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Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. On this celebration of Reformation, we follow the text that the Gospel reading has given us for the proclamation this morning. You may be seated. All he wanted to do was to get a debate or discussion going on some very important theological points. That’s all Martin Luther wanted to do 498 years ago this coming Saturday. Amen. When he nailed 95 statements or theses to the chapel door on Wittenberg, Germany, all he desired was to discuss Christ and his importance and the necessity of his centrality to the entire Christian faith so that Christ’s full and free gifts would be given to all people. All that Luther wanted to do was to make Holy Scripture the source and norm of the Christian faith again. Because what had happened is that the church had allowed a tarp to cover the gifts of God’s church coming from Christ revealed in the scripture. And what he did was take off the tarp and reveal to us again what has already and had already been there but had been sequestered away from the common people like you and like me. Reformation Day is not a recovering of the past. It’s not a celebration of the past. It is a commemoration of what happened in the past, but its impact is for right now for you so that babies like Keegan and Chesney, your babies and your grandbabies, have this same comfort in this same Jesus Christ forever. The Lutheran Church is a very fragile and weak church. She is full of fragile and weak people. Her stuff smells to high heaven, and she has to have the sacred blood of Jesus to cleanse her so that God continually finds her acceptable. And I tell you where the problem is within the Lutheran church. You and me are the problem within the Lutheran church because in holding to the truth of which Jesus speaks in the gospel reading, There are benefits and there are bains to holding to truth. Jesus would have never set them up or you up or me up for failure by saying, you know, the truth that’s out there, no one’s going to ever really know it all, so I’m really lying to you when I say I give you the truth and the truth will set you free. Jesus never said that. He said, I proclaim truth, and truth is absolute, which means it does not bend. And there is either conceding to truth or denying truth. There is no third alternative, picking and choosing, gerrymandering and cherry-picking what matters to you. There is only one truth. Paul talks about that in his epistle. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all who was over all, through all, and in all. But the Jews that Jesus spoke to, did you hear the very beginning of that gospel text? Did you hear the very beginning of that gospel text? It said, for the Jews who had believed in him. That means they did believe in Jesus, but they no longer do because they no longer hold to his complete truth. It doesn’t fit their paradigm. It doesn’t fit their understanding. They were willing to let Jesus be rabbi, be a rabbi Jesus like all the other rabbis that we have. However, do not claim to be God in the flesh. For once you claim to be God in the flesh… That’s far too beyond. That’s blasphemy, they would say, and that’s ultimately why they crucified Jesus. Jesus said to them very clearly, I’m giving you the truth, and the truth isn’t just so that you’ve got rightness to beat someone up with. That’s not the benefit of truth. The benefit of truth is for Keegan and Chesney and children like them who look like you and me with gray hair and balding, for children like us to have comfort in Christ’s death and resurrection. That’s what truth is for. That there isn’t uncertainty. That there isn’t questioning. That there’s certainty and comfort and hope in Christ and Him alone. That’s the purpose and the benefit and the offspring of truth. The Jews couldn’t stomach it because they had one paradigm, their paradigm. And they loved to mix a little bit of truth with a little bit of falsehood. Satan does the same thing. In fact, that’s what he did with Eve in the garden. Do you remember Adam and Eve? And he said, you will not surely die by eating of the fruit, which was a lie. And then he added a truth. For in eating of the fruit of the tree, your eyes will be opened. You will know both good and evil. That was true. He took a lie and attached a truth to it and gave it to them as one statement. And that’s a poison potion that only Christ drank to its very dregs when he died on the cross. For all the times we wish to mix a little truth of God’s word with our personal point of view. Reformation isn’t a time for us to go back and Completely rehash all of the battles of the past and pat ourselves on the back and say, look where we’re at. It’s really an opportunity for you to see the world through the eyes of scripture, which says we’re sinners. Jesus said that to the Jews. If you sin, you are a slave to sin. That begs the question, do you sin? See, the Jews that he was speaking to viewed sin as a very real point of view. The problem was they didn’t apply it to every facet of their life because they had