The Last Sunday of the Church Year Those Who Feared the Lord Spoke With One Another Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Old Testament, “Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another.” They were not talking about the weather. Dear Christian friends, God is superabundant in His grace. He is prolific in showing mercy toward us on account of Christ (ala Luther’s Smalcald Articles, part 3, article 4). · God does more than speak mercifully to us through the preaching of His Gospel. He submerged each of us in His eternal mercy when He sprinkled His Baptism upon us. (Baptism has the effect of keeping you continually soaked in God’s mercy, even when you are not in that moment hearing His Word of forgiveness being spoken to you.) · Our Father in heaven is not content to show mercy in merely two ways. In addition to Baptism and preaching, God has also added the sacred meal of the high altar, that is, the Holy Communion. There Jesus feeds us with the same mercy that He has already spoken into the ear and splashed upon the head. · Is that enough for our God? No. Above and beyond these rich, public and powerful ways He dispenses His mercy, God has added also the special and sometimes covert work of the Public Ministry, also known as the Power of the Keys. With the Power of the Keys, God will even whisper mercy to you ear, secretively speaking forgiveness to you in private confession, quietly absolving you of those sins of which you are most ashamed. God gives His private Word of forgiveness to you in addition to the more general (but equally powerful) forgiveness He announces to everyone through the liturgy of the church. · You might look at all this divine mercy, so variously delivered to you, and you might say to yourself, “That’s excessive.” Your God would not agree. Your Father in heaven earnestly wants to assure you that He has a good disposition and a kindly attitude toward you. He wishes to leave NO ROOM FOR DOUBT that you are indeed His precious, blood-bought, dearly loved child. For this reason, in addition to all the other mercy-bearing gifts that He has given to you, your loving God has also given you the high and holy gift of one another. God wants to use each of you in care and support of each other, not merely in bodily needs but also in matters of the Spirit and faith. Luther called this “the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren,” and that is a good phrase. In today’s Old Testament, the people in Malachi’s congregation poured out God’s rich mercy upon one another. That is to say, they engaged in the “the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren.” Thus it is written, “Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another.” Why did they do this? “Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another” because they had just heard a sermon from God that knocked them all flat on their backs. You heard the tail end of the sermon in today’s Old Testament. God had said to them through the preaching of the Church, Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, “How have we spoken against you?” I will tell you how, says the Lord. You have said, “It is useless to serve God.” You have wondered, “What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking repentantly before the Lord of hosts?” Then God added, “You the arrogant blessed. You actually think that evildoers not only prosper, but they put God to the test and they escape.” With this sermon, God stuck His finger right down into the peoples’ temptations and doubts. The Christians in Malachi’s congregation had begun to wonder whether it was really worth the effort to hear God’s Word and take it to heart in daily life. “It is useless to serve God,” they thought to themselves—and maybe you can see their point. · It is not easy to live a pious and decent life, especially when so many people around you live in exactly the opposite manner. Why should you honor marriage with your faithfulness, when so many others around dishonor marriage with the way they act and the way they talk? · Why shouldn’t you spend all your money on selfishness, especially when everyone else seems to have everything they want all the time? The money you drop into the offering plate could certainly be spent on something more entertaining. Let someone else keep the church lights on. · “What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking repentantly before the Lord of hosts?” What do you have to show for all your years of riding a church pew and trying to teach your family to do the same, only to have them ignore you and pretend they know better? You have nothing to show for it. Viewed by the naked eye, the arrogant ones seem to be truly blessed by God. They defy God. They act as if His Word has no impact and no power. Some arrogant ones simply look the other way when they drive past the church building. Other arrogant ones want to have their names in our church records and their dead bodies in our cemeteries, but after that, forget it! Don’t call them; they’ll call you. All of this amounts to severe temptation for the people of God. What did God do for the tempted Christians in Malachi’s congregation? He shows love and mercy toward them by calling them to immediate repentance. He shook His dear Christians out of their temptation and He called them back to faith by bluntly declaring that He knows what is going on: You call the arrogant blessed. You doubt whether it is worth your precious time to hold the faith and treasure My commandments. You wonder whether the words of the arrogant and the wicked should be believed, rather than My Words.” You might call such preaching Law. When God preaches His Law to you, He does so because of His love and mercy toward you. That is how God was preaching in today’s Old Testament, by the mouth of the prophet Malachi. What happened among the people of God, having heard the warnings of His Word? “Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another.” God’s Christians took up the richly merciful work of “the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren.” They were not talking about the weather or the Kansas City Chiefs or the latest Facebook sensation. “Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another” about repentance and faith; about sorrow over sin and comfort in the promises of Christ; about weakness admitted and strength received. “Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another,” thus making use of the same divine gift, the same miracle-producing power that your God has likewise given to you. I am speaking about the power of His Word upon your lips. Your God would not have you suffer in silence, isolated from one another by pride or fear or disinterest. Your God would have you · “bear one another’s burdens in love, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2); · “encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Last Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25); · “show mercy to those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the sinful flesh” (Jude 23); · “weep for yourselves and for your children” (23:28); · “live lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:12); · “continue in your strong obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please yourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up” (Romans 15:1-2); · speak to one another, as you heard in today’s Old Testament. Why should you do this? Because God is superabundantly generous in His grace: First, through the spoken Word, by which the forgiveness of sins is preached in the whole world. … Second, through Baptism. Third, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar. Fourth, through the Power of the Keys. Also through the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren (Smalcald Articles, III, IV). Why should you speak to one another, as those who fear the Lord? Because of the end of the story: Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.” _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
