` Lent 3 - 2007

Lent 3 - 2007



Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Oculi Sunday (March 11, 2007)
Luke 11:14-28, Eph. 5:1-9, Jer. 26:1-15
For an audio MP3 of this sermon, please CLICK HERE

TITLE: “With Jesus”


Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.  Our text for today is from St. Luke chapter eleven, as well as Jeremiah chapter twenty-six.  We focus on the words of Jesus, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Jesus’ words here sound like the words of a cult leader or a zealot.  If you’re not with me, you’re against me.  Why would Jesus sound so exclusive, so intolerant and unloving as this?  His words make it sound like He is the only way to freedom, and that any other path will only lead back to darkness and hell.

Lent, dear friends, is about this battle for freedom and life, forgiveness and salvation which may only come from the hand of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  His word and work may sound radical, and it is.  I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me, as Jesus Himself said.  Yet when He goes about His work of forgiving sins, releasing the captives under the devil, and granting healing to the wounded, what do the people do?  They either claim he is Beelzebub, Satan Himself, or they ask for a sign from heaven, just to be sure that it is always so.  In the end, they crucify Him as an enemy of God and the state.

So it goes with our Lord on His way to Jerusalem and death for us men and for our salvation.  He is accused of being Satan, a charlatan, just some kook from Nazareth, a liar, a blasphemer, and as setting Himself against both Caesar and God Himself.

Yet are we any better?  How often have you doubted the sure and certain promises of God?  How often have you wished that God would give you some special sign from heaven, or some special miraculous healing for yourself or others to prove He really loves you?  How often in your heart have you questioned whether the Christian faith of the Bible really might be too exclusive, too limiting and confining to be true?  Or how often, in your darkest moments, have you doubted that God was listening, or cared about you at all in the midst of your suffering?  We cry with the Psalmist:

Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me, for I am desolate and afflicted. (Psalm 50: 16)

Yet even as we pray this Psalm, we doubt.  We fear.  We get angry with God for not doing what we want, or for giving us suffering and crosses that seem unfair or unloving to our eyes misted by sin.  So when Jesus says, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters, there is a portion in all of us that looks at those words with fear and trepidation.  Will He follow through?  Will He really save me?  Will He truly gather me out of all my troubles?  Just like the people in the days of Jeremiah, we do not want to hear about our sins, and so by rejecting the messenger, we are in danger of losing the one person who can save us from all our troubles.

Repent.  Repent of your doubt and unbelief.  Repent that you want to control God, tell Him what to do, and command Him how to take care of your life.  Repent that you do not walk as a child of  the light, but prefer to hide in the darkness of your own sin and fears.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, though, is compassionate.  He sees past your doubts and fears, your sin and your hiding from Him.  He knows them all, for He has taken them into Himself at His Baptism.  When Jesus casts the demon out of the man born mute, the man didn’t ask Him to do so.  When Jesus binds the strong man and plunders his goods, He is talking about Satan and Himself.  You are under the terrible thumb of the devil.  But Jesus comes, binds up Satan, casts Him out with the waters of Holy Baptism, and makes you His own, holy and beloved, a child of light, not a child of the devil.

When you suffer, when you are in pain and under trial, when you fear for yourself and for others, it is then that our Lord comes to you with words of peace, of hope, and of understanding.  For our Lord is not slack in His promises.  He does not just get around to them when He feels like it.  No, you are His prized possession.  You are the apple of His eye and the jewels upon His crown.  Once you were under the possession and power of the devil.  But now you are under His kingdom.  His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  Why?  Because He takes your burdens upon Himself to the cross and death.  The burdens you bear today you bear because He loves you, and as a father disciplines His children, so also our Lord allows these things to happen to you, so that your faith may be strengthened, so that you may cling to Him all the more by faith in His Word.

For you see, dearly Baptized, Jesus loves you more than you can ever know.  Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it, He says at the end of our Gospel.  This is the gift He gives to you.  His Word of promise.  His Word of forgiveness.  His Word in water, in preaching, in absolution, and His Word in bread and wine.  The Word of God is what keeps you free from the assaults of the devil, the world and yourself.  The Word of God is what guards you from all that afflicts you.  When you doubt, when you are in despair, when you suffer and when you are in the darkest place of your soul, Jesus, the Word made flesh, comes to you with healing in His wings.  He brings light to the darkness, He suffers with you and promises an end to your suffering, He gives you hope for the future and faith in Him.  If He will die for you and rise for you, trust that He will take care of you both now and always.

Jesus words are words of hope.  He is the lifeline that you need in these days of uncertainty and sorrow.  Trust in the One who comes down to save you.  Blessed are those who are with Jesus, for they will not be disappointed.  Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting.  Amen.
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