Invocavit, The First Sunday in Lent, 2019.

Invocavit, The First Sunday in Lent, 2019

Pastor Gregory L. Jackson

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bethany-lutheran-worship

Bethany Lutheran Church, 10 AM Central Daylight Time

The Hymn #148           Lord Jesus Christ                

The Confession of Sins
The Absolution
The Introit p. 16
The Gloria Patri
The Kyrie p. 17
The Gloria in Excelsis
The Salutation and Collect p. 19
The Epistle and Gradual       

The Gospel              

Glory be to Thee, O Lord!
Praise be to Thee, O Christ!
The Nicene Creed p. 22
The Sermon Hymn #146      Lamb of God                         

Workers Together With Him

The Hymn #153             Stricken Smitten                   

The Preface p. 24
The Sanctus p. 26
The Lord's Prayer p. 27
The Words of Institution
The Agnus Dei p. 28
The Nunc Dimittis p. 29
The Benediction p. 31
The Hymn #154 Alas and Did My Savior              

KJV 2 Corinthians 6:1 We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. 2 (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.) 3 Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: 4 But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, 5 In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; 6 By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, 7 By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, 8 By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; 9 As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; 10 As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

KJV Matthew 4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. 3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

First Sunday In Lent

Lord God, heavenly Father, inasmuch as the adversary doth continually afflict us, and as a roaring lion doth walk about, seeking to devour us: We beseech Thee for the sake of the suffering and death of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, to help us by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and to strengthen our hearts by Thy word, that our enemy may not prevail over us, but that we may evermore abide in Thy grace, and be preserved unto everlasting life; through the same, Thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one true God, world without end. Amen.

Sermon Background - The Gospel Rain Moves On

2 Corinthians must be read as Paul's attempt to end the influence of the false teachers on the Corinthian congregation. Those were the ones who made fools of themselves in bragging about their great abilities and merits. Countering that (chapter 12) Paul said he would become a fool for their sake since they suffered fools so easily. In doing so he boasted about his work and suffering, but closed by saying God's power was perfected in weakness, to prove that His grace was sufficient for weak people like him.

This lesson has Paul reminding them not to live in vanity after they have heard and believed the Gospel - the message of reconciliation. The Atonement or Redemption is the Gospel message of Christ paying for our sins. When the contrite sinner realizes his own sins are on the cross, he believes the Gospel message exemplified by Abraham, who believed he could be the forerunner of the Messiah by having a son with his wife - though both were far beyond the age of bearing children.

Luther liked to say "the Gospel rain moves on." If we have a good vantage point, we can see that rain does not cover an entire area at once. Clouds give off rain here and there, like sponges releasing  a store of life-giving, nitrogen-fertilized water. Spring plants like the winter (hardy) bulbs take note, bloom, and regrow the bulb beneath the soil. As long as the preached Word is active, the Gospel gains results in conversions and guides Christians in obedience. When that Word is driven away in persecution or indifference, the effect stops.

That is what America has experienced for 100 years or more. When Creation became debatable and an evil to be silenced, our rule of law began to shrivel away, like plants dying in a drought. The judges no longer followed the system of law based upon "Nature and on Nature's God." Man's opinion substituted for God's wisdom, and every truth was torn apart, judged evil, and even legislated against.

The Lutherans, weakened by the Social Gospel method of making politics "The Message," did not have the confidence in the Word to teach and preach the Gospel anymore. That is why congregations turned to entertainment and "getting involved in the neighborhood" as a substitute for teaching the Scriptures as inerrant. So the Gospel rain has moved on. Faith fades away with no Word to nourish it, and behavior returns to standards set by Satan rather than Christ.

Workers Together With Him

KJV 2 Corinthians 6:1 We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.

Followers of Walther, who imagine he has answered all questions, are allergic to this word "work." So this is a painful text for them. But some background first - The people asked Jesus, "What work should we do to work the works of God." Jesus answered, "This is the work of God, that you believe in the One He Sent." John 6:28

They responded by saying, "Give us a miracle to believe," so they displayed their unbelief, not their faith - just after the Feeding of the Multitude, much like Moses feeding the people in the desert.

