Tag Archives: Righteousness of Christ

Covered – Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14 for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Matthew 22:1-14

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Weddings and marriage are all over the Bible. Scripture opens with the marriage of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2:21-25). It closes with the wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-9). And one of the most common pictures of God’s relationship to His people is marriage (Is. 54:5-8; Hos. 2:16-20; Eph. 5:25-32). So when we hear this parable opening with a king giving a wedding feast for his son, it sounds like it’s going to be a really good story.

The king sends out an announcement that he’s prepared the dinner. Oxen and fattened calves have been slaughtered. Remember how the father of the prodigal son had one fattened calf for the feast that welcomed his lost son home (Lk. 15:23)? Well, this king had all the grills and smokers going for this party.

But the parable takes an unexpected turn because the guests don’t show up. Some fancy weddings will have valet parking, but this wedding has chauffeurs that go out to bring the guests in. So, the king is befuddled that no one will come. He sends his servants back out to tell everyone about the feast. “Tell them about the menu and the venue. Tell them it’s all ready.” The servants go again, but this time, they don’t come back. The people who were invited take the servants and beat them, treat them shamefully, and kill them.

The king is done sending his servants. Now, he sends his military, and they level the place, utterly destroying it. The king, his son, and the soon-to-be princess are waiting at the palace to begin the wedding, but there are no guests. The king sends out more servants to find anyone who will to come to the feast—both good and bad (Mt. 22:10).

So, the parable started out good, got messy in the middle, but now it seems like it’s getting better. The reception is filled, the music is playing, the food is served, the dancing has begun. You can imagine the king going around the ballroom with his goblet filled and greeting the guests. But then, he comes to this guy who isn’t clothed in a wedding garment. The king confronts him, “How did you get in here without a wedding garment?” And the man is speechless. So, the king has his servants bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth—in other words, nothing but sorrow and anger. “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

The parable is a warning because it’s a picture of what has happened. God’s own people rejected and killed the prophets. Even worse, when Christ came, they rejected Him. So, God destroyed them. But the parable is still happening, even right now. God’s invitation to come be a guest at His feast is still being extended throughout the world.

Dear saints, we are the ones who were in the roads and gathered from all sorts of different places to be at this banquet. You have been brought into the feast to celebrate the wedding of God’s Son. Now, the question is: are you worthy to be there? Do you have the right clothes, or are you at the king’s feast without the wedding garment? Is the king going to see you and cast you out?

There’s no question that this king has a strict dress code. But is it reasonable for him to be so hard-nosed about what people are wearing? Remember where these guests came from. They were just out wandering around the roads and doing who knows what. Why should they be expected to have the right clothing for such a fancy feast?

It’s true that you can’t just show up to a wedding. It takes time to get ready—especially when the wedding is in the palace. You can imagine the people wandering along the roads hearing the invitation. The servants come up to them and say, “I’m here to bring you to the palace for the royal wedding.” They would probably say, “I can’t go like this, all dusty and dirty in these old rags.” But the servants would reply, “Don’t worry about that. The king has plenty of extravagant robes. We’ll find one just for you.”

This was how it was done back then. If you went to the palace, the king would provide the right clothing for you to be there. If you were going to go to the palace, the king would deck you in fancy new clothes that would have been way out of your price range. If you were going to see the king, the king had to make you ready. This is how it was then, and this is how it is for us now.

If you or I are going to appear before God in the splendor of His holiness, He has to make us ready. He must provide the robe and give us what is needed. And He does this in holy Baptism. Galatians 3:27 says, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

Einar, that brings me to you. Today, Christ has joined you to Himself in those waters. Our eyes could only see water being poured on your head. But our ears heard Jesus joining His Word and promise to that water. Scripture promises that God saw you receive the righteousness of Christ (2 Co. 5:21). Einar and all you saints, Ephesians 5 says that Jesus has given Himself unto death so that He might sanctify you, having cleansed you by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present you to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that you might be holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:25-27). In other words, you have been brought into the wedding banquet of the King of kings, and you have been covered in the most precious and expensive garment of Christ’s righteousness. That garment is free of charge to you, but it is fully paid for by the Blood of Christ.

That covering isn’t a new idea. God has been covering His people ever since the Fall into sin. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they knew they were naked, so they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves when God showed up (Gen. 3:7). God had something better. God Himself slaughtered an animal to show that He would accept the death of another in place of the sinner. From that animal, God made garments of skins that clothed and covered their nakedness and shame (Gen. 3:21).

