Sunday, October 27, Reformation Day… “How To Be Free”
Psalm 46; Revelation 14:6-7; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36 or Matthew 11:12-19
Divine Service III with Holy Communion
Hymns… #656 “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”; #953 “We All Believe In One True God”; #948 “All Glory Be to God Alone”; #655 “Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word”; #568 “If Your Beloved Son, O God”
“Redeemed” (Big Daddy Weave)
Seems like all I could see was the struggle
Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past
Bound up in shackles of all my failures
Wondering how long is this gonna last
Then you look at this prisoner and say to me
"Son, stop fighting a fight, that’s already been won"
I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains, wipe away every stain
I'm not who I used to be
I am redeemed, I am redeemed
All my life I have been called unworthy
Named by the voice of my shame and regret
But when I hear you whisper "Child, lift up your head"
I remember, oh God, You're not done with me yet
I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains, wipe away every stain
Now I'm not who I used to be
Because I don't have to be the old man inside of me
Cause his day is long dead and gone
Because I've got a new name
A new life, I'm not the same
And a hope that will carry me home
I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains, and wipe away every stain
Cause I'm not who I used to be
I am redeemed, You set me free
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
Jesus declared to the Jews in John 8 that He was “the Light of the World,” the One sent by the Father from Heaven to save them from their sins, and to bring them light and knowledge and grace and forgiveness and peace. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” Jesus told them. Some of the Jews believed Him – at some level, anyway - but that word “free” hit a raw nerve with some of them. The Jews were a proud people - proud of their heritage, proud of their ancestry, proud that they’d “never been slaves to anyone.” (Although their history showed that wasn’t true; they’d been slaves to the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, and Babylon; and now they were slaves to Rome). But Jesus wasn’t talking about political freedom or the freedom to live as you please; He was talking about being free from sin, and from all the things sin causes.
What is a sin, anyway? Who gets to say what a sin is? You and I don’t get to define it; God does. God has made it clear enough in His Word what’s right and wrong, if people would only read it and listen to it. And God has given us all a conscience, “written His Law on our hearts”, “so that all men are without excuse.” God had given us laws, rules, and Commandments to follow - for our good, because He loves us, and because He wants us to be happy. If we’d only follow those blessed “thou shall’s” and “thou shalt not’s,” our lives and our families, our communities and our nation, would be so blessed.
Sin is the cause of all the blatant and obvious terrible things that go on in the world - hunger and poverty, violence and murder, hatred, riots, conflicts, and wars and such. And sin makes prisoners of us all, St. Paul says, by making a prison of our heads, hearts, and souls. Sin is the cause of all our struggles. Sin leaves us stuck with the “ghosts that live in our past,” bound up in the shackles of our failures, and living with our shame and regrets. Where can you go to escape from your own head? Where is our hope? Where can we go to find peace? St. Paul faced this question and called out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Martin Luther, after years of self-abuse – laying a whip to his own back, starving himself, freezing in the cold, doing everything he could to try to satisfy God - finally said, “The harder I tried to satisfy God, the worse I felt.”
What do you do when you’re wearing those heavy chains of all your past sins, and you realize that nothing on earth can lift the weight or take away the stain? No good or charitable works, no doing good deeds, no amount of giving, tithing, or putting money in the plate; no penance, no sacrifices, no “Lord, look what I did for you” will do us any good. No matter what I do or how hard I try, the “old man inside of me” lives on. How can we be free? St. Paul, once known as Saul the Pharisee, was by his own admission a “persecutor, a murderer, and a violent man;” and he lays out the answer for us in Romans 3 – the only real answer there is. Martin Luther cited this passage from Paul as the words that set his poor heart free and brought peace and joy back to his life; and it’s everything we need, too. I’d like to get a little practical, and take “how to be free” step by step, on this Reformation Day.
Step #1 in “How to be free”: Recognize that you are accountable for your sin.
“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.” (Rom. 3:19)
The world we live in isn’t really big on accountability these days, you may have noticed. To be accountable means that if you mess up or you’re in the wrong, you admit it, and accept the penalty for whatever it is you’ve done. It’s the opposite of denial, or making excuses, or passing the buck, or looking around for someone else to blame. It takes courage to stand up and say, “Yes, I’m a sinner,” or “Yes, I was wrong.” The word Paul uses for ‘accountable’ here is the Greek word hupodikos, which is a word he borrows from Roman courts and legal proceedings. It literally means “to be brought to trial,” or “to be answerable before a court or law.” In this case, the trial he’s talking about is the one where we at last stand before God, to be judged by His holy Law. God’s Law – “what the Law says” – is that you’re guilty, and well deserving of the penalty for your sins. No argument, no excuses, nothing to do but shut your mouth and accept the verdict. This first step is critical for us, difficult as it can be; because as long as we’re downplaying our sins, or making excuses for them, or denying that our sins are sins, we’ll be living in a prison of lies, dishonesty, and self-deceit, and we’ll never be free.
Step #2 in “How to be free”: Abandon your own attempts at righteousness.
“Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” (Romans 3:20)
Give up on any idea that you can fix this thing yourself, or that you can earn your own freedom, or be “released on good behavior.” If you can somehow manage to keep those good Ten Commandments perfectly, in thought, word, and deed, all the days of your life, then keeping the Law can save you; but that particular water went under the bridge a long, long time ago. To be “conscious of sin” means looking at what God says, and realizing, “God wants me to do this, and I haven’t done it,” or “God has forbidden this thing, and I’ve done it.” Coming to understand what a sinner you are, and what your sins deserve, can certainly leave you feeling like an unworthy failure; and I guess that’s just the point. God has to break us down, knock all the pride and self-sufficiency out of us, before He can help us, heal us, and begin to make us what He wants us to be. “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up again.”
