"Live What You Are!" (Sermon on Matthew 5:13-20) | February 8, 2026

Sermon Text: Matthew 5:13-20
Date: February 8, 2026
Event: The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

Matthew 5:13-20 (EHV)

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its flavor, how will it become salty again? Then it is no good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people. 14You are the light of the world. A city located on a hill cannot be hidden. 15People do not light a lamp and put it under a basket. No, they put it on a stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16In the same way let your light shine in people’s presence, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

17“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy them but to fulfill them. 18Amen I tell you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not even the smallest letter, or even part of a letter, will in any way pass away from the Law until everything is fulfilled. 19So whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20Indeed I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and experts in the law, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Live What You Are!

How often do you learn something about yourself that you didn’t know? Maybe you tried a new hobby and found you have a great aptitude for it. Maybe you read a type of book that you normally would avoid and found out that you really enjoy that genre. Maybe you are going through a really difficult time and surviving in a way you never dreamed you could. Maybe the reverse is true—you found that something you thought you could handle just fine was way more difficult than you thought—perhaps even beyond your ability.

But any of that information is good to have. Knowing who you are, discovering your strengths and challenges, and exploring new interests and curiosities are ways to grow and change, helping you venture into areas you had never explored, and perhaps fulfill more of what you want or can do.

In our Gospel for this morning, Jesus continues his Sermon on the Mount, which we began last week. As he is teaching his disciples, he lets them know who they are. Again, today’s Epiphany revelations are perhaps more about who we are than who Jesus is, but we are who we are because Jesus has made us that way. Jesus compares believers to salt, light, a prominent, visible city, and a lamp in a dark house. All of those have a connected theme: they provide help in a situation that is otherwise bleak: light in darkness, preservation where food may otherwise spoil, and a clear place of refuge in an otherwise hostile environment.

To get the full extent of what Jesus is getting at, it’s helpful for us to review what we were before he made us what we are. Before Jesus, we were dead in our trespasses and sins, or to use Jesus’ picture in our Gospel, we were like salt that has lost its flavor. Now, the cooks among us may be wondering, “How can salt lose its flavor?” And it’s true, the container of table salt in your pantry isn’t going to not taste salty no matter how long it sits there unused. But, in Jesus’ day, they did not have the purity of salt that we are familiar with. To increase the volume of their salt supply, merchants sometimes mixed it with other materials, such as sand or even dirt. Water might be used to thin things out a bit and spread the salt more evenly among other materials. You can imagine that the more the salt was diluted, the less effective it would be at preserving or even pleasantly flavoring food. And since there was no real way to extract the salt from the mixture, once it hit the point of no return on usefulness, it would be worthless for anything salt-related. Instead, as Jesus said, you might as well just throw it out on the walking path because it has no use for your food, and it would be a danger to any soil where crops grow.

Spiritually speaking, that’s what we were: useless, tainted salt good for nothing but to be trampled on by people. The messed-up salt couldn’t make itself better, and no one else could either. In the same way, you and I couldn’t change our spiritual condition, nor could anyone else. Jesus said that only those who were better than the Pharisees and the experts in the law could enter eternal life through their works. Given that these religious leaders were viewed as the most upright people alive, Jesus point is that no one, not even those praised for their piety and good works, was able to change their spiritual condition. On our own, we were unsalty salt—and, actually, even less useful.

But this is God’s work: changing us from what we were to what we are. We had been this worthless salt, but Jesus changed that. When Jesus lived his life in our place, when he died on the cross to pay for our sins, and when the Holy Spirit worked faith in our hearts to trust in Jesus as our Savior, there we were changed from worthless salt to pure salt, from what God hated to exactly what God wanted. Jesus has made us perfect; now we are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

It’s fascinating that Jesus calls us by one of the titles that he had used for himself. In John chapters 8 and 9, Jesus refers to himself as the Light of the World. But here in Matthew, he calls us the light of the world. Jesus has made us the light; he has made us as himself in this dark world.

What does it mean to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world? The world is blessed by your presence. You bring a preservative quality to this world, as salt does to food. You bring light to this otherwise dark place. You show that there is safety and refuge outside of ourselves. Because you, dear Christian, point to Christ. You are the salt, light, and refuge of the earth when you bring the gospel to people who don’t yet know it or who have taken it for granted.

But in order to bring those blessings to the world around you, you need to actually act. You can’t be a lamp lit and then placed under a basket—what a waste and pointless thing to do! No, to be these things that God has made you to be, you need to act, you need to share, you need to live your lives in a way that reflects Jesus’ love to the world around you.

How can you be salt and light? How can you live what you are? It’s in how you treat people. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. When you see someone in need, or even simply claiming they are in need, help them.

This is not the way the world naturally operates, or at least not for the same reasons. The world would largely recommend that you keep to yourself, take care of you, and ignore others. The world would have you think that your problems are too great to ever be concerned about anyone else. The world pushes you inward to focus on yourself at the exclusion of everyone else.

But Jesus did not say you were your own personal salt and light. No, he’s made you to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We are here for others, we are here to let our light shine and to be a blessing for other people because that’s what Jesus has done for us. We can, in very tiny ways, be little Jesuses to other people in this life, reflecting just a little bit of his selfless love in how we speak and act.

But the amazing thing here is that God doesn’t just let that bright and salty work be for the moment; God attaches a greater, grander plan and blessing to it beyond merely addressing some immediate needs. Jesus says, “In the same way let your light shine in people’s presence, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” By acting like this, you will be as different among the people around us as a light bulb is to the rest of a dark room. But the goal is not personal glory, praise, or recognition. No, the goal is that others will glorify God, that through you, people will see not just how to live but the reason you live that way. The goal is that they will not just see the reflection of Jesus love or a faint reflection of his care, but that through you, they will see Jesus as he is, their Savior as well as yours.

You look different, noticeably different, when you live as you are. When you don’t ignore the guy outside the grocery store looking for handouts, but see if you can grab him a sandwich inside, you look different. When you spend those extra minutes (or hours) with someone going through a very difficult time, you look different. When you speak and act in a way that communicates you care for all people, not just people who you know personally or who live the way you think people should live, you look different. You will look as different as someone turning on all the lights in a dark room—it is unavoidable! And all of that looking different is going to make people notice and ask, “Why?”

And there’s your moment, either directly or indirectly, you can make clear that you do this not to get a pat on the back, not to be praised in this world, but because Jesus has already made you an heir of eternal life. You can share the blessing of Jesus’ forgiveness, the certainty of his love, and the promise of perfection in heaven. Ultimately, living as you are is not just about bringing blessings to people in the immediate term but, God-willing, in the eternal term as well. The smaller things can lead to the bigger. Good works can lead others to praise God, not for you, but for his forgiveness.

So, my dear Christians, live as you are, as Jesus has made you. Actively love all people and share that love in little ways and big ways, and ultimately in sharing Jesus, our Savior. 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.

"The Path of Humility Is Difficult" (Sermon on Zephaniah 2:3, 3:11-13) | February 1, 2026

Sermon Text: Zephaniah 2:3, 3:11–13
Date: February 1, 2026
Event: The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

Zephaniah 2:3, 3:11–13 (EHV)

Seek the Lord, all you humble people of the earth who have carried out his commands. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. Maybe then you will be sheltered in the day of the Lord’s anger. …

3:11In that day you will no longer bear the shame of your rebellions against me. Then I will remove the proud boasters from among you, and you will never again be arrogant on my holy hill. 12But I will leave among you the people who are humble and weak. They will seek refuge in the name of the Lord. 13The Israelites who remain will no longer act unjustly. They will not lie, and a deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouth. Instead, they will graze peacefully like sheep and lie down. No one will terrify them.

The Path of Humility Is Difficult

Looks can be deceiving. We’re probably all familiar with the trope in movies of someone who looks completely unqualified transitioning into someone qualified for whatever is going on. Usually, that takes place in a montage of clips, whether in a makeover or a training session. The gangly nerd wins the athletic event, the clueless space-cadet comes to save the day with academic prowess, or whatever expectations-subverting event the movie’s plot needs.

In our Gospel this morning, Jesus’ beatitudes (as they’ve come to be known) present these kinds of deceiving looks as well. The poor have the kingdom, the mourners are comforted, the gentle will own the earth, the persecuted will be the victors (see Matthew 5:1-12). But this is not a new concept or promise in Jesus’s sermon on the mount. These kinds of surprising contrasts had been part of God’s promises and blessings for a long, long time.

Our First Reading for this morning takes us to the prophet Zephaniah. If you don’t feel like you have a good mental shorthand of who Zephaniah was or what he did, that would make sense, because not only do we not typically spend a lot of time with his work in our cycle of readings for worship, we also know very little about Zephaniah in general.

Some of the things we can pin down pretty well: he was a prophet during the reign of King Josiah, one of the very few good, God-fearing kings in the history of God’s people. There’s a possibility that Zephaniah was a descendant of King Hezekiah, another one of the upstanding kings from a few generations prior, but that can’t be precisely nailed down.

Zephaniah’s call is pretty unenviable. He’s given a message of judgment coming on God’s people. The Southern Kingdom of Judah had become proud and felt invincible. God had rescued them from a siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians 100 or so years before, but that didn’t turn them back to God on the whole. In fact, after that, despite all logic, they seem to have gotten even bolder. Kings Hezekiah and Josiah brought some highlights and much-needed spiritual reforms, but most other kings and the people at large were often dedicated to false gods, if to any at all.

Zephaniah’s work is very much akin to Jeremiah’s: God sends him to Judah with a message of impending judgment. His preaching would not be popular or uplifting. It would not be long before God would send the nation of Babylon to carry Judah into exile. Much of Zephaniah’s message warns of that coming hardship and reminds God’s people why it would come. They had not humbled themselves before God and went their own way, and this brought God’s judgment on them.

Do you recognize yourself in the people of Judah’s approach to life? How often do we let our ego and hubris take control? How often are we driven by what we think is right and find ourselves dismissing anyone else’s opinion? How often do I let my feelings about what I think should be right or wrong override what the laws of our city, state, or nation say, or even more direly, what God says?

In those moments, we make our own desires and preferences into our gods, just like the Israelites did. Whether we publicly make our egos known or just silently and inwardly burn against others, we show our sinful, fallen nature so clearly. We view ourselves as better, smarter, or more important than other people. Or, again, even more important than God.

This is the way of the world. It’s the way the world thinks and operates. I think you would be hard-pressed to find too many people who were viewed as successful in the world’s eyes who could also be characterized as meek and humble. The world constantly reminds us that to get ahead, you have to be big, bold, and bowl over others in your path.

That’s what the world says. But what does God say? We heard Jesus in his sermon promise that the gentle would inherit the earth, that those who are merciful and bring peace would be blessed, and that even those who are “persecuted because of righteousness” hold on to their share of the kingdom of heaven. This is wildly out of line with the way the world pushes us to behave, but it’s also the behavior that God commended through Zephaniah: Seek the Lord, all you humble people of the earth who have carried out his commands. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. Maybe then you will be sheltered in the day of the Lord’s anger. In other words, “Turn from your prideful, boastful ways that you just might be saved.”

Babylon was going to come for Judah. Nothing would stop that. God has promised it, and so it would be, and no amount of solid reforms from upright kings could change the collision course the nation had put itself on. But God still encourages people to be humble before him and others. In fact, God would advise the king of Judah that when Babylon attacked, he should just surrender to him, and things would go much, much better. Of course, the king refused, and so things quickly went from bad to worse both for the king and the people of Judah, and especially those in the capital of Jerusalem.

But is our hubris and puffing up of self a reason to think that God is going send our own versions of Babylon on us? Perhaps. At times, we may need a bump or two in life to bring us back down, to see ourselves as we are, to see our needs.

