Treasure the Law of love, treasure Christ all the more

Posted on October 4, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 18

1 Corinthians 1:4-9 + Matthew 22:34-46

Last week we talked a little bit about the unique position of the Third Commandment—the Sabbath Day commandment—among the Ten Commandments as the only commandment that spelled out a ceremony instead of a moral principle. Resting from work on Saturday was a ceremony that God commanded Israel to observe religiously. As we said last week, that ceremonial command was not a universal and permanent expression of God’s will for all people. It was only for the people of Israel, and it came to an end when Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses and then set it aside, making a New Testament in His blood. But behind that ceremony was the standing moral principle that remains: You shall love God above all things, which means you shall love everything that He commands, even the ceremonies, simply because He commanded it. With regard to the Third Commandment, Israel was to love God by keeping that ceremony that God had commanded them to keep, honoring His Word and command above their own desires to get some work done—and possibly make some extra money—on the Sabbath Day. The commanded ceremony has since passed away, but the moral principle, to love and honor God and His Word above all things, remains as a permanent expression of God’s will for all people. That’s why Luther summarized the New Testament meaning of the Third Commandment the way he did: We should fear and love God, that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.

In today’s Gospel, you heard Jesus summarize the first and greatest commandment in similar terms: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. That was and still is the greatest commandment, the chief obedience that God requires according to His holy Law: love for Him with your whole self. Even though this is the first and greatest commandment, it’s the one that most people skip right over, as if it didn’t exist. People like to think of themselves as “good people” if they don’t go out of their way to hurt or say mean things to their neighbor, or if they do some nice things for their fellow human beings, or if they advocate for some social cause they think is important. But all the while, this first and greatest commandment is hanging over them: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole self. Notice, it’s not any old god that people are commanded to love. It’s not a command to “be religious.” It’s a command to love, specifically, the LORD God, the God who revealed Himself in the Old Testament by the name Yahweh, or Jehovah, the God who made a special covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with the whole people of Israel at the time of Moses. This is the God whom all people everywhere are commanded to love and to worship. This God, and no other.

But there is also that second-greatest commandment that Jesus cited: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love for God comes first. Love for your neighbor comes second. And, as Jesus says, the whole Law depends on those two commandments, as do the Prophets. In other words, the whole Old Testament Law is summarized in those two simple commandments. And here, it’s important to remember what that means. It means that none of the laws and commands and teachings of the Old Testament contradict the law of love for one’s neighbor, as if certain commandments were unloving on God’s part. No, they all support it! For example, God gave Israel certain laws commanding them to punish, or even execute, lawbreakers. The death penalty was common under the Old Testament Law. Does that sound “unloving,” executing people? On the contrary, as the saying goes, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” Love for one’s neighbor does not mean leaving the guilty unpunished. It means punishing the guilty, so that the guilty aren’t out there terrorizing or otherwise harming the rest of your neighbors.

In our context, you might apply that to the death penalty, which, if employed swiftly and justly, is still a good and godly means of punishing evil, protecting the innocent, and deterring more evil. Or you might apply it to illegal border crossings. Some people claim it’s the loving thing to do—even commanded by God—to let illegals stay in the country they crossed into illegally, and to leave them unpunished for their law-breaking, even reward it with benefits. But so-called love for the lawbreakers results in cruelty to the innocent. The innocent foreigners, who didn’t try to enter the country illegally, often suffer for trying to do things the right way, because of all those who did things the wrong way. Meanwhile, the innocent citizens of this country suffer higher prices, higher taxes, and reduced housing and public services because of the lawbreaking of the illegal aliens. And when they go unpunished, un-deported, it only makes it worse for the innocent. Failing to punish lawbreaking is not love.

Now, I bring this up merely as an example of the fact that “love” for one’s neighbor, as God defines it in Scripture, does not mean letting people do whatever they want, whatever they feel like. It doesn’t mean letting them “love who they love.” It doesn’t mean supporting wickedness or leaving wickedness unpunished. That’s not love. All the commands of the Old Testament, about how to worship God, or about how to treat one’s neighbor, or about how the guilty are to be punished, are all wrapped up in the commands to love God first, and to love your neighbor second.