Step #3 in “How to be free”: Turn back to Scripture. “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” (Romans 3:21)
To be righteous means “to be right before God.” We’ve already established that there’s nothing we sinners can do on our own to make that happen. If we truly, seriously, open God’s Word to read it and seek His truth, we’ll certainly see God’s Law in it. His decrees, statutes, and standards, are clear enough for anyone to see. And if the Law were all there was, we certainly would find ourselves in a bad way. “Lord, You are proved right and justified when You judge,” one of the prophets says. But, as Dr. Luther was happy to point out, there are two great doctrines, two great teachings, in God’s Word. There is the Law, which tells us what God commands us to do – but there’s also the sweet Gospel, the Good News that there’s a way out of this prison we’re in. The Law shows us our sin, but the Gospel shows us our Savior. And it’s not that the Old Testament is all Law, and the New Testament is Gospel; it’s that the whole blessed Word God has given us, from Genesis to Revelation, points us to our Savior. “The Law and the Prophets testify,” Paul says. The Old Testament tells us about a Savior who is to come; and the New Testament tells us the wonderful story about His coming; but it’s all about Jesus. I’ve had people tell me, many times, “I can talk to God from a fishing boat or a duck blind,” and that’s true, as far as it goes. But a sunset or a good day on the water will only tell you there must be a God. God’s Word is the only place to go to find out that God has a Son, and about what God’s Son has done because He loves you, and where you’ll find “the truth that sets you free.” Open it up and see!
Step #4 in “How to be free”: Believe in Jesus Christ for forgiveness for your sin.
“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Romans 3:22a).
Righteousness – being right before God, being forgiven and free from your sin – comes through faith in Jesus Christ, and by no other means. And faith – the ability to believe the Good News – is itself a gift from God. We can’t find this thing called saving faith on our own – but we can open our ears to listen to God when His Spirit calls us, and we can open His good Word to read it. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes through the Word of Christ,” Paul says. We can pray for the gift of faith, and ask God to increase our faith, and God will always hear and answer that prayer. Again there’s Jesus’ promise: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Step #5 in “How to be free”: Accept that your redemption is only by the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:22b-24)
“Justified freely by His grace” is such a wonderful phrase; again, one of those little phrases that Luther said freed his heart and gave him back his life. Justified, forgiven, made right with God, not because of anything I did, but because of what Jesus has done for me. We’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, fallen short of His standard, fallen short of the mark – but our redemption has come by Christ Jesus. “Redemption” is another word Paul has borrowed from the Roman courts. The Greek word there is apolutrosis, which means, “a release affected by payment of a ransom.” We were all, as we’ve established well enough this morning, prisoners of sin. We were owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by sin and death and the devil – wearing those heavy chains, saddled with a debt of sin we could never hope to repay, “without a hope in the world to be free,” Paul says. So who paid our ransom? How is it that we can be here today, free from our chains, and overwhelmed with joy and thankfulness at the wonderful grace and mercy of God?
St. Paul tells us that “God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement, though faith in His blood.” (Romans 3:25) “Atonement” is another wonderful word, also borrowed from the Roman courts. Atonement means “to make a thing settled or equal or right.” It means if there was a penalty or a fine to be paid, the debt has now been settled, the matter has been adjudicated, and the prisoner can be set free. God required the Hebrews, in Old Testament times, to bring sacrifices in order to make atonement for their sins; to bring their perfect lambs to God, lamb after lamb, year after year. Those sacrificial lambs could never, and were never intended, to take away their sins forever, which is why they had to keep bringing them. God was giving them a sign and a symbol to keep them faithful and give them hope, something to point them forward and remind them that God would one day keep His promise and send them a Savior, a true Lamb, a perfect sacrifice, to take away their sin forever.
And God did this, says Paul, “…to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26). Jesus, the Lamb of God, was nailed to a cross to make atonement, to make satisfaction for our sins. We owed the debt, and Jesus in His mercy paid it. Why would God do such a thing? Why would He sacrifice His only Son for the likes of sinners like us? On the one hand, God by His nature has to be just, and act justly. God is holy, and His standard is holiness, and He’s promised to punish unholiness and sin. Sin is a debt that has to be paid. God’s heart-breaking dilemma is that the sinners deserving of death were His own dear children. Imagine if it was your child in the dock. God’s answer – how to be just, and also save and justify the children He loves – was to leave sin unpunished for thousands of years, until the time came at last to send His only Son to the world, to die on a cross for us all. “Forbearance” is another legal term. It means to forestall payment, to defer sentence, until such time as the court should see fit to call in the debt. When the time came, Jesus, in His love and mercy, gave Himself and shed His own blood for our sakes, so we could be redeemed and set free, and have a new life and a new name, and hope that would carry us home.
So, no more boasting, Paul says. No more boasting about our own works or our own goodness, or about what we’ve acquired for ourselves. In the end, what good would that do? Paul says in another place, “May I never boast except in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord, through who the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” In Jesus’ name; Amen.
I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains, wipe away every stain
I'm not who I used to be
I am redeemed, thank God, redeemed