Always Being Reformed According to the Word of God

Texts:    Nehemiah 7:73b-12; Matthew 23:1-12

TODAY WE OBSERVE Reformation Day.  It was October 31, 1517, when the issues that'd been fermenting for decades  in the Church of Jesus Christ came to a head and nothing would ever be the same.  Reformation Day marks the official beginning of the Protestant Church, for when Martin Luther hammered his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, he was protesting against the evils and degeneracies that were rife in the church he loved.

    Luther was followed by Calvin, and Melanchthon, and Knox, and all the other great Protestant Reformers who lived and died by this confession: That we are saved not by our works, but by Christ alone by God's grace alone through faith alone to God's glory alone, this truth being revealed to us in Scripture alone.  In the life of the people of God, reformation is not a one-time thing; it's required again and again, as often as we go astray from the truth of the grace of God and as often as He sends His Spirit to bring us back to Him again.

    In our Scripture passages this morning we read of two occasions in Israel's history when God's people were in desperate need of reformation.  In Nehemiah, the reformation is underway.  In Matthew, it appears to be too late.

    The assembly in Nehemiah 8 takes place about a hundred years after the Jews were first given permission to return to the land of Israel after the exile to Babylon.  The exile shook to the foundations everything the Jews understood about their covenant with God.  But as they studied the Law and the Prophets, they came to realize that even in this terrible situation the Lord was still with them and still had a purpose for them.  They saw that it was their sins that had caused the Lord to drive them out of the land, and they returned to Judea with a heart of repentance and reformation.

    But as we read in the twin books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and in the book of the prophet Haggai, after awhile the returned exiles became complacent and lazy towards God.  They erected their own houses and didn't restore the Temple.  They feared the opposition of their non-Jewish neighbors and didn't trust God to protect them.  So they didn't rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  Worse, they began to fall back into the same sins that had gotten them thrown out of the Promised Land in the first place: Marrying foreign wives and adopting their religious practices.  Desecrating the Sabbath.  Oppressing the poor, not supporting the worship of the Temple as prescribed by the Law of Moses, and so on.  Spurred on by Ezra and Nehemiah, they put in the effort and the Temple and walls were rebuilt.  But spiritually, they needed reformation.  How was it to come about?  Would it be enough if all the heads of households simply pledged to keep God's covenant?  They did do that.  But how were they to know what God's covenant will was?

    Nehemiah the governor and Ezra the priest and scribe knew:  True reform would come to the people only if they were brought back to the written Word of God, delivered to Moses in the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  So in Nehemiah 8 we see the people, men, women, and all children who were old enough to understand, standing in the square beside the Jerusalem Water Gate, listening to Ezra read the Word of God to them. 

    How could they know God's will unless they knew God's Word?  God's people could be remade and remolded only according to the original plan and pattern He set for them.  The people listened to the Word of God read to them in Hebrew.  Most of them no longer understood their ancestral language, so the Levites went through the crowd and translated the Word into Aramaic for them, so, as it says in verse 8, the meaning would be clear.

    And the message of the Word became clear, painfully clear.  These spiritual ancestors of ours were devastated.  They were cut to the quick by the enormity of their sin.  They mourned and wept, as we read in verse 9. 

    Any true reformation born of God's Word and Spirit first convicts us of our sin.  The Scripture confronts us with how far short we fall of God's will for us.  It exposes how we have gone wrong, and God's Spirit moves us to grieve at how we have offended against the Lord who saved us once and loves us still.

    But after grief, the Word brings hope.  Its message of salvation does not leave us in our distress.  It doesn't stomp us into the ground and tell us how worthless and meaningless we are.  No, God's Word calls us to lift up our heads and rejoice in the Lord, for He has saved and forgiven us.  Through His power we can amend our lives and our practices and be the church He intends for us to be.  This is cause to celebrate!  As Nehemiah says to the people in verse 10, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

    "The joy of the Lord is your strength"!  True reformation according to the Word of God brings joy!  Joy in the Lord who is our salvation, and strength, because God Himself is joyful when His people return to Him in faith and humility.

    God's people the Jews needed to be reformed by the Word of God.  And again and again up to the coming of Jesus Christ, their Lord and Messiah, they needed reformation. 

    The Pharisees began as a reform movement.  They started out well, in the days of the Maccabean kings, about two hundred years before Jesus was born.  They worked hard to call their Jewish brethren back to the Law of God and away from Greek and secular innovations.  But so zealous were they, that over the years they began to see themselves as the only true interpreters of the Word.  They were so anxious that everyone should keep all the laws of worship and ritual just-exactly, that they came up with all sorts of additional guidelines and rules setting out their ideas of what God in His Word had really meant.  This oral law took on the same force as the original Law that the Lord delivered to Moses, whether it was faithful to the original meaning or not.

    By Jesus' day, things had gotten very bad with the Pharisees, but they didn't realize it.  They didn't see they'd missed the whole reason that God had given the Law to Moses in the first place-- to prepare a holy people through whom the Savior of the world should come.  They were like a bride who's so concerned with getting the pearl decorations on her headdress just right that she forgets to show up at the altar to meet her groom.  The Word of God no longer had power to bring repentance and joy in their lives.  Or, should I say, the Lord had withdrawn His Spirit from them so that they could not and would not hear the truth of the Word, and repent and be saved.

    In chapter 23 of the gospel according to St. Matthew Jesus pronounces woe and condemnation on the Pharisees.  They were beyond being reformed and they sought to keep others from being reformed, too.

    Yes (as He says in verse 2), "The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat."  They were like college professors with multiple doctorates.  By training they were qualified to teach what God had given through Moses.  They were the only sect in 1st century Judaism who made any effort to instruct the common people in the word of God.  So, as they taught according to the Torah, the people should obey them and do as they say.  But do not do as they do, Jesus warns us.  Do not follow the way they show off their outward obedience and inwardly are full of impurity, meanness, and unbelief.  Do not follow the way they claim to love God, but reject His Messiah, Jesus Himself.  Do not make the teaching of the Word of God all about ourselves and our greatness, instead of us being all about what God has done.  Do not be like them and make the voice of Scripture a burden and a trial to one another, instead of a light bringing repentance and the joy of the Lord.

