Emmanuel Lutheran Church

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Sermon for the week of Oculi – Lent 3

Job 19:23-27 + Matthew 22:23-33

Turn your thoughts again back to Holy Week, to Holy Monday. Or, honestly, maybe it’s Tuesday already; the Gospel writers don’t tell us everything Jesus said and did during that early part of Holy Week, and they don’t bother with an exact timeline. We didn’t hear about it last week, but the Pharisees have just given Jesus a trap question about paying taxes to Caesar, and He has just silenced them with His answer, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

That’s where this evening’s lesson comes in. You may recall that two of the main religious factions in Israel at the time of Christ were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were both well-known and powerful leaders in Israel, but they were different from one another.

The Pharisees weren’t generally priests. They were teachers in Israel and the elite Law-keepers, the ones who boasted about keeping God’s law, who looked down on anyone who didn’t keep it as well as they did, and who were well-known for adding laws and teachings and traditions to God’s law. And, the Pharisees were more “anti-Roman Empire.”

The Sadducees, for their part, were more closely tied to the priesthood and the temple. They were more “pro-Roman.” And instead of adding teachings to Scripture, they had subtracted many teachings of Scripture. They accepted only the first five books, called the Torah or the Law of Moses, as inspired Scripture. They denied the existence of angels and spirits and the “spirit-realm” we call heaven and hell. And they also denied the future resurrection of the dead.

So when the Sadducees in Jerusalem saw that Jesus had silenced the Pharisees, they decided it was their turn to test Him early on in this week of Passover.

In order to understand the Sadducees’ question, we have to understand the Law of Moses. In the book of Deuteronomy, God had given the Israelites this command: If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the widow of the dead man shall not be married to a stranger outside the family; her husband’s brother shall go in to her, take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And it shall be that the firstborn son which she bears will succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. You can see the purpose of it. Until the Messiah came, God was adamant that the genealogies and the tribal inheritances had to be preserved in Israel. If a man died without having a son, his name and his inheritance wouldn’t continue. So a brother of the man who died was supposed to marry the widow, and their firstborn son would bear the first husband’s name.

So, in the scenario presented by the Sadducees, seven brothers all ended up marrying the same woman, just as Moses had commanded. For the Sadducees, who believed that this life is all there is, that’s not a problem. But for those who believe in a resurrection of the dead? Did Jesus actually envision a future where those seven men and that woman would be raised from the dead and then live forever in some kind of reverse polygamy—not one man with several wives, but one wife with several husbands? It’s absurd. And they knew it. They were hoping to make Jesus either agree with them that there is no resurrection, or look silly by trying to defend such a strange marriage arrangement in heaven.

But Jesus knew much more about heaven, and about God’s plans for the future, than they could ever imagine. His first response was to correct their understanding about marriage. In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. That’s something that you actually couldn’t get from the Old Testament Scriptures, at least, not very directly. Contrary to the Mormon heresy about “celestial marriage,” Jesus tells us plainly that God designed marriage only for this earthly life. Husbands and wives are given to each other for companionship in this life, for supporting one another in this life, and for raising godly children in this life. Marriage is one of God’s greatest blessings. But it isn’t a blessing that God intends to last beyond this life. He has different plans for us at the resurrection, even better ones.

To be “like angels of God in heaven” just means that we, like the angels, won’t be married after the resurrection. But notice how Jesus threw that in there as a subtle rebuke to the Sadducees, who also deny the existence of angels.

Then Jesus goes on to rebuke them for their denial of the resurrection, proving it from Scripture. He could have used a Scripture like the one you heard earlier this evening, from Job 19, I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth. And that after my skin is destroyed, in my flesh I will see God. That’s one of the clearest teachings of the resurrection in the Old Testament, placing it at the Last Day. Instead, Jesus chose a verse from Exodus, one of the few books that even the Sadducees fully accepted as inspired and true. You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God…Concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Underneath that simple, well-known statement that God spoke to Moses, which every Israelite knew, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” lies the very simple truth that Jesus revealed to the Sadducees: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. In other words, God doesn’t claim to be the God of dead men, who once lived, but who are now long gone and have ceased to exist. When He claims to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He is proclaiming that their souls are still alive in heaven with Him, and that their bodies and souls will eventually live again at the Last Day, at the resurrection of the dead.

