The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
July 6, 2014- Pastor Adam Moline
Zechariah 9:9-12 Romans 7:14-25a Matthew 11:25-30
Hymns LSB 707, 684, 752 Communion LSB 662, 965, 717, 718
Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today is the Epistle lesson just read, especially these words,
“I do not understand my own actions.”
Thus far our text today.
Dear friends in
Christ. St. Paul, the great apostle and
follower of Jesus, who even was beheaded for his faith by the Emperor Nero in
the late 60’s AD, makes a bold confession in our text today. “Wretched man that I am,” he says, “Who can
save me from this body of sin?” It is a
good question isn’t it? And it needs to
be a question that we ask all the time, because, dear friends, we too are
wretched with sin.
Yes, you. You are wretchedly full of terrible, horrible
sin. It infects you, and every person in
Hankinson to their very core. Its within
you, in your selfish wants and desires.
It shows its ugly head when you hurt your neighbor because you are more
concerned about yourself. You’ve not
loved your neighbor who is on the street suffering and hurting. You’ve failed to give compassion to everyone
in every place that needed it.
You’re wretched in
sin so that you’ve driven past cars stalled on the side of the road because
you’ve been late. You’ve honked at cars
that you’ve felt weren’t driving the right way as it if was your job to police
them – and then a few moments later you’ve sped off as if speed limits don’t
apply to you.
You’ve become
wretched in sin. So wretched that you
would rather watch filthy reality T.V. shows that read your bible for five
minutes. You’d rather go out fishing
that come in to church on a nice Sunday morning – and what’s worse, when you do
so, you justify yourself by saying ridiculous things like “Well God’s in nature
so its ok for me to spend time here instead of where His word is proclaimed for
my salvation.”
You’re wretched in
sin, so much so that you do things even when you know they are wrong, even when
you know that they are wrong. You
continue in sin as if it doesn’t really matter.
You keep on in wretched things, because you enjoy them. You act as if you don’t know they’re
wrong. You get angry when someone else
tells you that the things you’ve done are sinful, to the point where you begin
to judge the other person, comparing your sin with theirs, and deciding that
theirs is worse than yours – which is in fact a lie.
Yes, because all
are wretched. Even the person who seems
the most holy outwardly is a terrible rotten sinner inside. All of sinned, all have fallen short of the
glory of God. All have failed in their
thoughts words and deeds. It’s the truth
– each one of you is wretched.
So what should you
do? Resolve today to change your sinful
life? To no longer sin? To only be holy and gracious? To do what is right in all times and all
places? Go ahead and try – you will
fail. Your sin is not a decision – it is
a reality that is beyond your comprehension.
And since it is not your decision to be infected with sin, it is not
your decision to be rescued from it, but it is only God’s grace that can take
it away. You do not do the good you want
to do, but instead you do the very things you hate. Wretched people that you are, who will save
you from this body of sin?
The answer comes
from the very Word of God. While you
were still a sinner, God saved you, not by righteous things that you have done,
but instead by the washing of Water and the Word, so that being justified by
his grace, we might heirs of the hope of eternal life. Yes, in baptism your sinful self was drowned
and died. In baptism, all the
wretchedness that infected you was killed.
It was destroyed along with death and the devil in baptism. You poor miserable sinner became a holy blessed
child of God.
Its true. When you were baptized you died with Jesus,
and your sin died with you. You became a
participant in Jesus death. You died
when water was poured on your head in the name of the only true God, the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. You
were dead in a tomb with Jesus, and as Jesus rose from the dead victoriously
sin free, so too did you. And because
Jesus rose, so too do you rise. Wretched
man that you are, Jesus died and rose to rescue you!
We watched it
happen this morning. A tiny baby,
already sinful by nature, came to the font, and with the power of the Word in
and with the water was made righteous in God’s sight. All the sin that the baby had already
committed was taken away. All the sin
that the baby would commit was already forgiven. The baby was already promised eternal
life. The baby was made well in the
blood of Jesus.
And the same
happened to you, a forgiven wretched sinner.
Yes, your sin was made well, by the water of baptism that connects you
to Jesus. Your sin, all of it, has been
paid for, forevermore. You are free from
the bounds of sin. You are God’s own
Holy Child.
That doesn’t mean
sin won’t be apart of your life. You
will still sin. You are still wretched
for as long as you are in this world.
Its reality. But at the same time
you deal with your sin in this world, you are a forgiven wretch. You are sinner and saint. You are guilty and not guilty. And you will be that way until finally your
sinful nature dies for good at the end of your earthly life, when all that will
be left is your new, forgiven, perfect and holy for Jesus sake self. Then the reality of your baptism will be made
complete – you will be forgiven and with God, even forever more.
In the name of
Jesus. Amen.