We have needs far beyond what we’ve mentioned here. Our egos are just one component of our fallen selves. We have a lifetime of rebellion against God, years and decades of acting as if we knew better than our almighty Creator. Not poor in spirit, not gentle, not humble.

Jesus came not just to preach pithy sermons, but to live a gentle, humble life. He came not just to tell us how to live, but to live that life for us. And so, in Jesus, while it’s true we have a great example of how to be humble, how to truly turn the other cheek in the face of abuse, and go the extra mile when we don’t have to, that’s not why he came. He didn’t come to show us how to be humble; he came to be humble for us. He didn’t come to show us how to be perfect; he came to be perfect for us.

In Jesus’ flawless humility, we have the solution for every time we have not been humble. In Jesus’ perfect gentleness, we have the solution for every harsh word we’ve spoken or action we’ve taken. And that’s exactly what we needed because we are not just a few steps off of God’s expectations for us; we are completely fallen and utterly hopeless on our own.

Jesus’ humility is seen in its ultimate form as he humbles himself to an obedient death on the cross. There, the great exchange was made. Jesus’ perfect life is credited to us, and our sins are transferred to him. He pays the price—suffers hell—that we deserved so that we could be free from all of that punishment forever. Our failures to behave as we should, to treat others as God wants, have been forgiven.

And that changes our perspective. No longer do we need to “win” in confrontations with others; no longer do we need to let our ego run wild to try to make a name for ourselves in the world. We already have a name, the best name we could possibly have: we belong to God’s family! Zephaniah describes the result of God’s forgiveness in the short- and eternal-terms in our reading: In that day you will no longer bear the shame of your rebellions against me. Then I will remove the proud boasters from among you, and you will never again be arrogant on my holy hill. But I will leave among you the people who are humble and weak. They will seek refuge in the name of the Lord. The Israelites who remain will no longer act unjustly. They will not lie, and a deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouth. Instead, they will graze peacefully like sheep and lie down. No one will terrify them.

Humility, either by our own choice or by being smacked down by hardship, is rarely seen as valuable. It feels bad and, to the world, looks even worse. We sit on this rock of a planet with hardships and heartaches that will not go away. We suffer in silence or right out in the open. We lose people we love dearly to relationship breakdowns or death. We feel like we have to scrape by just to survive, while others who seemingly have no regard for God or his will are comfortable and seem to be carefree. We suffer for what feels like no reason at all or even because we did the right thing. And all of this can make God seem very distant.

But through the eyes of faith we know that our loving Savior is not distant. As we go through hardships and problems, as we wrestle with the guilt of past sins or worry about future struggles, he is beside us guiding, guarding, and protecting, helping us to navigate this broken world until he calls us home to himself.

And that’s the ultimate promise that God gives to us and that he gave to his humble, faithful believers through Zephaniah’s preaching. Instead, they will graze peacefully like sheep and lie down. No one will terrify them. The Israelites were gearing up for an impossibly difficult time. Most would be removed from their homes; many would never return. But God’s promise here isn’t for earthly peace, but eternal peace. Because in heaven there will be no more sin in us or anywhere else. There will be no more egos run amuck or hardship for the gentle and humble. There will just be peace with our God with no terror or anything bad.

We’ve learned a lot about Jesus during this Epiphany season and here we have our eyes opened to our own reality. This—everything around us—is not the end. In fact, for us who cling to Jesus through God-given faith, this is as bad as life is ever going to be. When he calls us home—and he will—we will have perfect bliss forever.

Until then, we do well to recognize that the path of true, godly humility is difficult. But we don’t walk it alone. We have each other, and most importantly, we have our loving God. Thank you, dear Jesus. 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.

"Your Record Is Nailed to the Cross" (Sermon on Colossians 2:6-15) | January 18, 2026

Sermon Text: Colossians 2:6–15
Date: January 18, 2026
Event: The Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

Colossians 2:6–15 (EHV)

Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, 7by being rooted and built up in him, and strengthened in the faith just as you were taught, while you overflow in faith with thanksgiving.

8See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, which are in accord with human tradition, namely, the basic principles of the world, but not in accord with Christ. 9For all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ. 10And you have been brought to fullness in him. Christ is the head over every ruler and authority. 11You were also circumcised in him, with a circumcision not done by human hands, in the putting off of the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, 12when you were buried with Christ in baptism. And in baptism you were also raised with him through the faith worked by the God who raised Christ from the dead.

13Even when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ by forgiving us all our trespasses. 14God erased the record of our debt brought against us by his legal demands. This record stood against us, but he took it away by nailing it to the cross. 15After disarming the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them by triumphing over them in Christ.

Your Record Is Nailed to the Cross

It’s amazing what people think they can get away with, especially in our modern era, when we (evidently) have become pretty comfortable installing surveillance in and around our homes and businesses. You pretty much need to assume that if you’re out in public or outside on someone else’s property, you’re probably on camera.

Which can make the brazenness of some people particularly bizarre. You might see or hear someone speaking to police, denying having done this or that, when there’s video evidence (perhaps even from multiple angles) of them doing the exact thing they are denying. Red-light and speed cameras will record people’s license plates, making many cases essentially open-and-shut.

But never was there an open-and-shut case like the one we have before God. The police officer may give you some leeway if you’re driving 71 in a 65, but not so with God. He demands perfection—not our best, not doing better than others—perfection. And unlike the criminal who might be able to sneak around the cameras or wear a mask to obscure his face, there is no lack of evidence against us before God. The omniscient, all-knowing God knows everything that we’ve said, everything that we’ve done, and even everything that we’ve thought that violates his perfection mandate.

So we stand in God’s courtroom, red-handed as red-handed can be. And there’s no leeway with this judge. There’s no lesser sentence, no plea bargain. There’s only one punishment that fits the crime of imperfection and violation of the eternal God’s law: eternal death in hell, being forever separated from any of God’s blessings.

And there’s nothing we can do about any of this by nature. We can’t take back what we’ve done wrong. We can’t do good things to balance out the bad. God describes our spiritual state as “dead,” and just like the person who has died cannot do anything to help themselves, neither can we do anything to spiritually help ourselves. We are dead and condemned, with no hope of fixing anything.

And yet, in our Gospel this morning we heard John the Baptist boldly point to Jesus and proclaim, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). This is information we ought to be highly interested in because we can’t get rid of our sin, we can’t scrub our record before God, so if this Jesus is able to do something about it so that maybe—just maybe—we won’t face hell as the eternal punishment for our sins. If that’s true, we would want to know everything about it.

This epiphany season, we continue to see Jesus revealed as he really is because during his time on earth and especially during his ministry, he doesn’t look all that different from anyone else. The booming voice of the Father declared him to be God’s Son at his baptism, and today, through John’s testimony in the Gospel and Paul’s explanation in our Second Reading, we get a clearer idea of who he is, what his work would actually be, and what that all means for us.

Toward the end of our Second Reading, Paul outlines Jesus’ work this way: Even when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ by forgiving us all our trespasses. God erased the record of our debt brought against us by his legal demands. This record stood against us, but he took it away by nailing it to the cross. After disarming the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them by triumphing over them in Christ.

There’s a lot here, so let’s unpack it a bit. First of all, God addresses our spiritual death in a way that we could not. As we noted, just like someone can’t do CPR on themselves, we couldn’t do anything to save ourselves. If we were going to be saved, it had to come from outside of us. And that’s exactly what happened. When you were dead in your trespasses … God made you alive with Christ by forgiving us all our trespasses. Jesus’ death and resurrection result in our resurrection from spiritual death as well.

How? Because Jesus took that iron-clad case that stood against us and obliterated it by nailing it to the cross. He took everything you and I had done wrong and took it upon himself so that our debt became his debt, our eternal sentence became his, and at the cross he paid for it all. There, the Lamb of God took away the world’s sins, which means he took away your sins and my sins. Now we have life from death, now we have freedom from slavery, now we have release from every spiritual power and authority that sought to do us harm, and instead will be safe with our Savior forever.

Paul warned the Colossians, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, which are in accord with human tradition, namely, the basic principles of the world, but not in accord with Christ.” What do the basic patterns of this world tell us? What is the philosophy and empty deceit of the world? Well, it can come in many flavors, and it’s all eternally destructive.

One popular notion—because we’re all hard-wired to think this way—is what we already mentioned: that we can save ourselves from our sins and do good to make God happy. We can’t and, as we’ve seen, we don’t have to. Jesus did everything for us, which is exactly what we needed and exactly what we have—thanks be to God!

But the world’s philosophy can lead us even further astray, away even from trying to make things up with God and instead questioning whether there is anything to make up for, or actually anyone to make up to. If we deny the existence of sin, the existence of hell, the existence of God’s demands of perfection, or even the existence of God himself, we can trick ourselves into thinking that we’ve found a loophole and gotten ourselves out of the spiritual mess that we innately know that we’re in. Denying God’s existence, then, becomes a popular way to try to soothe and salve the aching conscience.

Of course, you can’t stop a fire in your house by pretending it’s not there, and the vicious disease is not likely to go away without treatment. Deluding ourselves that sin or hell or God himself do not exist, while appealing to the world, is no solution at all. It’s just a twisted game of make-believe that will still result in our condemnation in hell. I can’t will God and my debt to him out of existence by pretending they’re not real.

No, we need an actual solution; we need the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Not only does God, in fact, exist, but he is Immanuel—God with us. Or, as Paul put it: all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ. Jesus is true God and true man, which is good, because we needed an eternal, perfect God to take our place under his law, and a sacrificial man to die in our stead. And in Jesus, we have both. Through baptism, we have been connected to both his death and his resurrection. You were buried with Christ in baptism. And in baptism you were also raised with him through the faith worked by the God who raised Christ from the dead.

Jesus is the solution to the problem, not avoiding the problem. This is why we focus on both God’s law and the gospel in our preaching and teaching. We need to be reminded of the gruesome reality of our sin for Jesus’ work to have any meaning at all, but we also need to see Jesus’ triumph as certain and complete so that we do not fall into despair. Not only do we have hope, but we also have confidence in our Savior who gave his life to save ours.

And that truth leads us back to where Paul started our Second Reading: Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, by being rooted and built up in him, and strengthened in the faith just as you were taught, while you overflow in faith with thanksgiving. What is our response to God rescuing us from our sin? Joy! Thanks! Confidence! We walk about our lives in thanksgiving to God because he has saved us. We live our lives the way he wants us to live, not because we think it’ll get us off the hook for things we’ve done wrong, but because Jesus has already crucified those charges that stood against us. We were caught red-handed in our sin, and Jesus took our place so that we are declared “Not Guilty” in God’s court.

In some ways, all of this is the basic truth of the Christian faith. I suppose we could have simply summarized Paul’s words here this morning with that children’s song: Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so … Jesus loves me, he who died, heaven’s gates to open wide. What a wonderful gift God has given that through the eyes of faith we can see Jesus as he is—the Lamb of God who has taken away our sins! May this simple truth that leads to eternal life be your guide, focus, and comfort all the days of your life. And may we see our Savior in a new light this morning, freshly rejoicing in his eternal love 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.

"Jesus Fulfills All Righteousness" (Sermon on Matthew 3:13-17) | January 11, 2026

Text: Matthew 3:13-17
Date: January 11, 2026
Event: The Baptism of Our Lord (First Sunday after the Epiphany), Year A

Matthew 3:13-17 (EHV)

Then Jesus came from Galilee to be baptized by John at the Jordan. 14But John tried to stop him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?”

15But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, because it is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John let him. 16After Jesus was baptized, he immediately went up out of the water. Suddenly, the heavens were opened for him! He saw the Spirit of God, descending like a dove and landing on him, 17and a voice out of the heavens said, “This is my Son, whom I love. I am well pleased with him.”