At this point, we need to take a look at why Jesus is talking about the greatest commandments here. He didn’t just decide to preach a sermon on the commandments. He was approached with these questions about the greatest commandment, during Holy Week, by the Pharisees, who wanted to test Him, and trap Him, with these questions.

You see, for those who were fanatics for keeping and enforcing the Law, like the Pharisees, Jesus didn’t seem to be focused enough on the Law. He didn’t preach like the Pharisees did, always and only harping on people for their behavior, or bragging about how well they kept the Law. It seemed to the Pharisees that Jesus didn’t care enough about the Law, and so they prodded Him, to see if they could get Him to reject the Law of Moses. Because, if He did, they could bring Him up on charges right then and there. They wouldn’t have to follow through with their plot to arrest Him secretly later that week and hold kangaroo court against Him, in order to kill Him. If He publicly denied the Law of Moses, they had Him!

But He didn’t deny it. He correctly summarized the whole Law, and they actually agreed with Him on His summary. In another account, one of them says as much. Jesus didn’t deny the moral principles expressed in the Old Testament Law. He upheld them all.

But then He pressed the Pharisees with a question of His own. It was His turn to put them to the test. He asked them, What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is he?” They said to him, “The Son of David.” He said to them, “How, then, does David, in the Spirit, call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?”’ Now, if David calls him Lord, how is he David’s Son?

Let’s start with why Jesus asked them this question. The Pharisees thought they had everything they needed in the Law, in the commandments God had given to Israel through Moses. They were so focused on the Law that they missed the more important teaching of the Old Testament, the part that taught about the coming Christ. They thought of the Christ, the Son of David, as nothing more than another lawgiver and law enforcer, which is why they rejected the idea that Jesus could be the Christ, because He hadn’t been going around giving more laws or meting out divine punishment on the guilty. He had been preaching another message, called “the Gospel.” And the Gospel hinges on who the Christ truly is.

Whose Son is the Christ? They answered rightly that He is the Son (that is, the offspring) of David. God had promised to David that his son would sit on his throne, and build him a house, and reign over God’s kingdom forever. That promise was fulfilled in a lesser way by David’s literal son Solomon. But everyone in Israel understood that the true Son of David was not Solomon, but would be the coming Christ.

How, then, can David refer to his Son as his Lord? Jesus cites Psalm 110 to them, a Psalm of David, which he composed “in the Spirit,” that is, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And in it, David called his Son, the Christ, his “Lord.” The Pharisees were baffled. They had never considered that truth before, that David’s Son would also be David’s Lord. That the Christ, who would be true man, would be much more than a man. He would also be true God.

Now, why did God have to come in human flesh? Why did the Christ have to be both God and man? After all, God didn’t have to come as a man to give to the Law. He did that through a man named Moses. He didn’t have to come as a man to enforce the Law. He could do that directly from heaven by sending catastrophes or natural disasters or plagues. But the one thing God couldn’t do from heaven was to live under the Law in man’s place, and die under the Law in man’s place. To accomplish that, for the salvation of mankind, David’s Lord had to become David’s Son.

The Law is good. It is good and right to love the LORD God with your whole self, and to love your neighbor as yourself. The whole Law of God is good, including the punishments for disobedience to the Law—punishments which all people have earned for themselves, because all have sinned against the Law of God. All have earned the death penalty, including the eternal-death-in-hell penalty. Which is why the Christ came, to live under the Law in our place, to suffer and die in our place, and so to earn for all mankind a way to be saved from sin, death, and hell apart from the Law, through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

Most of the Pharisees continued to cling to their precious Law, without ever acknowledging that they themselves hadn’t kept the Law, without ever acknowledging that they needed the Christ to save them. As usual, the Holy Spirit calls out to you in this Gospel, “Don’t be like the Pharisees!” Acknowledge that the Law is good, yes, but also acknowledge that it cannot save you, that you need a Savior from your sins against God’s Law, and that Jesus is that Savior. He came both to earn for sinners, and to give to sinners, the free gift of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Receive His gift! Repent and believe in Him! Treasure and pay attention to God’s Law of love. But more than that, treasure and pay attention to the Son of David, the Son of God, whom the Father gave to the world, because He so loved the world, that all who believe in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. Amen.

