The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
July 6, 2014- Pastor Adam Moline
Isaiah 55:10-13 Romans 8:12-17 Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Hymns LSB 686, 594, 790 Communion LSB 662
Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our text today comes from the Epistle
reading, especially these words written by St. Paul. “If you live according to the flesh you will
die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the actions of the body, you
yourselves will live.” Thus far our text
today.
Dear friends in
Christ. Our text today really has to be
fit into the context of what has come right before it. Paul cuts right to the chase, several times,
with these words, “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the
things of the flesh,” not on God. . And “to set the mind on the flesh is death. For the mind that is set on the flesh is
hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those
who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
And finally, the first part of our text today, “If you live according to
the flesh, you will die.”
We hear these
words, and we let them just pass through our brains, as if they don’t really
matter, as if they don’t apply to us. As
if we are spiritual and holy people, and its everyone else who is fleshly and
sinful. We condemn all those around us
and feign innocence.
But innocent we
are not.
We, each one of
us, so often live according to our flesh, and not according to God. We, yes you, want what is best for you in
this world. You want what serves you
most at this time, at this place. You at
times, are not concerned with eternity, but only with the here and the
now. We are fleshly, according to Paul’s
thinking, because we care about ourselves so very much.
Paul, in chapter
one of Romans, describes what sorts of fleshly debauchery we fall into. He writes, that we are “filled with all
manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. We are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,
maliciousness. We are gossips,
slanderers, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to
parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”
Those things, dear
friends do describe us, faithful, church attending Christians, just as well as
they describe those who haven’t darkened the door of our building in many
years. We Christians are not better than
those whom we so often judge. We are
just as guilty, just as sinful, and live in fleshly thinking just as much as
any other person on this earth. We live
according to our flesh, our own wants, and our own desires. So hear again the Words of St. Paul, in our
text “If you live according to the flesh, you will die,” and know that those
words apply to you, dear friends, just as much as to any other.
But, Paul also
writes in the very first part of Romans chapter 8, “There is therefore no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” “For you have been set free
from sin and death.” How? Not by your doing, not by your holiness of
life, for as St. Paul wrote, you are incapable of keeping God’s law. No, you are set free from sin, you are
released from condemnation by the work of Jesus Christ on your behalf. He lived the life apart from sin. He lived perfectly, and wonderfully. He went to the cross to suffer the death
fleshly sin deserves. He died, and was
buried, all in your place and for your sin.
Jesus paid your
sentence. Though you had earned death,
Jesus suffered it, in your place. He
took your punishment upon himself, your guilt into his own body. For your “Fleshly” living, your sinful living
that is, he died.
And in his death,
God the father adopted you as his child!
It says so in the text. You have
received the spirit of adoption as sons and daughters, so that when you speak
and pray to God you may call him, “Abba!” “Father,” Dad, if you will. We use those very words in the Lord’s Prayer,
“Our Father in heaven.” Trusting that He
is our true father, and that we are his true children, so that boldly we can
ask him to love and care for us in this world and forever more. And as we ask him, we know that he will.
We are adopted
children of God in the blood and death of Jesus. We receive that adoption in water and the
word, in baptism in to the name of God the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit. In that one act, our fleshly
nature begins its death throws, and our spiritual life begins – the spiritual
life that will never end. You are an
heir of the spiritual blessings of God.
His own child, we gladly say it now, and even forevermore. We are forgiven, and we live, all because of
Jesus, who has adopted us as heirs.
In the name of
Jesus. Amen.