Jesus Fulfills All Righteousness

Have you ever started a project and then lost all the drive and motivation to finish it? Maybe you get that first coat of paint on the walls, but that necessary second coat just sort of feels like a bridge too far. Maybe you’re set on finally cleaning out the garage and getting to the point where you’ve filled up the driveway with random junk, but then sorting it and putting away the things that are staying just seems kind of impossible. Maybe you got the laundry all done, but it sits in the basket, wrinkling and never hitting the dresser or the closet.

Whether this happens to you rarely or multiple times a day, we all know what it is to leave a project half done, to almost make more of a mess with our effort to clean, or make problems worse with an effort to repair. Thankfully, that was not true with Jesus’ work. He didn’t leave things half-done or get part way through before losing interest and motivation. No, Jesus saw things through to the end—the bitter end—and as a result, sweetness waits for us for eternity.

Today, we see Jesus clearly starting that necessary work that he will complete for us, and it begins on the shores of the Jordan River as Jesus came to his relative and promised-way-preparer, John the Baptist. We have quite a time jump this morning from our Gospels over the last few weeks. Since the middle of December, we’ve been pretty firmly in that 2-3 year window of the announcement of Jesus’ upcoming birth, through his birth, and finally last week, in our celebration of the festival of Epiphany, we saw the nations of the world recognizing and coming to worship their Savior in the example of the Wise Men.

But all of this is still firmly in the camp of Old Testament patterns. Despite the fact that Jesus has arrived, the Savior has been born, we’re still entrenched in the Old Testament perspective of waiting and watching. Because, despite angels speaking to maidens and shepherds and Wise Men following stars, Jesus’ work hadn’t fully started yet. And that changes today.

Jesus’ baptism may seem a bit strange to us—it seemed a bit strange to John as well: “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?” We clearly and appropriately put baptism in the category of something we need as sinners. In our baptisms, God washes away our sins and creates or strengthens faith in our hearts. Even though John’s baptism is different from the one we are familiar with and have gone through, it was still a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But, crucially, Jesus had no sins to be forgiven. So, why is Jesus going to John to be baptized?

There are many things we could discuss on this subject, but I believe that chief among them is the truth that Jesus’ work is to take our place. On Christmas Eve, we heard the famous words of the apostle Paul from Galatians 4: When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son to be born of a woman, so that he would be born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law, so that we would be adopted as sons (Galatians 4:4-5). Jesus’ mission was to take our place under the law. Jesus was to be what we could not be: the one person to live a perfect life under God’s expectations and commands. Part of that substitutionary work, then, is taking our place even under the baptism that he did not appear to need. Jesus’ response is vague yet also aims to set John’s concerns to rest, “Let it be so now, because it is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

Jesus’ baptism will also serve a wide range of other purposes. This will be the moment of confirmation for John the Baptist that his relative, Jesus, is, in fact, the long-promised Messiah. Next week, as we hear him point the crowds to Jesus as God’s Lamb who takes away the world’s sins, we will also hear him point to this event, and specifically the Holy Spirit’s alighting on Jesus in the form of a dove, as the sign God promised to confirm these things.

This sign was a confirmation to John, in part, because God told him it would be. But it was also confirmation because these events are what God had promised would happen. We heard part of those promises in the prophet’s words in our First Reading: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I am placing my Spirit on him. He will announce a just verdict for the nations (Isaiah 42:1). The Messiah would be anointed with power and the Holy Spirit, and that’s exactly what is happening here at Jesus’ baptism.

Kings and prophets in the Old Testament would be anointed with oil as a sign that they were set apart for a special task, and here at Jesus’ baptism, that is also happening. Although Jesus underwent the same baptism as the crowds who came to John, his baptism was unique. No one else had the Holy Spirit descending on them, and certainly no one had the voice of the Father booming from heaven.

The Father’s words that echo around the Jordan really help focus us. He comments on Jesus here, “This is my Son, whom I love. I am well pleased with him.” Here is, perhaps, the first public confirmation of Jesus’ true lineage. He is not the son of Joseph nor the result of Mary being assaulted or unfaithful. No, Jesus is the Son of God.

But even more to the point, Jesus is not just the Son of God, but the Son whom the Father loves, with whom he is well pleased. There’s only one way for God to be well pleased with something, and that’s if it is perfect. We see a similar concept at creation: as God created the world, he called it “good” and “very good” (cf. Genesis 1:4, 10, 31, etc.) because it was flawless. There was no corruption of sin in the world at that time, and there is no corruption of sin in Jesus. Thus, he is the loved Son of God who makes the Father happy.

This is vital to our understanding of Jesus’ work. He has to be perfect to be of any benefit to us. As we said a few moments ago, Jesus’ work is substitutionary. He’s not showing us how to live; he’s living for us. He’s not a moral guide and grand teacher; he’s the Lamb of God who will be sacrificed in our place. This is Jesus’ commission from the Father, “Be perfect for them.”

Throughout this Epiphany season, we will continue to see more about who Jesus is and what he has come to do, and it all starts in earnest here. We won’t revisit Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness this year, but that follows immediately after his baptism. While not at all the only time he fends off temptation, it is perhaps the clearest example of it in all of Scripture. No matter what Satan throws at him, Jesus will continue to be the perfect Son of his Father.

That perfection is vital for you and me. I don’t have to tell you that none of us has been perfect. We’re not even two weeks into this year, and all of us could probably put together an embarrassingly lengthy list of ways we have failed to be the people God expects us to be. We have sinned against him, we have sinned against other people, we have sinned against ourselves. We’ve had misplaced priorities that make other things and people our gods while excluding the true God.

Jesus did none of that, and he hands his perfection to you and to me as a free gift. Even though you and I have failed over and over again, because of that gift from Jesus, our records only show Jesus’ perfection—his complete lack of sin and his flawless track record of good works. He took our place in every way so that we could live with him in the perfection of eternal life.

Jesus’ baptism is the public beginning of that work, fulfilling all righteousness by being baptized in our place, being anointed for the work of rescuing us from every sin. He fulfills all righteousness in our place and does everything we need so that, despite our sin, we have been restored to a flawless relationship with God.

May today be a reminder that Jesus did, in fact, fulfill all righteousness. But he did so not to show us how, but because we could not. He did it not to shame us for failures, but to rescue us from our sins. Jesus fulfilled all righteousness, and now, through faith, we are counted righteous as well. 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.

"Seek Him Out" (Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12) | January 4, 2026

Sermon Text: Matthew 2:1-12
Date: January 4, 2026
Event: The Epiphany of Our Lord (Observed), Year A

Matthew 2:1-12 (EHV)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, when Herod was king, Wise Men from the east came to Jerusalem. They asked, 2“Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3When King Herod heard this, he was alarmed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4He gathered together all the people’s chief priests and experts in the law. He asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, because this was written through the prophet:

6You, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are certainly not least among the rulers of Judah: because out of you will come a ruler, who will shepherd my people, Israel.”

7Then Herod secretly summoned the Wise Men and found out from them exactly when the star had appeared. 8He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you find him, report to me, so that I may also go and worship him.”

9After listening to the king, they went on their way. Then the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them, until it stood still over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they rejoiced with overwhelming joy. 11After they went into the house and saw the child with Mary, his mother, they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12Since they had been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.

Seek Him Out

Have you ever been on a scavenger hunt? Or maybe someone set up (or you set up for someone else) a trail of clues to follow to get to a big surprise. It can be fun, but it also can be a bit nerve-racking if you don’t know what’s at the end of the trail or if you’re not really confident about where to look to find the next item or clue on the list.

In some ways, you might see the Wise Men’s journey to find and worship the young Savior as kind of like a scavenger hunt. They had some indication of what had happened. In a way that isn’t clear to us, they knew that the appearance of a special star in the sky told them the Messiah had arrived. But they weren’t really sure where to find him or who to talk to about it, and yet in the confidence that God gave through faith, they sought him out.

While we don’t have as many unknowns in seeking out our Savior as the Wise Men did, we do well to follow their example in this young, new year. As we make our way through the days and weeks ahead, we do well to make the spiritual journey to seek out our Savior at his crib, during his ministry, to his cross, and then at his empty tomb. May God give us guidance in the days ahead just as he led the Wise Men to the young Jesus!

Despite what our nativity scenes might show, the Wise Men were not there at the stable while the newborn Jesus slept in the manger in his swaddling cloths. Likely for a variety of reasons, Mary and Joseph chose to settle down a bit in Bethlehem after Jesus was born. Once the Wise Men arrive in Bethlehem, Matthew tells us they find Jesus in a house, not a stable or an inn. Likewise, the word used to describe Jesus (translated here as “child”) is closer to our word “toddler” than to “newborn.” That, paired with Herod’s despicable actions that take place after our reading, we might assume that Jesus is somewhere around two years old at the time of the Wise Men’s visit.

But, we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. At the beginning of Matthew chapter 2, we meet up with the Wise Men as they come into Jerusalem. They saw a star that indicated that the King of the Jews, the promised eternal descendant of David, had been born. Immediately, this raises a ton of questions in our minds. What was this star? How did they know that this star indicated this specific birth? How did they have all of this information but not Micah’s clear prophecy that he would be born in David’s city of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2)? We’re going to have to leave most of those open questions as God doesn’t clarify for us, but what we can say for sure is that these gentile men knew the promised Savior was going to come from the Jewish people and in some way God let them know it had happened, so they sought him out to worship him and give thanks to God for his mercy.

In some way, these men knew the eternal King had been born, and they went to the most logical place to find this young King of the Jewish people, the royal palace in the capital city of Jerusalem. But, of course, he wasn’t there. They did get the nudge they needed; the chief priests and experts in the law knew the promise made in Micah well, and so the Wise Men were directed about 5½ miles away from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to find the child, and the star God used to guide them initally confirmed they were on the right track, even somehow indicating the exact place where Jesus was. There, they were able to see him, worship him, and share the gifts they had brought with him.

This whole account is a fascinating reminder of who God lets in on the early stages of his plan of salvation. That first Christmas night, it wasn’t the priests and scribes who heard about the Savior’s birth, but angels spoke to lowly shepherds. And even now, some time later, Rome’s appointed rulers for the area and the religious leaders still have no idea that the Messiah has been born. Instead, the Wise Men, these non-Jewish foreigners, are dropping this bombshell on them as they innocently ask for directions. “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this, he was alarmed, and all Jerusalem with him.

God continues not to reveal himself to the high and mighty, to those of worldly prominence. In fact, the way he reveals himself today is in some ways even more humble and lowly than it was then. No angel hosts appearing to shepherds; no star appearing in the sky bringing people from far away; no religious leaders or prophets with a direct line to God’s will and purposes. No, the way Jesus is revealed to us today is in his Word. Even as we have spiritual leaders in our congregations—pastors and lay leaders—as well as administrators, teachers, and professors in our synod and schools, still the source of all of their guidance and information is the same as it is for everyone: the pages of Scripture.

On Christmas Day, we heard John’s observation that Jesus was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not recognize him. He came to what was his own, yet his own people did not accept him (John 1:10-11). This was specifically true early in Jesus’ life, as no one would have guessed that this little child was God who took on our human nature, but it was more broadly true during his ministry, and it’s still true today. People don’t recognize Jesus as their Creator and Savior because it doesn’t seem right, it doesn’t feel right. If someone is going to admit that there’s a God out there at all, they’re probably going to settle in their comfort zone and assume that whatever issues there might be between them and God, they need to fix them and make things right.

That’s what feels right, but it is far from accurate. The reality is that no matter what we do, we can’t make things right with God. We can’t patch up our past sins and then have him be happy with us. We need Jesus to intervene; we need Jesus to do everything for us to save us.

