Let the Father’s mercy be in you.

 

Sermon for Trinity 4, June 27, 2021

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and Jesus our Teacher, Redeemer, and Lord.  Amen.

Luke 6:36–42  ³⁶“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.  ³⁷“Do not judge, and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  ³⁸Give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap.  In fact, the measure with which you measure will be measured back to you.”  ³⁹He also told them a parable: “A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he?  Won’t they both fall into a pit?  ⁴⁰A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.  ⁴¹Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?  ⁴²Or how can you tell your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck in your eye,’ when you do not see the beam in your own eye?  Hypocrite!  First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck in your brother’s eye.” (EHV)

Let the Father’s mercy be in you.

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

            It has become quite popular in the politics of our time to criticize wealthy people for being too selfish, too greedy, and too uncaring about their neighbors and fellow countrymen.  Now imagine someone with great wealth who would be unwilling to share his great treasure, not because he didn’t care, but because he simply forgot he was rich.  That would be just as wrong as the rich man whose greed or lack of love keeps him from generously sharing his good fortune with those in need. 

Now, I want to assure you that this sermon is not speaking about politics, nor will I tell you how much money to give to church or charity.  In fact, I don’t plan to speak about money at all.  However, I wonder, does forgetfulness about our great treasure also infect us?  For this reason, I need to remind all of us about the great wealth we possess in the mercy of God. 

Jesus said, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  How often do we consider the full extent of God’s mercy as it applies to us?  The people that surrounded Jesus certainly needed to be reminded.  Likewise, we need to be reminded to Let the Father’s mercy be in you.

“Just as your Father is merciful.”  One of Jesus’ main points here is to remind us of how richly God’s mercy has blessed us.  Whether we are rich or poor, God has been blessing us far more than anyone deserves.  The Bible tells us that the Father “makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)  Without our asking, or earning it, God gives us everything we need for body and life.  Far beyond what any of us even recognize, God is caring for us, helping us, and protecting us from harm and danger, for as Luther noted,

God has made me and all creatures; He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still preserves them; He richly and daily provides me with food and clothing, home and family, property and goods, and all that I need to support this body and life; He protects me from all danger, guards and keeps me from all evil; and all this purely out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me; for all which I am duty bound to thank and praise, to serve and obey Him.  This is most certainly true.

In addition to all these material blessings, the greatest gift of God’s mercy is the Son He gave into death so that all of our sins would be paid for and we could be forgiven.

A second main point is that Jesus wants us to see our own faults and shortcomings.  The primary reason we preach the law is not to condemn anyone else, but to remind every person in attendance just how far we all are from perfection.  Ideally, when we stand before the mirror of the law, we should see the holiness of God reflected in us, but as long as we remain in this world, we see instead the corruption that so infects us.  Yet, God does not immediately condemn us for that vast and total corruption we inherited from our parents, nor for the sins we ourselves commit.

“Just as your Father is merciful.”  Jesus declared the greatness of His Father’s mercy when He said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)  The only person in the history of the world who by His perfect righteousness and holiness could have the right to look down on sinners is the One Man who did not.  Instead of arrogance, Jesus demonstrated perfect humility and kindness, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17)

The pious, self-righteous leaders of Jesus’ day looked down on Him because He willingly associated with people they considered sinful and unclean.  The Pharisees thought that the sins of the people Jesus associated with made Him unacceptable to God.  They were offended, especially, when Jesus forgave sins.  The question for us is how often do we exhibit those same self-righteous attitudes in our dealings with fellow sinners? 

It would be easy for me to look at the people in this room, in my family, or in the neighborhood, and find sinners who don’t deserve God’s mercy, but when I look in the mirror of the law, I see even more so that it is me who doesn’t deserve the grace I have been shown.  We all should stand with William McComb who wrote, “Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed His blood for me.”

Perhaps one of the most misused lines of Scripture is the passage, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.”  Many are the sinners who try to defend their wicked ways by using Jesus’ words to claim that no one should judge their actions.  However, Jesus was not teaching that sin should be approved or ignored.  Jesus never condoned any sin.  When the teachers of Israel dragged an adulterous woman before Jesus hoping for Him to condemn her, Jesus simply asked for those without sin to cast the first stone.  When no one had the audacity to throw that first rock, Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.” (John 8:11)  Likewise, we say, Let the Father’s mercy be in you.

