2 Chronicles 28:8-15; Galatians 3:15-22; St Luke 10:23-37
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
What is the point of preaching? Depends who you ask. To the world preaching is utterly useless and pointless. A trite vestige of days gone by. Enlightened people don’t need to hear of sin and death, the condemnation of the Law, and Jesus’ blood atonement upon the Tree.
To the devil, real, Christian preaching, the kind of which St Paul, just verses earlier in his letter to the Galatians, says, It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified (Gal 3:1), is sheer agony; the excruciating twisting of the two edged sword of God’s word plunged deep into his scaly hide. It is just a painful reminder of what awaits him at the judgment.
To your flesh, it lands somewhere between these two. After all, your flesh is an ally of the devil and the world. It continues to despise preaching and the Word of God, foolishly rejecting and condemning it. Beware of such tendencies and dispositions within your own hearts, dear Christians. For this unholy trinity is at war with you, battling for your soul and body.
So, what is the point of preaching? Ask St Paul, he said it pretty clearly last Sunday: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? But they have not all believed the Gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ (Rom 10:13-15, 17).
Preaching, real, bloody, Christ centered preaching, is for conversion and confession. Jesus says as much in Luke 24 after His resurrection: Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Lk 24:46-47). To Jesus, St Paul, all the holy prophets and apostles, the point of preaching is for repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Faith in Christ lives from the preaching of the Gospel. This faith is expressed in the Christian’s life of prayer, confession, and charity.
So if this is the point of preaching within the Christian Church, what about the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ which goes on in the Gospels? Ought it not be for repentance and the forgiveness of sins? Ought it not create and sustain faith which is expressed in prayer, confession and charity? Does our Lord not desire all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4)? Indeed He does. Thus His preaching is for this purpose. For repentance and faith. For teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness. Indeed, this is why He came out, as our Lord says in Mark’s Gospel. To preach.
So it is that today our Lord Jesus is confronted by a lawyer who asks, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Ask a Law question, get a law answer: Love the Lord your God with your all and your neighbor as yourself. That’s right. This is the summary of the Two Tables of the Law. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love is all you need. Except what? You can’t. You don’t. You know you should. Or at least try.
So like this lawyer, you attempt to make the Law more manageable. More do-able. You attempt to justify yourself. “Hey, I’m not a bad guy. If I was going down the road and saw someone in real, desperate need, I’d help them. I mean, I’m no doctor, but I’d call 911. I’d stay there until the ambulance showed up. But do I have to do this for everyone? I mean, there have got to be some people I can pass by. Other Christians can do their part, right? I can’t be a good Samaritan all day. Just, who is my neighbor?”
Listen closely, because this is Jesus’ sermon: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.”
Now, is the point of this parable, this preaching, this sermon from Jesus, do more, try harder, you can do it? Is that ever the point of Jesus’ preaching? “If you just good worked yourself a little more, if you loved God more and your neighbor even harder, then you’ll inherit eternal life.” That doesn’t sound right, does it? But that’s how we often hear the parable of the Good Samaritan. This preaching of Jesus to a man who is truly interested to know how he can inherit eternal life. Is it just do the Law harder? The devil, the world, and your sinful flesh certainly want you to hear the Parable that way.
But this doesn’t fit with the analogy of faith. That you are justified by grace, by the undeserved kindness and favor of the Father toward you because of the bloody, atoning sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ on your behalf. This sort of interpretation of Jesus’ preaching doesn’t fit with the clear words of St Paul: For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an atoning sacrifice by His blood, to be received by faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law (Rom 3:23-25, 28). This is just more of the same preaching that he gives to the Galatians in today’s epistle. This is the clear proclamation of God’s Word of Law and Gospel.
So, since you’re like the lawyer and are always attempting to justify yourself, always trying to make the Law more manageable, according to your flesh, then hear this preaching of Jesus as the lawyer. You’re not the Samaritan. You’re not even the priest or the Levite. You’re the man in the ditch. In attempting to justify yourself and make the Law more manageable and doable to inherit eternal life, you’ve been pummeled and beaten by the very Law you thought could give life. You fell among the delusion of your old Adam that the Law could save you. And its stripped you of even your most righteous works, which are as filthy rags before the Lord. Its beaten you down, leaving you an eviscerated mess, alone in the ditch of your self-righteousness, dead in your trespasses and sins.
And in an attempt to climb out, to pull yourself up by your boot straps, and try harder, the priest and the Levite, those representatives of the Law, come strolling by to taunt you. They can’t help you. If a Law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the Law. They cross over opposite your bruised and battered carcass, ineffective and unable to help.
