A great High Priest who was tempted as we are

Posted on March 9, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Invocavit

2 Corinthians 6:1-10  +  Matthew 4:1-11

It says in the book of Hebrews: Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Those words look back, in part, to today’s Gospel, where we watch Jesus, our great High Priest, enduring the temptations of the devil during His forty-day fast, being in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. And as a result, we can now approach God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, as someone who can sympathize with us in our weaknesses, as someone who, through His victory over temptation, both earned for us mercy (the forgiveness of sins) and gives us the grace to withstand in the day of temptation.

After His Baptism, where Jesus, our great High Priest, was anointed and placed into office by God the Father, He was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. His being tempted was an essential part of God the Father’s plan for Him. Not that God tempted Him; the devil alone did that. But since the devil had had so much success against the human race, going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, it was essential that the Son of Man also be made to confront the devil, to see how He would do. Would He stand? Or would He fall, like the rest of mankind has always done? If He stands, He is qualified to be the great High Priest who offers Himself as the sinless sacrifice for the sins of the world, and who will forever stand before God the Father as the one priestly Mediator between God and man, between God and sinners. If He falls, at any point, then mankind belongs to the devil forever. There is no other plan for our salvation.

Let’s walk through the three temptations that are recorded for us in the Gospel.

The first temptation is a temptation to doubt God’s goodness. It comes at the end of Jesus’ forty-day fast. He’s hungry, starving, even, and the devil tries to take advantage. If You are the Son of God. You’ll notice, the devil begins two out of the three temptations with that “if You are the Son of God” condition. It was about 40 days earlier, when Jesus was baptized, when, you remember, God the Father spoke from heaven and proclaimed, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” “Well, if that’s true,” the devil implies, “then You should get some special privileges, like tapping into Your power as the Son of God to turn these stones into bread for Yourself. Wouldn’t that be nice? You haven’t eaten in over a month, right? You could have food right now, this very minute. You’re entitled to it. Right?”

It’s eerily similar to the devil’s temptation of Eve in the Garden, where he tried to convince her that she deserved to have that piece of fruit that was just hanging there in front of her eyes. God had no right to keep it from her. She was entitled to it—even though God had given her all the other fruit in the garden, and every possible gift and blessing was at her fingertips, except for this one thing that God hadn’t given her: the forbidden fruit.

Hasn’t the devil approached you in similar ways, holding forbidden fruit before your eyes, tempting you to doubt God’s goodness, trying to convince you that you’re entitled to things that God hasn’t provided for you (in spite of all that He has provided for you), persuading you to become discontent with what you have, to believe that, somehow, God owes you? “Don’t focus on Him. Focus on your hunger! Focus on your need! Steal, if you need! Fight, if you need to! (Forget the fact that the fruit is forbidden!).”

Turning stones into bread to feed Himself was forbidden to Jesus. He was sent to live in humility, like the rest of us. He was expected to depend on His Father for providence, just like the rest of us. He knew it would have been “cheating” to use His divine power to provide for Himself. Now, Jesus could have argued with the devil. But, instead, He chose to answer the temptation very simply, with the written word of God. It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Moses spoke those words to the Israelites, reminding them why God had caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty years: And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Jesus, too, had to be humbled, and tested. But unlike Israel, He never complained. He never grumbled against God. He waited patiently for His Father to provide, and so He passed the test and defeated the temptation.

In the second temptation recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, the devil tempts Jesus to doubt His Father’s word—just as he had done with Eve in the Garden of Eden. He took Him up to a high point on the temple and said, If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down! For it is written, ‘He will put his angels in charge of you,’ and, ‘In their hands they will lift you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ Yes, the devil can use God’s word. He can pretend to go along with what God says. That should serve as a sobering warning for us, because many people use God’s word today for evil purposes, just as the devil did with Jesus. The devil didn’t quote Psalm 91 to get Jesus to trust in His Father. He quoted it so that Jesus would doubt His Father and put His Father’s word to the test. Would He really keep His word and send His angels to rescue Jesus, if Jesus jumped down from the temple? Only one way to find out!

Hasn’t the devil tempted you in similar ways to doubt the word of God? Did He really create the world in six days, as He said? Was the world really destroyed in a flood? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? If only you could find some proof, something tangible, something scientific! Or, maybe worse, he uses God’s word to lead you into false belief, as he tried to do with Jesus, so that you misinterpret God’s word, so that you end up believing something that God never intended, and then stake your life on it. He never intended, for example, for His promises of angelic protection to lead His children to needlessly endanger their lives.