This flies in the face of what we naturally think and feel. When he wrong his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul commented on how wrong and demented this Jesus-for-us reality feels to us: An unspiritual person does not accept the truths taught by God’s Spirit, because they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually evaluated (1 Corinthians 2:14). Without the work of the Holy Spirit within us, we will never see the gospel as anything but, at best, utter foolishness.

Thankfully for us, the singular source we have to learn about what God has done for us—his Word—is also the tool the Holy Spirit uses to create and sustain faith in our hearts. So in the very moment that we are digging into God’s truths, the Holy Spirit is working to change these things from foolishness to the assurance of our salvation. By the Spirit’s work in our hearts, we see and trust Jesus’ life and death in our place as the only way we receive the forgiveness of our sins.

Let us follow the pattern of the Wise Men and seek Jesus out. To do that, we don’t need to make some long, harrowing pilgrimage. It’s not even about a total reset of your spiritual mindset. It’s all about going to where he reveals himself.

As we are still in the early hours of this year, perhaps it’s useful for us to reevaluate how we are doing at seeking him out. Are we as connected to God’s Word as we could be and want to be? Are there places we could make changes to better seek out our Savior? Are there Bible study opportunities at church that we could be making better use of? Could we be opening our Bibles or devotional books more at home?

This may sound ridiculous coming from your pastor, but I stand here this morning as someone who has really struggled with this through his life, up to and including today. Oh, I will commit myself to personal (not professional!) time in God’s Word, and it will go well for a while. Then, as I let so many good habits in my life do, it begins to fade, and I get distracted by other things, and suddenly, my personal seeking of Jesus is pretty low on the priority ladder. So then, I need to regroup and do it again. But that’s ok.

In these matters, we need to not let “perfect” become the enemy of “good.” Two days a week is better than zero days a week, even if the goal is seven; five minutes is better than zero minutes, even if the goal is twenty. The Wise Men weren’t perfect either—they sought Jesus in the wrong city! But they pressed on, they followed the guidance of God’s Word and eventually the star, and they found the treasure of their hearts.

Today, you will receive an email from me with several tools and suggestions to help you pursue this goal of seeking Jesus out. We are blessed to live at a time with such ready access to so many resources—not the least of which is God’s Word in many and varied translations accessible from almost any screen we are near—that when we wrestle with this, it’s not for lack of options or plans. Sometimes, it’s because we are overwhelmed or we just haven’t really found the right option that clicks for us here today.

So, let’s press on in seeking him out. Let’s dig into his Word, where we are reminded of the horrid reality of our sins and also the work that Jesus did to rescue us. Let’s join the Wise Men in making the journey to find him where he allows himself to be found. There we can bow down, offer our gifts, and worship the God who loves us and has saved us.

Merry Christmas and Happy Epiphany! 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.

"Behold God's Glory!" (Sermon on 2 Corinthians 3:7-18) | March 2, 2025

Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 3:7–18
Date: March 2, 2025
Event: The Transfiguration of Our Lord, Year C

2 Corinthians 3:7–18 (EHV)

If the ministry that brought death (which was engraved in letters on stone) came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look directly at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face (though it was fading), 8how will the ministry of the spirit not be much more glorious? 9For if the ministry that brought condemnation has glory, the ministry that brought righteousness has even more glory. 10In fact, in this case, what was glorious is no longer very glorious, because of the greater glory of that which surpasses it. 11Indeed, if what is fading away was glorious, how much more glorious is that which is permanent!

12Therefore, since we have this kind of hope, we act with great boldness. 13We are not like Moses, who put a veil over his face, so that the Israelites could not continue to look at the end of the radiance, as it was fading away. 14In spite of this, their minds were hardened. Yes, up to the present day, the same veil remains when the Old Testament is read. It has not been removed because it is taken away only in Christ. 15Instead, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. 16But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18But all of us who reflect the Lord’s glory with an unveiled face are being transformed into his own image, from one degree of glory to another. This too is from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Behold God’s Glory!

Things that have been hidden can be quite surprising when they are revealed. The engagement ring that was waiting until just the right moment to appear might take someone by surprise—in a good way. A cancer diagnosis when the person feels otherwise healthy will absoultely take someone by surprise—in a bad way.

While “ignorance is bliss” at times, we often prefer to know things rather than stay in the dark. Some things may need to remain hidden, at least for a while: the surprise party or the bad news that could be completely destructive to someone already going through a tough time. A surprise can be enjoyable when it’s fun, but when it’s something important and concealed, it can be frustrating and harmful.

When it comes to spiritual matters, there are all sorts of hidden things. Think of how many times we ponder God’s Word and we get caught up in genuinely unanswerable questions based on what God has told us. While his message in the Bible is sufficient—more than sufficient, even!—it is not exhaustive. Not every question that crosses our mind will be clearly answered in the Scriptures and many decisions need to be made in our lives with only the most general of guiding principles from what God has said. Rarely do we have a passage telling us which choice in our lives is right and which is wrong.

This Sunday, Transfiguration Sunday, is a summary Sunday for the whole season of Epiphany. The season has been all about revealing hidden things. We’ve seen things about Jesus that were not obvious—his being true God hidden in the garment of his true humanity—and we’ve learned things about the reality of events in our lives that are not always clear, such as the good purposes behind suffering and how God wants us to treat those who are our enemies.

Today, the veil covering Jesus’ divine nature was mostly removed for a brief moment in our Gospel. Peter, James, and John could see Jesus almost completely as the God that he is: his face changed, and his clothing became dazzling white, a comparison with a flash of lightning.  In Matthew’s Gospel, he compares Jesus’ appearance with the sun (Matthew 17:2). This was not just a glowing complexion on someone who is happy and content; Jesus looked wildly different than he usually did during his ministry.

But this is not the only time in the Bible that we hear of someone’s appearance being changed to something more dazzling. In our First Reading this morning we heard that after Moses met with God to receive the Law the skin of his face was shining because he had been speaking with the Lord (Exodus 34:29). Moses’ gleaming face was, of course, different than Jesus’ appearance at his transfiguration. Moses’ shine was a reflection of God’s glory where Jesus’ radiance was his own glory as God.

In our Second Reading, the apostle Paul takes the account of Moses and expounds on it for us. As the Holy Spirit adds some symbolic meaning to Moses’ gleaming face and as we see Jesus display his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, we can spend time this morning appreciating the true glory of God—his mercy and compassion.

When Moses received the law from God, that interaction brought about his gleaming face, reflecting God’s glory. But the law is, as you well know, not good news. This was a covenant that God was establishing between himself and his people. It was a bilateral, two-directional covenant: if the people would keep up their side, God would keep up his side. But if the people did not follow what God directed, then his promises of blessings would end.

Of course, understanding that this was a nation of sinners indicates from the very beginning how this would play out: not well. Therefore, Paul describes this law as the ministry that brought death, because that’s all the law can do for sinners. It reveals where we have failed to perfectly follow God’s directions, leading to eternal punishment in hell. Yet, even this death-bringing message still carried God’s glory. Paul continues: How will the ministry of the Spirit not be much more glorious? For if the ministry that brought condemnation has glory, the ministry that brought righteousness has even more glory. If God’s glory shines in the law’s message of condemnation, how much more does his glory shine through the gospel message that brings forgiveness?

Moses had to cover his face, the reflection of God’s glory, because even that fading reflection was too much for the people of Israel to look at. We might remember Peter’s reaction to the gigantic catch of fish a few weeks ago in our Gospel; in terror he fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to go away because Peter knew he was sinful. This is the same reaction all sinners—you and I included—have toward God’s glory.

But Jesus came to change that. He came so that we could stand in God’s presence, live in God’s presence not for a moment, but forever. For that to be possible, sin would have to be eliminated. Nothing would prevent us from living in God’s glory if all sins were gone. And not in a veiled, muted way or a disguised way as it was most often in Jesus during his ministry. No, without sin, we could bask in that full glory forever.

We see a very small preview of this on the Mount of Transfiguration. When Peter, James, and John saw Jesus’ glory, we don’t hear them begging for Jesus to go away from them in terror. No, quite the opposite, actually. Peter’s mind couldn’t quite process what was happening here, but he knew on a fundamental level that this was a place he wanted to stay—with these heroes of faith and his Savior in his revealed glory. Thus, he suggests that he put up some tents so that this moment wouldn’t have to end and could last as long as possible.

But it did have to end because the work of removing sins was not done. God could not just pretend like you and I had not sinned or that our sins didn’t matter. He had to solve this problem; he had to deal with sin. Jesus would deal with it in his own body, offering his own life in place of ours.

As we begin a new season of the church year this Wednesday, we will have ample time to dwell on the reality of our sin and the horrid price it cost Jesus to free us from it. But as we move through Lent’s darker and meditative days, let this scene with Peter, James, and John live in your mind. This is the goal. This is what Jesus is driving toward. This is what he wants for you, for me, and for all people.

And by God’s grace, we know how this all shakes out. We know that Jesus’ goal is not a pipe dream—it’s the reality he brought to completion. The trip down from this glorious mount will eventually lead elsewhere, a horrid and disgusting hilltop. As we sang in our hymn of the day, “Strange how his journey ended! In love that is his fame our Lord again ascended a mount—the hill of shame. Upon the cross he proffered himself to agony; his holy soul he offered to set the guilty free” (Christian Worship 388, s. 4). All of Jesus’ work, all of the promises that God had made for millennia before him, is leading to the cross. And the suffering at the cross leads to the victory of his empty tomb.

For us here today, this has all been accomplished. As was true for the apostle Paul, so it is true for us. There is no end to this glory brought about by the gospel. Indeed, if what is fading away was glorious, how much more glorious is that which is permanent! What is the result? All of us who reflect the Lord’s glory with an unveiled face are being transformed into his own image, from one degree of glory to another.  We don’t shield our eyes or face from this glory. We look directly into God’s glory with unveiled faces and bask in it.

Soon enough, we will join Peter, James, John, Moses, and Elijah, not in tents on a dusty hilltop, but in the perfect courts of heaven, in the mansions prepared by our Savior, because of his victory for us. You, my brothers and sisters, have been changed from fear and death to joy and life. The glory of God—the gloria Dei, if you will—transforms us so that we reflect that very glory, not in a fading way, but in a permanent way. We no longer need to be given special dispensation like Moses or Peter, James, and John, but we will be in that glory forever because Jesus has taken away our sins. There we will behold God’s glory without end! 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.

"Is Jesus' Grace Sufficient?" (Sermon on 2 Corinthians 12:7-10) | February 16, 2025

Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 12:7b–10
Date: February 16, 2025
Event: The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

2 Corinthians 12:7b–10 (EHV)

I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, so that I would not become arrogant. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that he would take it away from me. 9And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will be glad to boast all the more in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may shelter me.

10That is why I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For whenever I am weak, then am I strong.

Is Jesus’ Grace Sufficient?

Have you ever felt at the point of being completely overwhelmed, that you just couldn’t take one more issue or you were going to lose it? And “lose it” may have different meanings to different people in different contexts. Maybe you feel like you’re going to scream if one more person tries to put one more thing on your tasklist. Maybe you feel like you’re going to get sick if you have one more piece of anxiety-causing news come across your phone or TV screen. Maybe you feel like you’re going to quit your job or run away from some other responsibilities if things don’t change because you just can’t take one more minute of the way things are going.

Those responses all make sense. Each of us has different things piling on us and making us feel overwhelmed. Things that are difficult for you to deal with might be easier for me and vice-versa, but even if we’re all different in the specifics, the generalities are universal. You can only take so much before something needs to change.

