“The Teaching Is for Children of All Ages”
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost—Sixth Sunday in St. Laurence’ Tide
Psalm 143:10
September 11, 2011
Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God! Let Your good Spirit
lead me on level ground!
IN NOMINE JESU
Today is a very special day in the life of this congregation. After
a break for the summer months, we begin another year of Sunday school
here at Zion. Even though we took a break from Sunday school, the
learning has not stopped, as we have been gathered here each Lord’s
Day to hear Him as He speaks to us in His Word. Not only does our
Lord speak to us, He also teaches us. Where His Word is preached, it
is also taught. And who is being taught? Everyone who hears the Word
of God is being taught. This means that all of you within the sound
of my voice are being taught: the old and the young, adults and
children. There is no age limit to the teachings of our Lord. The
Church teaches children of all ages, from cradle to grave, from the
womb to the tomb. There is no end to our learning the faith. At
least there shouldn’t be. It is never too early to be a disciple of
our Lord. The word disciple means “one who learns.” Jesus taught the
Twelve, and He teaches us. Even before we were born, while we lived
in our mothers’ wombs, He taught us, even as He has known us since
before He made and formed us, before we were even conceived. While
our parents sat in church and heard God’s Word, you heard it, too, as
science has shown that babies still in the womb CAN hear.
Our Lord says through St. Paul that faith comes from hearing, and
hearing from the Word of God. Neither Paul nor the Lord nor the Holy
Spirit place age limits on when one can hear the Word or come to faith
in Christ. In the baptismal rite, we hear from St. Mark’s Gospel:
Then they brought little children to [Jesus], that He might touch
them; but the disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when
Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased and said to them, “Let the
little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the
kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the
kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” And He
took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.
[Mk. 10:13-16 NKJV]
Yes, for this reason the Church baptizes babies and teaches children.
This is why the Church admits those to the Lord’s Table who have
publically confessed the faith they have been taught according to
Scripture and thus Luther’s Small Catechism. This is why we have
Bible class and Bible studies that generally our adults attend. This
is why we are here in the Lord’s house this morning: you, me, children
of ALL ages, for we are all children of God. The teaching doesn’t
stop with confirmation. At least it shouldn’t, either.
King David was well aware of his need to continue learning from God.
David wrote the 143rd Psalm. It is believed that he wrote this, the
last of the so-called Penitential Psalms, as he fled from his son,
Absalom, who tried to overthrow him. David confessed his sins,
confident of God’s forgiveness, knowing that no one is righteous
before God and that God is gracious and forgiving. David remembered
God’s mercy when David confessed his sin of adultery with Bathsheba.
God forgave him, speaking through the prophet Nathan. In this Psalm,
David seeks God’s deliverance from both his enemies: Absalom his son,
and Satan. Yet in the midst of this prayer, for the Psalms are indeed
prayers, David asks God for further instruction, further teaching. He
prayed: Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God! Here is David,
a grown man, a king anointed by God, the one through whose lineage the
Savior would come, asking God to teach him His will. If David, mighty
as he was, would be humble enough to bow to God’s will and His
teaching, then we, regardless of age or social standing, should
imitate King David’s faith and ask God to continue teaching us.
Think back to your school days, not just Sunday school. For you
children, just think back to last week. There were times when you
didn’t want to go to school, when you simply didn’t want to learn a
single thing. You didn’t like the teacher. The subject was boring.
You hated doing homework. You wondered what the point was to having
to learn dates and places and anything else that you didn’t think had
any bearing on your life then or in your future. I was not a big fan
of algebra when I was in high school. Plotting points and making arcs
on a graph was not my idea of fun. Solving x for y, or even the other
way around, made little sense to me. I was going to study to become a
pastor…why did I need to learn this stuff, I thought. My junior high
math teacher once told our class that we actually learned algebra in
the first grade; the big difference was that, instead of x’s and y’s,
we dealt with squares and circles. I felt like I had been had. I
wished I could do something about it, but state law frowns on
first-grade dropouts.
