Remain faithful to the Lord (Daniel 6:10-12, 16-23)

October 28,2012

Dear friends in Christ.

I don’t know if you realized it when you came to church this morning, but today is a very special day.  Now, I admit, it may not be as special as Christmas or Easter, but it is still an important day.  It is still an important day, because today we are celebrating the festival of the Reformation.  We are celebrating how the Lord used a simple man named Martin Luther to preach the Light of the Gospel to a world that was darkened with false teaching and sin.  We are celebrating the fact that it was the Lord who enabled Martin Luther to remain faithful to the Lord even when it seemed that death was certainly coming down upon him.  And, as we celebrate this festival this morning, we will do so by taking a look at another man who also faithfully served the Lord, even under the penalty of death.  For this morning, we will remind ourselves of Daniels life, how he remained faithful to the Lord and how he trusted that the Lord God would, indeed, deliver him.  Just listen to the situation in which Daniel found himself in our lesson today, “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. 11 Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. 12 So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree: “Did you not publish a decree that during the next thirty days anyone who prays to any god or man except to you, O king, would be thrown into the lions’ den?” The king answered, “The decree stands—in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.”" (Daniel 6:10–12, NIV84)

Now, as you undoubtedly remember from your Sunday school lessons, the decree Daniel mentions was the decree which some of the governors had persuaded the king to put into effect.  It was the decree that stated that anyone who prayed to any god other than the king for the next 30 days would be thrown into the lion’s den.  It was a decree that they had persuaded the king into making, because those specific governors were jealous of Daniel, who would soon be promoted as head of all the governors, and they simply couldn’t stomach the fact that this captive Israelite would now be their boss.  Yet even when Daniel heard the decree had been made, he remained faithful to the Lord.  Even though he knew it might cost him his life, he went home, opened the windows of his house that faced east, knelt down on the floor and began to pray, just as he always had.

But now comes the question:  “What would you have done if you were in Daniel’s shoes?  Would you have gone home, gone up to your upper room, opened the windows which faced Jerusalem, and prayed to the Lord as you always had?  Or, would you have gone home, closed all your shades and blinds, and timidly prayed to the Lord?”  It’s a tough question to answer, and I have to admit, I don’t know what I would have done.  I hope and pray that I would have had the courage and the faith to remain faithful to my Lord even when my life was on the line, and not hidden out. 

Thankfully, we are not living in a land that passes such laws.  Rather, we are living in a land where we are free to worship the Lord any way we wish to.  We are living in a land, where praying to the Lord does not constitute a danger to our lives.  However, we are living in a land where satan is continually setting subtle traps designed to lead us away from the Lord our God.  For example: how many times this week did a love scene on TV draw your attention that much closer to the program you were watching?  How many times did you laugh at a joke which had sexual connotations buried within it?  How many times did foul language echo from your lips?  How many times did you enjoy hearing and passing on the latest gossip you heard while down town?  How many times did the thought of reading your Bible completely fail to cross your minds?  These are but a few of the traps satan uses to lead us away from the Lord.  For he is truly a crafty advisory!  Rather than hitting us with an all out assault, which threatens our very lives, he comes to us in subtle, tricky ways.  Rather than trying to knock us off the path to heaven in one foul swoop, he patiently moves us away from the Lord.  Inch by grudging inch he works to move us from faithfulness to complacency and from complacency to rampant unbelief.

This is why our God is calling on us today to remain faithful to him, because even though our physical lives are not being threatened, our spiritual lives are on the line.  If we should fall to our enemy’s temptations, we could easily be led into unbelief.  If we should be led into unbelief, we would miss out on the forgiveness which Jesus alone can offer.  If we miss out on the forgiveness which Jesus offers, we will miss out on eternal life all together.  This is why our Lord calls us to remain faithful to him, because the only way to fight against temptations like these are to remain rooted in the Word of God.  The only way to avoid the traps that satan continually places before us is to make regular use of the opportunities we have to worship the Lord our God here in church and to partake of the Sacrament of Holy Communion.  When we do these things, we will be growing in our faith and knowledge of God.  We will be better prepared and equipped to fight against the assaults of satan.  We will even find that through the working of the Holy Spirit in the Word of God, our desire will be to remain faithful to the Lord whatever the cost.  For even if we should lose our physical lives in faithful service to him, we know eternal live awaits, because as we know, he alone is our Salvation.  This is why the Lord is calling on us to remain faithful to him even though it might cost us our lives here on earth.  Remain faithful to him, trusting that the Lord our God will indeed deliver us.

This is exactly what Daniel did!  Even though he knew his faith might cost him his life, Daniel remained faithful to the Lord and trusted that the Lord would indeed deliver him.  He trusted that the Lord would either deliver him from the hand of the king and the paw of the lion, or the Lord would simply deliver him to eternal life where he would never have to face the troubles of this world ever again.  For Daniel, the outcome didn’t matter, he remained faithful to the Lord and the Lord delivered him from the paw of the lion, as we learn in our lesson today: “At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. 20 When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?” 21 Daniel answered, “O king, live forever! 22 My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king.” 23 The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God." (Daniel 6:19–23, NIV84)

Well, in the same way that Daniel remained faithful to the Lord, the Lord wants us to remain faithful to him in how we live our lives.  He wants us to remain faithful to him all the days of our lives, trusting that he will deliver us from whatever calamity befalls us.  But how do we do this?  How do we remain faithful to the Lord in any and every situation trusting that he will deliver us just as he promised?  We dive headlong into the Word of our God!  Though our faith is strengthened by regularly gathering together for worship, when we realize that we are awake for an average of 120 hours each week, spending only one hour with God means that there are 119 hours each week that you are being bombarded with worldly ideas and philosophies.  That’s 119 hours each week that satan is working to confuse us and cause us to doubt the Lord’s promises to deliver us from every circumstance.  That means that during those 119 hours each week, satan is doing everything he can to keep us from remaining faithful to the Lord.

