Sermon March 18, 2020 Mid-week Lent

Title: The Spirit Anointed Christ . . . to Preach Deliverance to Captives!
Text Luke 4:18-19

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Sermon audio: The Spirit anointed Christ ... to preach deliverance to the captives!

Sermon March 14-15, 2020

Title: The water of life is found in Christ!
Text: John 4:5-26

Sermon audio: The water of life is found in Christ!

23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

Even in the worst of human endeavors reconciliation is possible. At times even at church, separation can occur. Sometimes it is between friends and at times it is within families but through Jesus Christ and the living water he gives, you and I are restored to a right relationship with our loving God.

So is the case of Varina Davis and Julia Grant two widows who lived near each other in New York. They were both writers and were both writing memoirs of their husbands. Varina’s husband had been President of the Confederate States during the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and Julia’s husband Ulysses was the commanding general of the Union Army. Though they had been on different sides of the conflict during the Civil War they became the best of friends.

Source Unknown.

On his journey north with his disciples, Jesus came to the little city of Sychar, which was located almost in the center of Samaria.

Near this town there was a piece of land which the patriarch Jacob had given to his son Joseph in addition to his share of the country, Gen. 48, 22. It was on this piece of land that Joseph was buried. And here was also a well or cistern which Jacob had dug after his return from Mesopotamia. The well, which is now known as “Jacob's well,” is about a hundred feet deep and is protected by a wall. Jesus, being true man, had become very tired literally, tired out — by the long journey of the morning; for it was now high noon. So He sat down at the well.

P.E. Kretzmann NT vol. 1 pg 427

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

Those of you who have ever worked outside or had been on long walks during the summer might have an idea of just how thirsty you can get.

Last summer I replaced the wood on my deck. It was four long days of hard work and not being as young as I was I was exhausted. I’m sure that many of you have experienced work, whether growing up here or elsewhere that might show many helpful examples of the type of thirst Jesus experienced.

As we all get older and with the advent of air conditioning in every room and space we live, we can tend to get a little spoiled … especially me, who spent my entire work life in a cool office during the summer and a warm office during the winter. But, I’m sure that many of you who have grown up before the prevalence of air conditioning or worked outside yourself can and do understand thirst. If you don’t … you can sign up to work VBS during July in our church sanctuary … and then you’ll know.

There were a few things going on here. First Jesus was tired and thirsty but the one who approached the well was a Samaritan and it was of her that Jesus had asked for a drink. Israel had been carried into exile by the Assyrians in 722 BC and a small group of Israelites had remained behind who mingled with the pagan culture of Mesopotamia. These are the people who became the Samaritans so there was a long and wide divide between the Jews and the Samaritans.

This explains her reaction to Jesus’ question:

9 …, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”

There had not been much love between these two peoples and if you’ve had tension in your family or witnessed it you might know how this might play out … when two people that have not spoken to each other for years suddenly find themselves face to face.

Tension, can cause families to break and peace can be at times, only for a little while. The divisions can divide a people, evident in the current tensions in our world, but reconciliation must be truly on an individual basis.

The median used is water which can quench our thirst for a little while. It is something everyone can relate to. Jesus knows both the Samaritan woman’s thirst and that He is the cure.

11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and Jesus replies,

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Ill.

The current situation of the Coronavirus and the water shortage it hard but through it Christ continues to fill us with his gifts and comforts us with his peace.

From our friends in the Lutheran Church Canada:

When the black plague broke out in Wittenberg, Martin Luther wrote an open letter entitled “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 43, pp. 115-138).

“learn through God’s word how to live and how to die,” and that “everyone should prepare in time and get ready for death by going to confession and taking the sacrament once every week or fortnight.”

“We must never think of the Sacrament as something harmful from which we had better flee, but as a pure, wholesome, comforting remedy that grants salvation and comfort. It will cure you and give you life both in soul and body. For where the soul has recovered, the body also is relieved. Why, then, do we act as if the Sacrament were a poison, the eating of which would bring death?” (V. 68).
Luther concludes his letter in this way: “We admonish and plead with you in Christ’s name to help us with your prayers to God so that we may do battle with word and precept against the real and spiritual pestilence of Satan in his wickedness with which he now poisons and defiles the world.”

https://www.canadianlutheran.ca/public-worship-and-the-coronavirus-statement-from-lcc-president/

Dear friends, even thousands of gallons of water will only quench our earthly thirst for a time before you and I get thirsty again. But Jesus gives us living water through Baptism that takes away our sins and brings us to faith in him and His finished work.