    The Pharisees thought they didn't need to be reformed.  They thought the way they were doing things was a reformation in itself. In Matthew 23 Jesus tells His disciples and the crowds that God was finished with the Pharisees and their pretensions.  So do not aspire to be called "Rabbi," which literally means, "My great one."  Do not look to any human being as your spiritual master or teacher, for Christ alone is your supreme teacher.  In the life of the spirit, do not adorn any man with the title "father," for God in heaven alone is the Father of all the faithful.  No, for "whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

    As Presbyterians, we celebrate the Protestant Reformation.  We proudly stand in the tradition of Luther and Calvin.  So is it enough for us to look back five hundred years to a reformation that is finished, accomplished, complete?  Or are we, in our own time and place, in need of reformation so we will be a church pleasing to our Lord Jesus Christ, the Head and Cornerstone of the church?

    Considering what's been going on in our denomination lately, I think most of us would give that question a resounding "YES!!"  As a church body, we do need reformation in our time.  But let's not deceive ourselves.  Yes, it's harmful for us to celebrate open transgression.  It's distressing when we who call ourselves "Reformed" don't extend the redeeming grace of Jesus to those who tragically identify with their besetting sin.  But it's worse when we fall away from the faith of Jesus Christ in ways that seem innocent, even helpful, and don't even notice how faithless we've become and don't realize how much in need of reformation we really are.

    How many of us would agree to the following tenets:
1) "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth."
2) "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."
3) "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."
4). "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when He is needed to resolve a problem."
5) "Good people go to heaven when they die."

    Does this sound like Christianity to you, let alone Reformed Christianity?  It is not.  It's a counterfeit, false religion called moralistic therapeutic deism.  There is no room here for the sovereign Lord of the Bible.  It says nothing about our sin and our desperate need for a Savior.  It has no real need of the Son of God who hung on a cross to purchase forgiveness for us.  It does not acknowledge that our sovereign God has a claim on every part of our lives, nor does it bow the knee in awe and thanksgiving at His grace that alone will allow us into His presence when we die.

    But this is the creed many of us live by, a false creed we must reject.  The watchword of the Reformed churches is that we are "Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei"-- "The Church Reformed, always to be reformed according to the word of God."  Without close knowledge of God's Holy Scriptures, without the Holy Spirit confirming their truth to our hearts and conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ the living Word, our attempts at self-reformation will be worse than useless. 

    God's good news to us is that we are saved by Christ alone by God's grace alone through faith alone to God's glory alone.  This truth is revealed to us in Scripture alone, the Word of God that is as close as the Bible on our shelf.  Take up, read; repent, rejoice, and be reformed, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

What Do We Owe?

Texts:    2 Chronicles 26:3-5; 16-21; Romans 13:1-7; Matthew 22:1-14
           

    UP WHERE I LIVE, WE HAVE A SCHOOL district per capita tax.  A poll tax.  Everyone has to pay it simply because they live in the school district.  It's $15.00 a year, no big deal.  I pay it and forget about it until the bill comes in the mail the following July.

    In occupied Israel in the days when Jesus walked this earth, paying one's poll tax was a big deal.   It raised passions and questions of freedom and worship, of bondage and loyalty.  For Jesus' enemies, it was a way to try to destroy Him and His ministry.  But for us, the events of Matthew 22:15-22 should lead us better to understand who we are under God and what we owe to the kingdom of God and to the kingdoms of this world.

     It is Monday, the day after our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Jesus is in the Temple.  He'd been teaching the people that morning, until He was interrupted by a delegation of chief priests and elders, many of them Pharisees.  They challenged His right to do what He was doing: His royal procession into Jerusalem, His driving out the moneychangers, all of it.  In answer, Jesus confronted them with three parables, all of them passing judgement on these Jewish leaders for their failure to be ready to welcome Him as Messiah when He came.  Did that humble them and send them home to search the Scriptures and pray the Father to open their eyes to welcome their King?

    Of course not.  It made them all the more determined to find a way to get rid of Jesus, to kill Him.

    So, our passage begins, the Pharisees left His presence.  But they didn't go far.  They huddled together to make plans to trap Jesus in His words.  They'd ask Him one little question about paying the per capita tax to Rome.  However Jesus answered, they'd have grounds to arrest Him and have Him tried for  sedition, or He'd rile up the crowd so they'd spontaneously stone Him.  Cleverly, these same men didn't return to the Temple themselves.  No, they sent disciples of theirs, men they thought Jesus wouldn't know, to pretend to be earnest seekers after knowledge.  These men would flatter Jesus and then, when He was off His guard, they'd spring a question that was sure to land Him in disaster, no matter which answer He gave.

    Why is that?  Because, unlike the poll tax I pay to my area school district, the poll tax levied by Rome signified subjection to Caesar.  To a good religious Jew, that meant that Caesar was usurping the place of God.  In Exodus 30 the Israelites were each commanded to pay into the Tabernacle treasury a half-shekel "atonement money," as the NIV puts it.  The Scripture calls this a ransom for each Israelite's life, the price on his or her head, so to speak, and it symbolized that they belonged to the Lord their God and lived or died at His sovereign pleasure.  The Jews of Jesus' day still paid the Temple poll tax, but Caesar had imposed a head tax of his own, as if they belonged to him instead.