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They always see the face of the Father

Posted on September 30, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Festival of St. Michael and All Angels

Revelation 12:7-12 + Matthew 18:1-11

The Roman Catholic Church has a common prayer to St. Michael. It goes like this: “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”

On the one hand, you should never say this prayer to Michael, because, just like the saints, Michael the archangel is not omnipresent, or omniscient—unless the Biblical references to “Michael” are actually giving us another name for the Lord Jesus, as some have suggested. But, assuming that Michael is a created angel, as the Scriptures seem to depict him, he may be very powerful, very faithful, he may be a prince among the angels, especially the angels who are sent to defend God’s people throughout the world, but we have no reason to believe, from Scripture, that Michael can hear our prayers, since he can only be in one place at one time, wherever that is. Nor are we directed by God to worship him, to seek him out, or to pray to him. All our worship and all our prayers are to be directed to God alone. We have direct access to the ear of God Himself, the Creator and Commander of the heavenly armies, the Lord of hosts. Why would we waste our time pleading with His subordinates?

On the other hand, the content of the prayer to Michael is actually better than all the prayers to Mary, because, while Scripture never, ever makes Mary into a defender or protector or helper or patron of anyone, Scripture does refer to angels this way, as having these very duties. And so we take a moment this evening to hear again what the Scriptures teach us about the holy angels, and to give thanks to God for their faithful service.

There’s a single verse in our reading from Matthew 18 that mentions the angels: Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.

First, notice that Jesus, in speaking of these “little ones who believe in Me,” refers to “their angels in heaven.” “Their angels” means that little children who believe in Jesus have heavenly angels assigned to them for their protection. And we have every reason to believe that this applies not only to little believing children, but to all believers, who, as Jesus Himself said at the beginning of the lesson, must all become like little children if they are to enter the kingdom of heaven. All true believers humble themselves before God, like little children, and, like little children, believe simply and steadfastly in the Lord Jesus, our Savior and Redeemer. Therefore, all believers have “their angels” watching over them.

Meanwhile, Scripture also makes clear that the devil and his evil angels are, in one way or another, targeting us for ruin and destruction. As Peter writes, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. Or, as John depicts it in Revelation 12, the devil was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him, and, therefore, he says, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time. And then, after that, he depicts the devil persecuting the Church. That’s why it’s so important that Christians also have “their angels” with them.

Jesus says that their angels “always see the face of My Father in heaven.” If the devil and his angels are coming after you, take heart! Because your angels are never cut off from the presence of God, which means they’re never unable to rescue you from the devil’s power. Meanwhile, if you despise, look down on, or mistreat a Christian, no matter how little he or she may be, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant in the world, you’re a fool. Christians are under God’s own watchful eye, and He takes it personally if you look down on any of them—and even worse, if you dare to cause one of them to stumble. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has assigned some of His valiant spirit warriors to attend to these little ones, and those angels are continually “seeing the face” of God, taking orders from God directly about how to watch over His little ones, and how to deal with those who would cause them harm.

There are two Psalms that express the same thing beautifully: Psalm 91, Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. And Psalm 34 says, The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them.

There’s certainly a warning here for anyone who would mistreat a Christian, or make himself the enemy of a Christian. But for the Christian, what great comfort this is! There are so many dangers surrounding us at all times, from nature, from the wicked, and also from those unholy forces of evil in the heavenly realms, the demons who would love nothing more than to harm us, tempt us, or lead us astray into sin, or, just as bad, into false beliefs, which surround us like a plague. But our Father, in His great mercy, has given His angels charge over all His children, giving us these mighty spiritual warriors to minister to us in our hour of need. They always see the face of Jesus’ Father. They are always ready to carry out His commands to minister to those who will inherit salvation.

So don’t pray to Michael. But do pray to your Father in heaven to send Michael and his angel armies to defend you in battle, to be your protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. Ask your Father to rebuke Satan for coming after you, and, finally, ask Him to cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Your Father, who already gave His only-begotten Son into death for your sins, will also give you all the angelic help you need to make it safely through this enemy territory into the inheritance He has prepared for you and all the saints. Give thanks, today and every day, for that angelic help! Amen.