We have some specific promises of God to consider in matters like these. He promises through the apostle Paul that we will not be tempted—or tested—beyond what we can bear (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). And perhaps those limits are higher in God’s eyes than they seem to us, but whether it’s on your own or by making use of the support that God provides in your family, friends, neighbors, fellow Christians at church, etc., you will be able to bear up under any kind of testing and temptation.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t feel overwhelming. And God knows that. In fact, he tells us in Psalm 50:15, “Call on me in the day of distress. I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” He acknowledges that there will be distress and hardship, but that prayer is a lifeline for us. When you feel at the brink and edge (or ideally, well before that), God says to call on him and he will rescue you.

But, sometimes things we thought were good in our lives are revealed to be bad, and things that we thought were bad are revealed to be good. This isn’t exactly the kind of epiphany that we want to make, because it probably means suffering and hardship. Yet, do God’s promises still apply even in those instances? Even when we got things really mixed up?

This morning, in our Second Reading, we have a very specific illustration of this kind of epiphany. The apostle Paul, who had been granted many blessings along with his challenges, noted that “so that [he] would not become arrogant,” God allowed what he calls “a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment” him.

Plenty of attempts have been made to guess what this thorn in the flesh was, and we’re not going to spend much time on that here this morning because most of it boils down to speculation. However, we can probably say this much: it was most likely some kind of physical ailment, as it is something in the flesh, and it was likely something that Paul saw as hindering his work as a gospel minister.

So what does Paul do? He takes up God on his promise and calls on him in his trouble—three times! And perhaps in a different way than you and I have ever experienced, Jesus answers his prayers and pleading directly, but it’s not what Paul wants to hear, “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness.” Put that another way: “No, Paul, I will not take this away from you. I will be with you to empower you to endure it, but this thorn remains. And it is to this end: pairing your obvious weaknesses with the blessings that I give, you will see that the credit belongs to me, not you, and that your true strength is external in me, not internal within yourself.” If Jesus removed the thorn, the temptation would be stronger for Paul to boast in himself—in his work—rather than seeing Jesus’ power at work through him.

So, Paul had to resign himself to the fact that it was God’s will to let this hindrance and difficulty remain. He had to trust what God was doing and know that even if he didn’t understand it, he would trust that God was keeping his promises and doing what was best for him.

Our new district president, Pastor Heckendorf, attended our circuit pastors’ meeting this past Monday. While studying this text for this weekend’s sermon, he offered up a phrase that has stuck with me since he said it: “It is easy to trust God, until you have to trust God.” Trusting God is easy when you don’t feel like you’re leaning on him. When the income is comfortable, the food is plentiful, the home is sound, the health is solid—do you trust God? Of course! But when everything is good, that’s not really difficult. When God feels like the third or fifth or tenth line of defense, of course we trust God!

But what happens when the thorns in the flesh come for us? What happens when it feels like there are no other lines of defense—that I’m left trusting God alone because there’s nothing else to rely on? What about that challenge at work or even in securing a job? What about the health scare with no clear treatment options? What about the relationships with family or friends that are just wilting away, and no matter what you do, you can’t fix or change it? Do you struggle with God in prayer regarding these issues? Do you turn to your heavenly Father, who loves you dearly, and ask him to bring relief and solutions to these matters? Do you remind God of his promises that he won’t let you be overwhelmed and will provide a way out—and that he’ll work all things for your eternal good?

I hope you do. However, I know I’m not always so good at that. Perhaps I pray once, nothing changes, and then I give up. Or I assume that God’s answer to me is the same as it was for Paul, a firm, “No.” And so I ignore all of God’s promises to deliver me in the day of trouble, all of his direction to pray to him persistently, and I just stop—and perhaps begin to sink under the weight of these crosses and suffer at the pain of these thorns.

But, my brothers and sisters, what joy and relief we leave on the table when we just give up. Petition your God! Plead with him! He has not left you or abandoned you; your prayers are not being shouted into the void. They are coming before the God who loves you, who has saved you from your sins, who gave up his life that you would have freedom from death and hell and the certainty of eternal life with him. And with every decision that he makes, everything he allows in our lives, whether good or bad (from our point of view), he allows with a purpose, and that purpose is always focused on eternity.

Paul had the thorn that wouldn’t be taken away so that he didn’t get full of himself and start trusting in himself for salvation rather than Jesus. Perhaps some suffering in your life is being used for the same purpose—to keep you focused and reminded of how dependent you are—we all are—on God alone. We cannot get rid of our sins, but he has. We can’t make good come from bad, but he will. We cannot enter the gates of heaven on our own, but he draws us to himself.

Paul identifying this thorn as a “messenger of Satan” is something that has really stood out to me this week, and I can’t help but think about God’s conversation with Satan at the very beginning of the book of Job. All of Job’s troubles, to a certain extent, begin because God is bragging on how faithful Job is. At that time, God said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a man who is blameless and upright, who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8). Satan scoffs at this. Satan replies that Job is only faithful because God has given him many blessings and kept him physically safe. “But,”Satan argues, “just stretch out your hand and strike everything that is his, and he will certainly curse you to your face!” (Job 1:11). Surprisingly, God’s response to Satan’s challenge is to agree, but with limits. First, Satan cannot hurt Job himself, only the things near and dear to him (Job 1:12). And then, he can only affect Job’s health, but not take his life (Job 2:6).

And this has had me wondering—is God bragging on you? Is he holding you up to even Satan and saying, “Have you considered my servant, [Fill In Your Name Here]?” And perhaps, has Satan crafted a snarky response giving some crummy reason for your faith and dependence on God? And has God, knowing that the faith he’s given you is much more robust than that, given Satan permission to do something that would feel bad to us to test us, to try to pull us away from our faith in Jesus as Savior?

And if all of those things happened for you, and you stand your ground in your faith despite these thorns in the flesh, what does that say? Well, first it says to Satan that he’s wrong, you are not so easily overcome. And as Jesus said, his power is made perfect in weakness, so when the earthly props that we are leaning on get kicked out from under us, does God use those moments to help us depend on him even more than we used to? Does he put so many things in our lives that we have no control over to allow us (or force us) to say, “Lord, please help me—in the way that is best according to your will!”?

By holding fast to your Savior in good times and bad, you are focusing your life and attention where it should be: on Jesus. At the same time, you might be proving God right and Satan wrong. Satan was allowed to do something nasty to you, to send his messenger to you, to scourge you with these thorns. What does it matter? To live is Christ, to die is gain. Even if all is taken from me, our Savior’s power is still complete to save us; his grace is, indeed, sufficient for our needs.

Of course, we still pray for relief when bad and troublesome things are in our lives. That’s what those who have gone before us have done (like the apostle Paul), and that is what God himself tells us to do. But as we deal with these thorns, these sufferings, these hardships—whatever they may be—we are also freed to ask the question, “If God is not going to take this away, then he’s using it for good. I know that his power is made perfect in weakness. So, what good might he be working from this?”

We may never have an answer to that question until we can ask God directly in heaven, but we can know what God’s plan ultimately is: he wants us to be with him forever in heaven. And so, he’s freed us from our sins and allows all things in this life—both good and bad—to keep us focused not just on the here and now but on the eternity that lies ahead of us. That eternity is the free gift that our Savior won for us through his life and death in our place.

Is Jesus’ grace really sufficient for you? Absoultely. Both today and through eternity. 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.

"What Does Gospel Success Look Like?" (Sermon on 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5) | February 2, 2025

Sermon Text: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Date: February 2, 2025
Event: The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 (EHV)

As for you, continue in the things you have learned and about which you have become convinced. You know from whom you learned them 15and that from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be complete, well equipped for every good work.

4:1I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom: 2Preach the word. Be ready whether it is convenient or not. Correct, rebuke, and encourage, with all patience and teaching. 3For there will come a time when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, because they have itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in line with their own desires. 4They will also turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

5As for you, keep a clear head in every situation. Bear hardship. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry.

What Does Gospel Success Look Like?

Keep at it. Keep pushing. Fake it ‘til you make it. These sorts of encouragements are often shared with those who are finding the path ahead of them difficult. Maybe they’re trying to set new personal records at the gym, and just can’t seem to break through that plateau. Maybe they’ve started a new job or embarked on a new personal project and it has become clear that they are in over their head or didn’t have as solid a command of the material as they thought they did. What’s the encouragement? Keep at it.

But how do you know when you’ve succeeded? How do you know when you’ve reached your goal? In some cases, it’s probably pretty straight forward. If you goal is to be able to life a certain amount of weight on the bench press, and then you do that, then you’ve accomplished that goal. But what about the project at work? Have you found success simply if it’s done? Is there a metric to measure it by? Do you need to rely on other people’s feedback and affirmations to know that you have done something well?

Many aspects of life and work are murky, including our calling as Christians and as a congregation to preach God’s Word to all creation. How do we measure success in that endeavor? What dangers exist when we look to the wrong place for success? What comfort does God have for us in this work?

Last week, we saw two examples of what looked like failure in Gospel ministry: Jesus was rejected in Nazareth, while the leaders in Jerusalem rejected Peter and John’s preaching. At that time we wrestled with what rejection of God’s Word means. Does it mean that the messenger had failed, or even that God had failed? No! If God’s Word was shared the response from the people spoken to is not the measure of failure or success. If they reject the Word clearly and accurately shared, that is on them, not on the one sharing.

But the inverse is also confusing. What does success look like? How can we measure it, or can we measure it? In our Gospel this morning, we saw Jesus find what appeared to be great success, so much so that the people in Capernaum tried to prevent him from going elsewhere! What could be more successful than an adoring crowd begging a messenger from God to stay with them and continue the work among them?

Well, appearances can be deceiving. Entertainers and politicians often try to measure success by numbers and visible metrics. How many people attended that concert? How many movie tickets were sold? How many people were at that rally to hear that speech? If the number is big, that is success; if the number is small, that is failure.

But in our Second Reading for this morning, we have the apostle Paul revealing to young pastor Timothy where his focus should be. And nowhere does Paul mention crowd, audience, or congregation size as where he should be focused. Rather, from Paul’s point of view, inspired by the Holy Spirit, the thing that determines gospel success is faithfulness.

Paul begins our reading with an encouragement that is probably familiar to our ears, especially if we went to Catechism class in our earlier years: As for you, continue in the things you have learned and about which you have become convinced. You know from whom you learned them 15and that from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be complete, well equipped for every good work.

There is a lot there, more than we have time here this morning to unpack. But very briefly, Paul encourages Timothy above all else to stay faithful to the Word that he was brought up with, because that Word is the flawless, inerrant, inspired Word of God. It is not just a list of rules, or a guidebook that we can pick and choose from as we wish. No, this is the God-breathed will of God given to us, and it should be used for both addressing problems and bulding up people in God’s will, so that everyone may be well equipped to give thanks to God for his forgiveness through their life of good works.

That all sounds great. But what happens when things go awry? What happens when the motivations of messenger and listener get distorted? Paul addresses this: 3For there will come a time when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, because they have itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in line with their own desires. 4They will also turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

What will happen? People will grow tired of what God has to say and seek other sources of spiritual guidance that are more appealing. Perhaps this messenger emphasizes self-help that offers visible, practical benefits for people in their daily lives. Maybe this messenger understands that people prefer not to dwell on the negative aspects of God’s law and tends to avoid discussing sin, death, or hell, instead focusing on God’s love and peace.

There’s a lot of talk about echo chambers in our modern-day, internet-connected world. But this is not a new concept. The idea of wanting to surround yourself with people who think like you (or perhaps even cater and tailor their message to your desires and interests) is about as old as humanity itself. Many people—even ostensibly Christian preachers—have made quite a name for themselves by scratching people’s itchy ears, by just saying what the people want to hear and reinforcing their preconceived notions. That is a much more popular tact than challenging people to expand their thinking and challenge their feelings because that work is hard and uncomfortable, and I, generally, would rather not do it.

