For the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, the three assigned readings are 1 Kings 17:17-24; Galatians 1:11-24 and Luke 7:11-17. The text for preaching is Galatians 1:12, “For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Few would disagree with Paul’s point that his knowledge of Christianity did not come from or through human beings but through a special revelation given to him during his three years in Arabia. The point of the sermon is not simply to help the hearer understand the text (Scripture interprets Scripture) but also to apply the text (distinctions between Law and Gospel). The L&G handle would be the key difference between Judaism and true Christianity. Paul considered himself a top notch follower of Judaiam but a persecutor of the Church of God. What is the difference between the two?

It is a difference that Christians still make today as they turn the religion of grace into a religion of obedience. Judaism appeared on the scene around the time of the Babylonian captivity when the temple was replaced with synagogues; priests with rabbis and sacrifices with reading of the Law. As with Judaism today at your neighborhood synagogue, there is a great emphasis on one’s works becoming worthy of salvation. The Pharisee’s prayer of Luke 18 thanked God for not being like the sinner. How sad.

The old Adam within each Christian attempts to make us eat of the forbidden fruit of works righteousness and to regard Jesus as only Example rather than Savior. Some do so by imagining that their frequent attendance in worship, taking the Lord’s Supper and hefty offerings are what pleases God to save us. Of course, all such works are said to be motivated by the Holy Spirit thinking thereby that the charge of doing works out of self-interest would be bypassed. But no such luck.

For Paul, proper preaching of the Law consists of three parts:  God’s demand; it must be perfect and no one can fulfill it. However the Gospel may be in its specificity, it always comes down to this point–What man could not do by the law because we are weak in the flesh, God did and then transferred all the benefits of the cross and empty tomb to the undeserving who receive them by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

The Law is so subtle in its temptation that even the notion that I am well considered in God’s eyes because I know I am a sinner and give all the credit to Jesus becomes a form of legalism. That is why the life of the Christian is not one of increasing goodness but a sense of the need for an increase in repentance. The danger is that we become boastful of our humility and our better understanding of doctrine than other Christians have.

The text is a wonderful opportunity to remind each of us that our conversion was exactly like that of St. Paul’s. A conversion against our sinful will as God transplanted a new heart and a right will on our road to Damascus. A conversion not by man but through the power of the Holy Spirit Himself as He sanctifies us through the Word and keeps us in the one true faith forever and ever.

Having just completed the holy festival of Pentecost, we now enter into the second half of the Church year with the festival of the Holy Trinity. Assigned for Series C are the following three readings: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Acts 2:14a, 22-26 and John 8:48-59. The text chosen to preach on is John 8:58, “Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.’”

There is no doubt that Christians regard Jesus as the fulfillment of the promised Messiah (in Hebrew) or Christ (in Greek). They would also agree that He is the Son of Man promised in Daniel 7 to be sent by the Ancient of Days (the Father) to save sinners from eternal damnation. They also refer to Him as Savior. But on this holy Sunday there is another dimension to the personhood of Jesus that needs attention. Jesus is God!

For Christians today there is not much difference in referring to Him as the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of Man, the Redeemer, the Savior and God. However, the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is God Himself was most hard to accept. No, it was impossible to accept by the unbelieving Jews. The text has them accusing Him of being a Samaritan and having a demon because of what they considered to be His blasphemy.

They must have torn their hair out–if not tear their robes–when in verse 58 Jesus used the name of God for Himself. It is not that easy to recognize the name of God being used in the English translation of “before Abraham was, I AM.” In this translation, at least the I AM is capatalized. For in Greek, the personal pronoun is part of the verb form. However, Jesus in reality says, “Before Abraham was, I, I AM.” The double “I” is a reference back to Exodus 3 when God reveals to Moses His name, “Yahweh” which is literally “I AM WHO I AM.”

The closest we have in our literature to what this means is in the comic strip, Popeye, the Sailor Man. He and Bluto are arguing over who is going to take out Olive Oyle. Bluto says, “Who’s going to stop me from taking her out?” and Popeye replies, “I am who I am” puffing a few times on his pipe as he speaks. The best way I have found to understanding that is to say, “I fulfill what I promise.” In other words, I have made a promise and I will make sure it is kept!