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A Sabbath lesson in humility and love

Posted on September 27, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 17

Ephesians 4:1-6 + Luke 14:1-11

Meekness and humility, patience and love. These are essential qualities and attitudes for those who would walk in the footsteps of Christ, for those who are called the children of God, as you heard Paul say in today’s Epistle. But humility and love are the very qualities and attitudes that were lacking among so many in Israel at the time of Jesus, as we see in today’s Gospel, and we need to be careful that they are not lacking among us Christians. So let’s turn to today’s Gospel and learn a Sabbath lesson in humility and love.

We start with the Sabbath lesson in love. Luke tells us that it was on a Sabbath Day that Jesus went to dinner at the home of a certain ruler of the Pharisees, and, as usual, they were watching him closely. They were watching Jesus closely to see if He would break the commandment to rest on the Sabbath. You see, the Pharisees had turned the Sabbath rest into the litmus test for Jewish orthodoxy, and Jesus hadn’t been playing along with their expectations. He had been healing people on the Sabbath, which they counted as “work.” In fact, on one occasion, He healed a crippled man on the Sabbath Day and then told the man to pick up the mat he had been lying on and carry it home, which, according to the Pharisees, was pure wickedness. Carrying a mat on the Sabbath Day, after letting someone heal you, on the Sabbath Day? How evil!

Well, there was a man present at this Sabbath dinner who had dropsy—a painful swelling of the limbs, and Jesus intended to heal the man. But He got out in front of the Pharisees and asked them point blank: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Let’s go back and review what the Law and the Prophets had to say about it.

The Sabbath Day fell on the 7th day of the week, which we call Saturday. The 7-day week goes back to the six-day creation plus the 7th day on which God rested, and it says that God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. It may be that Adam and Eve devoted every 7th day of the week to worshiping God, but the truth is, we don’t know how or if the 7th day was observed in the early days of humanity; nothing more is said or commanded about the Sabbath Day until Moses gave the Law at Mt. Sinai.

So it was a brand new Law that God gave to Israel at Mt. Sinai: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it. Moses goes on a little later, The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you. You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever.

The Sabbath commandment was unique among the Ten Commandments. Resting on Saturday isn’t part of the moral Law, the universal principles, that God has written into the hearts of all men. For example, He never blames non-Israelites for failing to rest on Saturday, whereas He often blames non-Israelites for their moral failures: idolatry, murder, violence, dishonoring parents, adultery, stealing, lying, and coveting. Those things are always sinful and wrong by their very nature, because those things are always unloving practices and attitudes, whereas the Sabbath commandment, given to Israel only, was like the commandment of circumcision given to Abraham and his descendants, or like the commandment given to Adam and Eve only, not to eat from the fruit of that one tree in the Garden of Eden. Those ceremonial laws were imposed on a certain group of people, for a limited time, for a specific purpose.

And, some of those ceremonies could be set aside in case of necessity. For example, for as important as circumcision was in God’s ceremonial Law, the Israelites didn’t even circumcise their children during their 40 years of wilderness wandering, because they never knew how long they would be staying in each place in the desert. It was only when they were finally ready to enter the Promised Land that all the men were circumcised. Until then, the ceremony was set aside for the sake of necessity. Or, one time, David and his men were out of food, so the priest at the tabernacle gave them the show bread from the tabernacle, which, according to the ceremonial law, was only to be eaten by the priests. Again, the ceremony was set aside for the sake of necessity.

The Sabbath ceremony, too, could be set aside in case of necessity, because, as Jesus said on another occasion, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In other words, God imposed a day of rest on them for their good, and as a sign of their love for God in obeying this special ceremonial law. But, if one of them needed surgery or rescuing on the Sabbath Day, or (as we’ll see in a moment) if one of their animals had an emergency on the Sabbath Day, it was the right thing to do, the loving thing to do, to set aside the ceremony in order to help the animal, or, even more, their fellow Israelite. Because love was the motivating principle, not the ceremony.

