The Lord your God is faithful.

 

Sermon for Trinity 22, October 24, 2021

Grace, mercy, and peace to all of you who are in Christ Jesus, our Lord.  Amen.

Deuteronomy 7:9-11 ⁹He did this so that you would know that the Lord your God, yes, he is God, the faithful God who maintains both his covenant and his mercy for those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.  ¹⁰But he also repays the ones who hate him to their face by destroying them.  He will not delay repaying anyone who hates him.  To his face he will fully repay him.  ¹¹So you are to be careful to keep the set of commandments and the statutes and the ordinances that I am commanding you today. (EHV)

The Lord your God is faithful.

Dear fellow redeemed and friends of Christ Jesus,

            You are redeemed.  That means you have been purchased at a price.  More specifically, you have been rescued from a condition you couldn’t escape.  You were delivered from the control of someone more powerful than yourself, who held you in slavery leading to everlasting death.

Likewise, in the verses immediately preceding our sermon text, Moses reminded the Children of Israel that they had been redeemed and rescued from slavery in Egypt.  Moses also reminded Israel that there was nothing good or worthy in themselves that caused God to deliver them out of the control of their Egyptian overlords.  They had no power, no great wealth, no military might, and certainly no merit in the kingdom of God.  Instead, Israel had been rescued from a bitter fate solely because God chose to love them for the promise He had made to their forefathers.  God wanted Israel, and every other people on earth, to know that The Lord your God is faithful.

That is still true today, dear friends, The Lord your God is faithful.  And, like Israel, you are a Christian not because you somehow shined brighter than anyone else in the eyes of the Lord.  You did not merit God’s favor by your works.  Indeed, there is nothing good in any of us that would cause God to love us, or to rescue us from the devil’s control.  Yet, God does indeed love us, and He has indeed rescued us from slavery to Satan and from everlasting torment in the prison set aside for the devil and his angels.

Moses reminded the Israelites that God had rescued them out of Egypt “so that you would know that the Lord your God, yes, he is God, the faithful God who maintains both his covenant and his mercy for those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.”  You and I are part of a perfect corollary.  God wants us to know His love.  He wants us to know His faithfulness.  At the fall into sin, God made a promise of rescue through the Seed of the woman, and He kept that promise when Jesus entered this world to accomplish God’s covenant against the devil. 

Dear friends, the devil didn’t consider the odds when he started his rebellion against God.  Had the devil done so, perhaps no one would ever have sinned, for Satan’s rebellion was always doomed to failure, because The Lord your God is faithful,.  However, as is so often the case among the wicked, caring about what is right or good was not in the devil’s consideration.  Satan wanted to be God, and he wanted control over God’s creation and God’s people to be serving the devil’s schemes.

Oftentimes throughout the history of the world, it looks like the devil has the upper hand.  Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, the whole human race has followed in their footsteps of rebellion and selfishness.  Today, again, we who trust the Lord look around at the world and shudder at what we see happening among the people of the world.  Selfishness rules.  God’s commandments are trashed with seeming impunity.  Power goes mostly to those able to control the timid.  Life is cheap, or at least little valued among those led by Satan’s wickedness. 

You and I recognize that Satan’s rebellion also touches us.  Just a few moments ago, we all confessed with serious anguish that we are by nature sinful and unclean, and that we have sinned against God by thought, word, and deed.  With that admission, we agree that we deserve nothing but condemnation.  Therefore, we plead to God for mercy and grace.  At the same time, realize that God was working this humble confession i in us when He rescued us from the evil one’s control. 

Just as God rescued Israel so that they would know Him, so God also rescued you and me so that we would know His true nature.  Through the cleansing waters of Baptism and the life-giving power of the Gospel, God rescued us from sin, death, and slavery to the devil’s schemes.  By placing us in Christian homes with Christian parents guiding us to learn more and more of God’s Word and by their example teaching us to walk in His way, the Lord has been leading us through this wilderness world.  Jesus made the payment that freed us with His own precious blood, and not so that He could drive us in bitter slavery, but rather, so that we could be with Him forever and serve Him in joy and peace and grateful thanksgiving.