But Jesus, our great High Priest, knew His Father’s word well enough to stand up to the devil’s temptation. It is written again, ‘You shall not test the Lord your God.’” Again, He was quoting Moses, who was warning the Israelites not to repeat their past sins of testing the Lord, as they did early in their journeys when they angrily demanded that Moses give them water to drink—as if God had to prove His faithfulness by giving in to their demands. Jesus refused to do such a thing. He would trust in His Father’s word and in His Father’s faithfulness—blindly, if necessary. Nothing His Father said could ever be false, could ever be wrong. And so He passed the test and defeated the temptation.

Finally, the devil tried to get the Son of Man to abandon God altogether so that He could have everything a man could ever want—riches, power, fame, and fortune, the world itself—and have it easily at that, without having to work for it or earn it, or suffer for it, just by switching sides from God’s side to the devil’s side. All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.

Hasn’t the devil approached you with similar temptations? Have the job or the relationship that you want! Have the pleasure you desire! Have the approval of men that you crave! For once in your life, stop worrying about what God wants. You do what you want! You take what you want! All you have to do is set aside the First Commandment briefly.

Jesus would have none of it. Go away, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’ And so Jesus endured every temptation and passed every test. He met the requirement of sinlessness and so became our great High Priest.

Now, since our great High Priest faced temptation just as you do, since the whole purpose of His incarnation was to become the sinless Substitute for sinful mankind and thus to become the perfect Mediator between God and man, since He has now conquered the devil and death itself, Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, to Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Mercy Seat of God, that we may obtain mercy. Come to God with your sin, with your shame, with all the times you’ve given in to temptation, and give it all to the great High Priest! He has already suffered for your sins and offered Himself once for all as the sacrifice for them, the sacrifice that God the Father has accepted. Come to the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ, and you will obtain mercy from Him, even the forgiveness of your sins.

And, as forgiven children of God, Let us come boldly to the throne of grace…and find grace to help in time of need. You will be tempted again. You will be tempted throughout your earthly life, tempted as Jesus was tempted, tempted to stop listening to God and to listen instead to that other voice, the voice of the devil and his demons, the voice of the unbelieving world, the voice of your own sinful flesh, nudging you away from God’s commandments, prodding you toward sin and shame and disgrace. In such times, turn boldly to the throne of grace. Remember how your great High Priest used Holy Scripture to withstand temptation, and equip yourself ahead of time with the word of God, so that you have that mighty weapon at your disposal when you need it the most. Pray to your High Priest. He will understand your struggles, will sympathize with them, and will offer you all the help you need to stand strong for Him, as He once stood strong for you against the devil and against all the powers of hell. As it says in Hebrews, Since we have a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Amen.

 

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The Ten Commandments

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the First Day of Lent

Romans 13:8-10  +  Mark 12:28-34

The Lenten fast or “giving up something for Lent” has been around for a long time. And, if used for the purpose of self-denial, prayer, works of charity, or reflection on spiritual things, fasting can be a helpful tool, a useful discipline. We maintain that fasting should never be forced on anyone in the New Testament Church, since God doesn’t force it on us. But during this Lenten season I’ll encourage you to engage in another kind of discipline. During the six Wednesdays of Lent, prior to Holy Week, we’re going to review together the six chief parts of Luther’s Small Catechism. One part per week, starting tonight. And I’m encouraging you, not only to set aside every Wednesday for these services, but to take your Small Catechism out, and read the part for the week at least once a day. If it makes it easier, you can pick up a copy of the weekly catechism reading from the table in the narthex.

This evening, we begin with the First Chief Part: The Ten Commandments. We can’t possibly talk about each one in depth in a single sermon. But it’s my hope that this service will help you to read them fruitfully throughout the coming week.

The Ten Commandments were thundered down to Israel by God from Mt. Sinai, and later written by God’s own hand on two stone tablets. They were part of the Old Testament, the binding covenant which God established with Israel, through Moses, and into which the people of Israel willingly entered. All the words which the LORD has said we will do.

Why do we care? We are not Israelites, after all. We never signed onto that covenant and were never asked to. We care about the Ten Commandments, because we did sign onto the New Testament by being baptized into the name of the same Yahweh God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in the Ten Commandments, the will of our God for mankind’s behavior is revealed. They reflect who our God is, teach us what His standards are of right and wrong, teach us what we are to do and not do, think and not think, desire and not desire, in order to be holy people in fellowship with the holy God. We care, because the Ten Commandments teach us Christians why we needed a Savior named Jesus in the first place.

As you heard tonight in both Scripture lessons, the Ten Commandments are summarized with the word, “Love.” Love is not optional. It wasn’t for OT Israel, it isn’t for NT Christians, either. Love is the fulfillment of the law. And, as you may remember from your catechism classes, the Law serves as both mirror and guide.