Sadly, this is the type of faith-life that the average Christian has.  1 hour with God a week, and then the rest of the week is spent without even thinking about him.  Would you even think about feeding your family only once each week?  Yet this is what many Christians do and struggle all the harder to remain faithful to the Lord because of it.  This is why we need to be in the Word of God each and every day.  For it is in the Word of God where we receive the soothing balm of the Lord’s comfort; the comfort that we receive through the gospel message of salvation.  For it is in the Gospel that we are reminded of Jesus Christ our Savior. It is in the Gospel that we are reminded how God took us from our dry, dusty and dirty existence as sinners and led us into the cool refreshing showers of Jesus blood which washed away every spot and stain of our sins.  It is in the Gospel that we are reminded how Jesus has already delivered us from the curse of our sins and the punishment of eternal death by bringing us into a right relationship with our God.  This is the comfort we find in the Gospel, and this is the comfort, which moves us to remain faithful to the Lord, trusting that he will indeed deliver us.  Though we may not be facing the threat of death at the paws of hungry lions, though we may not be facing a room crowded with people who are calling on us to renounce our Savior, we do face many things which satan uses to lead us away from the Lord.  Knowing this, continue to stand fast in our Savior’s teaching!  Continue to remain faithful to the lord trusting that when he does deliver you, it will either be from harm while in this life, or it will be to his side in the life to come.

This is how Daniel was able to remain faithful to the Lord.  He remained faithful to the Lord in all things because he was rooted in the Word.  This is how Luther was able to do it.  Though there were many people who wanted to take his life and many temptations to turn from the Lord, because he was constantly in God’s Word, he, through the power of the Holy Spirit was able to remain faithful as well.  So then, heed the examples the Lord has given you.  Dive into the Scriptures so that you might continually strengthen your faith, and remain faithful to the Lord in all things.  Remain faithful to the Lord even if it should one day cost you your life.  Remain faithful to the Lord trusting that he will indeed deliver you from harm.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN

Produce fruits of faith for the Lord (Isaiah 5:1-7)

October 14, 2012

Dear friends in Christ.

A couple of weeks ago, as I was driving up to the cities, I saw a sign for Minnesota Harvesters, and my mind was immediately filled with memories.  It was when I was in grade school, 7th or 8th grade that our class took a trip up to Minnesota Harvesters.  We had the opportunity to ride horses and walk through the apple orchard.  I still remember it because when we took that trip we were in one of the last years of the drought of the 1980’s.  It hadn’t rained much if at all that summer, yet, when we arrived I was amazed to see rows and rows of trees with branches bowing low due to the weight of their fruit. It seemed that no matter which direction I would look, all I could see was tree after tree producing an excellent crop of ripe red apples.  All I could see was trees doing exactly what they were grown to do—producing fruit for the orchards owners.

Well, in many ways, this orchard is a picture of the very thing that the Lord wants to find when he looks at the lives of his faithful children here on earth!  For when the Lord looks at our lives he hopes to see tree after tree, or to use the illustration from our lesson today, vine after vine producing fruits of faith our of love for the Lord our God.  In fact, as we study the lesson before us this is the very thing that the Lord our God will be calling on us to do!  As we hear the Lord speaking to us through the prophet Isaiah, we will hear him calling on us to produce fruits of faith for the Lord!  He will be calling on each and every one of us to produce fruits.  Let’s take a look at what the Lord tells us in our lesson today: “I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. 2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. 3 “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? 5 Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. 6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.” 7 The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress." (Isaiah 5:1–7, NIV84)

Fruits of faith are the very thing that the Lord wanted his people to produce.  He wanted to see their faith showing itself in love and action as they lived in the vineyard that the Lord himself had prepared for them.  The problem, however, was that Israel was not producing the fruits of faith for which the Lord was looking!  Though the Lord himself had prepared Israel as his vineyard and planted them as the garden of his delight, they did not produce the fruit that the Lord expected.  But when we think of Israel’s history, this truth becomes extremely sad, because it was the Lord who gave his people every possible advantage.  As we just reviewed in Bible Study, it was the Lord who freed the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt, leading them safely through The Red Sea to Mt. Sinai in Arabia.  It was the Lord who blessed them, even as he led them through the wilderness for forty years, so that their clothes and their shoes did not wear out, nor did their feet even swell during that time.  It was the Lord who fought for his people sending the hornet ahead of them and driving out the inhabitants of the land for them.  It was the Lord who gave them cities that they had not built and fields that they had not planted.  It was the Lord who built up the watchtower of the priesthood and the temple worship which was designed to draw the people ever closer to himself.  He even surrounded them with the hedge of the Law to keep them safe from the ungodly ways of the nations around them.

