Sermon for 9/29/13 Matthew 18:1-11

Sermon: TheGreatest in the Kingdom of Heaven

Angels, mighty forces, spiritual warfare, overcoming power, greatness and glory
 all the things we want
 mighty warriors for God
 iron men
 superheroes
Who wants to be great?
 World’s Greatest ________ on a t-shirt or mug
 Supermom makes sure the kids are all perfect
 Superdad can fix anything
 We’re Americans, superior, independent, rugged, pretty much indestructible (John Wayne?)
But who is in the battle described in Daniel and in Revelation?
 The people are those who have died in the faith.
 The current combatants are spiritual beings.
 Pinch yourself. You’re not a spirit being like an angel, are you?
In Revelation 12:11 God says that his believers have overcome Satan, that they have done it by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ.
 in ourselves we are not able to fight
 in ourselves we cannot stand
 in ourselves we have no hope for victory, no strength against the spiritual forces of darkness.
 In Jesus we have overcome the enemy.
Wait, I thought Jesus did that. How do we overcome the enemy?
Jesus has given that to us out of his good favor.
How can this be?
I had a daughter who liked to help me with things.
 repairing the piano -  building a shed -  moving a wall at the school building -  fixing a computer -  repairing light fixtures at school
There’s a lot of “I can help by watching” that goes on.



Isn’t that like we are?
A lot of the “I can help by watching” with our Lord’s work makes u like the little children, the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.



How do we do that?  Watch what the Lord does in . . .
 Receiving eagerly from the Lord in the divine service
 Praying and watching for God’s grace
 Witnessing what the Lord does with people in the Bible
 Learning to speak biblical truth into our lives and those around us
 Visiting our shut-ins
 Serving our community - talk briefly about reaching out with Jesus’ kindness
After a while we find ourselves imitating Jesus
 loved us -  gave himself for us -  prays -  serves -  forgives



The battle is not for the strong of this world. The battle belongs to our Lord. He is the victorious one.

Sermon for 9/22/13 1 Timothy 2

Sermon: Prayers for All People


From the first eight verses of 1 Timothy 2


Right after President Obama was elected there was a flurry of reporting about how historically “black” churches were praying for their leaders. We heard audio clips and saw video clips of pastors praying for their commander-in-chief. How did we react to this? How did our world expect us to react to this?


1) only supporters of the leaders would pray for their leaders
2) nobody would think to pray for people they disagree with
3) prayer is a human grace


What does the Scripture say about this?


1) We pray for all people - supplication, prayer, intercession, thanksgiving
   not based on those people’s merits
   not based on whether we agree or disagree
  prayers for their good, for god’s blessing upon our friends and enemies
2) We pray for leaders, even though our leaders, like Paul’s, may not be people we would choose to support.
  Visit with a senator on a national day of prayer - cornered him in the hallway and prayed for him
   pray for God’s blessings
   pray for God’s mercy
   pray the Lord would use these people in positions of power as a blessing to the world
3) Prayer is not a human grace. Nobody earns our prayers, just as we don’t earn the Lord’s favor.
  We pray for all people.
  We pray for people because they need the mercy of God in Christ.
  We pray that the Lord would bless our world to live in his peace, his rest, godly and dignified.
      peace from forgiveness in Christ
      rest from our sin and strife
      freedom to love God and serve our neighbor
    ability to live an upright life, not in crime or dissolution
 

Sermon for 9/15/13 Luke 15 Joy in Heaven

Sermon: Joy in Heaven  Luke 15

Pharisees grumbling about Jesus

Why?

Eating with tax collectors and sinners

Who do we eat with?

What kind of people do we allow into our home?

What kind of home are we comfortable visiting?

 providing music for social events at homes of very wealthy - feel out of place

 not sure what to do when welcomed by someone from a different social class

 What about entering the home of someone troubled?

     poverty

     psychological difficulties with negative results

     illness

Where’s our comfort zone? More important, where does it end?

example of Nigerian Christians from VOM video

people in Mexican slums playing musical instruments made from trash

What do we think of the very poor or the very rich who are trusting in Jesus?

Yet as we explore this, we’re putting ourselves again in the place of the Pharisees.

Which one of us deserves to be welcomed to the riches of heaven?

Which one of us deserves to be accepted by the Lord of all?

What kind of a home do we have to welcome Jesus?

 filthy heart

 filthy mind

 poverty

 dead and rotting carcasses, dead in sin

We’re just the kind of people we would avoid being with.

Shift focus from our perspective as Pharisees

Our Lord’s attitude

Jesus humbled himself

 entered our world

 entered our family

 entered our life

 entered our home

No room for pride, only room for gratitude

How could he judge us? Sternly - we should be destroyed by his holiness

How does he visit us?

 grace

 mercy

 peace

 comfort

 food to eternal life

 drink that will make us never thirst again

 protection

 perfect love which casts out all fear

The greatest joy we could have, the greatest joy we could imagine, all pales before the Lord Jesus who gives us repentance and forgiveness, creating joy in heaven. Would we like all heaven to rejoice? Repent before the Lord. He is the one who comes to find us when we are lost. He is the one who comes to rescue us. He is the one who is willing to change us from inside out. Jesus is the one who visits us.