    To make things worse, Rome required that every citizen and subject of its vast empire must pay the poll tax with the imperial Roman denarius.  This was a silver coin minted out of Caesar's personal treasury.  Therefore, it belonged to him.  With it he paid his soldiers, officials, and high-ranking local collaborators, and through them, it got into circulation in the occupied territories. Most Jews were anxious to obey the Second Commandment, the one forbidding graven images, and they ordinarily used copper coins with no images of humans or beasts on them.  But the imperial denarius always bore the portrait of the reigning Caesar.  And to make things worse, it was also stamped with a motto.  The imperial denarius of Jesus' day read, "Tiberius Caesar, Worshipful Son of the God, Augustus."  There was this man's blasphemous claim to divinity, on the very tribute coin they were forced to use.

    What a galling affront this would be to most Jews!  The Pharisees, as the official defenders of the faith, would be opposed to Rome and all it stood for.  So would the super-patriot Zealots and their supporters.  So would the crowds that followed Jesus and wanted to make Him be their earthly king.  They wouldn't be happy if Jesus said paying the tribute money was right.  But Matthew tells us that some Herodians came along with the Pharisees to set the trap for our Lord.  These men supported the Herod family and its ties to Rome.  They favored Roman rule; after all, the Herods were kings only through Caesar's gift, not because they were proper Jewish royalty in the line of David.  The Herodians would make sure Pilate heard if this rabble-rousing rabbi from Nazareth said the Jews should refuse to pay.

    So here they all come to Jesus, talking Him up and pretending to esteem Him and His reputation.  Ironic, isn't it?  Everything they said about His character was absolutely true.  He was and is a true man, a man of integrity.  He did and does teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.  Our Lord was not influenced in His judgement by who people were or what positions they held.  But the Pharisees and the Herodians don't actually believe that.  They think Jesus is a dangerous imposter who can be maneuvered into condemning Himself with His own words.  By reminding Him of who He has set Himself up to be (as they saw it), they think they'll compromise His credibility as a rabbi if He refuses to answer, or make Him go against Scripture, if He does.

    With this in their hearts, they spring the question: "Tell us then, what is your opinion?  Is it right to pay the poll tax to Caesar or not?"

    They don't understand that they're dealing with the Font of all Wisdom, the divine Son of God.  His Spirit sees clearly into their evil hearts and He retorts, "You hypocrites!  Why are you trying to trap me?" 

    Yes, they are hypocrites.  Hypocrites for coming to Him with their flattery, pretending to be eager to learn.  And hypocrites for another crucial reason, which Jesus is about to reveal.  He commands them, "Show me the coin used for paying the tax."

    Ah, yes.  The hated silver denarius, bearing the image of the blasphemous emperor and his claim to be the son of a god.  One of these Pharisees, at least, has such a coin.  In his possession.  On the sacred ground of the Lord's Temple.  So shocked they would have acted, had Jesus said outright, "Pay Caesar's poll tax."  Why, that'd mean agreeing with Caesar's claims!  But here they are, carrying and using Caesar's money, even for their everyday business.

    Like the discerning rabbi He is, Jesus asks them a question in return: "Whose portrait is this?  And whose inscription?"

    They answer, "Caesar's."

    To us, this may seem to be a simple question and a simple answer.  But to Jesus' opponents, His words couldn't help but remind them of the words of Holy Scripture.  The Greek word the NIV translates "portrait" is εικών, icon.  It's the how their Greek Bible translated the Hebrew word meaning "likeness," as in "image and likeness."  Ah! what does that remind us of?  First, the fact that people are not to make images or likenesses of God or anything alleged to be a god.  But it also reminds us, and Jesus' challengers, of Genesis, of creation, and of mankind being made in the image and likeness of God.  Whatever is made in the image and likeness of its maker, belongs to its maker.  So this coin belongs to Caesar who made it and whose image it bears.

    And Jesus confronts them about the inscription, the επιγραφή, on the coin.  Remember, it says "Tiberius Caesar, Worshipful Son of the God, Augustus."  It was a confession of faith in Tiberius and his adoptive father Augustus as gods.  But Israel had its own inscription, its own confession of faith, which the Lord had commanded the people to write, not on coins, but on scrolls to be affixed to their doorposts and bound onto their foreheads and hands.  It's found in Deuteronomy chapter 6, and it says,

    Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

    Whose inscription shall be heeded and obeyed?

    Jesus' opponents have presented and seen the coin.  They have admitted that the likeness and inscription on it are Caesar's.  Jesus has evoked the authority of Scripture.  With this, He delivers His response, and it utterly confounds the Pharisees and the Herodians alike.  He says, "Give--" literally, "give back"-- "to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give back to God, what is God's."

    Matthew, Mark, and Luke all report that these men were amazed and astonished.  They had failed in their purpose.  Jesus had somehow evaded their trap with a riddle of an answer, and they had to admit defeat and go away. 

    Brothers and sisters, the Pharisees and Herodians didn't approach Jesus because they cared deeply how a servant of the one true God should relate to a pagan civil authority.  But we do care.  And because we do, it's frustrating that this text doesn't actually give us clear guidance on how we are to relate to the civil government, especially to a government that seems to be growing more and more hostile to the free exercise of our Christian faith.

    What did Jesus actually say?  Many scholars write that by reminding the Pharisees that mankind is made in the image of God, by evoking the confession of "Hear, O Israel," Jesus was saying that faithful Jews-- and faithful Christians-- should not pay taxes to godless governments.  For everything belongs to God, which leaves nothing left over for Caesar.  And in fact, the chief priests made this very accusation against Jesus in His trial before Pilate (see Luke 23:2).

    But according to other scholars, Jesus has effectually said to us, "This paltry silver coin made in the image and likeness of Tiberius?  It's his, he made it, let him have it back.  Pay your earthly taxes.  Meanwhile, you, child of God, give yourself and your devotion back to your Maker who owns you."  And, as for Caesar's claims to be a god and the son of a god, God Most High Himself refers to the human rulers of the earth as "gods," as we read in Psalm 82.  Fine, says Jesus, Caesar can call himself a "god" all he wants-- as long as he administers justice and defends the right as his own High King and Emperor, the God of Israel, has given him the authority and responsibility to do.