The primary or foundational work is to believe in Christ. The simpletons of the Left - many disguised as Church Growth experts - say we should decide between faith and work. They see faith as passive and work as active and good, so if they see a lot of action, that is good by itself. The social justice warriors today are simply the last gasp of Pietism because that is the point where there are no more Means of Grace, no more trust in God, only activity.

The Gospel is the energy - the working of God - and this text says the syn-energying (working together with Him). The corporations love synergy, but synergy began in the New Testament. The Left begins and ends with work, but faith in the Gospel causes work to happen.

Looking back at times of Gospel growth, increasing numbers of believers, those moments have come from a blossoming of faith - sometimes after persecution, other times after rationalism and indifference.

2 (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.) 

So Paul says, "This is a time of God's grace shining forth, like sunshine after a cold, bitter winds and darkness. The first thing we want to do when the warm weather returns is to go out enjoy the change.

Reagan said, "It is morning in America," after the pessimists had written off our country. But we are in far more peril than ever before, because the foundations have almost been destroyed by the visible church bodies, taken over by apostates, social justice warriors, and life coaches.

As a person from California warned, this could be the last time the Gospel is allowed to travel through the social media freely. There is already a lot of censorship, monitoring, and link squelching. I think we can move the other direction, but like hard drive failure, there is no advance notice.

That is one reason for us getting everything out on the Net, freely distributed, and backed up in many different ways. Most do not know this, but the monks of Ireland saved many ancient classics simply by copying them patiently. The story may be exaggerated, but the lesson is clear. Some must preserve the gems of the past for future generations.

Many say, "So what" about preserving books. "Nobody reads books now." I know from decades ago that most of the books in circulation then were Gothic novels, light reading, but still - the classics were prized by a few, neglected by most.

In our case, we are most concerned with preserving the true Bible, the correct text and precise translations. A good friend posted a video of someone reading the Gospel of Mark in Greek, because we started on that. I wondered - verse 1 - how is it treated by the new text. It read "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ" in Greek. 

Good, right? Only one phrase was missing, which they judged as not belonging (but was in the traditional Greek text) "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The attitude behind that surgery is - the early Gospel did not see Jesus as God, etc.

Faith leads to action, and unbelief also leads to action. This is the time when the Gospel is growing in the Third World and needing renewal in our country. We do not need more church buildings or seminary campuses in America, but we do need a faithful core to teach and believe the Word of God.

As I said before, gathering a library of Lutheran books, available to everyone in the world for free, happened because God gave a group of people the energy and skills to make that happen. I said to our finishing editor, "Could you weld Luther's sermons together in one file?" and she did. I can open that file and find every single time Luther referenced marriage or justification, simply with control-f and the word.

I asked last week, "Could you give me every book I have done as a PDF, so we can give them away?" And she did that too. I put in one wrong link and nobody could read them, so a fellow Lutheran book fan told me and it was fixed. He jumped on that like a hobo on a hotdog, which saved a lot of people - and me - anguish.

It can happen because it has many times before, that one action can have enormous impact, whose final impact can never be measured. We began a friendship with one neighbor simply by taking mail to the door on a snowy day. She died a Christian believer, a baptized Lutheran, some months later.

3 Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: 

Luther:

8. Two kinds of offense bring the Gospel into disgrace: In one case it is the heathen who are offended, and this because of the fact that some individuals would make the Gospel a means of freedom from temporal restraint, substituting temporal liberty for spiritual. They thus bring reproach upon the Gospel as teaching such doctrine, and make it an object of scandal to the heathen and worldly people, whereby they are misled and become enemies to the faith and to the Word of God without cause, being the harder to convert since they regard Christians as licentious knaves. And the responsibility for this must be placed at the door of those who have given offense in this respect.

In the other case, Christians are offended among themselves. The occasion is the indiscreet exercise of Christian liberty, which offends the weak in faith. Concerning this topic much is said in 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14. Paul here hints at what he speaks of in 1 Corinthians 10:32-33: “Give no occasion of stumbling, either to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the church of God: even as I also please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of the many that they may be saved.” He takes up the same subject in Philippians 2:4, teaching that every man should look on the things of others. Then no offense will be given. “That our ministration [the ministry] be not blamed.”