Oh, Jesus could have added other passages, where it says that, when Abraham died, he was “gathered to his people.” It says that same thing about Isaac when he died, and about Jacob when he died, and even about Ishmael when he died. That’s not something Scripture says about everyone who dies. But for those men whom we know to have been believers in the true God, the Holy Spirit made sure to let Israel know that there is life with “our people” after we die.

But the Sadducees weren’t actually interested in learning from God’s Word, or in living to please God. They didn’t actually believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their religion was for this life. Their aspirations were for this life. And Jesus was getting in the way of it. So they would do their part to get rid of Him for good. By the end of the week.

Even though the sect of the Sadducees died out quickly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, it’s really the beliefs of the Sadducees that dominate modern Judaism, and, really, most of the world, including “progressive Christianity.” Very few people believe they will have to answer to a holy God after this life. Very few believe they will face everlasting torment in hell for their pride, or for their greed, or for their sexual sins, or for their failure to worship the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And for the few who still believe heaven exists, most of them don’t believe that perfect love for the God of the Bible and perfect love for one’s neighbor are required for entrance into heaven.

Perfect obedience is required. But for those who know that God, and heaven, and hell are real, and who know and mourn over the fact that they haven’t provided the perfect obedience required to avoid hell and to reach heaven, there is a Savior from heaven who will help, who has helped by coming to provide that perfect obedience in the sinner’s place, so that all who seek forgiveness through Him are given eternal life here and now, and will be raised to life on the Last Day, safe from the resurrection of condemnation that unbelievers will most surely have to face.

Jesus did not suffer and die so that you could have a better life here on earth. He suffered and died for your sins, so that, after this short life is over, you can participate in the resurrection of life at the end. I am the resurrection and the life, He says. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. That’s why we’re Christians. That’s why we practice our religion. Because we do believe in the Lord Jesus as the resurrection and the life. We do live for God. And our aspirations are not primarily for this short life, but for the next eternal one, because we are confident that, through faith in Him who conquered death at the end of Holy Week, we, too, will conquer death and live forever. Amen.

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Sermon for the week of Lent 2

Isaiah 5:1-7 + Matthew 21:33-46

Turn your thoughts again back to Holy Week, to Holy Monday. Jesus isn’t done with the chief priests and scribes yet. He had just informed them that the tax collectors and harlots are entering the kingdom of heaven before you, because they hadn’t done the Father’s will in listening to John the Baptist, repenting of their sins, and trusting in the Son of God. But He has more to say to them.

He tells them the parable of the landowner and the vinedressers, which begins: There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a tower. Now, right away, they should have thought of what Isaiah had said in chapter 5, which you heard a little while ago, the song of God’s vineyard. Jesus’ description is a close paraphrase of Isaiah’s words. My beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; so He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. That was an Old Testament parable about the people of Israel, and all the work God did to nurture them, teach them, train them in the way they should go. But they went their own way. And so, through Isaiah, God foretold their coming destruction and their exile in Babylonia, because they were unfaithful to their God.

In Jesus’ parable, the vineyard isn’t the nation of Israel. The vineyard is the believing people of God, the true Church of God of which Israel and its leaders had been the caretakers, or vinedressers, throughout most of the Old Testament. He leased the vineyard to vinedressers and went into a far country. These were the leaders of Israel, the very people whom Jesus was addressing: the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and, really, all the Jewish leaders who had come before them, including most of the kings of Judah, with a few exceptions, and, really, the whole, idolatrous, stubborn, unbelieving people of Israel from the time of Moses until the time of Christ.

But those vinedressers proved to be unfaithful. As the grape harvest drew near, the landowner sent one servant after another to collect some of the grapes, but the wicked vinedressers beat them, killed them, and stoned them. He’s talking there about the prophets. Prophet after prophet was sent to Israel to call the people to repentance, and faith in God, and to bear the fruits of repentance with humble and kind hearts, with generosity, and with obedience to God’s commandments. But the leaders of Israel always persecuted the prophets, denounced the prophets, humiliated the prophets, and often killed them, too.

Now, in a real-life scenario, the landowner probably wouldn’t do what the one in Jesus parable did next: Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ Knowing the kind of wretches who were running his vineyard, any reasonable landowner would have probably gone in with an army and wiped them out after they mistreated even one of his servants. But this landowner sent many, and then chose to send his son, in person, to collect the fruit.