    Which of these has Jesus said?  We can't be one hundred percent sure.  But God has not left us to go away astonished and amazed.  He has given us sure guidance in His Scriptures on how we are to relate to the civil authority.  I'll summarize these quickly, then I'll conclude.

    First of all, in Matthew Jesus shows us that the kingdom of this world is not to be confused with the kingdom of God, not in ancient Israel, not even in these United States of America.  We have duties and responsibilities we owe to both, but those duties are not the same. 

    Second, our epistle reading from Romans 13 shows us that all civil authority is under the power of Almighty God, even when that government is pagan and doesn't acknowledge the Lord God at all.  Earthly authorities are established by God to uphold the right and to put down the wrong, according to the law of human nature that our Creator has put into every one of us, believer or unbeliever.  Because earthly rulers are representatives of God, we Christians are to obey their laws and pay the duly-legislated taxes they levy, for to refuse to do so is to rebel against God.

    In our American republic, being obedient to God in the kingdom of this world means fulfilling our responsibilities under the Constitution and voting and being involved to the extent of our ability, for our rulers, under God, are responsible to us, and we get the government we deserve.

    But third, the rights of the civil authority are not absolute.  In 2 Chronicles 26 we read of King Uzziah, a ruler who started out well.  But he lost his kingly honor and authority when he went beyond what God delegated to him.  He tried to usurp the honor and duties of the priests as well, to extend his influence into the affairs of the kingdom of heaven.  When Uzziah did that, God and God's priests put him down immediately and permanently.  As a leper, he could no longer enter the Temple, he could no longer rule, and his son had to take over the government in his stead.

    It's the same with our government today.  When they presume to legislate against the clear commands of God, we must confront them, and we cannot obey.  As the apostles Peter and John said to the ruling council in Acts 4:19,

    Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God.  For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.

What they had seen and heard was Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God.  The Pharisees and Herodians could not entrap Him in His words, and we cannot escape His authoritative claim on our lives.  Through Him we were made, and through His blood He has remade us anew.  Let us give back to our earthly governments what we owe them under God.  But always and for eternity, let us render back to God our hearts, our souls, our strength, and everything we are, for we bear the image and likeness of His Son, and we are His.

Who Will Hear and Obey?

Texts:  Isaiah 49:1-7; Matthew 21:23-32

     WHAT DO YOU THINK?  SUPPOSE you're the CEO of a multinational corporation, and you decide that methods and procedures at a certain branch office need to be radically transformed.  Whom do you think will be more responsive to the changes: the upper-level management types who pride themselves on their work ethic and devotion to the company, or the slackers in the cubicles who do whatever they can to avoid putting in a day's work?

    And suppose you don't communicate your wishes directly, but send a representative to announce and implement the changes.  Would that have any effect on how well the staff listens?  If the representative's credentials are all in order, should it matter?

    If this were just a tale of modern life, you might think that the leaders who acted all gung-ho about the company would be the first to get on board with the CEO's big plans.  And that if somebody in a suit just showed up one day and announced he was from the CEO and the whole product line was about to be revamped, people would be wise to question his authority.

    But of course, my analogy isn't just a tale of modern life.  We have read our passage from the Gospel According to St. Matthew, and we know that when it comes to responsiveness to God's will, talk is cheap, and true faith and devotion are displayed in obedience.

    The chief priests and elders of the people should have known better than to treat Jesus the way they did.  They were the ones to whom God had committed the office of interceding for the people through the sacrifices and temple rituals, so they could be forgiven and blessed.  They had the responsibility of teaching the people the law of Moses, so they could keep the covenant the Lord had made with them back at Mount Sinai, and so live in prosperous, joyful communion with their God.

    But it often happens this way in companies, organizations, and families: The leadership at first identifies their interest with the organization.  They say, "what the organization wants, I want."  But gradually they get entrenched, they start feeling their own power, and they forget what it is they're there for.  Now it's "What I want, the organization should want.  And if it doesn't, I know best."  Never mind what the chief executive, the family patriarch, or whomever might say.

    This attitude isn't always defiant or deliberate.  When we get it into our heads that we know best, we're generally convinced we have the good of the group at heart, but it's really about the good of yours truly.  So when something comes along that truly is about the good of the group, we can't see it, we reject it, we refuse to obey it.

    God Almighty was doing something radically new and fresh in His Son Jesus Christ, only it isn't really new, it's what God has taught His people to expect one day, all along, as our passage from Isaiah testifies.  And it's the leadership elite, those who prided themselves on their devotion and faithfulness, who rebel against it and refuse to obey.  If they can question Jesus' credentials, they can ignore the obligations He lays on their lives.  So St. Matthew reports that a number of chief priests and teachers of the Law came to Jesus as He sat teaching in the Temple courts, and demanded, "By what authority are you doing these things?"

    What things?  Well, in the past day or so Jesus has claimed to be the Messiah by accepting the title of "Son of David" and refusing to shut up the children who are praising Him by that name.  He has overturned the tables of those who were buying and selling in the Temple and called the Temple "My house" as He was driving the merchants out.  He has ridden like a king into Jerusalem and allowed His disciples to render Him praised and worship with their palm branches, their garments laid down on the road, and their shouts of "Hosanna!"  It must have galled the Jewish leaders to see how Jesus took all of this in stride, as if it were His due. 

    And it wasn't just Jesus' behavior in the past day or two that irked them, it was His conduct the past three years.  How He taught the Scriptures as if He were their Author.  How He healed people and cast out demons and did all those miracles they couldn't deny.  Especially, how He went around talking as if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were His actual Father.  Who gave Jesus the authority to do all that?

