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"For faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." ~ Romans 10:17

The Evidence of Saving Faith

9/14/2020

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Picture
James Tissot, The Healing of the Ten Lepers, 1886-94, No Known Copyright Restrictions
Trinity 14 
Luke 17:11-19 
September 13th, 2020 
 
 
“Your faith has made you well.”, Jesus says to the cleansed leper from Samaria. How did Jesus know that the leper had faith? Faith is an activity of the heart. You cannot see faith. Only God can look at a man’s heart. So, you would probably answer that Jesus is God, so he is able to look into the heart of the leper and see his faith. And yes, Jesus is God! Yet, Jesus did not need to be God to see the leper’s faith. Anyone standing around with eyes and ears could clearly perceive that the man had deep faith. How could they perceive his faith if they could not look into his heart? Because the man cried out to Jesus for mercy. And when he saw that his leprosy was cleansed, he turned back to Jesus glorifying God with a loud voice and falling on his face at Jesus feet, he gave thanks to God. One would literally need to be blind and deaf to not know that this man had faith! 
Faith is invisible. Only God can see faith. And yet, this man’s faith was clearly visible. How is this? Because faith produces fruit. We heard this from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” And of course, this is not an exhaustive list of the fruit of the Spirit, which is the fruit of faith.  
We know the leper had faith in Jesus, because his faith caused him to cry out to Jesus for help! He cried, “Have mercy!” along with the other nine lepers. He used his voice to shout praises and thanksgiving to God. Faith starts in the heart, but it does not lie dormant there. It works its way through the mouth. This is why Jesus says, “Whoever confesses me before men, I also will confess before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32) And why St. Paul writes, “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” (Romans 10:10) 
Public worship is evidence of saving faith. When Christians sing the Kyrie Eleison (Lord, have mercy), confess the Creed, sing hymns of praise and thanksgiving, and come to bow before Jesus, they make visible the faith dwells in their hearts, just as apples on an apple tree gives proof that a tree is an apple tree.  
Yet, strangely, it is common for those who do not go to church yet identify as Christians to pass judgment on those Christians who do regularly go to Church. They’ll say things like, “I don’t want to go to church, because churches are filled with hypocrites.” And as with many bad ideas, there is a little bit of truth in that. There are hypocrites who go to church. There are people who go to church, not to receive God’s grace through faith, not to worship Christ, but to make a show and to prove how good they are. And Scripture attests to this. Last week we heard the parable from Jesus of how the priest and the Levite, who devoted their lives to public worship, yet proved that they had no faith, because they neglected to love their neighbor lying bloody on the side of the road. And that goes to show that public worship is not the only fruit of faith, but also love, joy, peace, patience, etc.  
The fruit of faith is not what saves, but the faith itself is what saves. Yet, fruits are bound to follow. This is what it says in our Lutheran Confessions, “Good works certainly and without doubt follow true faith—if it is not a dead, but a living faith—just as fruit grows on a good tree [Matthew 7:17].” (Epitome of the Formula, IV) And if good works follow a living faith, then it follows that bad works follow unbelief. This is why St. Paul admonishes us, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.” He goes on, “The works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” Works like these make evident a lack of faith. St. Paul even goes on to say that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God! This is why our Lutheran Confessions also say, “We also reject and condemn the teaching that faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit are not lost by willful sin, but that the saints and elect retain the Holy Spirit even though they fall into adultery and other sins and persist in them.” (Epitome of the Formula, IV)  
So, while faith remains an activity of the heart which ultimately only God can see, both unbelief and faith can be made evident by outward actions. This is why Christians should flee from what is evil and cling to what is good. Continuing in sinful behavior without repenting kills saving faith and gives evidence of unbelief. Continued practicing of the fruit of the Spirit, including love, joy and public worship gives evidence of a lively faith and blocks the sinful flesh from accomplishing its evil desires.  