everything looking good on the outside. They had everything polished and dressed right dress and made to look nice. But on the inside, they were rotting. They viewed this kind of sin of which Jesus speaks as those people sinned. The kind of people that follow Jesus, the tax collectors and sinners, the prostitutes and such. They didn’t see themselves as sinners because they weren’t that bad. Whoever sins is a slave to sin. That truth is still among us and in your heart as it is in mine. Because that truth is what we tend to want to pull out in comparing ourselves to somebody else so that we can say to God in my own estimation of my own flesh and blood, I’m not that bad. And he gently says, whoever sins is a slave to sin. And there are no slaves in my house. They are all evicted. Which means we have to come to terms with we can’t live in Jesus’ house without Jesus. Keegan and Chesney were entered into the kingdom of heaven and became co-eternal heirs with us of heaven. And yet, you looked at them and I looked at them and nothing seemed to on the outside change from before they were baptized and when they were baptized. And yet, you and I believe because of what Scripture declares that baptism saves you. You and I believe because of what Scripture says that baptism forgives sins and gives the Holy Spirit. You and I believe because of what Scripture says that whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. But brothers and sisters, you know that not every one of your fellow believers that you talk to believe that about baptism. And baptism isn’t an oddie offer. It isn’t something that’s on the side of our teaching or the Bible’s teaching or Jesus’ teaching. It’s front and center and central to the Bible’s teaching, to Jesus’ teaching. And to your and my belief and comfort. Because on their worst day, their mama and daddy are going to tell them, you are my son, you are my daughter. Even if they don’t feel like they’re worthy of being called their son or their daughter. Same as you and me. On our worst day, when we don’t feel worthy to be called a child of God, God still says to you, yes, you’re my child. That’s truth that sets you free. Amen. Free from fear of uncertainty. Free from fear of trying to justify ourselves with our own flesh and blood. And it’s Christ. Justification by grace through faith in Christ is baptism. Justification by grace through faith is right there in the Lord’s Supper. It is the same teaching. When it’s pronounced to you, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is Christ speaking to you so that you cling to justification by grace through faith. It’s not an abstract teaching. It is the heart and soul of what you find comfort in. And you know you find comfort in It’s not just a peppy statement that we can paste upon our wall or use as a screensaver. It is why we stand before God, who is holy and righteous, as a sinner. The Jews did not want to cling to it. Anyone who does not cling to this truth is still fast bound in Satan’s chains, with death brooding darkly over him. Whoever does believe this finds comfort in it, peace in it. Closing your eyes in hope and joy in it because it’s all about what Jesus did, not what you did, what Jesus has accomplished, not what you can show him. What Jesus has given you in his means that he brought forward to set in the middle of the church which had been covered up by tarps of man’s teaching. In American Christianity, this confession of faith that you and I hold so dear is, It’s threatened more by our desire not to cling to it because it causes difficulties. There were two Jews who were a part of these Jews but came to faith, and their life forever changed after that, and they were a part of the ruling council. One was called Nicodemus, John chapter 3 in the Gospel of John. The other one is Joseph of Arimathea, in whose tomb Jesus’ body was laid. He was a Christian. They had to turn their back on their families for that truth. Or it may be better said, their truth caused their family to turn their back on them. Spoke to a classmate of mine who was a Jew, who became a believer in Jesus Christ and is a pastor in our church. His father considered him dead the moment he confessed the faith. His mother would not speak to him either. It is real. It is real. For this world to turn its back on you and your belief in these great truths that God gave to bring comfort to you. Being steadfast for whoever remains in my word is really my disciple. That’s hard when it comes to how it affects your life with your family. But it’s even more important so that little children, whether they be small in stature or big in stature, Have comfort in that truth, and it’s not robbed of them for the sake of anything else. If my truth sets you free, you will be free indeed. Not if some of my truth, not if a portion of it, if my truth, complete, total, that which he has given to you and has been baptized into, that is the truth, and there’s certainty, so that there’s comfort. In the name of him who has set us free and continues to set us free and guides and leads us, we give thanks and praise to Christ. Amen.