However, even though the Lord did all this and more for his people, they did not produce the fruits of faith for which he was looking, because in so many cases they were led away from the Lord by the allure of false gods.  For in the same way that the jewelry counter will stop most women, and even some men in their tracks, drawing them in for a closer look the charm of false gods drew the Israelites in.  In the same way that most women will lose their husbands to the mesmerizing glow of the TV during football season, so also the Lord lost so many of the Israelites to their fascination with idols.  Though they had been planted like grapevines in the rich dark earth of God’s Word and regularly received the abundant waters of God’s grace, the Israelites willfully sent their roots out into the gumbo of idolatry and the dry streams of false religion.  Because of this, even though Israel continued to live in the Lord’s vineyard, they were no longer producing fruits of faith for the Lord.  Rather, as Isaiah tells us, “they yielded only bad fruit.” (Isaiah 5:2, NIV84).

While it is true that Isaiah delivered this message to the Israelites nearly three thousand years ago, these words still apply to us today.  Though this section of Scripture clearly speaks of Israel as the Lord’s vineyard, we know that through faith in Jesus, we are living in the Lord’s vineyards even today.  We know that the Lord is looking to us to produce fruits of faith for him.  We know that he is regularly checking our branches to see what kinds of fruit we are producing. But the question is, “What kind of fruit are we producing?”  From this vantage point it’s hard to say, because only the Lord truly knows what kinds of fruit we are producing.

However, there is something we can say: we have been given just as many advantages as the Israelites.  For we are living in a land where we have the freedom to worship the Lord in whatever way we see fit.  We are living in a land where we have the freedom to speak to anyone and everyone about our Savior whenever we want to.  We are living in a time when God’s Word has been recorded for us in the pages of Scripture.  On top of that, we are living in an area where most of us could walk to church if we so desired, but even if you don’t live that close to church, there are very few of us who have to drive more than ten miles to get here.  Yet, the question is, are we taking advantage of those benefits?  Or are we becoming lax in our own spiritual lives and following the Israelites pattern of producing less and less fruit for the Lord?  Are we making sure that our roots are growing in the rich soil of God’s Word?  Or, are we beginning to send them over into the gumbo of idolatry and the dry deserts of false religion.  It kind of makes me wonder what the Lord would say if he spoke to us right now.  Would he praise us and encourage us?  Or would he say to us, “Now you dwellers in Le Sueur and people of this tri-county area, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?” (See Isaiah 5:3-4). 

What would the Lord say to us today?  Would he encourage us in our fruit producing?  Or would he say that we were beginning to follow the road the Israelites followed.  Sadly, for the Israelites, as they traveled the road of their lives they were producing fewer and fewer fruits for the Lord until the Lord had it in mind, finally, to destroy his vineyard.  Which is exactly what the Lord reveals when he says, “Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. 6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.”" (Isaiah 5:5–6, NIV84) 

Because the Israelites had turned away from their God and went off to follow idols, the Lord planned to destroy his vineyard, and that’s exactly what he did less than 150 years later.  He sent the Babylonians who came and destroyed Jerusalem and Judea.  They came and killed anyone who resisted.  They came and led whoever was left off into captivity.  This was the punishment the Lord had decided for Israel because they were no longer producing fruits of faith for him.  This was the punishment that they received because they continued to walk down the road of destruction even after countless warnings from the Lord.  But the scariest part about this is that this could well be the punishment, which the Lord has in store for us for the exact same reason.

For the truth is, even though you and I are part of the Lord’s vineyard, the majority of our country is not.  Though we are part of the Lord’s kingdom through faith, the majority of our world is producing nothing but bloodshed and cries of distress.  And if we should fail in our production of fruits for the Lord, the only thing left would be our own destruction.  But even though our nation and the rest of the world have begun traveling this path, you and I are still able to turn from the road of destruction.  We are able to turn from that road by turning to the Lord in repentance.  We can turn to the Lord knowing that the blood of our Savior has covered those times when we have neglected his Word.  We can turn to the Lord knowing that our Savior’s blood covers those times when we have failed to worship him.  In fact, we can turn to the Lord knowing that every sin we’ve ever committed has been removed by Jesus’ blood.  There is no sin too large and no sin to small, for Jesus blood covers all.

This is the message that shows our God’s great love for us, and this is the message that moves us to respond with our love.  For when we are reminded of how Jesus’ love for us led him to the cross to pay for our sins, our hearts are moved to give him thanks.  When we are reminded of how Jesus died for us even while we were still his enemies, we are moved to serve him with our lives.  In fact, this is the message that moves us to call our roots back from the gumbo and dry streams and drive them deep into the black earth of God’s Word.  This is the message that moves us to dust off at least one of our Bibles and begin reading again on a regular basis.  This is the message, which moves us to make time to read those short Meditation devotions after mealtime or at bedtime.  This is the message, the message of Christ’s love for us that moves us to meet together at the Lord’s house each week.  For here, in the Lord’s house, we have the opportunity to hear the Lord speaking to us in the liturgy, in the lessons, and even in the sermon; and here in the Lord’s house, we have the opportunity to speak to him through our prayers and our hymns.  These are fruits of faith, which are pleasing to the Lord.  These are the fruits of faith produced out of love for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

What a blessing to know that it is the Lord who moves us and enables us to produce fruits of faith for him.  Let us live in our love for him so that our lives may ever produce fruit for him.  May the Lord bless our lives so that our lives are filled with fruit in the same way those trees at Minnesota Harvesters were filled. That our lives may be lives of joy and serves to the Lord, ever producing fruit for him.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN

Remain Faithful to the Lord (Daniel 6:1-28)

July 22, 2011

Preached as Daniel

Dear friends in Christ.