What did the leper’s outward expression of faith demonstrate about the faith that dwelt in his heart? When he cried out for mercy, it shows that the leper trusted in Christ to heal him, not based on the leper’s own worthiness, but according to Christ’s own compassion and goodness. Today, we rarely look at a disease as a consequence of sin. Yet, that is very much the way people viewed leprosy at this time. Likely, because the Old Testament frequently connects leprosy and punishment. God punished Miriam the sister of Moses with leprosy for seven days, because she rebelled against Moses. God punished King Uzziah with leprosy on his face, because he offered incense in the temple when he was not authorized to. And clearly, the leprosy on these ten lepers is a symbol of their spiritual uncleanness. Yet, the lepers do not consider their unworthiness. They trust in Jesus to heal them. Their shout for mercy demonstrated the faith in their hearts.  
While the other nine lepers did not return to Jesus, this Samaritan did, with shouts of praise to God and thanksgiving as he bowed down at Jesus’ feet. This outward action demonstrated that the leper considered Jesus his God and Savior. Jesus sent the lepers to the temple, to show themselves to the priests. The priests would have performed a ceremony for the lepers for their ceremonial cleansing and would have offered a sin offering to make atonement for them. The temple is where God dwelt. The temple is where God made atonement for sins. Yet, this leper did not go to the temple, he gave glory to God at his feet. At God’s feet! At Jesus’ feet. He demonstrated with his outward actions that he believed in his heart that Jesus is God, his body being the temple where God dwells. He demonstrated with his worship that he believed that Jesus would make atonement for his sins, because he is the fulfillment of all the ceremonies in the temple. By the leper’s outward actions, we see clearly what his faith held to in his heart.  
And this is what we do when we come to worship. We confess our sins before a God, we do not see. We do not claim to be worthy, but to be poor miserable sinners, who deserve temporal and eternal punishment. But we pray to God to have mercy and forgive us for the sake of the blood of his Son. We sing, “Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us.”, because we believe that we receive all good things of body and soul from the only God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, out of His love for us. We confess the Creed confessed by the whole Christian Church throughout history, which confesses that the Son of God for our sake and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, so that he could suffer and die for our sins. We stand for the reading of the Gospel as we would for our Monarch when he speaks to us. We kneel before bread and wine, believing that this is the body and blood of our Lord, which was given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. We say clearly, “Amen” to every prayer and blessing, because we believe it is true. We sing with joy supplications, praise, and thanksgiving to our God. All these things we do with our bodies, our ears, eyes, and mouths, because that is what is going on in our hearts. Our faith becomes visible and audible when we worship him in Spirit and Truth.  
“Your faith has made you well.”, Jesus says. What does Jesus mean by "made you well”? Well, in fact, Jesus said, “Your faith has saved you.” Bible translators translate the word for save as “made well,” because it can mean made well, and in the context, the leper was healed of his leprosy. Yet, all ten of the lepers were made well, and only one returned to give thanks to God at Jesus feet. To only one did Jesus say, “Your faith has saved you.” after showing disapproval that the other nine did not return to demonstrate such faith.  
The nine other lepers went to the temple where the priests would offer a sacrifice to make atonement for them. The one Samaritan leper returned to Jesus, who would make atonement for his sins on the cross. The leper’s faith did not simply heal him. His faith saved him, that is, gave him eternal life.  
How did the leper’s faith give him eternal life? Because faith receives what God promises us through Jesus: forgiveness of sins, peace and acceptance from God, and eternal life. Faith is not our work. Faith receives. This is why faith must be an activity of the heart. It by grace, not by our works. Yet, faith receives something that is outside of us: the promise of salvation through Jesus. This is why faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ (Romans 10:17).  
We come to church to worship Christ, because we have faith. Our faith receives God’s blessing and forgiveness. And our faith cannot help but break through from our heart and into our words and actions. We do not come to church to make a show of our faith or to earn our salvation, yet our public worship does publicly declare the trust we hold in our Savior in our hearts. Our cries of supplication, our confession and singing of glory, all these come from a heart that trusts in the Lord. We come to church to hear our Savior say to us, “Your faith has saved you.” And by hearing this, our faith in our Savior grows. Amen.  
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God Reveals Himself to Us in Mercy