But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’ So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Was the landowner being naïve, thinking they would respect his son? If it were a regular landowner, we’d have to say yes. But this landowner is God the Father. He knew how the Jewish leaders would treat His Son. In fact, it was part of His plan for mankind’s salvation, that His Son should die for the sins of the world. But that doesn’t remove the guilt from those who put Him to death or who called for His crucifixion. It doesn’t make them good. God uses the wicked plans and deeds of wicked men to carry out His good purposes for His saints.

There’s an application here to the war in Iran that has recently begun. It appears that it was God’s will to topple a wicked regime in Iran. He would no longer tolerate their violence and open idolatry, because their religion of Islam was worthless and blasphemous toward the Son of God. But that doesn’t mean that the governments that conspired to remove that wicked regime were doing what was right for their part. That’s a different discussion which we won’t get into now. Just be careful not to let anyone convince you that, because evil men died, those who killed them were necessarily “walking with God,” just as the Jews who killed Jesus—which was a necessary part of God’s plan—did not do the right thing for their part. Again, God often uses the wicked actions of wicked men to carry out His good purposes.

Now, after Jesus finished telling His parable, He quizzed the chief priests on it and got them to pronounce their own condemnation upon themselves: Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?” They said to Him, “He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons.” You would think by this point the priests would have seen the meaning of Jesus’ parable, that He was depicting them as the wicked vinedressers who mistreated everyone sent by the landowner, including His own Son. But even that amount of spiritual discernment eluded them, because they belonged entirely to their father, the devil.

Jesus brings the point home: Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.

There it was, staring them in the face, that prophecy from the famous Passover Psalm, Psalm 118, the same Psalm from which the crowds had sung just the day before, on Palm Sunday: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! But He who came in the name of the Lord, Jesus the Christ, was also the Stone which the builders rejected. In trying to build their glorious nation, their glorious church, the Jews took one look at Jesus and said, “No, we don’t want this stone. This stone is worthless. We’ll just get rid of it.” But the Psalm foretold a different outcome. Though He would be rejected by Israel, the Christ would become the chief cornerstone in the true temple of God, the Holy Christian Church, while the vineyard of the nation of Israel would be rejected because they rejected the Son of God. And the care for the Church of God would pass away from Israel to the Gentiles.

But Jesus adds one more warning before He’s done: And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder. This is an allusion to Isaiah 8, where the prophet said that the Christ would be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel…and many among them shall stumble; they shall fall and be broken. Yes, many would stumble over Him, would be offended by Him, would take offense when He pointed out their sins, would stumble over His offer to reconcile them to God, not believing that He was the atoning sacrifice for their sins. They would stumble, and fall, and be broken. Their connection to the kingdom of God would be severed. That’s bad enough.

But for those who, like the vinedressers in the parable, wickedly persecuted, molested, and killed the servants of God, including the Son of God, and who were never brought to repentance—the Stone would fall upon them and grind them to powder. Jesus is no pushover peddler of cheap grace. He humbled Himself and made Himself obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He gives men time to repent of their evil deeds and find salvation through Him. But when He comes again, He will come with vengeance against all His enemies. And those who persecuted Him, or any of His servants, or any of His people at all—they will find out that even hell has levels of torment, when they’re cast down into the deepest dungeons of all.

Why is Jesus so threatening toward the chief priests? Well, they were about to kill Him, weren’t they? By the end of the week. They deserved to hear these threats, and should have been frightened by them, to turn away from their evil plans before it was too late. But what you should really take away from this interaction is how profound is God’s love and concern for His vineyard, for His Church. He knows how poorly it was managed in the Old Testament by hypocrites and wicked men within the Church, and the New Testament Church hasn’t fared a lot better, because if we’ve learned anything from Scripture, it should be that, wherever sinners are, there can be no Paradise, and every institution, even the outward Church itself, made up of sinners, as it is, eventually comes to ruin. But the Lord Jesus won’t let His vineyard languish forever in its current state. Just as there was a change in management from Israel to the Gentiles, so there will soon be another, permanent change in management, when Jesus Himself returns to dress the vines of His Father’s vineyard in person. Then there will be no more need for watchmen or managers, because Jesus will be all in all. Amen.