    That really is the question, isn't it?  A lot of people show up even today claiming to be somebody, calling people to follow them, and on what basis should we?  If the chief priests and elders really are good stewards of the commonwealth of Israel, if they really do have the glory of God and the best interests of their fellow Jews at heart, it's right that they should investigate Jesus' credibility.  Is He really from God?

    But responsibility and good stewardship isn't really what motivates them, and Jesus knows it.  He turns the question back on them.  Answering a question with a question is a time-honored technique in debate.  It helps reveal the underlying assumptions of the person asking the original question.  So Jesus asks the Jewish leaders, "John's baptism-- where did it come from?  Was it from heaven, or from men?" 

    That gets us to the foundation of it, doesn't it?  John the Baptist said he was sent by God to announce the coming of the Christ who would bring in the kingdom of God.  People came to him at the Jordan River and were baptised by him to testify that they'd turned from their sins and were preparing to meet the King when He came.  So did John really baptise in the power and authority of the God of heaven?  Or was his activity just a sideshow dreamed up by John and his disciples for notoriety and profit?

    The leaders of the people already don't believe John baptised in the authority of God.  They didn't want to believe he baptised in the authority of God.  Believing that would mean believing that the Messiah was at hand.  It'd mean accepting that the Messiah God sent wasn't exactly the kind of Christ they'd envisioned or planned.  It'd mean falling down at Jesus' feet and admitting that they were totally wrong in their schemes for redeeming themselves by their own works.  Their stubborn hearts simply were not prepared to be changed like that.

    Jesus wants us to see the irony in this.  These men claimed to be submitted to the authority of heaven.  The common people thought they were the holiest people alive.  So their discussion among themselves shows how Jesus has boxed them into a corner.  If they truly are the godly ones, and they say John's baptism was from God, why didn't they believe John and repent?  But the fact is that they refuse say John came in the authority of God.  They'd much rather believe his whole ministry was a product of popular enthusiasm-- from men.  But they're not about to stand up like men and say so out loud, because it would outrage the common people.  These held that John the Baptist was a prophet, and wouldn't want his memory insulted.  So the leaders say to Jesus, "We don't know."

    Meaning, they refuse to say.  And Jesus gives them the answer they deserve: "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things."  John's divinely-granted credentials were right before their eyes all through his ministry, and they refused to believe and repent.  They do not now deserve that Jesus should declare His divine source of power and authority to them.

    Brothers and sisters, we like to think we'd do better than the chief priests, elders, and Pharisees who refused to accept that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.  We'd believe Him to be who He said He was.  And maybe we would.  But mere mental belief isn't enough.  As James the half-brother of Jesus says in his letter, true faith is demonstrated by action.

    Jesus tells a parable to show us this is true: A father has work that needs doing in the family vineyard.  He tells both his boys to get out there and get to work.  First kid says, "No, I'm not going!"  But then he changes his mind and goes and works. Second son says, "Oh, yes, Father, certainly, Father, anything you say, I'm here to do your will, nothing pleases me better!" But he continues to sit on his rear doing the 1st century equivalent of watching television or playing computer games.

    So who actually did the father's will?  The men who'd challenged Jesus are forced to say that it was the first kid who did what his father wanted.  You know, the openly rebellious one.  The slacker.  The goof-off.  The blatant sinner-- who repented, submitted to his father, and went and did what the father commanded.  No hypocritical lip-service, no extravagant claims of devotion followed up by self-seeking disregard of the father's wishes, just genuine repentance with suitable action to follow.

    Friends, don't underestimate what terrible sinners the tax collectors and the prostitutes were!  The tax collectors were traitors to their nation and the prostitutes were and are traitors to their own humanity.  But they were cut to the heart when John came preaching about the kingdom and the King who was coming, and they turned from their sins and were baptised.  God was radically transforming His people, the wonderful effects of it were right before the eyes of the priests and elders, and still they refused to repent and believe what John had to say.

    And now they were refusing to repent and believe what Jesus had to say.  Nothing He said or did, no prophecy He fulfilled could break through their insistence that they knew God's purposes better than God did Himself.

    And so, the tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom of God ahead of them, and maybe instead of them.

    In the next two chapters Jesus will hammer home the guilt of the Jewish leadership, in shamefully failing to lead the people into the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven.  Why is this necessary?  Why does Jesus have to be so harsh about it?

    Jesus must expose even the sin of those who claim to be the righteous and holy ones, so that every human being is shown to be guilty before God and in need of a savior.  As Paul says in Romans 3:19,

    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.

    Who will hear and obey?  Obviously, not those who consider themselves good enough in themselves.  But open sinners aren't capable of hearing and obeying, either.  Not of themselves, not when they're submerged in their sin.  They need the Holy Spirit operating in the power of the word preached, they need the washing of the baptism of Jesus Christ, better than the baptism of John, to apply His blood to their uncleanness and wash their sins away.

    And, brothers and sisters, so do we.  Do you think you have everything under control and don't need Jesus or His prophets to call you to repent?  Or, will you listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and daily humble yourself, repent of your sins, and follow Him?

    In Matthew chapter 21 we see Jesus in Jerusalem, headed for the cross.  That cross demonstrated once and for all how rebellious we are, how sinful, how apt to ignore the call of our heavenly Father, for it took the blood of the sinless Son of God to wash our sins away.  But the cross of Christ also makes it possible for us to hear, to repent, and to obey.  Not in our own strength, not in our own goodness, not in our pride, do we say, "Yes, Father, I will," and get up and work in His vineyard, but in His strength, goodness, and worthiness alone: to whom be all power and glory, in the unity of the Holy Trinity, now and forever.  Amen. 
   

Earth's Wrongs and Heaven's Rights

Texts:  Isaiah 61:10 - 62:5; Matthew 19:1-12

          WHEN I WAS A KID, ONE thing my dad would always say was, "Two wrongs don't make a right."  He'd catch me doing something I shouldn't, and I'd plead, "Well, Big Sister did it, too!" but it never worked.  Two wrongs didn't make a right.