While there are references in the Old Testament to the Messiah being God Himself, almost 70 passages make it clear that the Angel of the LORD is the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ Himself. For more info on this, examine the book “The Angel of Angels” written by Pastor Peter Kurowski available from www.lawgospel.com. That the man Jesus is also true God means that His promises are always sure and never failing. We can be assured of our salvation as we recall the blessed promises given to us through the waters of baptism. It is indeed a washing of regeneraion resulting in an eternal salvation beginning right here and now.

For Pentecost Sunday, three assigned readings are Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21 and John 14:23-31. Chosen to peach about is Genesis 11:4, “And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’”

Have you ever wondered why the feast of Pentecost has as its Old Testament reading the Tower or Babel? The usual answer is that both the Tower of Babel incident as well as the event of Pentecost involve foreign languages. Whereas the Babel event led to a confusion among people with the creation of foreign languages, the Pentecost event has the disciples speaking in other known foreign languages so that those from other countries can understand the message of the Gospel. It’s a neat shift from confusion to unity because of Christ. However, the parallel breaks down somewhat in that while Babel involved going from one language to many languages, Pentecost involved speaking in the different languages.

Examining the text, though, from a Law and Gospel point of view, something else begs our attention. The confusion of Law and Gospel normally takes place when the Law is said to have a use that God does not permit. In fact, it is a use that the Law was never given. Yet every other religion of the world, except for Christianity, makes great use of this nonuse of the Law. And that is the Law becoming a step ladder to heaven.

Now while it is true that the heaven which the Tower of Babel folks wanted to reach was not the heavenly place of God but perhaps only the sky with the clouds beneath their planned tower, special attention to verse 4 reveals their true intenion. They wanted to “make a name for ourselves.” This is pure idolatry of self and a breaking of the first commandment not to have anyone above God Himself.

With that in mind, we now see a most interesting distinction between Babel and Pentecost. I call it the ascending vs. descending motif. In every false religion of the world, mankind assumes that his task is to appease or placate an angry god. That is done by some kind of word, thought or work which is then rewarded by the god first liking you, then loving you and perhaps, saving you. Using our chosen analogy, every religion in the world attempts some method of ascending to God.

In start contrast to that, we find Pentecost doing the very opposite. No, we don’t descend to God but God descends to us. The great miracle of the Incarnation led to the death of a perfect human being for all sinful human beings. Pentecost is another part of God’s plan in having God Himself–that is, the Holy Spirit–not simply descending upon the people but entering into their hearts and making their bodies His holy temple. What a great difference is Babel from Pentecost. It’s the difference between salvation by the Law in constrast to salvation by the cross and resurrection; that is, the Gospel.

For the 7th and last Sunday of Easter prior to Pentecost, the three assigned readings are Acts 1:12-26; Revelation 22:1-20 and John 17:20-26. The text chosen for the sermon is Revelation 22:14, “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.”

Sounds somewhat ominous, doesn’t it? The only way to have a right to the tree of life is that you have to do His commandments? You might ask your listeners to put up their hands if they have been able to “do His commandments” perfectly, because we do have a holy God and nothing but the best will satisfy Him. Just received an email from a listener to “Law and Gospel” on AM 850 KFUO who attached a Facebook posting about how the Bible teaches that the only way to get to heaven is to be sinless. Interestingly, he himself writes, “…even though I personally haven’t reached sinless perfection in my own life, I believe it is as a result of not being born again.” Good luck with that, we say. Why? Because I have never met anyone who has a sinless life. There was only One and He is God.

Among the numerous passages he cites he imagines supports sinless perfection, this passage from Revelation 22:14 could have been one of them. And it is why the distinctions of Law and Gospel need to be mentioned in every sermon as the text is applied to the hearers. Reading the Bible without understanding Law and Gospel is kinda like builiding a wall in your basement without knowledge of construction and load bearing and….etc. I know of what I speak when the wall we built was attached to the ceiling because we couldn’t figure out how to attach it to a cement basement floor. It lasted about a month.

Its not that any person cannot be saved by reading the Bible. It’s just that he won’t totally understand why he is saved; how he became saved and how to teach God’s way of salvation to others. He will actually read Revelation 22:14 and conclude that the only way one has a right to the tree of life is by meriting such right through doing His commandments!