If you’ll permit me, I’d like to tell you a story this morning.  It is a story filled with danger, struggles, hardships, and yes, even a little adventure.  It is a story with which you are very familiar, because it is a story that you learned when you were just little children, and it is a true story, which makes it all the better.  For the story I want to share with you this morning is the my story—my story of the things I endured as I sought to remain faithful to the Lord my God.

The year was 605 BC (roughly 400 years before the Savior would be born) and the time for Israel’s captivity was at hand.  The captivity which the Lord had promised through prophets like Jeremiah, Micah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah began as King Nebuchadnezzar invaded the land of Israel, bound King Jehoiakim with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.  (2 Kings 23:36-24:7; 2 Chronicles 34:5-8)  But not only did he take the king into custody, but he also took gold and silver articles from the Temple of the Lord, along with some of the young men from the royal family and nobility; “young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.” (Daniel 1:4, NIV84)

I was one of those men brought to Babylon where I was trained for three years before I entered the King’s service, and where, from the moment I arrived in Babylon, I was challenged as to how I was going to remain faithful to the Lord.  For you see, Babylon was the city that Nimrod had founded some years after the flood.  It was a great city in the very area where the Lord had confused the languages of the people after they had tried to build a tower to their glory so that they would not have to follow the Lord’s decree to spread out over the earth.  It was a city and an empire filled with all sorts of wealth and riches, peoples and nations, pleasures and diversions, and even though the name Babylon carries the meaning of “gate of god” it was clear that the Lord God was not worshiped in this city.  Rather people were “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power.”  (2 Timothy 3:2-5 NIV84) 

Interesting, isn’t it that the people of my day fit the very description of people that Paul spoke about in his letter to Timothy.  Yet the truth is, the people of my day were no different than the people of Paul’s Day nor than the people of your day.  It was because of this that I determined that I would do everything within my power to remain faithful to the Lord my God, and from the very moment that I determined to remain faithful to the Lord, I faced one challenge after another.  If I had time today I could take you through each one of them and show you just how the Lord blessed me as a struggled to remain faithful to him.  But since we don’t, let me take you through the story that has so often been called, Daniel and the Lion’s Den.

The year was 539 BC.  66 years had passed since I entered into the service of the Babylonian government.  The Babylonian empire had recently been taken over by the Medes and the Persians, who quickly set about establishing their empire in the place that the Babylonians so recently ruled, and it pleased King Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was [me]. The satraps were made accountable to [the administrators] so that the king might not suffer loss. Now [I] so distinguished [myself] among the administrators and the satraps by [my] exceptional qualities that the king planned to set [me] over the whole kingdom. (See: Daniel 6:1-3, NIV84)

This was something that just stuck in the craw of the other satraps and administrators.  They couldn’t stomach the idea that a foreigner, a Jew, no less, someone who did not worship their god Bel or any of the other gods of the Babylonian Pantheon, could possibly be placed in a position of authority over them.  They plotted and the schemed, and finally they came up with the plan to trap me in my faithfulness to the Lord.  They persuaded the King to sign a decree, a law if you will, stating that no one could pray to any god other than the king for the next 30 days.  They did this because they knew my heart, and they knew that I would not listen to the decree or pray to the king let alone other gods. They knew that I would remain faithful to the Lord.  Now, I cannot say that I wasn’t tempted to stop praying in my normal way, when I learned of the decree.  After all, the punishment was death by lions.  But even though I was tempted to be less than faithful to the Lord, the Lord gave me strength and the ability to remain faithful.    So, I simply did what I had always done.  I went upstairs to my room where the windows faced east toward Jerusalem, and I got down and prayed like I always did.  This time, as I expected, I was “discovered” by the others and tossed to the Lions.

You know how it happened.  You know how the Lord sent his angel to close the mouths of the lions and protect me, but the truth is, it could have gone the other way.  The Lord could have decided to let me be devoured by those lions, and allowed me to die in his name.  If he would have allowed me to die there, I was ready to go because I trusted in the Lord my God and knew that the Lord my God had the power to rescue me from the lions, and even if he didn’t I would remain faithful to him because I knew that he would carry me to his side where I would live with him forever.  Though the lions were not able to make a meal out of me, they made a very delicious meal out of those who sought to be rid of me when the King ordered that they take my place in the den and before they even reached the ground they were overcome by the lions. 

Now, why am I telling you all of this?  I am telling this to you because my story is not all that different than your story.  Just like me, you live in a great city and a great nation filled with all sorts of wealth and riches.  You live in a nation filled with all sorts of pleasures and diversions.  You live in a nation that though it was founded on Christian principles and values, it is quickly becoming more and more godless.  You live in a nation where shrines and temples to false gods cover the landscape. I’m not just talking about those religions that are obviously false and have absolutely no connection to the true God; I’m also talking about those churches that are supposed to be Christian, but no longer teach a Christ centered message.  You live in a nation where Atheism, which is the belief that there is no god, and Agnosticism, the belief that one cannot truly know if god exists, are becoming more and more popular.  You live in a nation that has blessed you with the freedom of religion, but certain groups are working very hard to make sure that this becomes a nation that establishes the freedom from religion.  You are living in a nation that is not that much different from ancient Babylon and the Lord your God is calling on you to remain faithful to him. 