So now you can answer the question: Is it lawful to heal a man on the Sabbath? Absolutely! Because it was a ceremony, not a universal principle, and ceremonies can and must yield to love, and it was entirely loving to give a person relief from his or her suffering on the Sabbath. But the Pharisees, who were experts in the Law, remained silent and refused to answer Jesus’ question. Because, for them, love was never part of the equation. They never understood it. They never lived by it. For them, the worship of God was all about external works, especially ceremonies.

Well, Jesus didn’t wait for their permission. He healed the man and let him go. And then He tried to teach the lesson to the Pharisees: Which of you, if your ox or donkey fell into a pit, would not immediately pull it out on the Sabbath day? They all would! So, why would they deny healing to their fellow Israelite on the Sabbath? There the truth comes out: They would help their own animal on the Sabbath, because the animal had value to them. They didn’t want to see their brother helped, because their brother had no value to them. And so their despicable lack of love was exposed for all to see. And still they remained silent. Because they were stubborn and unteachable.

What about you? Are you teachable? If so, then learn how a lack of love, for God and for your neighbor, is the root of all disobedience to God’s commandments. Why does a child dishonor his parents? Because he doesn’t love God or his parents enough to honor them. Why do people steal? Because they don’t love God or their neighbor enough to respect their neighbor’s property. Why do people have sex outside of marriage or otherwise commit adultery? Because they don’t love God or their neighbor enough to respect God’s commands concerning sex and marriage. Why do people worship idols or invent ways to worship God? Because they don’t love God or His Word enough to worship Him according to His Word. It’s for this lack of love that all people deserve to be condemned by the God who is love, and who wants to surround Himself with people who are also characterized by love.

But because God is love, He sent His Son into the world to call sinners to repentance, to live and die in our place, and to bring us, by faith, back into God’s favor. Now the Spirit is at work in all those whom He has caused to be born again. And just as God once sanctified the Sabbath Day, setting it apart from all the other days of the week, so now He has sanctified and is sanctifying His believing children, permanently setting us apart from all the people of the world, to live a life that is more and more characterized by love.

Now, since I wanted to take some time to go over the Sabbath laws themselves, we only have a little time left to learn the Sabbath lesson in humility. But we can summarize it rather briefly.

On the same Sabbath day, in the same Pharisee’s house, Jesus watches as the guests all run to grab the seat of highest honest for themselves. Now, even from a human perspective, that was just dumb. Because, as Jesus points out in His lesson to them about the wedding banquet, what if the host of the banquet decides that someone else is more important than you? Then he’ll go up to you and tell you to leave that seat. He’ll give it to someone else. And you’ll be disgraced before all the guests and will have to move down to the lowest place. Better, wiser, to start at the lowest place, and then let the host see you there, and raise you up to a higher place, if He so chooses, and so honor you in the presence of everyone. Arrogance before men is foolishness; humility before men is wisdom.

But Jesus had a much more important lesson for the people to learn. He wasn’t really concerned with giving the people good advice for their wedding etiquette. It isn’t a human banquet that matters for eternity; it’s the banquet of God’s kingdom. It isn’t the honor given by a human host that matters; it’s the honor—or dishonor—given by God. Humility before man is wise. Humility before God is crucial. The Sabbath commandment itself was there to teach the Israelites humility before God, to submit their will to His will, to trust in Him to provide for them, and not in themselves and their work.

On both fronts, before God and before men, many in Israel failed to humble themselves. To be honest, everyone has failed. Our natural hearts don’t willingly submit to God’s will, or wait patiently for God to act, or trust in Him to do what is right. We want to take the reins of power for ourselves and insist that God do things our way. That’s nothing but pride. And before men, well, we always tend to think we deserve more, or better treatment, than the next guy. But all throughout the Scriptures, there is this constant warning for man to humble himself, to lower himself, not in a degrading kind of way or in false humility, but to learn the simple-but-profound lesson Jesus taught at the end of today’s Gospel. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

And there we have both the warning and the promise, both the Law and the Gospel. Do not think too highly of yourself. Do not act as if you were the most important person in the room. Admit your sinfulness before God and, as you all confessed a little while ago, admit that “I deserve only Your wrath and punishment.” The Law calls you to repentance. And then believe the Gospel promise, that whoever humbles himself will be exalted, that God, purely out of His fatherly divine goodness and mercy, will raise you up, forgive you all your sins for Jesus’ sake, restore you to His favor, and even honor you before men.