For as long as I live, I don’t think I’ll ever forget my conversation with a Christian who was looking to join a congregation outside of our fellowship after doing some “church shopping.” “Pastor,” the person said, “these other churches are full.” And there it was. What was the metric for measuring success for this person? How many people were there? But what about the message being shared from God’s Word? Was it correct? Was it complete?

So, what is actual success when it comes to the gospel ministry? What is actual success when it comes to congregational ministry? Well, Paul tells us in his encouragement to Timothy: 1I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom: 2Preach the word. Be ready whether it is convenient or not. Correct, rebuke, and encourage, with all patience and teaching. … [K]eep a clear head in every situation. Bear hardship. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. Notice what is missing here? Nothing about the people's reaction, the crowd's size, or the message's popularity. Success in gospel ministry is dictated by faithfulness by God’s messengers.

That means that we will not shift our message as a congregation to meet the social norms of the day. While there’s certainly no reason to be acidic in our communities, we will not compromise God’s words to make other people happy or more comfortable. We will continue to press each other with God’s law, urging one another to see our sins and failures before God and recognize what we truly deserve from him: eternal death in hell.

However, we will not sidestep or distort the solution to that eternal problem. Any effort to look within ourselves to improve or reconcile with God is misguided, wrong, and eternally dangerous. Instead, we focus on Jesus and Jesus alone. He alone solves our sins through his death. He alone provides certainty for eternal life through his triumphant resurrection. He alone—his teachings and his work on our behalf—is the center of the entire Bible and, therefore, must be the focus of all of our work in his name.

What does that work look like? It looks like sharing this message with people as you have the opportunity. As Paul told Timothy,“whether it is convenient or not.” It means being in God’s Word ourselves so that we can draw from that Word for this sharing work.

As a result, we will let our lights shine in the world with joy and thankfulness to God for His free and complete forgiveness. This thankfulness means we will show love—true, unconditional love—to everyone. Not just our families or our congregation, but everyone everywhere. That includes showing love to our neighbor with whom we don’t get along, our coworker who can be a bit obnoxious, and the stranger who lives here or on the other side of the world and needs help and support. Perhaps that love starts with earthly kindness, but it always longs to address the more significant, eternal matters of sins forgiven and life in heaven because of Jesus’ work for us.

Faithfulness in our message and how we live our lives is the key to success in gospel ministry. Are we proclaiming God’s Word clearly and accurately? Can people learn from us what God has done to save the world, to save us, to save them? Then, regardless of the response, we’re fulfilling what God has called us to do. And what about the impact of the Word on the hearts of those who hear? Well, that is God’s work, not ours, so in our faithfulness, let’s not worry about the response and let God be God, doing what he has reserved for himself to accomplish.

And in all of these things, whether positive or negative, encouraging or discouraging, let us lift up our hearts in joy to the God who has saved us from our sins. The world's response to God’s work doesn’t change God’s work, which means that no matter how many people join us in church or share our confession of faith, our sins are forgiven in the blood of Jesus, and heaven stands waiting for us. The very Word that healed the sick in Capernaum and worked powerfully through Paul’s ministry is also with us. 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.

"Rejection Is Not Failure" (Sermon on Acts 4:23-31) | January 26, 2025

Sermon Text: Acts 4:23-31
Date: January 26, 2025
Event: The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

Acts 4:23-31 (EHV)

After Peter and John were released, they went to their own friends and reported everything the high priests and the elders had said. 24When they heard this, with one mind they raised their voices to God and said, “Master, you are the God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. 25By the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David, your servant, you said:

Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26The kings of the earth take their stand,
and the rulers are gathered together
against the Lord
and against his Anointed One.

27“For certainly, in this city both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and people of Israel, were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28They did whatever your hand and your plan had decided beforehand should happen.

29“Now Lord, look at their threats and give to your servants the ability to keep on speaking your word with all boldness 30as you stretch out your hand to heal and as signs and wonders take place through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

31After they prayed, the place where they were gathered was shaken. Also, everyone was filled with the Holy Spirit, and they continued to speak the word of God with boldness.   

Rejection Is Not Failure

When plans fall apart, it might leave you feeling like you failed. But the things that caused (or hastened) the failure were often out of your control. The picnic plans fall apart because of the rain. The project at work gets cut because of budget decisions far above your job description. The car you intended to keep for a decade or more is totaled because someone wasn’t paying attention and ran into you.

We start second-guessing ourselves, “If only I had picked a different day for the picnic,” “If only I had lobbied to my boss’s boss’s boss to get funding,” “If only I had left the house just a couple of minutes earlier.” And yet in all of those cases, you couldn’t have known and probably you couldn’t have done anything to change things. Couldn’t it have just as easily rained on your alternate picnic day? You don’t control the weather! Sometimes, things, even significant things, fail or go the way we didn’t want them to go, but that’s through no fault or action on our part; it’s just the way things go.

This morning, as we continue our journey through the Epiphany season, we get a clearer and clearer picture of who Jesus is. Last week we saw him as the miracle worker (turning water into wine in Cana) whose miracles pointed to his message that he is, in fact, the Savior. This week, in our Gospel, we see Jesus preaching early on in his ministry—to the people of his hometown even! He’s sharing the very message that the miracles all served to highlight. But what is the result? Not faith but utter rejection; it was rejection so strong that they would sooner murder Jesus, this hometown boy, rather than listen to another word from his lips.

Jesus’ preaching in Nazareth is not our explicit focus this morning, but it is an account similar to our Second Reading. In the early days after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, the apostles spent a lot of time preaching the good news about Jesus’ victory in Jerusalem—the very place where Jesus said they would start their witnessing work. But, of course, the people who didn’t like Jesus and worked to have him executed just a few months earlier are still in power and, unsurprisingly, are very upsert that these former disciples of Jesus are keeping the name and teaching of this man in front of the people. They saw Jesus as a threat and they see those keeping his memory alive as a threat as well. This was especially concerning for them because the apostles’ work often included working miracles in Jesus’ name which, once again, underscored the validity of their message and also Jesus’ own ministry and his claims about himself.

The leadup to this scene in our Second Reading starts with one of these miracles. Back in Acts 3, Peter and John met a man who was begging in the temple because he had been crippled from birth. Peter told him to look at them. Then Luke tells us, “The man paid close attention to them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, ‘Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I will give you. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!’ Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately the man’s feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk. He entered the temple courts with them, walking, jumping, and praising God” (Acts 3:5-8).

This, understandably, caused quite a commotion. It gathered a crowd of some size, enough for Peter to take the opportunity to proclaim God’s Word, both law and gospel, to those who came to see what had happened. He gave all glory for the miracle healing to Jesus and then underscored the purpose of Jesus’ work—the forgiveness of people’s sins, even the sins of crucifying the Savior. Peter ended his message by saying, “God raised up his Servant and sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you away from your wicked ways” (Acts 3:26).

Now, this did not go over well with the officials. The Jewish authorities came to where this crowd was gathered and arrested Peter and John. After questioning them, the officials ordered them to stop speaking about Jesus and let them go. This is where our Second Reading picks up: “After Peter and John were released…”

Peter and John’s preaching was largely rejected. The enemies of Jesus remained the enemies of Jesus. And while undoubtedly many in the crowd heard the gospel and through that the Spirit created faith in Jesus as Savior in their hearts, it certainly wasn’t everyone. And in this case, it wasn’t the people who might have seemed to have mattered the most: the influential leaders who could have served as a blessing to sharing the good news with the broader populace rather than a hindrance to it.

But what is the response of Peter, John, and the other believers? With one mind they raised their voices to God. And this raising their voices was not in complaint; they were not grousing to God about the treatment the apostles were undergoing. No, actually, just the opposite. They were praising God that despite the opposition, God’s will was still being done.

They quote Psalm 2, which we gave a detailed look at a few weeks ago, when they ask David’s question, “Why do the nations rage?” And the point they make is the same point we discussed then, that this is not a question of what motivates the enemies of God but more of a question of “Why bother? This isn’t going to work.” Consider what happened at the raging of Herod, Pilate, and those in the crowds who were against Jesus. Not only did they not get rid of the message, but their raging was actually used by God to bring about his purpose. They thought they were winning a great victory by nailing Jesus to the cross, but God worked it so that that was the payment for sin, that was the promises coming to fruition, that is our eternal hope.

And so, no rejection and anger on people’s part is going to be able to stifle God. But rejection will come. Jesus faced it, the apostles faced it, and we have and will continue to face it as we share the good news about Jesus. What do we do with that? How do we think about that? If the world rejects us when we share about God’s love because the world just wants people to do their own thing, or hate people who are different than them, or rage against God, is that a failure for us? What should we do?

How did Jesus handle the rejection by the people of Nazareth? As they dragged him to the edge of the cliff to kill him, he passed through the middle of them and went on his way (Luke 14:30). How did the apostles and those with them deal with the rejection by the people in Jerusalem? They continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Rejection does not mean you have failed; rejection doesn’t mean you did something wrong. Rejection of the gospel is to be expected, but the path forward is to continue on the path, share God’s love, and not let Satan use that rejection to discourage or stop the good news from going out into the world. Jesus left Nazareth and the apostles quickly began to widen out beyond Jerusalem and Judea. It may be that in rejection, we change our audience. But we continue to share this Word with the world. And we know that, in the end, faith in this message is God’s work, not ours. And he has promised that his Word will not return empty (Isaiah 55:10-11).

In all of this, we have something about God revealed to us, a clearer sense of who God is, an epiphany:  He is not a God who forces love and obedience. While he is truly the God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them, he does not make us robots who cannot help but listen to and obey him. Instead, he does all things for us; he forgives every sin and invites us to love and thank him in response to this glorious, eternal gift.

And in rejection, he doesn’t destroy those who reject. He didn’t call down fire and destroy the people of Nazareth who rejected him; he just left. He didn’t wipe out those who arrested Peter and John; he let them just move on. It’s not that he doesn’t care, in fact, it’s precisely because he does care. Would those people in Nazareth have other opportunities to hear the gospel, to reconsider their rejection? I hope so! So, too, for someone who might reject God’s Word at our sharing as individuals or as a congregation, perhaps we are not the people to see the fruit come forth. Perhaps we are just a cog in the machine, and that later, through someone else’s sharing of his Word, God will work faith in that person. There is time to share as long as a person is still here.

So don’t let rejection equal failure in your heart and mind. Instead, commend these things to God who promises to do what he knows is right when he knows the time is right. As for us? Let us continue to speak the word of God with boldness! 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' Power Brings About Faith" (Sermon on John 2:1-11) | January 19, 2025

Sermon Text: John 2:1-11
Date: January 19, 2025
Event: The Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

John 2:1–11 (EHV)

Three days later, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there. 2Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.

3When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no wine.”

4Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My time has not come yet.”

5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6Six stone water jars, which the Jews used for ceremonial cleansing, were standing there, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. 8Then he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” And they did.

9When the master of the banquet tasted the water that had now become wine, he did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew). The master of the banquet called the bridegroom 10and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when the guests have had plenty to drink, then the cheaper wine. You saved the good wine until now!”

11This, the beginning of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

Jesus’ Power Brings About Faith

If you’ve ever adopted a pet from a group like the Humane Society or an animal rescue, you’re probably familiar with all the hoops you need to jump through to complete the adoption. These groups will not just hand over an animal to you because you walked through the door and had the cash for the adoption fee. They ask for information, if you rent your home they want clearance from the landlord that it’s ok for you to have a pet. They want to know who your vet is to get a clear idea of how you’re caring for any current pets or pets from the past.