But how do we do that?  The answer is simple!  We remain faithful to the Lord by remaining in his Word, for it is only through the Word of God that our faith is strengthened and our faith grows.  Just think about how your faith grows when you are regularly in church and you are regularly hearing the Word of God.  Just think about how your faith grows and how it is easier to avoid certain temptations when you are regularly partaking of the Lord’s Supper.  Just think about how your faith grows and how you are better prepared to remain faithful to the Lord when you are reading his Word for yourselves on a regular basis.  Just think about how your faith grows when you do these things, because you are convicted of your sins, and assured forgiveness from Jesus Christ your Savior.  Just think about how the Lord works in your hearts and how the Holy Spirit strengthens your faith and gives you that stronger conviction to live for your Savior, simply because you have been in the word. 

These are but a few of the blessings that the Lord gives when we remain faithful to him.  He blesses us with the assurance of the forgiveness of sins.  He blesses us with the assurance of life and salvation. He blesses us with the assurance that not only are our prayers heard, but they are also answered.  He blesses us with the power for Christian living.  He blesses us with the association of fellow Christians who are facing similar struggles so that we can encourage each other and build each other up as we remain faithful to the Lord.  He gives us the ability to stand up against temptations through Jesus Christ our Savior, and when we feel that we cannot stand up he assures us that we can hide ourselves in our Savior who will fight for us.  Though there are times when we do fail to remain faithful to the Lord and we fall into sin that one sin is never the end, because when we turn to the Lord in repentance, he forgives us.  He washes us clean.  He lavishes his grace on us, and he enables us to stand faithful once again.

Though remaining faithful to the Lord was not the easiest thing to do in Babylon, it was a very important thing for me to do.  Not only was it important for my own salvation, but it was also important that I remained faithful to the Lord to encourage my fellow Israelites who had also been brought to Babylon.  The same thing is true for you today.  Because you are living in a world where your Christian beliefs are being challenged, it is all the more important that you remain faithful to the Lord.  Because you are living in a land where Atheism is becoming more popular, where sexual sins are becoming normalized, where sexual perversions are thought of as alternate lifestyles, and where certain groups are seeking to do all they can to legislate Christianity to the point of nonexistence, it is all the more important for you to remain faithful to the Lord your God.  Though you may not have been threatened with lions because of your faith, we all face different kinds of persecutions because of our beliefs.  Yet, it is the Lord who delivers us from those persecutions. Though sometimes he uses them to help us grow in our trust of him and someday he might allow those persecutions to take our lives as he did with so many of the heroes of faith in his Word, we know that when we remain faithful to the Lord it is the Lord who blesses us.  We know that no matter what we face in this life, heaven is waiting for us.  We know that no matter what hardships the Lord brings into our lives, he is the one who will deliver us from them, either in this life or in the life to come by his side forever.

This is why it is so important for us to remain faithful to the Lord our God, because the Lord is our salvation.  Though I know you know my story so well because you learned it as little children, I hope that it has been a blessing to you.  I hope it has been a blessing to you and an encouragement to you to remain faithful to the Lord who always remains faithful to you.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN

Find your Wealth in teh Lord your God (Luke 12:13-21)

Dear friends in Christ.

John G. Wendel and his sisters were some of the most miserly people of all time. Although they had received a huge inheritance from their parents, they spent very little of it and did all they could to keep their wealth for themselves. John was able to influence five of his six sisters never to marry, and they lived in the same house in New York City for 50 years. When the last sister died in 1931, her estate was valued at more than $100 million. Her only dress was one that she had made herself, and she had worn it for 25 years. The Wendels had such a compulsion to hold on to their possessions that they lived like paupers. Though they were undoubtedly some of the wealthiest people of their day, they had completely missed out on the true wealth that can only be found in the Lord our God. In fact, as we study our Gospel lesson this morning we will hear Jesus calling on us to find our true wealth in the Lord our God.

To do this, to find our wealth in the Lord our God, we want to take a look at what Luke has recorded for us in our Gospel lesson, so I invite you to open your Bibles to Luke 12:13, which can be found on page 1031. Now, before we begin reading in Luke 12, let me give you a little bit of background. Very recently Jesus had been at the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany which was just a couple of miles to the East of Jerusalem. Jesus had taught his disciples the Lord’s prayer as we heard in our sermon last week, and now Jesus was most likely traveling around the region of Perea, which was the area to which Jesus had sent the 72 disciples in preparation for his coming there. As Jesus traveled through the area preaching and teaching the crowds that gathered continued to grow larger and larger, even as Jesus gave the people many warnings and took the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law to task by pronouncing woes on them—stirring them up and causing them to oppose his message of salvation through faith in him. Now, as we come to the parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:13 a crowd of many thousands of people had gathered to hear Jesus and Jesus began teaching them to find their wealth in the Lord their God. “13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 “Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:13–15, NIV)