The message for you and me is that Jesus was not in this world seeking to destroy those who disobey the law; He was here to rescue all of us who cannot keep the law.  Every human who has ever lived is in the same putrid pool.  None of us can swim out of the muck to safety.  None of us will survive the cesspool of sin without divine intervention.  The love of God demands that we recognize that no matter how great the sin, how evil the action, how awful it all might look, Jesus paid for it all. 

Having said this does not require that sin be encouraged or excused.  Nor can we help anyone else while we are immersed in disobedience or selfish arrogance.  The Christian response to sin is to correct the fallen soul as honestly, gently, humbly, yet forcefully as possible, and then to share the Good News of Jesus to the penitent sinner. 

Jesus said, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap.  In fact, the measure with which you measure will be measured back to you.”  This is the same way Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4)  This is the grace God has shown us, to give us the forgiveness we don’t deserve so that we can extend God’s love and mercy to others who have no right to claim it.  By the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice, God washed us clean of the stench of our sin, so that we can likewise share that cleansing miracle with fellow sinners.

Jesus then told them a parable: “A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he?  Won’t they both fall into a pit?  A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.”  To help our fellow sinners, we need to have our eyes opened to both the law and the grace of our God.  We need to see our own weaknesses and the sins which would condemn us.  We need to learn from Jesus how we should live in humility and kindness.  Yet, like our Teacher, we will demonstrate to the world the kindness of our Father who sent His only-begotten Son to live and die on our behalf so that sin is no longer our downfall and sentence of death.

Jesus’ second parable shows us that we can only help others when we live in humble repentance for all of our own sins.  It is only in living truth faith in Christ Jesus for forgiveness and life that anyone can help his neighbor.  The log in our eye is removed only through humble repentance, trust in the Father’s love, and confidence in the sacrifice Jesus made for us all.  We help our brother when we keep our eyes focused on Jesus and what He did for us all.  We help our friends the most when we lead them to the Great Physician of body and soul.  It is trusting in Jesus that heals us.  He is the only One who has perfectly carried out the proper mixture of love, forgiveness, and firm rebuke. 

All of us need to remember that there is a Judgment Day coming in which all things will be revealed.  None of us can know the hearts of those around us.  We observe the actions and accept the confessions, then we offer the forgiveness God has accomplished through the blood of His Lamb.

Dear friends, I don’t know how much these passages trouble you.  If you are like me, you recognize that in this too we often fall short.  Did I rightly explain the law?  Have I given a proper correction so that I am not leading a spiritually blind person into further darkness?  Have I readily forgiven those who have hurt me with the same mercy as God has shown me?  Questions like these often trouble faithful Christians because we know we fall short of the glory of God. 

However, this point must be our assurance and our comfort: Jesus has done everything necessary to win our forgiveness and life.  Jesus has already lived the perfect holiness that covers our guilt.  “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For in Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.  Indeed, what the law was unable to do, because it was weakened by the flesh, God did, when he sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to deal with sin.” (Romans 8:1-3)

Jesus has dealt with every sin ever—your sin—my sin—the sins of the whole world—all of it was paid for on that cross on Golgotha.  God, in His immense mercy and love, gave His Son into death so that no sin will ever be held against mankind again.  Let this be your confidence and guide: “The gracious gift is not like Adam’s trespass.  For if the many died by the trespass of this one man, it is even more certain that God’s grace, and the gift given by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, overflowed to the many!” (Romans 5:15)  Thus again I say, Let the Father’s mercy be in you.

One of the sad realities of our sinful nature is that we sometimes overestimate our goodness in comparison to others, especially when our feelings are hurt by loved ones, friends, or fellow church members.  We find it so easy to judge them, yet so hard to judge our own failures.  For this too let us turn to Jesus knowing that He has invited us all into His Father’s mercy by the life He lived and the death He suffered so that the Father in heaven will count you as perfectly holy and forgiven.  “Like all the others, we were by nature objects of God’s wrath.  But God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses.” (Ephesians 2:3-5)

My friends, return daily to your baptism by humble repentance.  See the love in your Savior’s eyes as through His apostle He assures you again and again, “If anyone does sin, we have an Advocate before the Father: Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.  He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)  Let the Father’s mercy be in you.  Amen.

Now may the God of peace—who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, in connection with His blood, which established the eternal testament—may He equip you with every good thing to do His will, as He works in us what is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ.  To Him be glory forever and ever.  Amen.”