Why do they go through all of that work and make you supply that information? They are looking out for the well-being of the animals They want clear indications, clear signs, that you are a person or family that would take good care of an animal. They don’t want you to have a pet if it will be overwhelming (a large dog with behavior issues probably isn’t right for a family with newborn twins) or if you simply are not fit to take care of the animal. This process ideally indicates both the pet’s fit in your home and your home’s fit for the pet.

In Catechism, we learn that one of the significant differences between God and people is that God can read the heart while we cannot. The people at the animal shelter can go on some signs, but they can’t actually know that someone is a suitable adopter because they can’t know the person’s heart and mind. So they have to go on outward signs, outward indications of what’s happening inside a person, their ability ot care for and their intentions with an animal, and make a judgment call.

Have you ever wondered why there seemed to be so many more miracles throughout the Old and New Testaments than we see today? On the one hand, I think we get a little bit of a misguided sense of that, because the Scriptures tend to cover those special events and tend to skip over more “quiet” times of history. It’s not like God was turning rivers to blood every other week—that happened once in Egypt. But the miracles, whether in Moses’ or Jesus’ day, served a purpose. They were authenticating to the message that was being proclaimed. Essentially, every miracle performed through one of God’s messengers was God setting up a giant flashing neon sign pointing at that messenger, telling everyone around, “HEY! LISTEN TO HIM!”

Why was that more important then than it is now? Because they didn’t have the Scriptures written, complete, and preserved, like we do today. Consider Moses’ day—there was no written Bible. Moses himself wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, so the people had nothing to go on to check to see if what Moses said was true. One of Moses’ big concerns when God called him at the burning bush was that no one would believe God had sent him. So, God equipped Moses to work miracles with the staff that was in his hand.

This is the same reason that Jesus worked his miracles. It wasn’t because he had come to heal people from their physical ailments or because he wanted everyone to have a nice meal when they were far away from being able to purchase food. No, they were to draw attention to and underscore the validity of Jesus’ claims. They made it clear to the people that they should listen to what Jesus had to say.

But even that is jumping far ahead into Jesus’ ministry, isn’t it? Where we are in our Gospel is at the very start. Jesus has been baptized—anointed and installed for his work as the Messiah—as we saw last week. He’s called a couple of his disciples to follow him. But there were no crowds. Few people would have known his name. This scene in the wedding at Cana in John 2 is one the earliest moments in Jesus’ public ministry.

Jesus and his disciples attend the wedding with Mary, Jesus’ mother. Jewish weddings, especially at this time, could be a week-long celebration. Running out of wine early on in the celebration would point either to the family’s poor planning or slim resources. Whatever the reason, running out would have been an difficult embarrassment.

Before anyone knows that the wine at the wedding is gone, Mary asks Jesus to help. Jesus clarifies that his mother does not get to dictate when and how he conducts his ministry, but we also see Jesus’ heart to help this family. So he works a miracle. This miracles has become so well-known that it transcends the Christian faith so that even pop culture will refer to “turning water into wine” as a phrase to describe doing the impossible or turning something of seemingly low value into something of high value.

This was the first miracle of Jesus’ public ministry and very likely his first miracle ever. As we go through this Epiphany season, as we see Jesus do his work, Jesus will show us who he really is. He is not some charismatic guy who was able to get people to follow him because of his personality. He is the one who was worthy of the angelic announcement at his birth, the long journey of the Wise Men, and the joyful praise of the Father at his baptism.

Can you trust Jesus? When he promises that his death paid for your sins, can you believe that? Is it reliable when he promises that his resurrection has also opened your grave and that because he lives, you too will live? Well, journey again to Cana. Enjoy the wedding reception and note that the one who has promised your sins are forgiven can turn giant jugs of water into the finest wine that the sommelier of the day had tasted.

That power is a résumé that speaks volumes. What authority does Jesus have to make such audacious claims about your sin? Look at what he has the power to do; look at the signs. He can turn water into wine. He can heal the sick, feed the hungry, and even raise the dead. And he does so not because God is doing it for him or through him; he’s doing it of his own accord because he is the promised Savior, true God and true man, that you and I need.

That power reveals Jesus to be trustworthy—worthy of our faith. Jesus’ disciples at the banquet understood that. After this singular miracle, we’re told he revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. Of course, in the end, it wasn’t the miracles that did that, was it? It was the Holy Spirit. They didn’t just believe because of the miracles but because of the Word Jesus preached. The miracles, from the very first one, did their job, though. They pointed out that this Jesus was worth listening to, and through that lisenting, the Spirit worked faith—trust—in the hearts of his people.

He does the same for you and me today. By faith, we know that the accounts in God’s Word are not just fables and myths but actual events. The miracles that Jesus worked, as inexplicable as they may be, were real and happened. Even after being removed from these miracles by about 2,000 years, they still hold value as signs revealing Jesus to be trustworthy.

So, Jesus’ power brings about faith. You know Jesus’ power and authority and that he can be trusted. So his promise of complete forgiveness in his death for you is unquestionable. His promise that he’s applied his perfect life to your record is sure. His promise that because he’s been raised from the dead you, too, will rise, is inevitable. The one who turns water into wine turns your hell into heaven. 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.

"Do You Laugh with the Lord?" (Sermon on Psalm 2:1-7) | January 12, 2025

Sermon Text: Psalm 2:1-7
Date: January 12, 2025
Event: The Baptism of Our Lord, Year C

Psalm 2:1–7 (EHV)
Why do the nations rage?
Why do the peoples grumble in vain?
2The kings of the earth take a stand,
and the rulers join together
against the LORD
and against his Anointed One.
3“Let us tear off their chains
and throw off their ropes from us.”
4The one who is seated in heaven laughs.
The Lord scoffs at them.
5Then he speaks to them in his anger,
and in his wrath he terrifies them.
6“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy mountain.”
7I will proclaim the decree of the LORD.
He said to me:
“You are my Son.
Today I have begotten you.”

Do You Laugh with the Lord?

Have you ever been in a situation so bad, frustrating, or seemingly hopeless that all you could do was laugh? Why is that a gut reaction for us sometimes? I assume it’s a response to things we can’t control, things that are sometimes so out of reach that it almost begins to be funny.

That laughter or “humor” (if we can call it that) is a dark, hopeless laughter. I can’t do anything but laugh. But it’s not expressing the joy that laughter often communicates. It’s certainly not expressing something funny or entertaining. So, there are many reasons someone might laugh at the situation around them, some of them positive but sometimes very negative.

In Psalm 2, we get some behind-the-scenes look at God’s actions, and perhaps one of the most surprising is that the one who is seated in heaven laughs. What kind of laughter is this? Joyful? Funny? Hopeless? What is going on here? And if God is laughing at the events surrounding him, do we join him in that laughter?

The psalm writer sets a scene that was familiar in ancient days and continues to be familiar today: Why do the nations rage? Why do the peoples grumble in vain? The kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers join together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. “Let us tear off their chains and throw off their ropes from us.” The nations, and especially the powerful people in them, are taking their stand against God. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? When was the last time you saw someone who was truly influential in the world and you thought, “This person really has their moral compass calibrated completely correctly. What they say and do is in line with God’s will!”? I don’t know that I could list many examples...

Being on this side of it, that’s kind of scary. When the world around us seems to have their sights set on God’s will, trying to rebuff it, ignore it, and even change it, what will we do to stop them? To redirect it? If the most powerful, influential, and wealthy people in the world want to try to rip off what they see as chains and ropes from God and even encourage others to do so as well, so that the nations and people rage and grumble against God, what can we do? Does this feel like a hopeless situation?

It might. But then we look at God’s reaction. The one who is seated in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. The Lord laughs. But what is in this laugh? Is it a laugh of fear and hopelessness because all of these powerful forces have taken their stand against him? No! This is the laugh that might come out of me when I see one of the cats reaching and reaching and reaching under the refrigerator to retrieve a lost toy that is hopelessly out of their reach. They’re trying so hard, but it’s never going to work. It’s almost funny, but there’s also a little sadness at the effort’s futility.

This reaction from God helps us to understand precisely what the psalm writer is getting at in the first verse of this psalm. When he asks, “Why do the nations rage?” it’s not an inquiry about motives. He’s not wondering what drives someone to do this. It’s “Why?” more like “What are you doing? What do you hope to accomplish? What is the point?” Because he knows that no matter how powerful you are, to take a stand against God is to lose.

That point is driven home by what God says next and how he says it, “Then he speaks to them in his anger, and in his wrath he terrifies them. ‘I have installed my King on Zion, my holy mountain.’ ” This raging of the nations against God is not laughable to be ignored and dismissed. This open rebellion against God is a real problem he doesn’t allow to stand. So, in his anger and wrath, he points to the King—the real ruler—he has placed over everything.

This installation, placing, and anointing of this King is what we are focused on here this morning. What is spoken of as true from eternity here in the psalm happened in time as Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. This moment—as Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends as a dove, and the Father’s voice booms from heaven—is the formal start of Jesus’ ministry.

Why is the Messiah’s installation pointed to as proof that no rulers of this world can do anything against God? We do well to pay close attention to a very small detail in our text, one that might not have stood out at all when we read these verses and honestly could be chalked up to a typo in our worship folder, but it’s not. It’s very important.

Look at the word “Lord” in our psalm. In vv. 2 and 7, it’s in all capital letters (LORD), and in v. 4 it’s in normal lettering (Lord). This is intentional because it reflects the careful wording of the Hebrew verses of this psalm. When that name is printed in all capital letters, it is God's special covenant name. This is God’s unique name, Yahweh, that emphasizes his grace and his mercy. So who are the nations and people raging against in v. 2? The covenant God of grace. Whose decree is the Messiah proclaiming in v. 7? The covenant God of grace.

But then, in v. 4, God is responding to this open rebellion. His name is no longer listed as the God of grace, but a more generic “Lord,” which we might sometimes translate as “master” or “ruler.” This name emphasizes God’s sovereignty and his authority. This name reminds the nations that they are not in charge; God is. He is the Lord.

So, the rebellion is against the God of love and mercy. The peoples of the earth don’t want to hear from God about anything, and certainly not about sin and forgiveness. And while that might strike us as a touch strange, we need to carefully consider how unpleasant it is to be told we are not only not in charge, but that we are accountable to someone else—to God—and that we haven’t met his expectations. The message of God’s law is deeply unpleasant, so much so that the sinful nature will do anything it possibly can to get rid of it, even trying to stage a coup against God. If we are accountable to God and we can get rid of him, then we would be free, right?

Well, as we said before, to take a stand against God is to lose. So, no, the path to freedom doesn’t go through open rebellion against God because you won’t get rid of him. And people with that mindset and goal will be crushed. But even the sovereign, ruling God points to the Messiah as proof that he can’t be thwarted. Why? Because the Messiah is the solution to all of this. “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy mountain.”

Jesus’ work is one of mercy, but it’s also one of exclusivity. If you and I want to be rid of our sins and be right with God, Jesus is the only way. So, from a law perspective, if you’re not with Jesus, you’re lost. But from a gospel perspective, Jesus is everything you could need for eternity.

This part of the psalm ends with the Messiah speaking. I will proclaim the decree of the LORD (the God of grace!). He said to me: “You are my Son. Today I have begotten you.” Sound familiar? We heard essentially this exact phrase from the Father at Jesus’ baptism, “You are my Son, whom I love. I am well pleased with you.” What does it mean for the God of grace to call the Messiah his Son? It shows their profound unity of purpose.