Humility and love. Learn this Sabbath lesson from Jesus. Make every effort to live in humility and to act in love, and to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Amen.

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God’s enemies don’t stand a chance

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the week of Trinity 16

Deuteronomy 32:39-43 + 1 Corinthians 15:21-28

There are people—lots of them—who think they will get away with rebelling against God. They live as they please, believe what they want, worship how they choose, ignore God’s Word, ignore God’s commandments, and still think they will be fine, in the end. They believe they are in control of their own fate. Now, the level of self-delusion it takes to believe that way is truly mind-boggling. But it’s exactly the deception that the devil puts out there and wants people to believe. Because he knows that, as long as people believe that, they are his. Forever.

If we believe the God of the Bible, then no one is in control of his own fate. We are all at the mercy of God. As He said through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy: ‘Now see that I, even I, am He, And there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand. Of course, that’s really bad news for those who are not on God’s side, and, at the same time, it’s really great news for those who are on His side. His enemies don’t stand a chance against Him, while those who have been reconciled to Him through Christ, and are on His side, have nothing in the universe to fear, from anyone or anything. As David says in Psalm 27, The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

The Lord goes on through Moses to explain how this works: For I raise My hand to heaven, And say, “As I live forever, If I whet My glittering sword, And My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies, And repay those who hate Me. I will make My arrows drunk with blood, And My sword shall devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the heads of the leaders of the enemy.” If God comes against you as His enemy, you will not survive the encounter. And He will come against all His enemies, sooner or later, to take vengeance on them, in divine retribution for all their lawlessness and hatred of Him. Truly all men ought to fear His anger. That’s part of the Christian Gospel, in its broader definition. It’s the simple truth of what will happen to the enemies of God. And it’s important to remember that God is the one who decides who is His enemy and who is His ally, and friend, His son or His daughter. Because lots of those same people who live in rebellion against God and His Word will claim to be God’s friends. But God has said otherwise, and it’s His determination that counts.

Of course, the other part of the Christian Gospel is where we draw our hope from. We all start out life as God’s enemies, with the force of His holy and righteous vengeance aimed at us. But the same God has come up with a way to turn His enemies into His friends before that wrath hits us. He calls us, through the Gospel, to repent of our natural enmity toward Him, and to take shelter behind His beloved Son, who put Himself in the way of God’s oncoming wrath, and bore the brunt of His wrath and punishment so that we might be kept safe as we move behind Him. Those who move safely behind Him are now said to be reconciled with God and will not be devoured with the enemies of God, but are counted among His friends, and among His children.

Who is invited to do this, to be converted from God’s enemy to His child? Everyone. The people of Israel were invited to it before Christ came, so that they would be counted as the people of God who were looking forward to their promised Messiah. And now, all nations and all people are invited, as Moses himself prophesied 1500 years before Christ came. ’ “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people; For He will avenge the blood of His servants, And render vengeance to His adversaries; He will provide atonement for His land and His people.” “His people” are all those who believe in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles. Christ has provided atonement for us all, and all who use it, all who take shelter in it, are part of God’s holy people.

Meanwhile, God’s enemies are still out there, for now. Some of them will be converted before the end, but most who are God’s enemies now will remain His enemies. But what did the Father say to the Son? The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” This, too, is the hope of the Christian, that, one way or another, sooner or later, God will come against all His enemies. Because His enemies are also our enemies. For our part, we are not to take vengeance against them. But for God’s part? Vengeance is Mine, declares the Lord. I will repay.

And so, even now, Christ reigns. He is, even now, in the process of putting all His enemies under His feet, working out His plans for this world to rescue the remnant that can still be rescued, before He comes to finish it all on the Last Day. As you heard Paul say in the Second Lesson this evening, He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For “He has put all things under His feet.”