The Lord your God is faithful.  That also means, however, that the Lord your God is perfectly just.  God will have no patience with the unrepentant sinner.  There will be no admittance into God’s heavenly home for those who remain in rebellion against Him.  Moses warned Israel, “He also repays the ones who hate him to their face by destroying them.  He will not delay repaying anyone who hates him.  To his face he will fully repay him.”  Elsewhere in God’s Word, we are told how those who face God’s wrath on Judgement Day will react: Jesus prophesied, “Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’” (Luke 23:30)  The rebellious will be filled with terror.

St. Paul later explained, “We will all stand before God’s judgment seat.  Indeed, it is written: ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, and every tongue will acknowledge God.’” (Romans 14:10-11)  There is no fooling the Lord.  Those who prefer to live in rebellion and to indulge in wickedness as God describes it, sentence themselves to eternal imprisonment in hell.  On the day Jesus returns to judge the world, it will be too late to repent, and those who have refused to believe will at that point stand condemned even while they finally admit that The Lord your God is faithful. 

God will faithfully administer His just sentence against those who refused Him.  However, God is equally faithful in love.  Therefore, He honestly pleads, “As I live, declares the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from their way and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11)  Moses, God’s spokesman, instructed the Israelites, “So you are to be careful to keep the set of commandments and the statutes and the ordinances that I am commanding you today.”  While we live here on earth, God wants all His people to live in harmony and peace, walking in true sanctified living. 

For Israel, that meant they should live by the instructions and laws God laid down for them.  For you and me, God still holds out His Ten Commandments as sure guides for living holy lives, so that we know what is good and right, but especially, so that we recognize when we fail and confess those sins before the God who loves us and has paid the price for all our sins.

You see, just as the Lord rescued Israel in covenant love, He told His Son, “It is too small a thing that you should just be my servant to raise up only the tribes of Jacob and to restore the ones I have preserved in Israel, so I will appoint you to be a light for the nations, so that my salvation will be known to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)  The descendants of Abraham were saved only through faith.  Those people God led out of Egypt were not saved because of merit or any kind of material value.  They were saved because God desired to save them.  Likewise, do we receive God’s mercy.

Though all of us have sinned against God and deserved only His wrath and just condemnation, God brought us to saving faith through the hearing of His Gospel in Word and Sacrament, because God wants us to experience His mercy, so that we will serve Him out of sincere love.  In Moses’ presence, God proclaimed Himself, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and overflowing with mercy and truth, maintaining mercy for thousands, forgiving guilt and rebellion and sin.” (Exodus 34:6-7)  By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul later explained, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Throughout the world, many people hope to earn God’s favor or to buy their salvation through works and offerings to whatever god they serve.  Yet, our God doesn’t need our sacrifices to appease His ego.  Instead, the writer to the Hebrews tells us of the only sacrifice that is pleasing to God:

“When he entered the world, Christ said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but you prepared a body for me. . . .Sacrifices and offerings that were offered according to the law, both burnt offerings and sin offerings, you did not desire, and you were not pleased with them.’  Then he said: ‘Here I am.  I have come to do your will.’  He does away with the first in order to establish the second.  By this will, we have been sanctified once and for all, through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ.” (Hebrews 10:5-10)

God promised a Savior for the world, and He sent His Son to live and die so that we might be delivered from Satan’s rebellion and the punishment that Deceiver deserves.  By the same love, God has transformed us from slaves dead in their sins, and pagans lost in confusion and hopelessness, into His own dear children dressed in Christ’s pure righteousness.  God again proves His faithfulness, for by the Gospel in Word and Sacrament, He delivers us from the darkness of unbelief into the glorious light of Jesus Christ.  Jesus won our freedom at the cost of His holy life.  By His blood we have been made clean, and by His Word He continues to be with us so that He might lead us home.  Rejoice and be glad.  Serve the Lord with great joy, for The Lord your God is faithful.  Amen.

Now to Him, who is able, according to the power that is at work within us, to do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever!  Amen.