Obviously this man had a problem with his brother and the dividing up of the inheritance from their parent’s estate, and he wanted Jesus’ help in the matter. At first glance this might have seemed like a natural thing for him to ask, after all, Jesus was the Rabbi of Nazareth, and Jewish Rabbis were often asked to act as judges in legal disputes because they were so well versed in the Law. However, when Jesus responded to this man’s request, Jesus revealed that he was not about to encroach upon the work of the legally appointed judges. He was not about to involve himself in the midst of a dispute on the division of inheritance when his mission to the world had to do with much more important things. His mission was to teach the people to find their true wealth in the Lord their God, which is exactly what Jesus did! In such a simple way, Jesus cut right to the heart of the matter calling on those two brothers, along with that crowd of thousands, to guard their lives against greed and find their true wealth in the Lord their God as he began to tell his parable. Take a look at verse 16: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’” (Luke 12:15–19, NIV)

Did you see what Jesus did with this parable? In such a clear and concise way, Jesus tells us that there is nothing wrong with being wealthy. There is nothing wrong with having a great deal of material possessions. There is nothing wrong with planning for the future and making the most of the money and possessions that you have been given here on this earth. That, in fact, is the very thing that this rich farmer had done. The Lord had blessed him with wealth. He had given this man wisdom and aptitude as a farmer and as a business man, and now the Lord had blessed him with a bumper crop. Because of this bumper crop he had to build bigger barns to store his grain and all his goods. He could see that from this harvest he would more than he needed for a long time, which meant that he could essentially retire, take it easy, and enjoy his retirement. The problem, however, was that though this man had been blessed by the Lord with great wealth, he did not possess the true wealth that comes through faith in Jesus. Rather, his life essentially consisted in the abundance of his possessions. His life consisted in the desire to acquire more and more. His life consisted in an attitude of greed and not in an attitude of trust in the Lord, or thankfulness for all his possessions. Instead, in his pursuit of possessions, he had fallen into idolatry, placing things before the Lord God, which is why verses 20 and 21 are so poignant: 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:20-21, NIV)

Though this man had been extremely shrewd and wise in all of his business dealings and his acquirement of wealth, somewhere along the line he had lost his true wealth; faith in Jesus as his Savior. Though he may have though he had plenty of time to enjoy the finer things in life and then re-establish his true wealth in God, that very night was his last on earth. Not only did he lose everything that he had prepared for himself to others who would claim it, and possibly fight over it when he was gone, but he also found that the result of replacing his true wealth in God with the wealth of the world was that on his death bed he would be cast out of the presence of the Lord and found himself suffering the torment of unbelief forever in hell.

This is our Savior’s warning to us today! He is not warning us against being wealthy! Rather he is warning us against replacing our true wealth of salvation through faith in Jesus with the endless acquisition of things. He is calling on us to understand that our lives as his children do not consist in the abundance of our possessions but in the abundance of his grace. He is calling on us to recognize that everything we have is a gift from our God. It is no ours to possess but ours to manage! Whether he has given us great earthly wealth, moderate earthly wealth, or little earthly wealth, God gifts are for us to manage. They are for our use in providing for our families and for others. They are for our giving back to him.

Yet, how often haven’t we acted just like this foolish rich man? How often haven’t we pushed God out of our thoughts while we planned our financial futures? How often haven’t we put away money for that new car, new house, new computer, dream vacation, or even retirement, yet we couldn’t find anything to give back to the Lord? Or look at it from the other side of things. How many of us are suffering under the weight of credit card debts, because we simply had to have that new toy now and we couldn’t wait until we had saved for it? How many of us are suffering under the weight of car payments because we just had to have that brand new car that we couldn’t really afford? How many of us have found that the money we had planned to give to the Lord has been reduced because suddenly we need it to make ends meet?

If we are honest with ourselves, then we must admit that we have acted like the foolish rich man in the parable on many, many occasions. We must admit that there have been times when even we, Christians, have though that our lives consisted in the abundance of our possessions rather than in the true wealth of God’s Word. But even though we have acted in this very way, our Savior is speaking to us and assuring us that he has forgiven us. He is assuring us that through faith in him we have been washed clean of every greedy longing for more and more stuff. He is assuring us that through faith in him we have once again found the source of our true wealth in the Lord our God. Though we may have to deal with the consequence of our actions that brought the debts upon us, now that we have been reminded of the source of our true wealth, we can give thanks to the Lord our God for all his gifts to us. We can live as managers of the wealth we’ve been given, not setting our hearts on their increase, but setting our hearts on the Lord. In this way, whether our wealth increases or decreases in this life, our focus is on our God and Savior who has made us his own through faith in Jesus Christ.

Though the Wendles completely missed out on the true wealth of salvation through faith in Jesus, today we have been reminded of that very thing. Today we have rediscovered the true wealth that our God has given us—the wealth of salvation that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior who gives us all that we have. Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church Le Sueur, MN

Raise your hearts in fervent prayer (Matthew 6:9-13)

Sermon Hymn 410: Our Father, Who from Heaven Above
Tune: Vater Unser Im Himmelreich, Der Du: 88 88 88

1. Our Father, who from heav'n above Bids all of us to live in love
As members of one family And pray to you in unity,
Teach us no thoughtless words to say, But from our inmost hearts to pray.

2. Your name be hallowed. Help us, Lord, In purity to keep your Word,
That to the glory of your name We walk before you free from blame.
Let no false doctrine us pervert; All poor, deluded souls convert.

Dear friends in Christ.