But by chance a Samaritan comes. Well, not by chance, but by divine design. It just seems like chance from your perspective. He is not encumbered by the false belief that the Law can give eternal life. He knows the real purpose of the Law: to kill you, but also to teach you to be merciful. So having compassion, the Samaritan comes to you, binds up your wounds, cleanses you by the application of oil and wine, His purifying Law and sweet, refreshing Gospel. He hoists you to His own animal, walking, while you ride, taking you to the Inn of His Church. He ordains the Innkeeper to be your caretaker and shepherd, and bestows to him two denarii, enough for two days provision, for He, the Good Samaritan, will be back on the third day to give the full inheritance by grace and mercy.
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? Do you see it? Have you heard this sermon correctly? What is the point of Jesus’ preaching? You know and believe the Good Samaritan is the depiction of Jesus Christ, your Good Shepherd, who has had mercy upon you, coming down from His Father’s throne, seeing you in your decrepit and miserable state. He pours out upon you the oil and wine of His Word, cleansing you from all unrighteousness, bringing healing to your Law-battered conscience.
He has carried you in Himself, laden as He was with your carcass, your rotten, festering sin. He was pummeled with the wrath of the Father, beaten bloody by the fists of the Law, which ought to have killed you. But having bestowed the two day deposit to see to your aid and comfort, He comes back on the third day, bringing life and immortality to light, giving you the inheritance of eternal life.
This you know. But how? Through the preaching of His Word in which He is publicly portrayed before your very eyes as crucified. By repentance and faith. For the purpose of preaching is for teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness. Not just the preaching of the Church now, but this is the purpose of Jesus’ preaching which you hear in the Gospels.
So what about this certain lawyer? Does he see it? Has the Law done its work on him, bringing him to repentance? Has the Gospel of the Good Samaritan raised him from the ditch of death? Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor unto the man who fell among the robbers? How does he answer? The One who showed him mercy. He seems to get it! He is converted by the preaching of Jesus and makes the good confession. The promise of life which was given to Abraham by faith is fulfilled in the One Seed, who is Christ. The Law does not annul this. The Law is a pedagogue, a teacher, until the coming of the One who shows mercy. The Merciful One who in faithful obedience kept the Law for you, loving God His Father with His all, and His neighbor as Himself. All people. All the time. He is the Good Samaritan, who by His all sufficient Sacrifice has redeemed you from under the Law.
So like the certain man in the parable you wake up here in the Inn of the Church, having received mercy and compassion, kindness and love, forgiveness for all your sins, freedom from having to earn your salvation, having to do to get your inheritance, for it is bestowed by grace through faith in the promise. And what do you do? How do you live? You just sang it: “O grant that nothing in my soul may dwell but they pure love alone; Oh may Thy love possess me whole, my joy, my treasure and my crown! All coldness from my heart remove; my every act, word, thought be love” (LSB 683:2).
And as we are want to do, we’ll sing it again, preaching it to one another during the distribution. For this is what hymns do. They are sermons set to music. By them you preach to one another, to yourselves, and confess before the world and the devil. So listen up to that great Lutheran chorale and sermonic hymn from Paul Speratus: “Faith clings to Jesus’ cross alone and rests in Him unceasing; and by its fruits true faith is known, with love and hope increasing. For faith alone can justify; works serve our neighbor and supply the proof that faith is living” (LSB 555:9). Again in 851. And again in the last hymn: Where charity and love prevail. To be sure, the Scriptures are constantly preaching good works to you, exhorting you to holy living according to the Law.
Make no mistake, dear Christians, you are baptized into Christ, buried with Him, but your flesh is a good swimmer and the old man needs to be daily drown in the baptismal waters. The Law does this. Crucifies you anew. Slays and kills you. Always. But raised through those same baptismal waters you have put on Christ and His righteousness and delight in His Law.
So it not only kills your flesh, it guides your new man. It teaches and admonishes you, as Christ does the lawyer, Go and do likewise. As you heard in the Old Testament reading. You are given to clothe your neighbor, who shares in your flesh and blood, care for them in prayer, through confession of the faith, and in charity. Not only to send them off, but to go with them to Jericho, the City of Palm Trees, to the rest and habitation of the Lord.
