Galatians 5,25-26; 6,1-3.7-10. 15. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠ 

Galatians 5,25-26; 6,1-3.7-10    4812

15. Sonntag nach Trinitatis  060

Euphemia, Virgin, Martyr at Chalcedon, Turkey. † 307

Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, Tunisia. Martyr 258 

16. September 2012

1. Almighty God, we come once more to You our Faithful, Dear Lord and Father. We lament to You that shameful unbelief plagues us again so that we do not entirely confide in You nor do we trust Your Word which promises that You will provide all our needs. Therefore, O Yahweh, help our unbelief and increase our faith so that we trust Your Word and remain steadfast upon it. Supply us and our heart’s desire, for You have promised to us that when we seek first the reign of God and its righteousness all is given to us. Therefore we will lay hold of Your Word in times of calamity and let You worry about how You will nourish us. We commend to You our bodies and souls, our homes and all our livelihoods, for You temporally and eternally preserve us with Your grace, in Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Redeemer and Savior.  Amen.   

2. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Brothers and sisters, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him or her in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. 

3. Jesus taught in His Beatitudes: »Seek first the reign of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you« (Matthew 6,33). Jesus teaches that a person should be concerned first and foremost with his or her salvation. „How do I stand before Yahweh? Is He my Judge or my Justifier?“ are questions of prime concern and personal reflection. Such spiritual reflection should come before the needs of the body and the neighbor. 

4. The law reveals God to be our Condemning Judge. The law shows our sin and our unholy lives. The law casts us away from God’s presence. The gospel, however, reveals God to be our Comforting Justifier. The gospel shows us Jesus’ righteousness and holiness. The gospel draws us into God’s presence. Therefore, when Jesus tells us to: »Seek first the reign of God and His righteousness« He is ultimately telling us to seek Him. Yes, seek Jesus who is the world’s righteousness. Indeed, Jesus is Your righteousness. 

5. What does Jesus’ righteous create? Jesus’ righteousness makes you righteous and justified in God’s sight. This means that you are forgiven, redeemed and saved. Jesus gave you His own righteousness in an exchange on the cross. What then flows from this justification? Sanctification flows from justification, and this is the content of our sermon text from the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. 

6. The holy apostle exhorts us to: humility, pleasing one another, contentedness, gentle restoration of repentant sinners, watchfulness unto holy living, bearing one another’s burdens, and doing good to our neighbors. These are not works of self-righteousness. These are not means to earn good points with God the Father. The apostle’s exhortation is a description of the fruit that is born from a person justified by Christ and Him crucified. Just as an apple tree bears apples, so a person performs works. Every apple tree bears apples, but not all apple trees bear good apples. Some trees are rotten to the core, and as such they produce bruised and rotted apples that are unfit for eating. The truth is, you cannot tell whether an apple tree is healthy or rotted by merely looking at its apples, for both types of apples look good on the outside. It is only by eating the apple that one discovers whether it is pleasing or putrid. The same is true of people. There are many people who are humble, bear other’s burdens and do good things for people, but only one type of person is truly good. Wicked unbelievers can be nice to you, however their niceness is not a good fruit in the eyes of God but a rotted fruit. Only a Christian can bear fruit that is pleasing to God, and that is solely by the merit of Christ and the faith that takes hold of Him as Savior. Christ brings into our midst His heavenly reign with its justification and sanctification.  

7. The reign of God is the first of many blessings. »The reign of God does not consist in talk but in power« (1. Corinthians 4,20). »Flesh and blood cannot inherit the reign of God« (1. Corinthians 15,50). The reign of God comes through Christ Jesus alone. 

     8. Jesus exhorts you to look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Jesus teaches that in every way and each day that your Heavenly Father provides your earthly needs. Jesus points you to the lilies of the field: even Solomon in all his wealth, power and glory was not arrayed like one of these lilies. Jesus assures you that no matter the trial or temptation, no matter how difficult this life may seem, nevertheless He watches over you, protects you and desires only good things for you. Jesus brings the reign of God and promises you that God truly loves you and cares for you. You are worth more to your Heavenly Father than a flock of birds and a field of flowers. You are so precious to Jesus that He shed His blood to redeem you. If Jesus will provide all your earthly needs for this life, then He will also provide all good fruit of the sanctified life, and in abundance, unto you. 

   9. The reign of God is a reign of righteousness. One is made righteous solely by Jesus. The reign of God is revealed in Christ Jesus suffering on the cross and dying for your sins. Jesus did that to purchase your forgiveness, and with forgiveness there is salvation and eternal life. 

   10. „In His Incarnation Jesus lived the truth that no hair, no sparrow, falls without the Father knowledge. The grass of the field which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven. And Jesus too, in solidarity with the lot of all creatures. What all creatures bear, He bore more. The weight of all was upon His shoulders. He was thrown into the oven. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. There is Calvary and there is Easter. His – and yours! Yours, given to you in Baptism. A newness of life, from Him, with Him, and so, no more living as if He did not die and rise again for you. And so, no more anxiety. Those who choose to, remain alone – isolated items having to look out for themselves as if the Lord were not there, not caring or not caring well enough so that some alternatives have to be devised to fill in for His failures: idols, other gods, that last only as long as we can keep them going. Endless anxiety. Jesus calls you out of anxiety to grow as the little lily grows, with final confidence in God. Thirty fold, sixty fold and an hundred fold“ (Nagel § 10-16). 

11. These multiple folds are the fruit that Jesus brings forth in your lives through the working of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul lists some of that sanctified fruit: humility, pleasing one another, contentedness, gentle restoration of repentant sinners, watchfulness unto holy living, bearing one another’s burdens, and doing good to our neighbors. This is Second Table of the Decalogue stuff, namely, love your neighbor and do good to, and for, your neighbor. Vocation is also some of this fruit. What is your vocation in life? What stations do you hold? If you teach, then teach well. If you are a parent, then discipline your children, raise them in the Christian faith and mold them into good citizens. If you are merely a paper pusher, then push those papers with efficiency and joy as you help the larger cogs in the corporation turn smoothly. Such is what Jesus brings to fruition in your life, and even more. He brings forth these good works in blessed abundance, yes, thirty-, sixty- and an hundredfold.  Amen. 

12. Let us pray. O Yahweh, our Good and Gracious God, today we taste and see that You are good; we have heard it preached into our hearts and we will receive it upon our lips in the Sacrament. Through these means of grace comfort and assure us that the person is blessed who takes refuge in You so that we may be confident to cast all our anxieties and cares upon You alone, and in doing so receive rest, peace and joy.  Amen. 

To God alone be the Glory 

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4^th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27^th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. 

   ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

Nagel, Dr. Norman. A sermon preached on 14. October 1985 (Pentecost 20) at Concordia Seminary Chapel on Matthew 6,25-34. Copyright © 1985 The Rev. Dr. Norman Nagel.