Rev. Charles Lehmann + Matthew 21:28-32 + Pentecost 19
When Israel went down into Egypt, they were a small, insignificant people.
A father, twelve sons, and their households. Israel sojourned in Egypt for
four hundred and fifty years. During that time, Pharaohs began to rule who did
not know Joseph, and so they enslaved the people of Israel. But even in their
slavery, the Lord blessed them. The Israelites became a great nation, numerous
and mighty, and this made Pharaoh afraid. So the king of Egypt forced the
Israelites to make bricks, and he decreed that every boy born to the Israelites
had to be thrown into the Nile.
This decree weighed heavily on the Israelites. If some mothers had not
successfully hidden their children, Israel would have died off in a generation.
In fact, Moses was one of the babies that should have been murdered by
Pharaoh's wicked command. Moses should have died, but his mother hid his birth
from the Egyptian slave masters. She made a basket for him and sent him out
onto the Nile, hoping that a kind Egyptian woman would find him and raise him
as her own.
When Yochebed put her son Moses into the water where all the other sons of
Israel were dying, he was a slave and a fugitive. But, a short time later,
when Moses was drawn up out of the water by Pharaoh's daughter, he became a
prince of Egypt.
It is not so different with you, people loved by God. You go down into the
baptismal waters a slave to sin and an enemy of God. And as those waters are
poured on you and the Name of God is put on you, you die to your sin forever.
You drown like a little baby in the Nile. And when you are drawn out, you are
free. Your slavery is ended. And more than that, you are a prince and king,
but not in the kingdom of Egypt. You are nation of priests and kings in the
kingdom of heaven. You are a child of the Most High God. You, dear
Christians, are baptized into Christ, and in your baptism you receive all the
gifts that Jesus won for you on the cross.
Baptism is the fulfillment of the circumcision that those baby boys
received on the eighth day. Baptism is when God puts His name on you and calls
you out of the life of sin and unbelief into which you are conceived and born,
and puts you into a life of faith and holiness which the Lord nourishes and
sustains by His Word.
All Christians, whether they start as Israelites in Egypt or Americans in
Garrett County are born in sin and have nothing in them that makes them worthy
of the Lord's love and mercy. That is the life of all Christians, but by
Ezekiel's time, Israel had forgotten its sin. A sense of entitlement had
settled in. They'd forgotten that God had chosen them only out of love and
mercy. They'd forgotten that there was nothing in them that was lovable.
They'd forgotten that before the Lord came to them they were dead and lost.
They weren't good students of history. They thought that God was just giving
them what they deserved for all their righteous deeds.
And so, when the people of Israel who thought that they'd earned the Lord's
favor saw that He was having mercy on the wicked, they cried out to Him in
anger, and they said, “The way of the Lord is not just!” The mercy by which
the Lord had chosen the Israelites became, in their mouths, a word of
accusation.
But the problem is never the Lord's mercy. In fact, it is only by the
Lord's mercy that we have life and salvation at all. Sometimes that seems too
easy. We don't want to wholly rely on Christ's work on the cross for our
salvation. Instead, we want to contribute something. We want our righteous
deeds to avail before God. But God has said that all our righteous deeds are
filthy rags. Every one of them is stained by sin. None of them can save us.
“The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of Lords, the great, the mighty, and
the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.” Every person comes to
God in the same condition of sinfulness. None of us has the right on the basis
of our merits to expect good things from God.
The Israelites needed to remember the word of Moses, and so do we. Forty
years after the Lord had brought the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses had said,
“You are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you
to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on
the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any
other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the
fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the
oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a
mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of
Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
But the Israelites had forgotten. They had grown fat and lazy on the
Lord's gifts and had begun to think that they deserved the Lord's favor. They
said, “The way of the Lord is not just.”
Six hundred years later, the Israelites were still the same. They still
believed that they had earned the Lord's favor. They still hated it when God
showed love and mercy to the wicked. The scribes did not think that tax
collectors and prostitutes were worthy of the kingdom of God. When Jesus ate
with sinners, the scribes and teachers of the law accused him of all kinds of
horrible things. When Jesus forgave sinners, he was accused of blasphemy. The
scribes and teachers of the law said that Jesus was giving the tax collectors
and prostitutes permission to keep on living unholy lives. They said, “The way
of this Nazarene is not just.”