    Sadly, in our denomination, and indeed, in our whole culture, people do make the argument that two wrongs make a right.  We're all aware that homosexual rights groups are lobbying relentlessly for same-sex marriage throughout America. The arguments in favor of it have come from all angles.  People say that marriage is a good thing, and no human being should be deprived of it, no matter what their sexual habits are. On the other hand, it's also argued that "You can't really say that the marriage bond is sacred, since heterosexual couples get divorced and violate it all the time.  You heteros have already trashed it.  So it's not going to hurt anything if homosexuals get married, too."

    We can't say, "No, that's not true!"  Divorce rates are skyhigh in America, even among those who claim to be committed Christians.  These days, any and every cause seems to be a reason for husbands and wives to split up.

    So do we give in to the proddings of the homosexual rights groups and let two wrongs make a dubious right?

    No, we don't.  We can't.  For heaven has a say in this question as well as earth, as we see in our Gospel passage from St. Matthew, chapter 19.

    A group of Pharisees come to test Jesus.  They ask, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"

    When the Pharisees ask Jesus if easy divorce was "lawful," they're thinking of a command of Moses recorded in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and a current debate among various rabbis over allowable grounds for divorce.  One group said divorce was only allowable for sexual lewdness, the other that a man could divorce his wife for about anything, bad cooking or body odor or simply because the man saw someone else he liked better.  However He rules, the Pharisees figure Jesus will get Himself into trouble.  For one thing, easy divorce was popular with the people-- the male half, at least.  But Jesus doesn't waste time weighing in on this debate over allowable grounds.  No, He goes straight to the heart of the matter.  He upholds the basic integrity of marriage as recorded by the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24.  He says,

    "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,' and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'?  So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Do you see what our Lord has done here?  In one fell swoop He  has managed to offend or wrong just about everybody, His original audience and us living today.  He offends the Pharisees by implying they don't know how to interpret Scripture.  He offends the homosexual rights advocates of our day by reminding them that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, instituted by God since the beginning of Creation.  He offends all of us who think marriage is for our personal fulfillment or convenience, by pointing out that in the marriage bond, especially in the relations of the marriage bed, husband and wife are no longer themselves, but together they are a new creature, one flesh.  He offends all of us, married or single, who regard marriage as something we can define and do with what we will, by asserting that God is the active agent in marriage, and when God has joined a man and woman together in matrimony, no human person, not even the spouses themselves, have a right to break that union apart.

    A pastor at my home church once preached around this by saying that if a marriage ends in divorce, that means that God didn't actually join that couple together and the marriage wasn't a real one according to Genesis and Jesus.  I spoke to him after the service and said, "Thank you very much, Pastor, you've just declared my sisters and brother and me to be illegitimate children."  I don't recall how he answered me; it was pretty lame, as I recall, and not worth remembering.

    We can't get this out of what Jesus is saying!  God joins couples together wherever and whenever a man and a woman get married, whether they're Christians, Jews, or pagans, whether they acknowledge Him as the Creator or not!  In this word, Jesus convicts us all of wrongdoing, and at the same time, He asserts heaven's right. 

    The Pharisees think they've got Jesus after this.  And if you've ever been through a messy divorce, you might be secretly cheering for the Pharisees at this point.  "Oh yeah, Jesus?" they retort, "then what about Moses' command that a man should give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"

    That's Deuteronomy 24:1, and the Pharisees have twisted the text into a pretzel.  You'd think God wanted men to find excuses to divorce their wives!!  Bur Moses never commanded men to divorce their wives, he didn't even command them to give the women certificates to show they had been divorced.  Moses merely takes it for granted that as sinful human beings sinful, marriage-breaking things would happen between husbands and wives, and he passively allows the break-ups to proceed, since the evil of divorce was perhaps less than the evil of a cruel and miserable marriage.  As Jesus says, Moses permitted divorce because of the hardness of people's hearts.

    But earthly wrongs never make heaven's right.  This custom of divorce is not the way God planned it, it's not the way God wants it, it's not the way God ordained it from the beginning.  In His will, it has always been one man, married to one woman, for life, till death did them part.  And so Jesus tells us, "Anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

    Jesus' standard is both beautiful and fearsome.   We gaze on that ideal and we think, "Oh, how beautiful!"  But then, we lower our eyes to the earth and see how messy and painful the reality gets to be. How can this word of Christ have any practical meaning for us?

    But this word of Christ is one that has to be preached and heard, because marriage is not just an arrangement we make for our own good.  It's not even merely a contract entered into for the good of society.  Marriage is a model of the relationship that God desires and commands between Himself and all of humankind. 

    All humanity-- not just Christians, not just Jews, all humanity--was created to be in an eternal, unbreakable, sublime love relationship with our Creator God.  As a bride marries her husband, we were all as one to be married to Him.  But as we know, humanity sinned, and was unfaithful.  So God called out Israel to be His spouse, to live in faithful relationship with Him alone, to seek no other lovers, whether they were the foreign powers of this earth or the false gods of the nations.  Over and over in the Old Testament the covenant between the Lord and Israel is described in terms of marriage; our passage from Isaiah is only one example of this.  The earthly nation of Israel foreshadowed the spiritual Israel, the Church, and we read in Ephesians 5 how earthly marriage is a reflection and model of the eternal relationship between Christ and His Bride.

     So a man who divorces his wife for any reason other than adultery is not modelling the behaviour of God who keeps on seeking humanity out, keeps on sacrificing Himself for us, regardless of how spitefully we behave.  Unlike God, he has broken the most important covenant he will ever enter into in this life.  And a woman who leaves the marriage and weds another for anything short of her husband's sexual unfaithfulness makes of herself a living picture of humanity's unfaithfulness and idolatry against God.