That attitude against learning that I had—that we all had—in school is
no different than in our spiritual lives. We don’t always like to
learn what God desires to teach us. God wants to be holy, just as He
is holy. He teaches us His will, which is to be holy, through His
holy Word. But it’s like that class we took that we thought was too
hard for us, but harder. We don’t like to do the homework God assigns
because we can’t do the work He asks—that He demands—of each and every
one of us. We cannot do it because we are not holy. We’re not even
close. Why? Our first parents, Adam and Eve, failed the first test,
and there was only one assignment: Don’t eat that fruit! They could
score one of two grades on that test: 100% or a big, fat zero. They
each got a big, fat zero. We have the Ten Commandments, and they’re
not multiple choice. We can’t pick and choose the right answers,
because the right answer is “all of the above.” And if we get even
the first one wrong, we’ve failed the entire test…with a big, fat
zero. We’ve all failed God’s test. We retake it every day. We fail
it every day. Every day we earn a big, fat zero. It doesn’t matter
if we’re a child or an elderly person. It doesn’t matter if we’re
grandparents or grandchildren. It doesn’t matter if we’re laypeople
or pastors, we all get the same grade each and every day of our lives:
a big, fat zero. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of
God. We have sinned against God by thought, word, and deed by what we
have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved God with
our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We
daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. You see,
each time we give the wrong answers on God’s test through our
thoughts, words, and actions, we not only fail, but we sin. And
because our grades have been so bad for so long, we don’t risk God
sending us to the principal’s office; we risk His sending us to hell
to be in Satan’s torment forever, to be eternally condemned.
One thing students always dread is getting their tests or homework
handed back to them. They don’t want to see how much red ink the
teacher has put on their papers. They don’t want to know how many
questions they got wrong. The less red ink, the better. But then God
gives us back our tests. We’re scared to look. We don’t want to see
our grade, but we finally look. There’s a lot of red on that paper,
but our grade is not that big, fat zero. Our score is 100 percent!
We realize something is different here. God is a harsh grader, but He
says we aced the test. How can this be? Take another look at that
test. That red is not ink from God’s pen. It’s the blood of His Son,
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. It is His blood that puts us in
good standing with God our heavenly Father. God grades on a curve,
but that curve is the shape of Mt. Calvary, where Jesus bled and died
to take away our sins. Jesus went to that parent-teacher conference
on Good Friday and said to His Father (and ours) on our behalf,
“Father, forgive them.” Because Jesus suffered, bled, and died, we
get His “A+”. Look at that grade again. That plus sign is the cross
upon which Jesus died to take away your sins and mine. Because of
Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, He has aced our test for us.
We get His perfect score!
But we don’t graduate, because the learning never stops. King David
prayed to God, “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God! Let
Your good Spirit lead me on level ground!” The Holy Spirit teaches
us, as He has since before we were born, when we listened from inside
the womb. He teaches us through His Word as we hear it read from the
lectern, proclaimed from the pulpit, and taught in class. He moves us
to want to live according to God’s will, to love Him even as He has
first loved us, to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things, with
all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love one another in
response to the love He has shown us in Christ Jesus. And that love
He showed us on “Show and Tell Day,” that first Easter morning, when
He showed His Son risen from the dead, and when the angel told the
women the good news that Jesus, who bled and was crucified, dead, and
buried, rose again on the third day. It is this good news—this great
news—that I get to proclaim to you each Lord’s Day. This is the
greatest thing we get to learn: that Jesus died for our sins and rose
so that we would have life with Him in heaven forever! And our Lord
teaches us every time we are gathered here that He loves us; it’s that
important to learn it every time we’re here.
God teaches us of His love and forgiveness and His will for us in Holy
Baptism, even as children are baptized in the Name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, for, as St. Peter tells us, baptism
saves us. We are marked with the sign of the cross to remind us that
we are redeemed by Christ the crucified…and risen. God places His
thrice-holy Name on us, to show us that we are His children,
regardless of how young or old we are. He teaches you as He forgives
you in Holy Absolution, in the Readings and in the sermon. He teaches
us as He places the body and blood of Jesus on our lips, His body
given and His blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Your
sins are forgiven. You get Jesus’ perfect score. The Holy Spirit
moves us as we leave to live God’s will in our callings and vocations.
Shortly, we will be taught again through Bible class and our
newly-restarted Sunday school, thanks be to God! The learning is for
children of all ages. God grant this in Jesus’ Name and for His sake.
Amen.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
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