As we heard on Sunday, Christ is the obstacle of death, and death stands no chance against Him. Death is His enemy. And, soon, that enemy will be destroyed along with all the rest of God’s enemies. Soon, when this dying world reaches its last day and breathes its last breath, then, as John describes it in the book of Revelation, Death and Hades will be cast into the burning lake of fire, together with the devil, together with the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. But those who have found reconciliation with God and the forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ Jesus will finally begin a life without any enemies to disturb us. Hold on to that hope! Hold on to the One who has defeated death for Himself—Christ the firstfruits—and will soon defeat it, permanently, for us who are found taking refuge in Him. Amen.

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Jesus approaches death with compassion and a solution

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 16

Ephesians 3:13-21 + Luke 7:11-17

Once every year, the Church Year urges us to deal, directly, with the topic of death. Not in a somber way, but in a sober way. Not in a mournful way, but in a serious way. Not in a hopeless way, but in a hopeful way. And, by the way, we can do that here, in a reverent, traditional worship setting, where people come to worship God in joyful humility, to hear the Word of God, and learn it, and meditate on it, in a way that the entertainment-driven churches simply can’t do. Imagine having a serious discussion about death, and grief, with a big screen and a band up here in the background, with its drum sets and guitars and speakers, revving up the audience with their so-called “worship music.” It just wouldn’t fit; it wouldn’t make any sense. But with a simple baptismal font, that reminds us of the death we died with Christ when we were baptized into His death, with an altar and a crucifix that remind us of Christ’s death on the altar of the cross as the sacrifice for our sins, with a pulpit that’s designed to communicate the message, “We preach Christ and Him crucified,” this is the perfect setting to talk about death.

We talk about it every Sunday to some degree, if you’re paying attention, because it’s the wages of sin that all people share in common. We all die, because we have all sinned. Without sin there would be no death. Sin is the reason why death exists. We talk about death every Sunday, because the Scriptures have been talking about it since the Garden of Eden in the second chapter of the Bible, as a warning in Genesis 2, since the Fall into sin in Genesis 3, since Cain’s killing of Abel in Genesis 4, and since the long litany of death in Genesis 5, “and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died.” Death is the problem that has plagued all mankind for our entire existence, and we would be foolish to gather here in God’s house to try to forget about that truth for a while, as if it didn’t exist.

On the other hand, we also talk about death every Sunday because it’s the very thing from which Christ, the Son of God, came to save us, the thing that He came to destroy for all who believe in Him, which is the hope of the Christian. Again, we preach Christ and Him crucified—crucified, which means put to death on a cross. But we also preach Christ risen from the dead, the firstfruits of all who believe. To ignore death would be to ignore the resurrection from the dead.

In today’s Gospel we see Jesus taking on death, and, as always, winning. Jesus solves the problem of death for the young man of Nain—just a little foretaste of what He will do for all believers on the Last Day.

Let’s hear again how Jesus tackled the problem. He was approaching a little city called Nain, the only time this city is mentioned in the Bible, making it all the more famous for the one big miracle that happened there on that day—the very first time, out of three, that Jesus raised someone from the dead (as far as the Gospels tells us). As Jesus approached, they were carrying a dead man out of the city, for burial. Luke tells us that he was a young man, and the only son of his mother, who was a widow. It’s hard to imagine a sadder situation. Death is always sad, but here, it’s a young man who dies young, leaving behind a grieving mother who had already lost her husband, and was now entirely alone, and would soon become destitute, as she had no one to provide for her any longer.

Now, as we said a moment ago, death is a reality of human existence, common to us all. You’d think that God, who has watched every human being die since Abel died at the hands of Cain would be unaffected by one more death. But that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t the case in any of the accounts where Jesus confronted death. Each time, He confronted it both with compassion, and with a solution.

Luke tells us that, When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her. Remember, Jesus’ compassion is God’s compassion. And His compassion for this one grieving mother is His compassion for every grieving mother, or father, or child. When death comes, God is not distant. He is very near. He is not uncaring. His heart goes out to the grieving. Even though, because of our sins, we all rightfully deserve the death penalty from God, He is not joyful about it when the penalty is imposed. He has compassion, the very compassion reflected in the face and demeanor of Jesus with the grieving widow of Nain.