However, one can have a right to something either because he has earned it or because he has certain rights he hasn’t earned. In regard to the former, you have a right to a paycheck if you work for a company. You merited it. However, you also have a right to an inheritance if your parents die which you didn’t earn or merit. You were born into the privilege of having such a right.

So also with Christiainty. The right we have to the tree of life is part of the free gift one receives when that conversion heart transplant takes place through Word and Sacrament by the power of the Holy Spirit. Also part of the free package is recognition by God that you are doing His commandments. First of all, you are absolved or forgiven for not doing His commandments; you are dressed in the robe of righteousness to take care of your sins of omission and finally, through the love of Christ placed in your heart at conversion by the Holy Spirit, you do accomplish fruit of the Holy Spirit. To put it bluntly, the Christian believer is regarded by God as fulfilling perfectly every commandment of Almighty God. That’s why the Bible addresses members of the Church as “saints.”

Verse 14 is easy to understand and apply as long as you don’t put the cart before the horse. That is, don’t give the impression that you first do His commandments by your own will thereby meriting a right to the tree of life. No, instead God creates in you a clean heart and right spirit (Psalm 51) which spontaneously produces fruit of the Holy Spirit that God declares to be sinless good works. The right to the tree of life is part of our inheritance given to us as a free gift by grace through faith on account of Jesus Christ and Him alone!

The assigned readings for the sixth Sunday of Easter include Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:9-14, 21-27 and either John 16:23-33 or John 5:1-9. The text for preaching is Revelation 21:27, “But there shall be no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

Why the Bible at times appears to be so confusing is due to passages such as this one. For does it not appear at first glance to contradict the primary message of the Gospel that salvation is NOT by works but by grace through faith in Jesus Christ? However, this passage appears to say that if you are defiled or cause an abomination or a lie, you are unable to enter into the celestial kingdom of heaven. Which of us does that not include? Are we not all truly poor, miserable sinners deserving nothing but temporal and eternal punishment because of the curse of the Law?

It is verses like these that cause great fear even among Christians. For the more you read the Bible, the more you realize how far short you fall from the glory of God. We indeed, from the point of view of the Law, are defiled. Rather than attempt to paint a rosy picture of the Christian life, the purpose of the Law is to cause fear and trembling that we are not pure enough to merit entrance into the celestial heaven. Each week the chosen readings include some form of this Law that is to be used to accuse every hearer of not being able to save oneself. Why? So that the person will realize that salvation has to come from outside of oneself.

And that’s the purpose of preaching the Gospel. To summarize, we would understand proper preaching of the Law to make demands on the person that are impossible to fulfill perfectly. The Gospel is the Good News that we can give up trying to merit our way to heaven because God and God alone has fulfilled all of His Will for us and then transfers that righteousness and the forgiveness of sins to human beings.

It’s fairly obvious that the Law of Revelation 21:27 is clear as each person understands that he is defiled. Then what hope does one have in entering through the pearly gates? The verse includes the Gospel as understood properly. We have often said that every passage of the Bible can be understood in one of two ways–the wrong way and the right way. Or another way of putting it, is by living under the Law or by living under the Gospel. So also with verse 27. How so?

Living under the Law, we would interpret Revelation 21:27 to say that the way one gets his name to be written in the Book of Life is by cleaning up his act so he is no longer defiled, causing an abomination or lying. Living under the Gospel, the passage is to be understood that being written in the Lamb’s Book of Life is not something we accomplish by thought, word or deed. Rather it is totally the work of God Who takes unworthy, defiled sinners and cleanses them in the blood of the Lamb. The free gifts of the forgiveness of sins and the robe of righteousness received in water baptism is God’s means of cleansing us.

Note well that Revelations 21:27 does not say that the ones who are saved are those “who write their names in the Book of Life” but rather whose names “are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” The passive, rather than active verb, reveals that it is God Who does the writing and He does so purely out of fatherly goodness and divine grace without any merit or worthiness in us. So rather than cross one’s fingers hoping to make it through the pearly gates by our works, we are confident that our entrance into the celestial kingdom will occur the same way we entered into the earthly kingdom of God; that is, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ as LORD and Savior!