The Law is a mirror. It shows us what we look like—like sinners, who have not kept God’s commandments. As a mirror, the Ten Commandments tell us what we’re supposed to do and not do, desire and not desire, so that we may see clearly how far short of God’s glory we fall. The man who does these things shall live by them. But we haven’t done them. Not all of them. Not all the time. No one has. And so the curse of the Law is pronounced on all men: Cursed is the one who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the Law…Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

But the Law is also a guide. As a guide, it shows us Christians, who have been redeemed from the curse of the Law by Christ, who became a curse for us, the holy lives that holy people are called to live. We are called to walk by the Spirit. And the Ten Commandments are a Spirit-inspired summary of how the Spirit teaches us to walk.

So we turn to the First Table of the Law, the first three commandments, summarized by love for God.

1st: You shall have no other gods. Every form of idolatry is forbidden, every form of worship of any god except for the One who reveals Himself in the Bible as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Instead of serving other gods, we are to fear, love, and trust in the true God above all things, including ourselves. He is to be our all in all, while all that we have and all that we are is to be entirely devoted to Him.

2nd: You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God. The LORD, or Yahweh, or God, or Jesus, or Christ, is not a name to be tossed around lightly, much less used as a curse, or for needless swearing, lying, deceiving, or practicing witchcraft. His name is to be holy to you. For sacred use only. God’s name is to be used for good, to call upon Him in the day of trouble, to praise Him in front of other people and tell of all His wondrous deeds, to give thanks to Him, at all times, and in all places.

3rd: You shall sanctify the Day of Rest, or, Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. The Old Testament regulation about doing no work from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday has fallen away. But God’s command to hear His Word regularly, to cherish the preaching of it, to use His Sacraments with reverence, and to honor and support the ministry of the Word—that command remains.

The first three commandments summarize how we are to love God directly, by honoring Him, His name, and His Word. The rest of the commandments, the Second Table of the Law, show us how to love God by loving our neighbor. Your neighbor is literally the person next to you, the one whom God places in your direct path, which begins with your immediate family.

4th: You shall honor your father and your mother. God has placed children under the authority of their father and mother, not only demanding outward obedience to them, but also the honor and respect of the heart. That honor and respect are to remain even when the parents are old, even if the same level of obedience to them is no longer required. By extension, this commandment applies to all the authorities that God has placed us under. We are to honor them, serve and obey them, love and respect them.

5th: You shall not murder. No one is permitted to end a human life (and yes, that includes abortion) unless God authorizes it in His word, as He does for the government in the case of evildoers, or as He does for the average citizen if a thief breaks into his home or poses an imminent threat to his life. And if we are to avoid taking another person’s life, then we are also to avoid mistreating our neighbor’s body (or our own bodies!). On the contrary, we are to provide help for our neighbor’s bodily needs as we are able.

6th: You shall not commit adultery. Or as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. God gets to define the terms of sexual relations, just as He gets to define man and woman, husband and wife. He designed marriage to be a sacred, loving, lifelong bond, where husbands and wives love and cherish each other. And He clearly forbids all sex outside of marriage, all homosexual behavior, all pretending to be a different gender than the one He made you to be, and divorce in most, but not all, cases.

7th: You shall not steal. God permits people to acquire things and to own things, and He forbids people from taking things that another person owns, unless the person freely agrees to sell it or trade it or give it away.

8th: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Our tongues and our typing fingers are to take great care, lest we say or write something that may harm our neighbor’s reputation. Lying about our neighbor to get him in trouble is a sin, but so is telling the truth about our neighbor in such a way that we expose a sin that we have no business exposing.

9th: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. This commandment, together with the next, is especially revealing. No human government can regulate your desires. But God can, and does. Not only are you not allowed to take your neighbor’s house from him. You aren’t even allowed to desire it, to set your heart on it, to be discontent with your own house. And not only house, but…

10th: You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, workers, animals, or anything that is his. You are to control your desires, to the point that, whatever possessions the Lord enables you to have, whatever opportunities, whatever place in life the Lord gives you, you are to be content with these. And while you may desire something beyond what you now have, you commit those desires to the Lord, and if He provides it, good! And if not, good! But setting your heart on what your neighbor has, and growing bitter over your neighbor having something that you crave, such desires are forbidden by God.

If you stop and really think about all these commandments, what obedience looks like from the start of your life to the end of it, when you take into account what James says about the commandments, that whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it, it’s clear that all men, including us, are lawbreakers.