Sermon for 9/8/13 - Deuteronomy 30

Sermon: Choose Life


Our sermon today is from Deuteronomy chapter 30.
God puts a choice before his people. And, being the all-knowing, loving God, he does know what the right choice, the one which brings blessing, is.
 life
 good
 blessing
 prosperity
 The choice? Hold fast to God’s commandments
   love the LORD - JHWH
   walk in His ways
   keep His commandments
Seems the obvious choice?
What do we choose?
Our Lord knows our choice.
How did Israel choose?
Verbally, “YES, YES, YES”
What did their actions choose?
 plunder things that they weren’t to have
 alliances with the people they were to destroy
 abandoned the sabbath for many generations
 add idol worship to God’s commanded worship
 abandon God’s word
What do we do? Just the same things. We make exactly the wrong choice.
Terrible fix! What are we going to do? We don’t choose life, we choose death.
Remember who God is.
 all-knowing
   knows the right choice
   knows what we will do
 all-loving
   does not want us to perish
   wants to rescue us
Our Lord knows that we have departed, that we have fled, like the slave Onesimus, we have become unprofitable. He desires to rescue us. So he does it.
 Jesus, entirely human - really one of us
 Jesus, entirely divine - really perfect
 Jesus = the perfect sacrifice
 Jesus who keeps God’s law perfectly
 Jesus who is able to give that perfect obedience and its fruits to us
 Jesus who is God’s word incarnate
God knows that we need Jesus. We don’t choose life. But Jesus chooses it for us, for all who believe.  He sets before us life, good, blessing, hope, future, grace.
What will we do to be saved?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our righteousness.

Sermon for 9/1/13 Luke 14

Sermon: The Beggars’ Feast (Luke14:12-14)

What’s our status?

 Most of us think of ourselves as average, maybe a bit above average, doing pretty well.

   social

   economic

   cultural

   well-fed

   well-clothed

   good moral people

   “spiritual”

And we like doing things with our friends. We all think, deep down, that we are the kind of people who can and should be invited to just about anything, that we’d be able to fit in.

 young people - all above average

 all our families are special

 “Maybe some people can’t fit in, but I can.”

What does Jesus say about us?

 Don’t consider too highly

 take the lowest seat

 invite the kind of poor, crippled, lame, blind that we are

People like us? So we should invite respectable people.

poor, crippled, lame, blind

None of us is above that, none has escaped the challenges which can lay us low

In fact, we think too highly of ourselves. We deceive ourselves into thinking we are the kind of great people Jesus would like to hang with.

Jesus invites us, poor, crippled, lame, blind, to come to his feast.

He has laid his life down, given it for us, given it to us.

We cannot repay him. We’re exactly the kind of guest he wants. What he gives is truly a blessing to us, because we could get it nowhere else.

 forgiveness

 life

 hope

 all the blessings of God in Christ are ours. He invites us to his table, to his feast. We cannot repay him. He would have it no other way.

Sermon for 8/25/13 Hebrews 12

Sermon: “Welcome to Mount Zion”

In Isaiah 66 we read that God is recreating the heavens and the earth.

 He is making everything new

 The old will pass away

 All will acknowledge Him.

Does this fill us with confidence? Just what kind of God is he?

 consuming fire

 glory before which none can stand

 too holy to look upon evil

In Luke 13 Jesus tells us that some will be shut out of his kingdom.

 strive to enter

 difficult to gain a position in God’s kingdom

 even the recognition and association we think we have will fail

   but what about all those things I’ve done?

 we may be cast out - beware - salvation is not from our good deeds, our life, our righteousness

We need to bring ourselves to Hebrews 12.

As Jesus told us in Luke - yes, strive to enter by the narrow path.

But . . .

 our hands hang down

 our knees are weak

 our arms are tired

 my brain hurts

 we strive against sin and it wins

 we tried to be better

 we tried to live a joyful life

 we tried to be victorious

 we tried that positive confession

Again and again it has failed us. We try and try only to find ourselves as moralists and legalists. We don’t value what God values, we see his perfection and are confronted by it.

 blazing fire

 darkness

 gloom

 tempest

 a trumpet

 a voice which paralyzes us with fear

 even to approach the mountain of God’s holiness brings death

 terrifying even to Moses.

Do we want to see God in his glory? Lord, deliver us from that.

But we have not come to Mount Sinai. We have come to Mount Zion.

The Law came through Moses, but grace and peace came through Jesus.

 the city of God

 heavenly Jerusalem

 our home

 angels gathered for a festival, not for battle

 assembly of those called by Jesus’ name - those whose names are written in heaven

 God acting as the judge of his enemies, treating us as his dear children

 we find ourselves made perfect

 this perfection through Jesus

    new covenant

    sprinkled blood

Welcome to Zion! We are not in Sinai any more.

 forgiveness

 life

 salvation

 hope

 peace

 joy

 Jesus present for us, bringing us all the life we can ever need.

Sermon for 8/18/13 Jeremiah 23

Sermon: “Faith in What?”

wheat vs. straw

Did you see those bales of corn last summer?

 not worth much

Prophets say all is well

 straw

How do we make our plans? What do we trust?

 heart

 dreams

 what Dad or Mom would do

That trusts straw

OK to look back, share visions, reminisce but that isn’t our authority

Hebrews 11 - the authority of the Word of God

Jesus is the true and living Word

There is our power

 trust

 hope

 forgiveness

 grace and truth

 promises

Learn God’s power, God’s promises, God’s Word

 Bible study

 discipleship

 evangelism

 God’s hope for the world

We’re walking forward, looking back, relying on the Word.