The first example is well known and often discussed. Non-believers find it disgusting that clergy and church teachers do not obey the basic rules of society. 

Lenski, p. 1062.

The two words have "not"  because they are used with the participle. proskope occurs only here in the New Testament: "cause for stumbling," "offense" in this sense (A. V.). It is to be distinguished from skandalon, the trigger stick in a trap, to which the bait is fixed and by which the trap is sprung. This is fatal and kills whereas the other causes only the foot to strike and the person to stumble, at the most to fall and suffer only a slight hurt. These ministers of God cause no one even a slight moral or spiritual hurt in any thing. So carefully they guard themselves at every point. Here is a sermon for preachers, to say nothing of church members! Offenses of preachers are especially offensive and damaging.

The gravest danger comes from those matters that cause grief and dismay but are not as serious as death-triggers. If every problem caused loss of faith, there would be no one left. Nevertheless, we should expect issues to disrupt and impede the progress of the Christian faith. 

The best single example I see is that lack of respect for the power and efficacy of the Word of God. For that reason, those who have grown up in a parsonage are more likely to avoid church vocations than to pursue them. They naturally respond to the hyper-political atmosphere by saying, "Why should my children and spouse endure what I experienced growing up?" Besides that, the political denominational schools teach very little Biblical content, only loyalty to the synod, so that is terribly unappealing and boring for a four-year delay in having an adult job.

The problem with this loss of vocations is - the children of those working in the church were once the most likely to become pastors and teachers. They have experienced the silent and unwarranted shunning firsthand, so excuses for it do not have an impact on their decisions.

Here and there, it all adds up. So people can ask today, "How far do I need to drive to find a traditional, liturgical, Means of Grace congregation that teaches Justification by Faith?"

4 But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, 5 In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; 

This needs to be remembered because it is the most ignored. Here Paul is using "minister" which really means "servant." He is not citing his title and authority as an apostle but a term that can be used for all Christians.

This is a paradox, a seeming contradiction, and basic to understanding what it means to be a faithful Christian. The way the world measures things is entirely wrong and against the Faith, and yet that is how people in secular jobs are treated. Someone in a corporate job may have many disappointments and reverses, but in the Christian Faith, those afflictions are not only normal but worse and to be expected.

When a job was open for teaching world religion at a public community college, an insider said, "You should have this, but you will never get it. The department only allows atheists to work there, even if they are adjuncts, part-time."  For practice I went ahead and found myself interviewed by a committee of atheists about Islam. It is like Paul saying, "You may be interviewed but you will never teach what you could teach. So take it patiently." In regards to synods, I avoided one big group of schools because they were LCMS and politically charged down to the cafeteria workers. (In Cleveland, one side did not speak to the other side, and they did not want a conservative editor I knew representing their synod.)

Paul had to endure being a criminal in the eyes of the Roman Empire, claim what rights he had, and still go to prison for the Gospel. In addition, all his members were shocked and saddened, so he had to encourage them that he life-threatening reverses were actually good rather than horrible. 

7 By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, 8 By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; 

This is a beautiful and concise statement, because Paul said in the midst of suffering for the Kingdom, his own conduct had to be based on this list.

In verse 7 Paul lays out his method - using the Word of God and the righteousness of faith. Verse 8 teaches the results, always good and bad, depending on the perspective of the person. The vast majority saw him as dishonorble, spoke ill of him, and claimed he was a deceiver.

9 As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; 10 As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

In verses 9 and 10, Paul offered the positive results in the midst of opposition and persecution. He was not known or understood by the majority but well known to God and believers. He was always suffering all kinds of reverses and opposition, but rejoicing in what the Word accomplished. Unrewarded by the world, he made tents to make it easier to get the Gospel across. They were rich in the treasurers of the Gospel. As Luther said, the believer has heaven and earth, and God truly makes things happen for those who trust in Him - not the health and wealthy promised by the snake oil salesmen, but enough to see the abundances of His power and grace.