But during this Lenten season, we celebrate our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Ten Commandments show us the reason why, because no man can hold up his own obedience to the commandments to God and claim, “See, God! I have kept them all!” Instead, everyone must approach God as a humble beggar and admit, “Oh, God! I am a poor, wretched sinner!”

But sinners are called, not to despair, but to repent, and to run to Christ, the Redeemer, where God promises that sinners will find forgiveness, on the basis of His obedience, on the basis of His suffering and death, which He suffered for all our lawbreaking. So run to Christ and stay close to Him, because where He is, there the commandments can no longer accuse or condemn, because Jesus has fulfilled them all in our place.

But as you stay close to Christ, you dare not ignore God’s commandments. As John says, This is love for God: to keep His commandments. For the redeemed, this is the path. This is the way, each and every day. Do you love the God who has redeemed you? Would you serve the God who has redeemed you? Would you be holy, as God Himself has called you to be? Then, as Jesus Himself said, If you love Me, keep My commandments. Amen.

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Faith, hope, and love, even in the dark

Posted on March 2, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Quinquagesima

1 Corinthians 13:1-13  +  Luke 18:31-43

Sometimes the ways of the Lord are clear as crystal; the pieces of the puzzle all seem to fit together; the things going on around you make sense. But sometimes the Lord’s ways are about as clear to us as mud. And that’s okay. You’re not supposed to understand everything yet. It’s like when you read a book. Many things that the author understands perfectly well are not understood by the reader, or by the characters in the story, until the end, or close to the end. As the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

What do you do when you’re in the middle of the story, and the Author’s plans seem fuzzy and dim? We learn that lesson from today’s Gospel and Epistle, from Jesus’ disciples, from the blind beggar, and from the apostle Paul. And the pattern we learn from them is simple: Have faith, hope, and love, even in the dark.

As Jesus made His way through Judea to Jerusalem for His final Passover, He began to spell things out for His twelve apostles. See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that were written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be fulfilled. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon. And they will scourge him and put him to death. And on the third day he will rise again. For His part, Jesus saw everything clearly. He knew exactly who He was—the Christ, true God and true Man; He knew where He had come from—from God the Father; and He knew exactly why He had come: that the world through Him might be saved—saved from sin, death, and the power of the devil; saved from every evil and every trouble at the end of the story. He even saw clearly the path to get there, both because He was the Author of the plan, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and because it had been revealed, although somewhat obscurely, in the Old Testament Scriptures. He would go to Jerusalem at the Passover and allow Himself to be betrayed by His own friend, handed over to Pontius Pilate by His own people, falsely accused, condemned, tortured, and killed. He would do this willingly in order to make atonement for the sins of the world. And then He would rise from the dead on the third day, ascend into heaven, and work, by His Spirit, with the preachers whom He would send out into the world to bring men out of darkness into His marvelous light.

The light of the Gospel, shining on Jesus as the merciful Savior, is clear to all who believe, but it doesn’t always shed a bright light on the path directly ahead of us on our way to the salvation at the end of the story. Even when Jesus shined the light on the path that lay ahead of Him in the coming days, His disciples were like blind men still groping about in the dark. We’re told that they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them. How can that be? It can be, because, when it comes to the ways and the things of God, only the Spirit of God can truly enlighten the mind, and sometimes He has a reason for keeping even the faithful in the dark about certain things, as an author often does in the story he’s writing.

In the case of the apostles, it wouldn’t work out the way it was supposed to if they had perfect understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection ahead of time. They had to be kept in the dark for a little while longer, for their own sake, for our sake, but also for Jesus’ sake, so that He could suffer more. You see, it lessens a person’s suffering to share it with friends, with those who can sympathize and understand. On the other hand, it increases a person’s suffering to go through it alone, without the understanding of family and friends. And Jesus had to suffer alone.

What did they do when they didn’t understand? Well, first they listened to Jesus and pondered what He said, even though they didn’t understand. They listened, and then, later, after Jesus’ resurrection, they were able to remember what He had said. But even before they remembered, they trusted. They had faith in Jesus, that He knew what He was talking about, even though they didn’t. And so they kept following Him, hoping and expecting that things would turn out well, for Jesus and for them, hoping for the details to be made clear when the time was right.

So listen to God’s Word and ponder it, if the path ahead seems blurry or dim, and have faith in the God who has given you His Word, and who has given you His only-begotten Son, and who, through His Son, has also given you His Holy Spirit, to enlighten your minds as much as necessary for the place where you’re at in the story. The Lord has His reasons for not making everything clear to you now. Not that He has hidden His overall plan or His saving works from you. He has revealed more than enough of it in Holy Scripture to bring you to trust in Him, and to preserve you in the faith, and to give you hope that things will turn out well. Have faith! And hope!