    This is the word of Jesus.  Whatever the cause, divorce is a sign of our failure and sin, to be repented of, not celebrated.  But here we all are, sinful, failing, and very uncomfortable human beings, thinking about all the divorces our loved ones have gone through, thinking maybe about the divorces some of you have gone through yourselves.  The disciples cry out: "If this is the situation between a man and an woman, it is better not to marry!" Maybe you're thinking the same.  Why bind yourself to a impossibility Why make promises you can't keep?

    You may have heard of the Rev. Dr. Jack Rogers.  He used to be known as a prominent evangelical in our denomination.  Several years ago I was at a pastors' training conference where Dr. Rogers was one of the presenters.  This passage in Matthew came up, along with the corresponding passage in Mark, which doesn't mention the exception for adultery.  Dr. Rogers said that the exception must have been added in by some later church scribe, and that made Jesus' standard for marriage so impossibly high, no one could achieve it.  And since heterosexuals can't avoid divorce, neither should we expect homosexuals to fulfill the requirements of Scripture and repent of their sexual sins.   The very fact that the standard was so strict, Dr. Rogers taught, gave us all leave to ignore it and do whatever we pleased. Dr. Rogers, I'm afraid, had joined the world in proclaiming two very big wrongs to equal one very non-existent right. 

    But for our Lord Jesus, the alternative to accepting the godly standard of marriage is not "anything goes," it's celibacy.  It's making oneself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven, as He puts it in verse 12. 

    But Lord, how can we accept either of these words?  Both perfect godly marriage and perfect godly celibacy are out of our ability.  After all, here many of you are, divorced and remarried. And if you're not, like me you may have loved ones who are. What's done cannot be undone!  And even if it could be, would it make things any purer or better?  No, most likely it'd just make things worse.   Two, three, or more wrongs never make a right!  But what can we do?  We can't pray God's favor on our sin!

    No, but we can receive His mercy and forgiveness.  In our Isaiah passage, Israel is likened to a bride who has been divorced.  But God her husband is taking her back.  He is rejoicing over her as His chief delight., for He has made her new.  Brothers and sisters, this is a picture of what Jesus Christ even now is doing for us.  In Christ, the right of heaven will prevail for you.  Whatever you have done in your marriage, regardless of whether you've been married once, twice, three, or more times, regardless of the sins you have committed in any area of your life, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ washes you clean and His broken body nourishes you to eternal life.   In all the ambiguities and uncertainties of life, He can and will bless you with His grace.  You with all the Church are His beloved Bride, and He invites you to this Table to enjoy sweet communion with Him.  Will you come to Him and be stored?  Will you flee to Him to find your deep enduring love and only true joy?  He is your Lord, whose love and faithfulness endure forever, and in Him, every wrong is made right.  Amen.

Jesus, Our Muckraking Savior

Texts:  Jeremiah 17:5-10; 12-14; Matthew 15:1-20   

      
        IN AMERICA ABOUT A HUNDRED years ago, there were people called muckrakers.  Not your ordinary farmhand who spread the manure on the field, but magazine and newspaper reporters, men and women both, who specialized in bringing to light the hidden evils of American society.  The title "muckraker" was a pejorative: it implied that these writers were so busy focussing on what was wrong with American politics, business, and manufacturing that they never looked up and saw what was good.

    But the muckrakers didn't care.  They believed that our country could only be truly great if someone had to guts to dig below the beautiful, glittering surface and reveal the disease and evil that was hidden below.  It wasn't nice, or pleasant, or socially-acceptable to talk about such things, but it had to be done for America to be healed.

    In our passage from St. Matthew, chapter 15, our Savior Jesus operates as a muckraker.  He goes beyond the religious leaders' obsession with the clean surface and reveals the uncleanness of the human heart.  And just like the crowds and His disciples, we have to understand the dire sickness of our own hearts, if we are to turn to Jesus and be cured.

    Our scene takes place in Galilee.  Some Pharisees and teachers of the law arrive from Jerusalem to investigate Jesus.  Now, the Pharisees started out well.  They were a reform movement after the Babylonian Exile, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah.  It's thanks to them that the Jews of Jesus' day weren't still bowing down to pagan idols.  The scribes and Pharisees were very zealous for keeping the law of God: so zealous that their rabbis and elders kept adding interpretation upon interpretation, rule upon rule to the law, just in case anyone should violate the commands in the slightest way.  And the Pharisees of Jerusalem were the most zealous of all.

    Trouble was, they were like some 21st century Constitutional lawyers, who get so wound up in the latest case law that they forget what the Constitution actually says.  And now the Pharisees have heard disturbing things about Jesus.  They've been informed He isn't making His disciples keep the tradition of the elders.  As a Rabbi, He's responsible for their moral purity.  He needs to be challenged on this!

    So, Jesus, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?  Why, they don't wash their hands before they eat!

    Don't imagine that the Pharisees were concerned about keeping germs out of the food.  No, it was spiritual and ritual cleanliness they cared about.  Washing hands before eating had to be done in the right ritual way, with repeated pourings of water over first one hand, then the other.  Because if you didn't do all that, it made the food you ate ritually unclean and that food would make you spiritually and morally dirty inside, too.  But doing the ritual washing kept you clean and acceptable to God.  At least, that is what their tradition led them to believe.

    So what they were really saying is, "Jesus, you pretend to be a rabbi and teach the way of God, but your disciples are unclean in His sight and you encourage them to be that way.  You are a dangerous fraud."

    You or I might be tempted to get defensive and make excuses about the no-hand-washing charge.  But Jesus sees past it and turns their real accusation back on them.  Do they pretend to be rabbis themselves, true teachers of the law of God?  Then why do they break the true law of God, given through Moses, for the sake of the rules and interpretations added on by their not-God-inspired, johnny-come-lately predecessors? 