God’s plan is not just to be the vengeful, terrifying, wrath-filled God that punishes open rebellion. If it comes to that, he certainly will, but he prefers a far different approach. He would much rather solve this with his grace. So he sends his Son to take the place of these rebellious, sinful people—you and me included. We hear more details about this relationship at his baptism: I am well pleased with you. If God is well-pleased with anything, it is perfect. So here, in Jesus’ anointing, we have not just a connection shown, but Jesus’ value is made clear. Here is the perfect Son of God who has been sent to rescue us and all mankind from our sins.

What does all of this mean for us? Let’s return to our original question: do you laugh with the Lord? When it comes to what some might call the crumbling of society, living in a post-Christian world, or however else people might choose to despair when they see what they view as the downfall of society, do we need to panic? No! This is not anything new. It’s been happening since the beginning, and it will continue to happen until the end. But in the meantime, we can laugh with God. This can be a laugh of certainty, not despair and hopelessness. These nations, these people, these powerful forces raging against God are no more than the kitty desperately trying to get the ball from under the fridge with no hope of ever reaching it.

Because Jesus, God’s Son, won the victory over sin, death, and hell, we know that we do not need to join the nations in this rebellion against God. The solution to our eternal problems is not getting rid of God; rather, it’s the plan God has set in place. He has installed his King, his Messiah, our Savior, as champion and ruler of all. He is the one who willingly started this formal work at his baptism, knowing full well it led to the cross. The one who judges the earth, who rules all things, is the same one who loved you and me enough to die in our place. And so complete was his victory that not even the grave could hold him.

So, my brothers and sisters, do not despair over your sins or how they affect your relationship with God. The covenant God of grace forgives you for Jesus’ sake. And as you see the world in open opposition to God, do not fret or fear. Instead, you can laugh with God. Laugh, knowing how hopeless their raging is in the long run, how they will not be able to overthrow God or do anything to change his promises or his work. With that confidence, we can approach those who rage with the comfort and assurance of God’s mercy in Jesus to show them they are not chained or bound by God but that he has released them from their sin just as he has released us from ours.

The results of sharing the gospel can lead to real, joyful, even ecstatic laughter as we and many more join in the perfection of eternal life that Jesus has won for us. Here before us is God’s Son, God’s King, the one who, despite appearance to the contrary, will conquer sin, death, and hell in his death so that all of us, purified from sin, can be called the children of God. 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.

"Do You Consider Yourself Worthy of Eternal Life?" (Sermon on Acts 13:46-49) | January 5, 2025

Sermon Text: Acts 13:46-49
Date: January 5, 2025
Event: The Epiphany of our Lord (Observed), Year C

Acts 13:46-49 (EHV)

Then Paul and Barnabas responded fearlessly, “It was necessary that God’s word be spoken to you first. But since you reject it and consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life, look: We are now turning to the Gentiles! 47For this is what the Lord has instructed us:

I have made you a light for the Gentiles,

that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth.”

48When the Gentiles heard this, they were rejoicing and praising the word of the Lord. All who had been appointed for eternal life believed.

49And the word of the Lord was being carried through the whole region.

Do You Consider Yourself Worthy of Eternal Life?

Have you ever gotten a gift, maybe this Christmas just finished or sometime in the past, that you felt unworthy to receive? Maybe it was something so personal, so dialed in to you, that you knew you could never, ever give such a thoughtful gift, and rather than appreciating the love and care that went into it, you felt only guilt over the generic nature of the gift you had prepared. Maybe there was a gift so costly that you were embarrassed to think that someone gave you a gift of such value. Perhaps it even left you wondering why they did.

The answer is probably pretty simple: because they care about you. They have talents or resources that they wanted to use for you! But even that can leave us feeling unworthy, that we don’t deserve what has been given to us. But it wasn’t given because you met some standard of worth; it was given because the giver loves you and cares for you.

So it is with God’s gifts. We can be overwhelmed by the unmeasurable scale of all that God provides, physical, spiritual, and eternal. This morning, we want to pause to take a fresh look at those gifts and consider whether or not we should consider ourselves worthy of them.

Our brief Second Reading takes us to Pisidon Antioch, a city in the south-central region of modern-day Turkey, very early on the apostle Paul’s first missionary journey. This city had become important in the area, serving as the region's capital in the Roman Empire. As such, it had a diverse population. As a major Roman city, it would have been predominately populated by Gentiles, people who were not Jewish. But, like most prominent cities in the empire at the time, it served as home for many Jewish people living in the “diaspora” of God’s people worldwide.

So, Paul’s initial audience was the Jewish people worshiping in the synagogue in Antioch. He summarized God’s promised plan of salvation and how it was accomplished through Jesus. Afterward, both Jewish people and Gentile converts to Judaism continued speaking with Paul. Luke records that the next week on the Sabbath, “almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of God” (Acts 13:44). What an audience to hear the good news of God’s forgiveness!

However, as would be an unfortunate theme throughout many of Paul’s missionary journeys, a segment of the Jewish people did not want to believe in Jesus as Savior or even allow this message to be shared. Here in Psidian Antioch, we’re told that the Jewish people who rejected this message were filled with envy and began to contradict what Paul was saying by slandering him” (Acts 13:45). To these actions, Paul and Barnabas responded fearlessly.

Paul’s fearless message is short and cutting, “It was necessary that God’s word be spoken to you first. But since you reject it and consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life, look: We are now turning to the Gentiles!” For many of the Jewish people, they would not have considered Gentiles to be worthy of God’s mercy; they viewed that as their special privilege. But that’s far from the truth. On this festival of Epiphany, sometimes called Gentiles’ Christmas, we see the nations coming to worship the Savior first in the Wise Men's faith. Jesus wasn’t a Savior for some—he’s a Savior for all.

But Paul’s warning to the Jewish unbelievers in Antioch cuts even for us today. “You … consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life.” That is harsh. But why did their actions show this? What attitudes or thoughts show that someone considers themselves unworthy of eternal life? Are we ever guilty of that?

Let’s begin where Paul begins. Why did he say that his Jewish opponents in Pisidan Antioch considered themselves “unworthy of eternal life”? Because they heard the Word of God, the gospel of the good news of God’s plan of salvation, and they reject[ed] it. This rejection of God’s Word is a rejection of God’s work. In this case, they are doing so because they think they are above it—smarter than it, better than it, or at least know better than the message being proclaimed. But such hubris and belittling of God’s promises and works results in disaster. Rejection of the Word of God is the rejection of eternal life.

We may not see this often as a real likely danger for us (and I hope that we don’t), but we do well to be mindful of this attitude. Does it not happen occasionally that we hear a part of God’s Word and say, “Ehhh… I’m not sure about that. I don’t know if I agree or think about it that way.”?

But this may show up in our lives differently. Maybe it’s not an out-and-out refusal to believe God’s Word, but not giving it a place of priority. We get busy with things or problems crowd out God’s Word in our hearts, minds, and daily lives. And so as we slowly, almost subconsciously, separate ourselves from the promises of God, we are no different than those who rejected Paul’s preaching. By not prioritizing it, we essentially admit that we don’t consider ourselves worthy of this eternal life given by God’s grace.

But perhaps the word “worthy” is a sticking point for you. I know it is for me! Because am I worthy of eternal life? Have I lived my life in such a way that God would look at me and say, “Tim, you deserve to be in heaven! Come on up here with me!”? No! I’ve been as far from worthy as can be! I’ve been sinful and rebelled against God. To be worthy of eternal life on my own would mean to be perfect, a life of literally flawless obedience to God’s commands. I know that’s not me, and I’m sure that’s not you. So, in that way, are we worthy of eternal life? No!

But, if I stick to that thinking, I’m ignoring the work that God has done for the whole world, me included. In my misguided “piety” and “humility,” I could, perhaps, exclude myself from eternal life. If I consider my sins not only real and constant (which they are), but actually so bad that they’re unforgivable, that will lead to real problems. If I think that I’m so unworthy that not even God can forgive me, I don’t consider myself worthy or even eligible for eternal life. I can convince myself that somehow, I’m so bad, that I am unique among all the history of humanity, of every person from every nation, and that when Jesus died for the sins of the world, I managed to exclude myself.

This is the lie that Judas believed. Judas is not in hell because he betrayed Jesus on Maundy Thursday night, nor is he in hell because he committed suicide; those were both sins that Jesus died for. He’s in hell because he thought himself excluded from forgiveness, that what he did was so bad that there was no way he could be forgiven. Thus, this deep grief and hopelessness led him to reject the promises Jesus had so clearly taught, and it left him in the state of unbelief. He did not consider himself worthy of eternal life.

Indeed, we do well to take stock of our sins, to hear God’s law, and let it resonate in our hearts. These are healthy things that God wants for us and provides for us. As we mentioned on Christmas Eve and last Sunday, a Savior only has value if you recognize what you need to be saved from. But don’t sell Jesus short. His payment for sin was a global, universal, objective payment. It is done—finished! The Wise Men didn’t travel all those miles to worship an unsubstantiated hope that maybe, possibly, this child would grow into one who could save them. No, by faith, they knew this was the promised Savior who would rescue all people from their sins.

So are you worthy of eternal life by your own actions? No! But are you worthy of eternal life by Jesus’ actions? Absoultely, yes! Jesus has washed and made you clean, purifying you of all sin. He’s given you his perfection so that you are exactly what God expects—demands—that you be. When the Father looks at you, he only sees his Son’s faithfulness. When he looks at me, he does, in fact, say, “Tim, you deserve to be in heaven! Come on up here with me!” because Jesus made me deserving, made me worthy.

That message is not something new for most of us. Many of us have known this for years, decades, perhaps even our whole lives. But the problem of considering ourselves unworthy of eternal life can even creep into that fortress of God’s grace. Because the longer we know this, the more difficult it can be to appreciate it. We can take it for granted. We know all that stuff. We’ve been going to church for how long? We’ve read the promises of God how often? We’ve even, perhaps, read the entirety of God’s Word—even multiple times! Indeed, I do deserve this, Lord; I am worthy of eternal life. Look at what the faithfulness of my life displays!

A life focused on Jesus can, over time, through familiarity and apathy, devolve into a life of self-righteous arrogance. I can start putting more stock in my church attendance than my Savior. I can start pointing to my works, such as my knowledge of the teachings of God’s Word, rather than trusting in the Savior it points to. Even in my ultra-familiarity with God’s Word and perhaps even its constant presence in my life, I can begin to consider myself unworthy of eternal life when faith warps into mere tradition and head-knowledge.

So, do you consider yourself worthy of eternal life? I hope you do because God certainly does. He never would have sent that gift lying in Bethlehem’s manger if he didn't. He never would have given us this King, worshiped and adored by the Wise Men. But he did, and we have him as our certain Savior from sin.

So, where do we want to be now and in the future? See yourself as the loved, blood-bought child of God that you are. No matter how you feel or what you think about things, God’s Word stands true: We were lost in our sins, and God rescued us through Jesus.

And this message doesn’t just apply locally; it applies globally. It’s not just for “good” people; it’s for everyone. It’s not just for members of our congregation or for people who currently share our same faith; it’s even for those who, today, are totally ignorant of and perhaps even antagonistic toward this message. Jesus is for all—even for you and me.

So, let’s not fall into the trap some of the Jewish people in Antioch did as they rejected the gospel from Paul. Let us not let distractions, guilt, or apathy lead us to separate ourselves from this promise and consider ourselves unworthy of eternal life.

Instead, see yourself as worthy of eternal life because God has made you worthy. See yourself as worthy of his love because he loves you. See yourself as worthy of his forgiveness because he died to forgive you. See yourself as worthy of the perfection of heaven because God, who knows you better than you know yourself, as given you this free gift, no strings attached.

Value and cherish your God-given worthiness. Continue to seek it out and look for opportunities to share it with those who might not yet know or understand it or who have been dragged away from it so that they, too, know they are worthy of eternal life, for Jesus’ sake. 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.