Next in our Gospel, we encounter a blind man. Actually, two blind men, according to Matthew, but they believed as one and called out to Jesus as one. Mark reveals the name of one of them. His name was Bartimaeus. He had no physical sight. He was reduced to begging, and the Lord hadn’t revealed to him why it had to be this way. In that way, too, he was left, for a time, in the dark.

But Bartimaeus’s physical blindness, and his blindness to the Lord’s plan, didn’t hinder him one bit from listening to the word of God in the Old Testament, and to the word about Jesus being the Christ, the promised Son of David, and, having heard, he believed. He had faith. And because he had faith, he cried out to Jesus, as soon as he heard that Jesus was passing by, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! And he refused to be silenced, when the crowds told him to keep his mouth shut. He cried out boldly, confidently, and with great hope, Son of David, have mercy on me! So Jesus stopped the procession, called the man over, and asked him what kind of mercy he was seeking. Bartimaeus said, Lord, I want to receive my sight!

And what happened? Jesus said, Receive your sight! Your faith has saved you. Jesus granted his request freely, willingly, gladly. Not only that, but he praised Bartimaeus’ faith as that which led to his healing. Not because faith had the power to heal, but because faith brought him to Jesus, who had the power to heal. The blind man’s eyes were opened, enlightened, just as his mind had already been by the Holy Spirit. His sight was restored. And then, what? He followed Jesus, glorifying God.

It’s really the same lesson as with the apostles. If you confess Jesus as Lord and Christ, as the apostles did, as the blind beggar did, then have faith in Him, even if it’s blind faith, for the moment. And put all your hope in Him, even if it’s blind hope, for the moment. You don’t have to understand everything now. Go along with the story now, as it unfolds. Follow along with Jesus. Do the things He has given you to do, the things you know to do, because His Word has clearly revealed those things. Have faith. And hope. You won’t be disappointed in the end. There will be a cross. But there will also be a resurrection and a glorious future in the kingdom of God.

There’s one more thing God calls on you to do while you remain in the dark, in addition to having faith and hope. St. Paul wrote a whole chapter of the Bible about it, which you heard as today’s Epistle: Love.

We learn love from Jesus in today’s Gospel. The way He stopped and took time for the man in need. The way He spoke kindly to him and helped him gladly. And, of course, we hear from the Apostle Paul in today’s Epistle a beautiful description of what Christian love looks like. Love is patient. It is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not boast. It is not conceited. It does not behave indecently. It does not seek its own. It does not become angry. It does not dwell on evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

Being in the dark about the path ahead, being confused or frustrated doesn’t give you the right to behave badly toward your family, toward your neighbor, toward your fellow Christian. On the contrary, you are called to keep loving at all times, with Christ Jesus Himself as the prime example. In fact, you are called, as Christians, to be characterized by love—not love according to the world’s definition, but love as God defines it in His Word, love that is consistent with God’s commandments. Yes, you are to be known in this dark world as people of faith and people of hope. But just as much you are to be known as people of love—the kind of love Paul describes in the Epistle, which will continue into the next life after there is no longer a need for faith or hope, because all that is now dark will be made bright. As Paul says, For now we see through a mirror, darkly; but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part; but then I will know fully, even as I am also fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Have faith in Christ, whether or not you fully understand. Trust in Him who willingly and intentionally suffered and died for you. Wait in hope for the Lord to act and to reveal things in His time. And be a person characterized by love. In faith, hope, and love, keep following the Lord Christ, wherever He goes, wherever He leads, knowing that your Shepherd will never lead you astray. His path is the path of the cross. But if we suffer with Him in shame, we will also reign with Him in glory. Amen.

 

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An invitation for weary children to rest

Posted on February 26, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Festival of St. Matthias

Acts 1:15-26  +  Matthew 11:25-30

Our Scripture readings this evening are the readings for the festival of St. Matthias, which occurred two days ago. Matthias is only mentioned once in Holy Scripture, and yet he was a disciple of Jesus from the very beginning, unmentioned and unnamed, standing in the background of Jesus’ earthly ministry. After the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, but before the Day of Pentecost, His remaining eleven apostles concluded that they were meant to fill the vacancy among the Twelve left by Judas Iscariot when he betrayed the Lord and then hanged himself. In order for such a man to be a true eyewitness to the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, he had to have accompanied the apostles from the beginning, “from the baptism of John to that day when Jesus was taken up from us” (Acts 1:22). Barsabas and Matthias were the two qualified men who were nominated, and Matthias was the one chosen by lot to be added to the number of the Eleven, after which little is known for certain about his life and ministry.