    Jesus ruthlessly exposes how they operate.  For instance, the real law of God, recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy, commands us to honor our parents with our obedience, our words, and our financial support.  But the scribal tradition had come up with a concept called korban.  It means "sacrifice," and it originally meant the animals and so on that God commanded the people to offer to Him in worship.  But in the practice of the Pharisees, a man could declare anything to be "korban," that is, a sacrifice vowed to God, and since God takes precedence even over one's mother or father, why, you could declare anything to be korban and not have to use it to help your needy parents.  And so, Jesus says, the Pharisees "nullif[ied] the word of God for the sake of [their] tradition."

    Oh, yes, on the surface it looked as clean and holy and legal as can be.  But Jesus our Savior took the muckrake of His word and dug down and showed how selfish and wicked and unloving this practice of korban really was.  The religious leaders put on a great show of loving God's law, but it was all hypocrisy.  They claimed to be the only ones who were truly worshipping Him, but as Jesus quotes Isaiah, it was all for nothing.  They weren't teaching the people the word of God, just a lot of rules made up by themselves and other men.

    Jeremiah, in the seventeenth chapter of his prophecy, also condemns those who depend on what men say and do for their life and strength.  He says that those who trust in man are like bushes in a wasteland: stunted, dried up, bearing no fruit.  Do you think this habit of abandoning the real law of God and following manmade rules began and ended with the Pharisees?  Not at all!  It's the oldest human habit and sin-- it's as old as Adam and Eve-- and it'll continue until Christ returns. Every day of our lives we're swimming in manmade rules telling us what we're supposed to do and what we're not supposed to do, all promising that if we keep them we'll please God or at least be happy, healthy, well-adjusted human beings. These rules and promises come from our secular culture and from misguided leaders in the church.  You know how it goes: A preacher says you'll go to hell if you take one sip of beer, so you think, "OK, if I avoid all alcohol, I'll be all right with God."  Or some worldly pundit says you're an intolerant bigot if you tell an unbeliever about Jesus Christ and His death for their sins, and your response is, "OK, I'll keep quiet.  Don't want anybody to think I'm not kind and loving."  But following these manmade rules don't make us "clean," they just hide the real uncleanness we have deep down inside.

    Jesus will not allow that unhealthy uncleanness to be hidden.  It has to be brought to the light and be washed away and cured.  So that day in Galilee He called the crowd to Him and told them frankly, "Listen and understand.  What goes into a man's mouth does not make him ‘unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.'"

    The disciples are astonished.  Didn't Jesus realize He'd offended the Pharisees, the way He'd answered them?  They were the ones everybody thought were getting it right.  Their very name means "Separated Ones" or "Saints."  How could Jesus dare to get on the wrong side of the separated saints of God?

    But Jesus knows their corruption and He does not hesitate to reveal it.  These so-called saints haven't been planted by God, and they will be uprooted.  The disciples should ignore them; don't even think of following their lead.  The Pharisees claimed to be guides for the spiritually blind, but they were blind themselves.  Go after them, and you'd end up in a spiritual pit.

    In our day we, too, have people and parties who claim to be able to tell us what to do and how to live.  Whether they speak from the right or from the left, don't follow them until you've compared what they're saying with the word of God.  Jeremiah says that the one who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by a stream of water, never going dry and always green and fruitful.  Remember to follow God first, even when your own party or group is demanding you accept or reject something just because they say so.  Stay out of that pit.

    When Jesus had warned the crowd and the disciples against the corruption of the Pharisees, Peter said to Him, "Explain the parable to us."  The disciples took it for granted that you could be spiritually corrupted by something you ate.  It didn't dawn on them that there was a literal meaning to what Jesus had said. And it frustrates Him that the disciples don't get it.  Are they still so dull?  Hasn't He been teaching them ever since the Sermon on the Mount that the seat of sin and corruption is the human heart?  The Pharisees were wrong in thinking that spiritual uncleanness came from eating unclean food with unclean hands.  Our culture is wrong in thinking that people are basically good and human evil comes about due to bad parenting or economic deprivation or some other outside influence.  No, says Jesus, food is food, it's swallowed, it does its job in the body, and the waste ends up in the latrine.  But what comes out of the mouth, that comes from the heart, and that is what makes a human being unclean. 

    Brothers and sisters, every last one of us was born with a dirty heart.  As Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure."  We all have evil thoughts, we wish others were dead, we cast the eye of lust on those who are not joined to us in marriage, we steal or wish we could steal, we lie about ourselves and against others, we speak ill of God and our fellow man.  We act out these urges in continual thoughts and acts every day of our lives, and if we haven't done anything to get arrested for, it's because we haven't yet had the nerve or the motive.  Even our so-called good deeds are selfish and corrupt and unacceptable in the sight of our holy God.

    So what can we do?  Jeremiah says our hearts are beyond cure.  Are we condemned to the muck forever?

    We are not.  What is impossible with man is possible with God.  For in Jeremiah 17:14 the prophet cries, "Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved."  We can't clean up our own hearts, by keeping rituals or following rules.  But Jesus who reveals the muck of our hearts is also the Savior who makes them clean.  The blood He shed for us on Calvary is sufficient and effective to wash away every sin: not just the ones we commit, but the sinfulness of our hearts as well.  If you belong to Christ, He has put a new and clean heart within you.  It's at war with the old heart and its evil attitudes, but slowly, bit by bit, His Holy Spirit is shrinking that old heart and taking away its power over you.

    It's not pleasant to face up to the filthiness that's in our own hearts.  But it's the mercy of our Lord Jesus that reveals it to us and calls us to repentance.  It's His grace that keeps us clinging to His Holy Spirit and His word, so that we come to Him again and again to be made pure.  And it's His love that will bring us at last to stand with Him on Zion's holy hill with clean hands and pure hearts, united by faith with Him the holy Son of God, the only Man whose hands are truly clean, and whose heart is wholly pure.