And so, when Jesus told the parable, the scribes probably had no idea that
He was talking about them. In the parable there are two sons. One refuses to
work and then later changes his mind and goes into the vineyard, obeying his
father. The second says that he's going to work but never does. The second
son is the scribe, and the first is the tax collector or prostitute. The first
son is a Christian. He may have once been a tax collector or a prostitute, but
now he has repented of his sin and done what His Father commands. The second
is an unbeliever. He may be a scribe or teacher of the law. In any case, he
only pretends to be obedient but actually ignores His father's word. But no
scribe would have been able to put himself into the story. The scribe would
see himself as a third son, one that was told to go into the vineyard and
obeyed immediately.
But there is no third son. None is righteous, no not one. All men are
liars. All have the word of the Lord's Law written on their hearts and disobey
it. All are conceived and born in iniquity. Though the scribes and teachers
of the law were circumcised on the eighth day, they ignored the Word of God in
the years that followed. Instead of trusting the One who had brought them out
of slavery in Egypt and given them life and salvation, these scribes and
teachers of the law believed that their own obedience to the Lord's law would
save them.
But all of us are born in disobedience to our Father's command. It is only
by the Word of the Gospel which creates faith that we ever enter the vineyard.
The scribes and the teachers of the law were the second son. Though they made
a great show of their righteousness, they did not believe the Word of God.
They did not receive the forgiveness of sins.
Luther put it this way, “[The Father] does not look upon the person as he
appears before the world; he neither disdains nor rejects the sinner, no matter
how laden with sins he may be. So Christ says to his disciples, 'Fear not,
little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.'
This the hypocrites and work-saints cannot stand; in fact it makes them
furious, raving mad that the foolish and simple, the tax collectors and open
sinners should go into the kingdom of God before them, and they, with all their
holiness and beautiful, fine, glittering works, be excluded. This is God’s
good pleasure; the one to whom He reveals it, has it, and the one from whom He
hides it, it is hidden from him.”
To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but
to the scribes and the teachers of the law it was given in parables. They do
not understand the Word of God that condemns them. They are like the
Christians who though they are baptized begin to stray away from the house of
God. Their confidence in the gifts that the Lord gave them in their baptism
turns from confidence into security. They believe that because they are
baptized they no longer need the gifts that the Lord gives in the Divine
Service. Sunday becomes a day to sleep in. They go without the nourishment of
the Gospel and in time they grow ill and their faith dies.
People loved by God, there are no adults of God. There is no independence
when it comes to your Savior. We all need the Lord's forgiveness. We need it
daily. We need it all the time. We all need to eat Christ's body and drink
His blood. We all need to be reminded to rely on God for all good things. But
we all have the rebellious son, the second son in us. We all have a tendency
to believe that we can get by on appearances.
In our baptisms we daily drown the old Adam, but we don't want to. We
would rather think we can manage our salvation on our own. We want to let the
sinful flesh rule, and when that happens, our faith is in jeopardy. Faith can
fade and die, and then we can enter eternity apart from the gifts that our
Savior won when He took our sins to the cross.
We all need to be the first son. Repent, people loved by God. You cannot
live on your own. You cannot contribute anything to your salvation except your
sin. Jesus has taken all your sin into His body. He has suffered and died to
forgive you. He has won life and salvation for you and all the world.
So come, dear Christians. The way of the Lord is just! He has poured out
His wrath on His Son so that He can pour out His mercy on you. The way of the
Lord is just. The shed blood of the Son of God covers all your sin. Come to
the Lord's house. Hear His word of forgiveness for you. It is by this Word of
the Gospel that your Lord gives you your life. It is by this Word of the
Gospel that your Lord sustains your life. Outside the Lord's House is the
wilderness. Outside the Lord's House the devil roars around seeking to devour
you. Rejoice, for the victory has been won. Your Lord and Saviour has
suffered and died to redeem you.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and
your minds in faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Charles R. Lehmann
Pastor, Saint John's Lutheran Church, Accident, MD
http://chaz-lehmann.livejournal.com
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