Now, the choosing of Matthias to be counted among the Twelve Apostles is a little strange. After all, Jesus appeared on and off to His disciples for 40 days after His resurrection. And yet, Jesus never handpicked Matthias to replace Judas. On the other hand, He did handpick the apostle Paul some time later, and we know from the New Testament what a vital role Paul played in the founding of the Christian Church, leading us to conclude that maybe Matthias wasn’t Jesus’ own choice for rounding out the Twelve foundational Apostles. But his selection for the office of the apostolic ministry was still entirely valid. He was still called by God through the Church to be a minister, to preach and teach and administer the Sacraments. In fact, the manner of his calling sets the pattern for the calling of all future ministers in this New Testament era. The Church, both ministers and laymen, gather. They pray to God to reveal, through their choice, whom He is sending into the ministry. And then, whether by lot or by vote, a man is selected.

As I said, we don’t know anything about Matthias except for what is said about him in Acts 1, but since we know that he was with Jesus from the beginning, it’s altogether possible that he was one of the 70 (or 72, as some manuscripts have it) who was sent out by Jesus ahead of Him, to preach and prepare the way for Jesus. Those 70 performed many miracles, including casting out demons, and when they returned from their mission, they told Jesus in amazement, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name. And Jesus replied, I was watching Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Although Jesus wasn’t with them on their mission, He was still watching them. He was with them through His Holy Spirit, through whom He was watching—and participating in—all they did in His name. And He not only saw Satan falling as the disciples cast out the demons. What else did He see? He saw the same things He had seen already in His own ministry. He saw most people, especially the wise, the smart, the religious leaders, rejecting His message. But He also saw simple people, and little children, even, believing it. And so, it was in that context that He spoke the first words you heard tonight from Matthew 11. He prayed and said, I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and have revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.

The wise and well-educated religious leaders thought they knew God so well. They would have fit right in in our modern world, where people pretend to be religious, even Christian, while they intentionally ignore what God actually teaches in His Word about right and wrong, sin and grace, and faith in Christ being the only path to salvation. But because people think they know God so well, they don’t like it when Jesus steps in and tells them something that clashes with their “knowledge” and their version of morality. And because they don’t want to listen to Jesus, God chooses to hide the truth from them, to hide Himself from them, because God only invites people to know Him by knowing Jesus.

Little children, on the other hand, have no problem with the illogical, supernatural things that Jesus says. He says, “I am the Son of God, born of the virgin Mary. No one comes to the Father except through Me,” and a little child doesn’t say, “How can that be?” or “That’s not fair!” A little child says, “You’re amazing, Jesus! Tell us about God, Your Father!” Jesus says, “I will die on the cross to pay for your sins and then rise from the dead.” And a little child doesn’t stop to think about how impossible that is. She just says, “Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross for me and rising again.” Jesus says, “The water of baptism will wash your sins away and bring you into my family,” and a little child has no counterargument, no argument at all. He just watches Jesus do what He says He’ll do. And that child who simply takes Jesus at His Word knows God a thousand times better than the smartest theologian, the greatest Bible scholar, or the most devout religions people who question, deny, or ignore, Jesus’ Word, because God hides Himself from the wise and learned, but invites little children to know Him through Jesus. As He says in the next verses, All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

That’s great news for the little children here today. Jesus says in Matthew 18, I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So it’s not about how old you are. Even the 80+-yr-olds here today can be little children when it comes to Jesus, little children who sit at His feet and listen to His Word and trust in the things He says. So if, like a little child, you look to the Word of Christ and know Jesus to be the One sent from God the Father to be your Savior, if You trust in Him to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then join Jesus in praising God for inviting little children like you to know him.

Jesus makes the invitation even more specific in the following verses: “Come to Me,” He says, “all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” This is one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible, and I’m sure many of you knew them by heart before you came to church this evening. “Come to Me,” Jesus called out, but you notice, he didn’t invite everyone. He invited only the weary and burdened people to come to Him and rest with Him. The tired people! But not people who are tired because they stayed out too late last night or worked long hours at their job. He’s inviting people who have weary and burdened souls.