Hence do you always need the Inn of the Church. Its preaching and care. The oil and wine of His Law and Gospel. The Absolution of your wounds. For here are the two denarii of Christ’s Body and His Blood, your heavenly inheritance, by grace. Received in faith they strengthen you in faith toward God and in fervent love toward one another.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
What is the point of preaching? Depends who you ask. To the world preaching is utterly useless and pointless. A trite vestige of days gone by. Enlightened people don’t need to hear of sin and death, the condemnation of the Law, and Jesus’ blood atonement upon the Tree.
To the devil, real, Christian preaching, the kind of which St Paul, just verses earlier in his letter to the Galatians, says, It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified (Gal 3:1), is sheer agony; the excruciating twisting of the two edged sword of God’s word plunged deep into his scaly hide. It is just a painful reminder of what awaits him at the judgment.
To your flesh, it lands somewhere between these two. After all, your flesh is an ally of the devil and the world. It continues to despise preaching and the Word of God, foolishly rejecting and condemning it. Beware of such tendencies and dispositions within your own hearts, dear Christians. For this unholy trinity is at war with you, battling for your soul and body.
So, what is the point of preaching? Ask St Paul, he said it pretty clearly last Sunday: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? But they have not all believed the Gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ (Rom 10:13-15, 17).
Preaching, real, bloody, Christ centered preaching, is for conversion and confession. Jesus says as much in Luke 24 after His resurrection: Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Lk 24:46-47). To Jesus, St Paul, all the holy prophets and apostles, the point of preaching is for repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Faith in Christ lives from the preaching of the Gospel. This faith is expressed in the Christian’s life of prayer, confession, and charity.
So if this is the point of preaching within the Christian Church, what about the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ which goes on in the Gospels? Ought it not be for repentance and the forgiveness of sins? Ought it not create and sustain faith which is expressed in prayer, confession and charity? Does our Lord not desire all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4)? Indeed He does. Thus His preaching is for this purpose. For repentance and faith. For teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness. Indeed, this is why He came out, as our Lord says in Mark’s Gospel. To preach.
So it is that today our Lord Jesus is confronted by a lawyer who asks, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Ask a Law question, get a law answer: Love the Lord your God with your all and your neighbor as yourself. That’s right. This is the summary of the Two Tables of the Law. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love is all you need. Except what? You can’t. You don’t. You know you should. Or at least try.
So like this lawyer, you attempt to make the Law more manageable. More do-able. You attempt to justify yourself. “Hey, I’m not a bad guy. If I was going down the road and saw someone in real, desperate need, I’d help them. I mean, I’m no doctor, but I’d call 911. I’d stay there until the ambulance showed up. But do I have to do this for everyone? I mean, there have got to be some people I can pass by. Other Christians can do their part, right? I can’t be a good Samaritan all day. Just, who is my neighbor?”
Listen closely, because this is Jesus’ sermon: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.”
Now, is the point of this parable, this preaching, this sermon from Jesus, do more, try harder, you can do it? Is that ever the point of Jesus’ preaching? “If you just good worked yourself a little more, if you loved God more and your neighbor even harder, then you’ll inherit eternal life.” That doesn’t sound right, does it? But that’s how we often hear the parable of the Good Samaritan. This preaching of Jesus to a man who is truly interested to know how he can inherit eternal life. Is it just do the Law harder? The devil, the world, and your sinful flesh certainly want you to hear the Parable that way.
But this doesn’t fit with the analogy of faith. That you are justified by grace, by the undeserved kindness and favor of the Father toward you because of the bloody, atoning sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ on your behalf. This sort of interpretation of Jesus’ preaching doesn’t fit with the clear words of St Paul: For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an atoning sacrifice by His blood, to be received by faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law (Rom 3:23-25, 28). This is just more of the same preaching that he gives to the Galatians in today’s epistle. This is the clear proclamation of God’s Word of Law and Gospel.
So, since you’re like the lawyer and are always attempting to justify yourself, always trying to make the Law more manageable, according to your flesh, then hear this preaching of Jesus as the lawyer. You’re not the Samaritan. You’re not even the priest or the Levite. You’re the man in the ditch. In attempting to justify yourself and make the Law more manageable and doable to inherit eternal life, you’ve been pummeled and beaten by the very Law you thought could give life. You fell among the delusion of your old Adam that the Law could save you. And its stripped you of even your most righteous works, which are as filthy rags before the Lord. Its beaten you down, leaving you an eviscerated mess, alone in the ditch of your self-righteousness, dead in your trespasses and sins.
And in an attempt to climb out, to pull yourself up by your boot straps, and try harder, the priest and the Levite, those representatives of the Law, come strolling by to taunt you. They can’t help you. If a Law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the Law. They cross over opposite your bruised and battered carcass, ineffective and unable to help.
