spent time with last week are all ways to proclaim God’s greatness. Let us share the good news of this upcoming birth. Invite a friend to worship this week, share the hope you have for eternity, and let your joy in God’s eternal rescue from sin motivate every moment.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, now and forever! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.