Sermon A: 23 S Pent: 1 Thess 1:10

The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost falls on October 19, 2008 and has the following lectionary readings: Isaiah 45:1-7, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 and Matthew 22:15-22. The sermon’s text is 1 Thessalonians 1:10: “…and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”

One possible outline of a sermon is to ask a question in order to get the listener confused and then use the text to clarify the confusion by bringing the comfort of the Gospel into play. The question for this sermon could be: “What was the purpose of the cross of Jesus Christ?” or “What did God intend to take place because of the cross of Jesus Christ?”

In our experience, there is a near unanimous agreement that Jesus died on the cross in order to take away our sins. Now sometimes they will abbreviate the answer by talking about the forgiveness of sins but it basically means the same thing. It is at this point that the second question causes the confusion: “If Jesus took away your sins at the cross, then why do you find yourself sinning when you look into the mirror of the Law?”

Once a person concludes that faith in the cross of Jesus Christ somehow reduces or eliminates sinfulness, the devil’s work is begun. For who could ever be assured of personal salvation if the evidence of one’s salvation is a reduction or elimination of sin? In reality from God’s point of view, it was and is not “sin” that separates us from God. How so?

If sin is understood as rebellion or disobedience against the intention of the created order, then the entire world has fallen into sin. Trees fall on cars; lions eat people! Yet neither trees or lions are banished to an eternal hell. That is only reserved for two parts of creation: angels and human beings. What really separates God from man is the curse of the Law which reads, “In the day that you sin, death is the result.”

We know that death is not temporal death for Adam and Eve continued to live after their sin in Eden. But it certainly was a spiritual death as they ran to hide from God where He already was. It is the consequence of the curse of the Law that separates us from God.

Now just what did happen at the cross? Did Jesus die to take away the sins of the world in the sense that we sin no more or did He die to take away the curse of the Law? Verse 10 of the 1st chapter of Thessalonians reveals that the work of Jesus was to deliver us from the wrath to come. That wrath is against all unbelief which refused to acknowledge God as the true Redeemer of mankind and instead went after other gods.

With the purpose of the cross effective when Jesus substituted Himself for you, the lack of assurance of salvation is taken away and replaced with the objective revelation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He died so that you will never really die; He lives so that you live eternally. And all that is for you out of God’s good and gracious will to those of us who do not deserve such a gift of salvation.