A story has long been told about two monks who were discussing the Lord’s Prayer and their ability to pray it completely while concentrating on it fully. The first monk said with sorrow and frustration, “I can’t do it! I try and I try, but invariably somewhere in the middle of the prayer my mind wanders and I start thinking about other things.” “Really,” said the second monk. “I have no problem praying the Lord’s Prayer or concentrating on what I am saying.” The first monk looked quizzically at the second and said, “I don’t believe you! I’ll bet you my horse that you cannot say the Lord’s Prayer without being distracted and thinking about something else.” So the second monk took the bet. He took a deep breath to help clear his mind and focus his thoughts. He folded his hands, closed his eyes, bowed his head, and began praying. But before he even reached the petition asking that the Lord’s will be done on heaven and on earth, he stopped, looked at the first monk and said, “I guess you were right. Everything was going fine. I was focused and concentrating on what I was saying, and then I suddenly wondered if the saddle would come with the horse.”

How often doesn’t the same thing happen to us? How often don’t we begin speaking the words of the Lord’s Prayer when suddenly three or four different thoughts crowd their way into our minds and we simply stop paying attention to the words we are speaking? How often doesn’t it happen that we hear the Pastor say something like, “We join to pray the prayer that Jesus taught, and the next thing we realize is that we are saying, “Amen” and we are continuing on with the Communion liturgy or sitting down to sing the next hymn? How often haven’t we simply taken the Lord’s Prayer for granted? How often haven’t we simply prayed it without considering what we are praying for? How often haven’t we been upset because we were in a church that used that other version of the Lord’s Prayer, the one with which we are not so familiar, and we had to open our hymnals and read it, and think about the words we were saying; instead of simply reciting it verbatim without a care in the world? We’ve all done this! We have all failed to focus on what we were praying as we fervently prayed the Lord’s Prayer. It is for this very reason that we want to take a closer look at the Lord’s Prayer today so that we might grow in our understanding of what we are praying, and so that we might be better able to focus our attention on what we are so fervently praying to the Lord with these words.

To our text! Take a look at Matthew 6:9” “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,’” (Matthew 6:9, NIV). With these words, Jesus himself is inviting us to believe that God is our one true Father in heaven and that through faith in him and his Son Jesus, we are his true children. With these words, Jesus is teaching us that we can pray to the Lord God our heavenly Father as boldly and confidently as children speak to their parents here on earth. With these words, Jesus is teaching us that we can bring any problem, hardship, frustration, concern, item of joy or praise to our heavenly Father at any time and he will hear us, he will listen, and he will answer our prayer as we fervently pray to him and ask that his name be kept holy.

Now, if you think about it, God’s name is already holy in itself, even without our asking. But when we are praying that the Lord’s name be hallowed, we are asking that we too might keep it holy. We are asking for his help and his blessing in keeping his name holy, because God’s Name is hallowed, when his Word is taught in its truth and purity. God’s Name is hallowed when we, as God’s children, live holy lives according to his Word, and as we pray that his name be kept holy, we are asking our Father in heaven to help us do that very thing so that through our lives others might see our faith and have the opportunity to learn about their Savior through the message of the Gospel. This is God’s will for our lives that his kingdom comes to us and many others through the message of his Word. Join me in singing about his kingdom and his will in stanza’s 3 and 4 of hymn 410:

3. Your kingdom come, we humbly pray, That Christ may rule in us today
And that your Holy Spirit bring Still more to worship Christ as King.
Break Satan's pow'r, defeat his rage; Preserve your Church from age to age.

4. Your gracious will on earth be done Just as in heav'n around your throne,
That patiently we may obey Throughout our lives all that you say.
Curb sinful flesh and ev'ry ill That sets itself against your will.

Such beautiful words the hymnist uses to expound what we are praying in those two very beautiful petitions form Matthew 6:10: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10, NIV). How strange it is that we as Christians should be praying such a petition as, “your kingdom come.” After all, we know that God’s kingdom will certainly come even without our asking, but when we speak these words, we are asking that God’s kingdom would come to us and to many others through the Holy Spirit whom the Father sends into our hearts through his Word and Sacraments. We are asking our heavenly Father to send his Holy Spirit into our hearts and the hearts of many others so that we all might believe his Word and lead a holy and godly life here on earth, through faith, and forever in heaven by God’s grace. This is God’s good and gracious will for our lives!

Again, God’s will would certainly be done without our prayer! Yet, whenever we pray, “Thy will be done;” we are praying that the Lord our God would break down and defeat every evil plan and purpose of the devil, this sin-filled world, and even our own sinful flesh. We are asking the Lord to strengthen us and keep us strong in our faith and firm in his word so that we might keep his name holy with our lives and his kingdom might come to others through our words and actions. That is God’s good and gracious will for our lives, that satan would be defeated, that the Lord would use us to spread his word to the nations, and that he would call many others to faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

This is our fervent prayer to the Lord as we speak the words which our Savior has given. Though the petitions, to this point, have been rather straight forward and easy for us to speak, as we come to the Fourth and Fifth Petitions, we find ourselves in a little more difficult territory. Though these words roll off the tongue so easily without a thought, when we stop to consider their meaning, they become that much more difficult for us to speak. Join me in singing these petitions from stanzas 5 and 6 of hymn 410:

5. Give us today our daily bread, And let us all be clothed and fed.
From hardship, war, and earthly strife, From sickness, famine, spare our life.
Let selfishness and worry cease That we may live in godly peace.