9/7/2020

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Picture
Parable of the Good Samaritan by Balthasar van Cortbemde (1647), Public Domain.
Trinity 13 
Luke 10:21-37 
September 6, 2020 
 
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”  
 
The wise and understanding of this world live by the Law. That isn’t to say they understand its heavenly meaning. No, they make God’s heavenly Law a very earthly thing. They turn God’s Law which reflects the glory of heaven into the Law of the Jungle, where only the strong survive. God’s Law commands you to do. And to the one who does as the Law commands, the Law promises life. So, in order to manage the Law and make it doable, the wise and understanding of this world add laws upon God’s Law. The Pharisees were known to have come up with over 600 laws in addition to the Law God gave to Moses. These laws helped the Jews accomplish what otherwise seemed too difficult.  
And this is always how mankind treats laws. When I was in college, a law professor gave a lecture to one of the political science classes to explain what law school would be like. One of the students came out of the lecture hall and said, “Well, I guess I’m not going to be a lawyer. I could never read that much.” And it’s true. To be a lawyer, you have to read a tremendous amount of information; not just the written laws which increase year after year, but also the decisions courts have made concerning those laws. And because there is so much information about each law, the goal of many lawyers is not to seek the truth or serve justice, but to find a way for the law’s many rules to justify their clients and condemn their opponents.  
This explains the attitude of the lawyer, who seeks to test Jesus in our Gospel lesson. He is one of those wise and understanding types, who has turned obeying the Law into an art. “What must I do to inherit eternal life.”, he asks. Put aside for a moment that an inheritance is not something you must work to receive, but it is given according to promise. The lawyer asks Jesus a law question, so Jesus gives him a law answer.  
“What is written in the Law?”  
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and your neighbor as yourself.” 
 “Correct,” Jesus answers, “Do this and you will live.”  
Yet, the simplicity of Jesus’ command makes the Law impossible for the lawyer to fulfill. In order to justify himself, he must add to God’s Law, not to fulfill its heavenly goal, but to make it more attainable here on earth. “Who is my neighbor?”, the lawyer asks. You see, if the lawyer simply took the Law of God at its word, he would have to assume that he must love everyone. That is impossible for a mere man to accomplish. So, the Lawyer desires to add to the Law, not so that he can better love his neighbor, but so that he is not to blame when he doesn’t love his neighbor.  
Jesus sees right through the lawyer. So, Jesus tells a parable, which crushes the lawyer’s hope in himself that he can fulfill the Law and which reveals to us God’s mercy, which the Law cannot give.  
A man goes down from Jerusalem to Jericho and falls among robbers, who strip him, beat him, and leave him half dead. Down come two men: a priest and a Levite. Yet, both of these men walk by on the other side of the road. They do not help the man lying beat up and bloody. The priest and the Levite represent the Law. Their action teaches us both something about those who trust in their works of the Law and about the Law itself.  
First, that the priest and the Levite walk by the bloodied man demonstrates to us that those who seek to justify themselves by their works of the Law are hypocrites. Jesus addresses this when he rebukes the scribes and the Pharisees saying, “Woe to you, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” And in another place, Jesus rebukes those who try to falsely condemn his disciples, saying, “And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”  
The reason why those who seek to justify themselves by works of the Law are hypocrites, is because you cannot make your heart pure by your outward works. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit. When sinners try by their works to make themselves righteous, they become like white washed tombs. They look good on the outside, but inside they are filled with dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. By portraying the priest and the Levite passing by the bloodied man without helping him, Jesus exposed the odor of sin hiding in their hearts.  
The Law can be divided into three parts: The Civil, which refers to laws made by the government; the moral, which refers to what is right and wrong; and the ceremonial, which refers to the regulations of worship. The moral law is summarized in the Ten Commandments. Those who seek to justify themselves according to the moral law do so by trying to put on some outward show of keeping the commandment. The priest and the Levite can justify themselves that they have not broken the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not murder.” because they did not physically assault the poor man. Yet, they showed no love for the man’s body, which is the goal of the Commandment. Likewise, the First Commandment says, “You shall have no other gods.” and people think they keep this commandment by not worshiping idols of gold. Yet, in their hearts they worship other things by loving and trusting in people and money instead of God.  