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Jesus tells her to “Go, call your husband, and come here.” Knowing full well that when she says “I have no husband,” he answers her that she has had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. To this He adds: “What you have said is true.”

She now understands that this man, this Jesus is something special even calling him a “prophet” saying that 20 our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

Jesus tells her that not on the mountain and not in Jerusalem but true worship will be in spirit and truth, and that this Messiah that she is expecting and is waiting for is right here with her!
The living water himself, Jesus, who quenches our eternal thirst is the one, who by the Holy Spirit’s working in us, we believe and trust. Our spiritual thirst is never to return because in Christ we have been brought into his family by faith.

Thought we continue to fall short as we are conformed into the image of Christ the security of His water and word washing you and me clean of sin continues to give comfort that the gift of faith by water and the word has once and for all freed us from the power of sin, death and the devil in us.

The Samaritan woman’s faith was found in the Jew Jesus Christ at the well and we have found separation of God and man restored in this same Jesus through His gift of word connected to the water in Baptism for the forgiveness of sins by faith in His finished work.

The water of life is found in Christ!

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

Amen

Sermon March 11, 2020 Mid-week Lent

Title: The Spirit Anointed Christ . . . to Heal the Broken Hearted!
Text: Luke 4:18-19

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Sermon audio:The Spirit anointed Christ ... to heal the broken hearted!

Sermon March 7-8, 2020

Title: Whoever believes in Him … has eternal life!
Text: John 3:1-17

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Sermon audio: Whoever believes in Him ... has eternal life!

[Thoughts on the world at this time]

Martin Luther died on February 18, 1546 at around 3:00 AM in the morning. His last words and actions were recorded by his dear friend Justus Jonas. Luther was asked, “Reverend father, will you die steadfast in Christ and the doctrines you have preached?” To this Luther responded affirmatively … “Yes!” quoting John 3:16 and Psalm 31:5 which reads:

5 Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.

In his last prayer he said to God,

“Yet I know as a certainty that I shall live with you eternally and that no one shall be able to pluck me out of your hands.”

Because of the resurrection of Christ we are reminded that we need have no fear about death.
As the Epistle to the Romans tell us I chapter 4:

7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
Whoever believes in Him … has eternal life!

The Nicodemus narrative is a foundational and interesting one, in which we hear from the Lord Himself as to what the working from God is, and how He redeems His fallen creation from the sin of Adam and Eve … restoring the relationship between God and man.

Mixed reactions to God and his word have been around since the serpent questioned, “Did God really say?” In our gospel lesson for today another questioning occurs.

3 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night …

In the grey and black of the night a leader - a man of the Pharisees – comes to see Jesus. It is as if in and through the blackness of sin he sees a light shining in the darkness in this person Jesus saying:

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

Nicodemus sees in the signs that Jesus had been doing, and probably his teaching as well - God’s work, and it is through this work that God had brought Nicodemus to this place, this night to be with Jesus.

Jesus’ reply that “… unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God …” comes as a bit of a surprise to him.

In a similar sense "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” also brings for some a questioning thinking,

“It’s just a fable, it can’t be real. No one really believes this is how things came into existence, do they?”

Even Nicodemus asks, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?”

Just as God and his creative act brings many questions that we and others might wrestle with, God’s word points us to the source of truth and understanding … his son, our Lord Jesus.

Genesis’ beginning and the Gospel of John’s beginning have one thing in common and that is Jesus. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth or, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God,” have Jesus connected in a real way to creation and redemption.

The word of God spoken in the beginning, and the word of God [Jesus] speaking to Nicodemus, is the same word of God heard now by you.

The word is not only connected to your hearing now but it is also, as Jesus is making known to Nicodemus, connected to the washing away of sins in Holy Baptism. He asks Jesus: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?”

In reality though, even if this were possible it would do Nicodemus, you and me no good; for being born in the natural way only brings forth one who is born in sin and brought forth in iniquity.

One needs rebirth as Jesus tells him … to be born again which is a new birth that is born from above, born anew, or born of the Spirit.

Paul writes to the Corinthian church about the need to see with new eyes born from the Spirit when he writes:

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Cor. 2:14

You and I also needed to be spiritually reborn and this was delivered to us in our Baptisms. God’s word connected to simple water and his command by the working of the Holy Spirit:

“Works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.”

As Jesus declared, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

And the Apostle Paul affirmed in 1 Corinthians 6 when he writes:

11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Jesus in John 3:17 brings the fullness of His desire and mission to Nicodemus:

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

The “Him” to whom Jesus speaks of, in the discourse with Nicodemus and the person to whom we must believe and trust, is the very Son of God Himself, Jesus Christ who became man for our sake so that we might be redeemed by Him and trust in His name.