Who are they? They’re people who are exhausted from living each day in rebellion against their Creator. Exhausted from carrying around years’ worth of guilt and regret. Exhausted from trying to be good enough for God to accept them and love them. Exhausted from fighting against a sinful nature that, no matter how hard they try, they cannot get rid of, and from living in a world so full of wickedness. It’s these people, all of them, whom Jesus invites to Himself and says, Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Now why would Jesus offer these tired, weary, burdened souls a yoke to put on? Because He has a sense of irony. A yoke is normally put over the neck of a farm animal. It’s a symbol of hard work, working underneath someone else’s rule. Every religion in the world offers you their “yoke,” teaching you how to be a good enough person to be accepted by God, which, in today’s world, often means being so good that you would accept and tolerate things that the Bible calls evil. No, they say, to be good enough for God, you have to be a better person than Jesus was! You have to be more accepting, more “loving,” more tolerant, less “judgmental.” But their “yoke” is worthless. It’s fake, but it’s still a heavy, burdensome thing. And it produces only death.

Jesus’ yoke, on the other hand, offers, not work, but rest, because Jesus took up that yoke of God’s Law upon Himself, and like a work-horse, ploughed the whole field of God’s commandments for us. Jesus’ yoke is the Gospel, and to take His yoke upon you is nothing else than to recognize Him as Your Savior and as Your King, to trust in Him as the One who has saved you from the burden of sin, death and hell, to believe the good news that He has done God’s work in your place, the good news given to weary and burdened souls that you don’t have to do one single thing to earn eternal life. You can rest in Jesus, and in what Jesus did for you.

You can rest, knowing that God has already punished your sin on the cross of Christ. You can rest, because Jesus is gentle and humble in heart and doesn’t want you to go through life wondering whether or not you’ll be in heaven when you die, but resting in the knowledge that heaven is God’s gift to you through faith in Jesus. You can rest, because, as you struggle every day against the devil, and the world, and your sinful flesh, God knows your struggle, and God knows how to defend you, how to strengthen you, and how to rescue you in due time. These are the things that make His yoke easy and His burden light.

So don’t turn down this invitation today, the invitation to know the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He Has sent, to know Him and to enjoy the rest He invites you to have with Him. Be a little child. Hear the Savior’s invitation, and accept it with joy! Amen.

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Overcoming the obstacles to the growth of God’s Word

Posted on February 23, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Sexagesima

2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9  +  Luke 8:4-15

Today’s Gospel is about the power of the Word of God. But it’s also about the condition of the heart of the one who hears the Word of God. Jesus compares the word that is preached to a seed, and the hearts of those who hear to various kinds of soil.

The Word of God, like a seed, always carries inside it the energy, and the ability, and the tendency to grow. For a normal plant or a tree, healthy growth looks like the seed being embedded in the soil, sending down more and more roots, so that the plant gets the moisture and the stability it needs. As the roots go down, or even before, a stalk begins to spring upward, putting out leaves to catch the sun’s rays, which is converted into more energy. It gets taller and bigger until, when it’s mature, it produces flowers, and then fruit that ripens until it’s finally ready to be picked. But the conditions matter, don’t they? The seed may be healthy, and the dirt itself may be the right kind of dirt. But if the conditions are poor, the seed may not sprout at all, or, even if it does, it won’t mature and produce the desired fruit.

What does growing look like for the seed that is God’s Word? Well, ideally, under healthy conditions, the Word of God is preached, accusing everyone of being a sinner, who hasn’t loved and worshiped God as he ought, who hasn’t loved his neighbor as he ought, who stands under God’s eternal condemnation and will be judged by God on the Last Day and sentenced not only to death but to eternal death in hell. This preaching hits home with the hearer. It strikes fear and dread into his heart. He realizes that, it’s true, God is real, and he hasn’t given God the honor He is owed. He deserves this threatened punishment and God’s righteous wrath.

But the seed of the word of God contains more than this. It contains a message of hope for the poor sinner, a message that centers on Jesus Christ, whom God the Father sent into the world to redeem sinners. It’s a promise that God holds out to the world, inviting all men everywhere to look to Christ Jesus for salvation. The sinner draws hope from that promise. He looks to Christ in faith, confident that God will keep His promise, that his sins will be forgiven, that he will be accepted by God because of Jesus and will escape eternal death, and just like that, the seed has sprouted!

But the word of God is not done. It contains more. It teaches the newly sprouted plant, the new believer, to come to the water of Holy Baptism, to stay close to the preaching of the Word and to the Lord’s Supper, which are, together, like the life-giving water that a plant needs. It teaches the believer to grow in the grace and knowledge of God, never to be content with knowing just the basics of the Christian faith. It teaches the believer that he must daily take up his cross and follow Jesus, being willing to suffer for the name of Christ, and bearing up under suffering with the patience and strength that God will give. It teaches the believer to live each day in contrition and repentance, to set his heart, each day, on leading a holy life, completely devoted to God, and to keeping His commandments. And it offers the continual comfort and strength necessary to do this, not just once, but until the believer has grown to full maturity, in faith and love, and has, with God’s help, weathered every storm, and has, by God’s power, produced a lifetime of good works.