In the book, War and Peace, there is a wealthy countess who does not love her husband and desires to marry another man. So, she converts from Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholic and justifies herself by saying that the marriage vows she made before her conversion were invalid. And in a myriad of other ways, people justify themselves by adding to God’s Law, so that it is easier to outwardly perform it. All the while, their hearts remain black with sin.  
The ceremonial law refers to the regulations God set in place for sacrifices in the temple. The priest and the Levite are coming down the road, which means they are leaving Jerusalem. They have just performed the ceremonies commanded by God in the temple. Yet, they prove that their performance was just an act. They did not worship God with their heart, otherwise, they would have helped the beaten man, for one cannot love God while he despises his brother.  
Likewise, this shows us not to be hypocrites in our worship. It does not please God that you simply show up to church, mouth the liturgy, and ignore the teaching in the sermon. We must worship God in Spirit and truth. This means, we must worship God by receiving his grace through faith. Mere outward actions are not what please God. And when Christians treat others with utter hatred instead of in humility counting others more significant than themselves, they betray the true condition of their heart. You cannot be a Christian while you continue in unrepentant hatred.  
Secondly, that the priest and the Levite walk by on the other side demonstrates to us something about the Law itself. The Law isn’t going to help you when you are lying half dead on the side of the road. The Law does not feel compassion for you. The Law commands you to do. The Law doesn’t care if your legs are broken; it will still tell you to run. The Law doesn’t care if you are dead in your sin! It will still command you live without sin! As helpful as the priest and the Levite were to that beaten up man, so helpful is the Law in rescuing you from your sin and eternal damnation.  
Then along comes the Good Samaritan. Samaritans and Jews were considered enemies. The Jews at that time were taught, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” (Matthew 5:43) According to the additional rule set up by the wise and understanding of this world, the Samaritan would have been justified in walking past his enemy lying bloody on the side of the road. Yet, the Samaritan had compassion. He loved his enemy and took care of him. He bound up his wounds, poured on wine to kill infection and oil to keep the wounds clean. He carried the man to an inn on his own animal and paid in full all his expenses.  
Then Jesus turns the question around on the lawyer. He doesn’t answer his question, “Who is my neighbor.” He asks him rather, “Which one of the three was the neighbor to the one who fell among the robbers?” And when the lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus answers, “You go and do likewise.”  
You see, Jesus is the Good Samaritan, who shows mercy. He comes to your aid where the Law offers no help at all. The Law can only tell you to get up and improve yourself. Jesus picks you up and heals you. The Law can only blame you for the terrible situation your foolishness has placed you in. Jesus rescues you from your own folly and sin by forgiving you.  
The wise and understanding of the world think that they are in control of the Law. And because of this they are blinded from God’s love and mercy. They cannot see or know the Father. They can only serve themselves. It is only through the revelation of Jesus that you can see God as your heavenly Father. And Jesus reveals himself to you in showing mercy. Jesus is the Good Samaritan, who suffers the loss for your sin, who helped you when you were his enemy, who does for you what the Law could never do, because of your sin.  
“Go, and do likewise.”, Jesus says. As God has had mercy on you, have mercy on others. Forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Only those to whom the Father has been revealed through the mercy of his Son can go and do likewise. Only those, who have experienced God’s mercy through faith in Christ, can go and be merciful.  
The story of the Good Samaritan is not an example of how you can earn eternal life by your own works, as if the wise and understanding of this world are just off on a few minor details. The story of the Good Samaritan is a story of God’s Grace. It teaches us that the Law is no help to us in our sinful condition. This parable is meant to clear us from the delusion that adding a few of our own rules to God’s Law will somehow make our sin pleasing in God’s sight. This story shows us a Savior, who loves his enemies. Yes, the Samaritan pours wine on the wounds, which stings, so Jesus rebukes our sin, which hurts. Yet, Jesus heals our sin with his own blood. He baptizes us, anointing us children of God. He carries us when we are too weak to walk. By his death and three day stay in the tomb, he gives God the Father a token of payment, so that we are never cast away. In his Church he continues to provide for us, forgiving our sins week after week, day after day. We are assured that his grace will never run out, but whatever expense our sin has incurred, he will pay.  
The wise and understanding in this world add laws that chip away the requirement of the Law to love. Yet, we love, because God first loved us and gave his Son to die for us. Christ Jesus is the completion of the Law for righteousness to all who believe. As his love is poured out on us, so his love pours from us to our neighbor. This love is known only through the revelation of God’s mercy in Christ.  Amen.  
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The Letter Kills, but The Spirit Gives Life