And He said to her, Weep no more. Then he came and touched the coffin, and those who were carrying it stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” And the dead man sat up and began to talk, and he gave him to his mother. Compassion, with a solution. In this case, the solution was immediate. By the power of the life-giving Spirit of God—power which God the Father had authorized His Son to exercise whenever and however He wished—Jesus brought the dead man back to life with a word. Death was no obstacle to the Son of God. On the contrary, He is the obstacle that death faces. And death doesn’t stand a chance.

Death is coming for each of us here, sooner or later, as it comes for every son and daughter of Adam and Eve. It comes for the violent criminal. It comes for the young who are entirely innocent, by human standards. It comes for the elderly, for men, women, and children, for widows and for the children of widows. It comes quickly and painlessly. It comes slowly and painfully. It is the enemy of the human race, unleashed against us all, because our first parents sided with the devil, chose the death penalty over obedience to God, and set us all on this path that leads from the cradle to the grave.

You all know what a terrible enemy death is. It causes pain. It causes grief. It results in separation and loss of companionship. It may involve financial hardship. But there is an even bigger problem than physical death and its consequences. We are body and soul creatures. And when the body gives out and dies, the soul doesn’t cease to exist. It goes somewhere, either to the everlasting death that is hell or to the everlasting life that is Paradise. And then it waits in its appointed place until the Last Day, to be reunited with a body that will be raised from the dead, to spend eternity in that same state, either of eternal blessedness in God’s presence or of eternal death, where, as Isaiah writes, their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched.

Fools blame mindless evolution for death. (As the Psalm says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God!’”) The rebellious and wicked want to blame God for death. “He could get rid of it, if He wanted to, but He doesn’t! He never had to impose it in the first place!” What is that, but just another way of saying, “People should be able to do whatever they want without consequences,” or, to put it even more bluntly, “We want to be God!” Which is exactly the temptation by which the devil convinced Eve to turn away from God, leaving us all, now, with the inborn sinful desire to be God, just as she did, to make the rules, and to answer to no one.

The truth is, God does have a plan to get rid of death. Yes, He justly imposed it on our race, and He didn’t have to make any plan to get rid of it. But He chose to. And that plan is unfolded before our eyes in the Christian Gospel. The Father would send His Son into human flesh, to provide the human righteousness that the rest of us lack, including the humbling of Himself before His heavenly Father, to do, not His own will, but the Father’s will. And the Father’s will was for His Son to die, to die a violent and painful death, accompanied by injustice and insults and shame, to die, on a cross, the human death that the rest of us deserve. We preach Christ and Him crucified.

But the Father’s plan didn’t end in death for His Son, as you know. It included a literal resurrection from the dead. It included the ministry of the Word that now preaches Christ crucified in the world, calling all men to repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus, and promising the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who believe. And, for as much as we may wish that God’s plan, God’s solution, included an immediate end of death in all its forms, that is not His solution. What He offers is a life, in this dying world, that is still subject to suffering, death, and decay. But with that life, He also offers a permanent home for your soul in His own house, starting now, a home that cannot be disturbed by death even a little bit. He offers the indwelling of His Holy Spirit now, as a downpayment in your mortal body, so that God is ever present with you, with His divine compassion, through every moment of pain and grief. And he offers an expiration date, not to your life, but to your death, so that, in the end, even your physical death is erased, defeated, and destroyed, becoming nothing more than a sleep from which you will awake into a new and far better life, where death no longer exists. This offer is sealed to you in Holy Baptism, repeated in every preaching of the Gospel, and renewed with you regularly through Holy Communion. And you have God’s promise that He will walk with you even through the valley of the shadow of death itself, until His solution reaches its fulfillment, for you and for all who believe.

Cling to that promise—now, and when death draws near. Your God is merciful, and full of compassion. And, as Paul assured us in today’s Epistle, He is able to do far, far more than we can ask or imagine. He has come up with the only possible solution to the problem of death: the life, death, and resurrection of His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and the promise that all who are united to Christ will share in His life, will share in His death, and will share in His resurrection. May the Holy Spirit increase your determination to remain united to Christ, in life, death, and resurrection, and may He grant you divine comfort as you await, with hope, death’s ultimate demise. Amen.

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