That, dear friends, is the Christian life, start to finish. It’s not flashy. It’s not necessarily exciting. It’s like a plant growing in a field. It’s a slow and steady process. But, at the end of the process, what is produced is something wonderful, something beautiful, something astounding.

In today’s parable, Jesus describes how that process is often disrupted. He gives three examples of the disruption. There’s seed that falls along a dirt road. The seed is good, and the dirt itself is fine. But the conditions aren’t right for a seed to grow there. The soil is far too compacted, too trampled upon (or driven over, in a modern setting), so the seed would just sit there on top and would eventually be either crushed or snatched away by the birds. This is what happens very often when the Word of God is preached. Instead of listening to and pondering the message, people tune it out, think about other things, or immediately reject whatever is said because it challenges what they currently believe. It happens out there in the world. It can happen right here during the sermon. The hearers hear but don’t really listen.

Then there’s seed that falls on rocky soil. There are some softer spots on top. The seed can germinate and begin to grow quickly, but it doesn’t get very far, because the rocks keep the roots from going downward and outward, so there’s not enough moisture to keep the process going. The hot sun soon overpowers the growing plant, and it withers and dies. This is what happens very often when the Word of God is preached. A person believes, and is excited about the Gospel, but there’s no deepening of the roots, no ongoing watering with Word and Sacrament, no struggle to resist temptation or to bear the cross. And so faith dies. It happens all the time.

Then there’s seed that falls among thorns or weeds. The soil itself may be fine. The seed itself is potent as ever. But a plant that has to compete with weeds almost always loses, because part of the curse of this sinful world is that the weeds grow faster than the good plants, they’re hardier than the good plants, and they end up choking the good plant, stealing its moisture, blocking its sunlight, tangling up the roots and the leaves of the good plant, until its growth is stunted, so that it never reaches maturity or puts forth edible fruit. This is what happens very often when the Word of God is preached. A person begins life as a Christian, grows for a while, goes to church for a while, but then the cares, riches, pleasures, and concerns of this life take over. God and His Word become less and less important as other things become more and more important, and so they don’t finish the process of the Christian life, meaning, they don’t finish life as Christians. What makes this disruption of the Christian life so insidious is that it’s sometimes a slow process that goes unnoticed until it’s too late, until the person is left with nothing but an outer husk of faith, without its saving power.

But, finally, sometimes, the seed falls on good soil—those who hear the Word with a good and noble heart, keep it, and bear fruit with patience. In them, the process of germination and growth and bearing of fruit is allowed to continue, until it’s finished, until it’s time for the harvest, and the farmer and his family, and the whole village that he feeds with his crops, rejoice together in what that tiny seed has now become.

Now the question that really matters: What kind of soil are you? Or, maybe a better question, where are you in this process? What are the conditions like around you? You’ve all heard the Word of God. You’ve all confessed your faith in the Lord Jesus and your commitment to follow Him, to follow His teachings, so His Word has penetrated into your hearts. But do you still hear His Word sometimes without really listening, without pondering what you hear? It can happen. Are you continually deepening the roots of your faith through regularly hearing and learning God’s Word, so that you’re ready to face temptation and persecution when they come? Are you watching out for those annoying cares and riches and pleasures of this life that threaten to creep up on you and choke the faith God has given you, that threaten to keep you from doing all the good works God created for you to do, to keep you from finishing your lives as Christians? Are you hearing the Word with a good and noble heart? Will you hold onto it, and bear fruit with patience?

No one can fully answer all those questions until all the obstacles and disruptions have been overcome, until you reach the end of your life with your faith still intact and with the harvest of works God is seeking from the seed He has sown in you. But the questions, like the parable itself, are there to help you, to guide you, so that you don’t take the Word of God for granted when it’s preached, because, if you’re prepared for the conditions that you know can come along and adversely affect your faith, and disrupt your growth in the Christian life, then you’ll guard against those conditions. You’ll recommit yourself to hearing God’s Word fruitfully and to putting it into practice. And you’ll remember that you must keep doing this, slowly and steadily hearing and growing, hearing and growing, throughout your whole life. But God Himself will see to the growth. The power for you to grow is not in you but in the seed, where it’s always been. It’s in the powerful Word of God, which is like the rain and snow that come down from heaven and water the earth, making it bud and flourish. Such is My Word, God says, that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish that which I purpose, and will succeed in the thing for which I sent it. May God’s Word always find, and create, in you a good and noble heart. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! Amen.

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