9/1/2020

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Picture
Moses with the Ten Commandments, Rembrandt, 1659, Public Domain
Trinity 12 
2 Corinthians 3:4-11 
August 30, 2020 
 
St. Paul tells us that ministers of the new covenant are made competent by God. God makes them sufficient by the message that he gives them to preach. This is commonly misunderstood today. I’ve preached much on the importance of judging one’s pastor. It’s not because I think people are reticent to judge, but rather, because Jesus commands us to judge with right judgment and beware of false prophets. But Jesus does not command us to judge our pastors based on whether we like their personality or style or whether we agree with what he is preaching or not. Jesus commands us to judge whether the preacher is preaching the truth according to Christ’s word. 
This is what makes a preacher sufficient; not how flashy or entertaining he is; not how elegant his speech is; not that you like everything he says. Pastors are not sufficient in themselves at all. Their sufficiency is from God, who has sent them to proclaim the saving Gospel. So, it is important that every Christian make this distinction when judging whether you should or should not believe what the pastor preaches. Judge not whether you like what is said. Judge whether it is the truth. And judge whether your pastor is a minister of the covenant of the letter or whether he is a minister of the covenant of the Spirit.  
The covenant of the letter kills. It does not save. The letter is the Law, which was engraved in letters on stone. This Law, which was given to Moses, was glorious. It was so glorious that Moses needed to cover his face so as not to frighten the Israelites, because his face shone with the reflected glory of God’s Law. The Law of God is good and wise and sets God’s will before our eyes. Just listen to God’s Law:  
You shall have no other gods. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God. Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. Honor your father and your mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.  
Can you find anything wrong with these commandments? Of course not! They are holy and good. If we actually lived according to these commandments, there would be less crime in the world, less heart break, less senseless deaths, less suffering. Those who devote their lives to these commandments do find some glory in this life, for a time. In fact, most religions in the world are devoted in some way or another to living according to these commands in order to acquire glory. Most religions in the world teach that you reach the glories of heaven by living a good life and doing good.  
Yet, St. Paul says that this ministry of the letter brings death! How can this be? He explains it in the seventh chapter of the book of Romans. “If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”  
So, St. Paul maintains that the Law is good, yet the Law kills. Why is that? It’s not because the Law is bad. It’s because we’re bad. We are sinners. So, when the Law shows us what we ought to do to be good, instead of it glorifying us and giving us eternal life, it shows us our sin and that we deserve to be punished, as Romans 3:20 says, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in God’s sight, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin.”  
This is why God calls his ministers, ministers of the new covenant of the Spirit, not of the letter. God wants his ministers to proclaim the words of eternal life. Only the ministry of the Spirit gives life. The ministry of the letter kills. Those ministers who preach only the letter, who give you hope only in your own works for your salvation are ministers of death. There is no set of rules that you can perfect that will earn you eternal life.  
Yet, that does not mean that ministers of the Spirit should not preach the Law! In fact, ministers of the Spirit are required to preach the Law precisely because it kills. The letter must serve the Spirit, so that the Spirit can bring the dead back to life! St. Paul goes on in Romans chapter 7, “Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.”  
The Law, these commandments of God do not give life, but rather they expose the sinner to be sinful beyond measure. Now why would God want his ministers to do this? Why would he want people’s sins to “become sinful beyond measure”? It is so that he can save them by grace! St. Paul writes in Galatians chapter 3, “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”  
The Letter imprisons everyone under sin, so that no one can deny the reality of his sin. If you can’t escape the reality of your sin, what can you do? All you can do is ask God for mercy. That is the condition a sinner must be in in order to receive the gospel. If you think that you can overcome your sins yourself or that they are not a big deal, you will not accept the Gospel.  