Whoever believes in Him … in Jesus … has eternal life!

[Nicodemus means - Victory of the people!]

Martin Luther’s last words and actions when asked, “Will you die steadfast in Christ and the doctrines you have preached?” is the same question you and I will be asked and must also answer affirmatively … “Yes!”

5 Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God. Psalm 31:5

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

Amen

Sermon March 4, 2020 Mid-week Lent Service

Title: The Spirit Anointed Christ … to Preach Good News to the Poor!
Text: Luke 4:18-19

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Sermon February 29 – March 1, 2020

Title: The Son of God Jesus was made righteous for you!
Text: Romans 5:12-19

18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

In my former life as a salesperson my boss was not fond of beards. I’d had a beard most of my adult life. When I hired in to work I had shaved and cut my hair which was quite long. My boss only knew me by the person he had hired who was clean shaven.

Fast forward a few years. My boss went on a vacation and would be gone three weeks and my beard began to grow. When he returned to work and I walked in forgetting the change in my facial appearance he looked at me and said:

“Russ … you got two days to get that – blank - off your face!”

I laughed at his comment and so did he but he laid the law down and the next morning I came in with a clean freshly shaven face.

I thought:

It’s his business and I should honor how he wants his business run and his employees to look and dress.

“Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience there is; delayed obedience is disobedience."

Thomas a Kampis.

12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. (Rom. 5:12-13)

Since Adam and Eve and the fall, sin has been active in the world. God made a covering for sin:

21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. (Gen. 3:21)

There was a sacrifice … the skins came as a result of sin, a sacrifice was made and Adam and Eve were covered. So much for this transgression and the eating of the fruit … but so much has been changed.

23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen. 3:23-24)

What looks unloving – to drive man out of the garden and away from the Tree of Life – is, in fact very loving, because God here does not allow man to eat of the tree of life and live forever in his fallen state.

14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Roman 5:14)

The Son of God Jesus was made righteous for you!
.
Years later my boss retired and his son  bought the business. He desired to go to Italy with his family and was going to be gone a while. He put me in charge of paying the bills and overseeing the business. He expected that I would follow his lead and do what he would want done.

We had a new employee in charge of advertising. She was to be the one to place the ads and ready the radio commercials. We had a big sale coming up and it would begin the day after my boss returned. She showed me all that ads and what she had planned. It was terrible.

I had to decide. Do I use what she had created and let hope for the best and let it fail or do I do what I knew my boss would want and hopefully be successful?

I did what my boss would want. If it failed it was my fault but at least I followed what he desired. He returned and was pleased with what I had done and the sale was very successful.

But our relationship with God’s requirements is very different. While doing what God has instructed is very good … you can’t do it … not perfectly, at least, as God requires. Though we have His instructions and know his will, we can’t follow them; because of sin … death reigns.

Sin, death and the power of the devil have so corrupted this world once created perfect that God had to make a way out. We can’t please him or measure up on our own.

But the second Adam, Jesus Christ, is the solution to the problem of sin and death because:

15 … the free gift is not like the trespass.

16b For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, and the world fell into sin but the free gift following many trespasses, by Christ’s sacrifice, brought justification.

Because He became our substitute, and because He was without sin,

… the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Our Lord God, Jesus Christ, the one who was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil is the one who followed all of God’s instructions perfectly.

He had a command of the word because He is the Word of God made flesh … for you.

He is the word, the bread of life on which you can trust and live forever.

His guardian angels protect you and will bear you up and he himself, Jesus Christ passed the test in the wilderness … for you, so that, you can be made perfect by Him and in Him.

As Paul reminds us:

18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Christ Jesus was obedient unto death and at the cross He brought you peace … peace again between God and man. The price had been paid and by His death on the cross for you - you are free! Free to eat once again from that Tree of Life and live forever covered in Christ’s righteousness.

The Son of God Jesus was made righteous for you and by Him you are righteous!

At times in this life we can meet the expectations of those we work for, serve, or have responsibility over. It is important to do all we can be responsible parents, guardians, and friends and loved ones caring and living for others as we would want them to care for us.

But, because of sin we often fall short and can never measure up to what God requires in obedience to his Law.

But, Christ was obedient to the point of death, death on a cross for you. He listened to the call of the Father to be the all sufficient sacrifice for sin so that you and I and all who receive this Good News by faith can have communion with God again.

He was obedient so that you and I can be forgiven in Him!

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

Amen

Sermon February 26, 2020 - Ash Wednesday

Title: The Spirit Anointed Christ for Mercy!
Text: Luke 4:18-19

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”