6. Forgive our sins, Lord, we implore, That they may trouble us no more;
We, too, will gladly those forgive Who hurt us by the way they live.
Help us in our community To serve each other willingly.

So how did you feel as you sung the words of these two stanzas? Did you find these words easy to sing or did you find them a little more difficult than you expected as they so clearly expounded on what Jesus tells us in verse 11 and 12 of Matthew 6: “Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:11-12, NIV). But why is it that these petitions are so difficult for us? The answer is quite simple; because we are asking our God not only to teach us to rely on him for all things, but to live in love and forgiveness for each other. In fact, just think about what we are saying when we ask our God to give us our daily bread. We are asking him to provide everything that we need for our body and life on a daily basis. We are asking him to help us realize that he graciously gives us all these things and more, even without our asking, even to those who are wicked. But we are asking him to help us realize that all our blessings come from him and that he will provide all that we need, which is something that so few of us do because it is so contrary to our human nature. All we have to do is look at our budget and calculate how much we are paying in credit card interest and other deferred payments for things that we may not have needed but simply felt that we couldn’t live without in order to find our level of trust in the Lord’s ability to know what we need and provide all that we need every day.

Yet even as we have sinned against the Lord by not trusting him, we are asking him to forgive us. Yet this is also where it becomes difficult for us. Though it is easy to pray that the Lord would forgive our debts, our sins; it is not as easy to pray, as we have forgiven our debtors—those who have sinned against us. This, too, goes completely against our human nature. We long to hold on to our grudges and remember what this person or that person did against us. We see it as a source of pride to withhold forgiveness from someone who sinned against us. Yet we fervently pray for our God to forgive us, we are asking him for the strength to forgive others as well. We are praying that the Lord would neither look upon our sins, nor deny our prayers because of our sins, even though we sin on a daily basis and deserve only his wrath and punishment. Yet, as we approach our heavenly Father, we ask him to act in mercy because of our Savior, forgive us of all our sins, and help us to do the same for those who have sinned against us. We ask him to help us reflect the love our Savior has for us by forgiven others, even as Jesus has already forgiven all of us.

This is the forgiveness in which we all live; the forgiveness that is ours through faith in Jesus, who poured out his blood and took back his life to save us. This is the forgiveness that now moves us to live in his love, love our neighbor as our selves, and forgive those who sin against us. This is the forgiveness that no moves us to pray that the Lord deliver us from temptation and all evil, just as we sing in stanzas 7 and 8 of hymn 410:

7. Into temptation lead us not. When evil foes against us plot
And vex our souls on ev'ry hand, Oh, give us strength that we may stand
Firm in the faith, a mighty host, Through comfort of the Holy Ghost.

8. From evil, Lord, deliver us; The times and days are perilous.
Redeem us from eternal death, And, when we yield our dying breath,
Console us, grant us calm release, And take our souls to you in peace.

Just as we sang so beautifully in our hymn we pray so fervently with those words from verse 13 of Matthew 6: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” (Matthew 6:13, NIV) Though we know that God does not lead anyone into sin or even tempt them to sin, with these words we fervently pray that the Lord our God would guard us and keep us so that satan, this sinful world, and our traitorous-sinful flesh would not deceive us, or lead us into false belief, despair, or any other sins for that matter. Instead, with these words, we fervently pray that with God’s help we may overcome these and other temptations and win the victory over them as God himself delivers us from the evil one—our enemy, the devil.

This, too, is our fervent prayer that God our Father would deliver us from every evil that would threaten our body and soul, even our property and reputation. Not only that, but we also pray that when our time comes, the Lord would grant us a blessed end by calling us out of this life to his side forever in heaven. This is our fervent prayer to the Lord our God who promises to hear us, answer us, forgive us, provide for us, and deliver us from every form of evil.

Thus, we come to the end of the Lord’s prayer as recorded in the Bible. Though it was a little different in the account in Luke than it is in Matthew, there is no place where the doxology is recorded in the Scriptures. So I cannot point to you any specific passage in the Bible where you can read, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.” But even though they may not appear in any specific passage of Scripture, they undoubtedly echo many of the praises found in the Scriptures which describe how the Lord’s kingdom, power and glory shall endure forever. Interestingly enough, these very words were included with the Lord’s prayer in the Didache, which was essentially the Catechism for Christians back in about 100 AD. They were the words that we sang in response to the reading of the Lord’s Prayer during the communion service back when we used The Lutheran Hymnal, and they are words that have stuck. They are words of praise and glory that we proclaim before we say Amen, which is our statement of confidence that the Lord will hear and answer our prayer. Thus we say Amen at the end of our prayer, for this simple word declares, “Yes, it shall be so.” Yes, it shall be so thus declares our confidence in approaching our heavenly Father in this way, for not only has he commanded us to pray and promised to hear us, but these are the very words that Jesus has given us to pray.

So now, as we continue fervently praying the Lord’s Prayer, each and every week, I pray that this brief explanation will help you more thoroughly concentrate on what you are saying as you speak those familiar words that our Savior gave us. Thus, as we bring this sermon to a close, let us join our hearts and voices in singing the Amen from stanza 9 of hymn 410:

9. Amen, that is, it shall be so. Make strong our faith that we may know
That we may doubt not but believe What here we ask we shall receive.
Thus in your name and at your Word We say, "Amen. Oh, hear us, Lord!"

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church Le Sueur, MN