Dear saints, you are covered. In those waters, Christ has joined Einar to Himself, and He has joined you to Himself. The promise from Galatians 3, that those who are Baptized into Christ have put on Christ, that isn’t wishful thinking. You are covered and you remain covered not by adding your own works or your own righteousness to dazzle up the garment. You remain covered by faith. Philippians 3 puts it this way, you are found in Christ, not having a righteousness of your own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. It is the righteousness that comes from God that depends on faith (Php. 3:9).

Don’t be that man without the wedding garment. He insisted on keeping his own dirty, stinky, stained, ragged clothes. He did not want the covering the king had provided. In other words, he didn’t have faith in the king’s provision. Don’t do that.

God has covered you. The garment is His own precious Son, and it remains yours by faith. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.

Visible & Invisible – Sermon on Matthew 18:1-11 for St. Michael & All Angels (Observed)

Matthew 18:1-11

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

In April 1961, the Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, became the first man to go into outer space and orbit the earth. Sometime later, the leader of the atheist Soviet Union was on an anti-religion campaign. The leader said that they had been to space and hadn’t seen God. The conclusion he wanted people to draw was that this must be proof that God doesn’t exist. C. S. Lewis heard about this and wrote a short essay called “The Seeing Eye.” In that essay, Lewis shreds that argument. He says that looking for God in outer space is like reading every play Shakespeare wrote in the hope of finding Shakespeare as one of the characters.

Shakespeare is in every play he wrote, but he isn’t a character on the stage like Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Romeo, or Juliet. God created the universe, so creation is the set. You could travel millions of light years and still be no closer to God than you already are sitting in this sanctuary. God is not an item to be found inside the universe He authored. We know Him because He has entered His own creation. The second Person of the Trinity became flesh and shed His blood to save it. Lewis named his essay “The Seeing Eye” because we need to be given one.

In our Old Testament reading (2 Kgs. 6:8-17), Elisha’s servant needed a seeing eye to keep him from despairing. All his eye could see was the human army surrounding him and Elisha. What he couldn’t see was that the mountain was already full of allies—the Lord’s horses and chariots of fire. When God gave the servant a seeing eye, nothing new arrived. The only thing that changed was that the servant could see the whole stage.

The Soviet leader looked at outer space and said God was not there. Elisha’s servant looked at the enemy and said they were finished. Both trusted eyes that cannot see the whole set. We just confessed what an opened eye sees: God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. The Nicene Creed names two realms in one creation—visible and invisible. The authors of the creed didn’t make this up. They got that from Colossians 1:16, which puts it this way: “By Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” God gives us that seeing eye through His Word. Some things are real even though our physical eyes don’t see them. The invisible is not a different universe. There are not two creations. There is one. The Lord’s host that surrounded Elisha and his servant was notsomewhere else. It was on that mountain near Dothan.

Even though we aren’t surrounded by the army of Syria, the same angel hosts are present with us right now in this sanctuary. If God gave us seeing eyes, we’d be stunned, amazed, and, maybe, fearful (Dan. 8:16-17; Lk. 1:11-12, 29-30, 2:9; Mt. 28:2-5; etc.) at the number of creatures the Lord has surrounding us. We take attendance here each week. But the numbers on those slips of paper are always wrong. (No offense to you who have taken attendance.) Hebrews 12 says that you have come to Mt. Zion and to “innumerable angels in festal gathering” (Heb. 12:22). In other words, every congregation is a “mega church.” We just can’t perceive it, but just because we can’t perceive it doesn’t make it any less true.

Scripture calls the angels “ministering spirits” sent out to serve Christians (Heb. 1:14). In this Gospel text, Jesus says that the little ones who believe in Him have angels who always see the face of God the Father (Mt. 18:10). The angels are with us wherever we go because God sends them to guard us in all our ways (Ps. 91:11-12). 

These angels also worship God (Is. 6:2-3; Neh. 9:6; Lk. 2:13-14; Heb. 1:6), and fight on our behalf (Rev. 12:7-12). These angels are holy, which is why the Church calls them ‘saints.’ The word ‘saint’ simply means a ‘holy being.’ You are also saints, but in a different way than the angels. Angels have a holiness that is native to their being. God created them good (Gen. 1:31). You have a holiness as well, but you have a holiness that is bestowed, imputed, and given through faith.

Here’s the amazing thing: You are not less holy than the angels. Even though you have sinned, you through faith (Php. 3:9) have the righteousness of Jesus Himself (1 Co. 1:30; 2 Co. 5:21). The angels look at you and are aware of your sins. But when the angels see your righteous and holy status in Christ, Scripture seems to imply that their mouths drop in amazement (1 Pet. 1:12).