But by chance a Samaritan comes. Well, not by chance, but by divine design. It just seems like chance from your perspective. He is not encumbered by the false belief that the Law can give eternal life. He knows the real purpose of the Law: to kill you, but also to teach you to be merciful. So having compassion, the Samaritan comes to you, binds up your wounds, cleanses you by the application of oil and wine, His purifying Law and sweet, refreshing Gospel. He hoists you to His own animal, walking, while you ride, taking you to the Inn of His Church. He ordains the Innkeeper to be your caretaker and shepherd, and bestows to him two denarii, enough for two days provision, for He, the Good Samaritan, will be back on the third day to give the full inheritance by grace and mercy.
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? Do you see it? Have you heard this sermon correctly? What is the point of Jesus’ preaching? You know and believe the Good Samaritan is the depiction of Jesus Christ, your Good Shepherd, who has had mercy upon you, coming down from His Father’s throne, seeing you in your decrepit and miserable state. He pours out upon you the oil and wine of His Word, cleansing you from all unrighteousness, bringing healing to your Law-battered conscience.
He has carried you in Himself, laden as He was with your carcass, your rotten, festering sin. He was pummeled with the wrath of the Father, beaten bloody by the fists of the Law, which ought to have killed you. But having bestowed the two day deposit to see to your aid and comfort, He comes back on the third day, bringing life and immortality to light, giving you the inheritance of eternal life.
This you know. But how? Through the preaching of His Word in which He is publicly portrayed before your very eyes as crucified. By repentance and faith. For the purpose of preaching is for teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness. Not just the preaching of the Church now, but this is the purpose of Jesus’ preaching which you hear in the Gospels.
So what about this certain lawyer? Does he see it? Has the Law done its work on him, bringing him to repentance? Has the Gospel of the Good Samaritan raised him from the ditch of death? Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor unto the man who fell among the robbers? How does he answer? The One who showed him mercy. He seems to get it! He is converted by the preaching of Jesus and makes the good confession. The promise of life which was given to Abraham by faith is fulfilled in the One Seed, who is Christ. The Law does not annul this. The Law is a pedagogue, a teacher, until the coming of the One who shows mercy. The Merciful One who in faithful obedience kept the Law for you, loving God His Father with His all, and His neighbor as Himself. All people. All the time. He is the Good Samaritan, who by His all sufficient Sacrifice has redeemed you from under the Law.
So like the certain man in the parable you wake up here in the Inn of the Church, having received mercy and compassion, kindness and love, forgiveness for all your sins, freedom from having to earn your salvation, having to do to get your inheritance, for it is bestowed by grace through faith in the promise. And what do you do? How do you live? You just sang it: “O grant that nothing in my soul may dwell but they pure love alone; Oh may Thy love possess me whole, my joy, my treasure and my crown! All coldness from my heart remove; my every act, word, thought be love” (LSB 683:2).
And as we are want to do, we’ll sing it again, preaching it to one another during the distribution. For this is what hymns do. They are sermons set to music. By them you preach to one another, to yourselves, and confess before the world and the devil. So listen up to that great Lutheran chorale and sermonic hymn from Paul Speratus: “Faith clings to Jesus’ cross alone and rests in Him unceasing; and by its fruits true faith is known, with love and hope increasing. For faith alone can justify; works serve our neighbor and supply the proof that faith is living” (LSB 555:9). Again in 851. And again in the last hymn: Where charity and love prevail. To be sure, the Scriptures are constantly preaching good works to you, exhorting you to holy living according to the Law.
Make no mistake, dear Christians, you are baptized into Christ, buried with Him, but your flesh is a good swimmer and the old man needs to be daily drown in the baptismal waters. The Law does this. Crucifies you anew. Slays and kills you. Always. But raised through those same baptismal waters you have put on Christ and His righteousness and delight in His Law.
So it not only kills your flesh, it guides your new man. It teaches and admonishes you, as Christ does the lawyer, Go and do likewise. As you heard in the Old Testament reading. You are given to clothe your neighbor, who shares in your flesh and blood, care for them in prayer, through confession of the faith, and in charity. Not only to send them off, but to go with them to Jericho, the City of Palm Trees, to the rest and habitation of the Lord.
Hence do you always need the Inn of the Church. Its preaching and care. The oil and wine of His Law and Gospel. The Absolution of your wounds. For here are the two denarii of Christ’s Body and His Blood, your heavenly inheritance, by grace. Received in faith they strengthen you in faith toward God and in fervent love toward one another.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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