This is why faithful pastors must preach the Law. The Letter must do its work and kill, so that souls may be saved on the Last Day. This is why it is of the utmost importance that when the Law is preached to you and your conscience is pricked and you don’t like what it says, that you do not try to resist the preaching of the Law, but confess yourself to be a sinner, so that God may have mercy on you.  
The letter serves the ministry of the Spirit. The ministry of the Spirit is the ministry of the Gospel. Now, it is not as some imagine, that the Spirit comes apart from the words of Holy Scripture. Rather, the Gospel of the Spirit is proclaimed in the Holy Scriptures.  
The Gospel is that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. He was born without sin. He is the only man to never sin. He fulfilled the Law perfectly. The letter had no right to kill him. Yet, Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, took upon himself our sins. Scripture says, “God made him who knew no sin to become sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) And St. Peter writes, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18) Christ is the righteous one, who died in exchange for the unrighteous ones.  
This is the message of the Gospel. Christ Jesus has taken away the power of the letter to kill us, by himself dying in our stead! He takes away our sin, which gave the Law the power to slay us! Jesus is our life, which is given to us not by our works, but through faith.  
The letter demands works; the Spirit produces faith. This is the difference. The reason the Law cannot save you, is because you cannot save yourself. The Law simply demands works, but gives you no power to accomplish them. The Gospel saves, because it does not require works, but rather gives you the gift of life to be received by faith.  
The Gospel must predominate a preacher’s sermon if he is to be a minister of the Spirit. This does not mean that a preacher preaches lots of Gospel and only a little Law. Rather, it means that the Law serves the purpose of the Gospel and not the other way around. It is important for sinners to hear that they should not worship other gods; that they should put aside their work and pleasure and hear and learn God’s Word; that they should obey authority; love their neighbor; be chaste and not fornicate; not steal, and not covet. It is important for sinners to hear this, so that they can beware of their sin and repent. It is important for the Law to kill you now, so that you are not sentenced to eternal death on the Last Day.  
The Gospel predominates by responding to the killing of the Law by bringing sinners to life. Are you guilty of loving other things more than God and neglecting to worship and serve him? Have you been disobedient or lazy? Have you hurt someone by your words or deeds? Have you been unchaste? Greedy? Have you been dishonest? Have you coveted what does not belong to you? Has the Law exposed you to be sinful beyond measure? Then repent and believe in the Gospel! Jesus forgives your sins. He paid for them with his blood. He died for the idolater, the sloth, the rebel and criminal, for the fornicator, homosexual, and adulterer, he died for liars and covets and thieves. Jesus’ blood makes atonement for all sins. Repent of your sins; don’t cling to them or defend them. Cling to Jesus, who forgives and saves.  
The ministry of the Spirit makes alive. Obviously, that means that the Gospel gives eternal salvation to all who believe it. Yet, the Gospel makes you alive today. St. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” God has done all that for those who believe in the Gospel. You see, the Law commands you to do, but does not give you the power to do it. The Gospel calls you to believe something that has already been accomplished and also gives you the power to believe it! To be made alive by the Spirit is be given faith in Christ! 
And this new life that you receive through the Gospel produces good fruits now in this life. We are not called to continue in our sin, but to die to sin and to live to Christ. The Spirit who dwells in you through faith, also empowers you to love, to be merciful, patient, and forgiving. The Spirit accomplishes in this life, what the Law cannot because of sin. Even more, the Spirit gives us the promise of eternal life, which was denied us by the Law. This eternal life has been given to us as a gift from the Father by the Spirit through Christ Jesus. Amen.  
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    Rev. James Preus

    Rev. Preus is the pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ottumwa, IA. These are audio and text of the sermons he preaches at Trinity according to the Historical Lectionary. 

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