So, yes, it’s appropriate to call the angel Michael a ‘saint,’ just as it would be appropriate to call Gabriel or any other angel a ‘saint.’ But, Christian, you have a greater holiness than the angels because you have the righteousness of Christ through faith. They don’t.

That being said, we also know that not all the angels are saints. The devil led many angels in a rebellion against God. Those fallen angels are demons, and they hate us. A compelling argument for why Satan led this rebellion is that he didn’t want to be a ministering spirit. He hated the fact that we are made in God’s image and were given dominion over creation. That jealousy may have led to his rebellion. Scripture doesn’t say that in so many words. But what it does say is clear. Our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers over this present darkness, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12). All of those are titles for the demons.

In the prophet Daniel, the Bible shows that these demons can stand behind kings and nations. Daniel is told that the “prince of the kingdom of Persia”—this refers to a demon—withstood God’s messenger for 21 days until Michael came to help him (Dan. 10:12-13). From that, I think we can infer that the demons can stand behind organizations that promote abortion, groups that try to redefine marriage, many evil and oppressive governments, and all sorts of other groups that seek to destroy and deface humanity.

The demons also start false religions. In Galatians 1:8, Paul says that even if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the Gospel of Jesus, let him be accursed. The false religion of Islam claims to originate from a message brought by the angel Gabriel. Mormonism claims an angelic origin as well. Both claim to have angelic origins, but both claim a different salvation. Don’t listen to them.

The same thing goes for worldly spiritualism. Ouija boards, horoscopes, psychics, and the use of crystals are not toys. They are not cute hobbies that try to manage the invisible realm. They are demonic portals. I’m going to give you an example. Just know that I am going to be vague on specifics on purpose to protect the identity of the people involved.

Several years ago, I got a call from someone late at night. This person had recently had a family member die in a tragic way. This person asked, “Pastor, is there a way I can talk to my dead relative?” I said there wasn’t and cited several Scripture passages as proof (Lk. 16:19-31; Lev. 19:31; Dt. 18:10-12; Ecc. 9:5-6, 10; Job 7:9-10; Is. 8:19-20). This person said that their significant other insisted that using crystals was a way to communicate with the dead. But I stopped this person right then. I said, “If you’re hearing voices while using crystals, you’re hearing the voice of demons.” There was silence on the other end of the phone. I asked, “Have you been doing this tonight?” “Yes.” So, I asked, “What did the voice say tonight that troubled you?” After a brief pause, the person responded, “How did you know?” Well, I knew because getting a call like that at 11:00 PM isn’t normal. And I know what Scripture teaches about the demons. They are real, and they will try to lure people into horrible things. I told this person to get away from their significant other. For the next several minutes, I heard this person walk out of the house, run outside, get into a vehicle, and another person pound on the window of that vehicle while screeching in a non-human voice. The entire time, I prayed for God’s protection and that the blood of Jesus would guard this individual.

For the next several weeks, I regularly talked with this person. Sadly, my contact with this person was received less and less. Today, I couldn’t tell you how this person is doing. Pray for this person.

I share this story for two purposes: First, to warn you. The demonic forces are real and they are active. They will do all sorts of things to lure you into their trap and influence. Don’t dabble in the demonic. Second, to prepare you. Even if you aren’t drawn to dabbling in these things, you probably know someone who is. You might be the instrument God uses to draw someone else out of and away from these demonic practices. Yes, the demons are real, but, God be praised, they are already defeated. 

Scripture is clear. The Son of God took on flesh and blood “that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). Christ disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame at the cross (Col. 2:15). St. Michael and the angels do throw the dragon down. The brothers conquer him “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (Rev. 12:11).

The demons do not get the whole stage. Elisha’s servant could only see the Syrian army. But the mountain was not empty then, and it is not empty now.

That is why, in this Gospel reading, Jesus will not let the disciples stare at a greatness they can see. The humble state of a little one who is dependent on another is the greatness Jesus points you to. Do not despise that dependence.

Dear saints, you are the little ones that Jesus talks about in this Gospel reading. Like that little child Jesus put in the midst of the disciples, you are dependent upon another—upon Jesus. God has sent His angels to serve you. They behold the Father’s face, and His face is turned toward you.

Christ has come for you. “The Son of Man came to save the lost” (Mt. 18:11; Lk. 19:10). The Author has walked onto His own set. He became the little Child in the center of all history and grew into the man who is crucified, risen, and returning for the lost.

Today, we thank God for His work through the angels He sends to serve us. And we praise Him because through His Word, your Savior has given you the seeing eye to know about the visible and invisible realities. The mountain is not empty. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.