[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the Old Testament reading, the first reading from Jeremiah.
Please be seated. The Old Testament is full of prophets of God. In fact, 23 of the 39 books
of the Old Testament are written by prophets. And four other books in the Old Testament are
a history of the prophets works. Jeremiah is one of those prophets. And a prophet’s
role, his job, was to proclaim, to speak for God. Thus says the Lord, or as the
King James Version puts it, thus saith the Lord. It’s in the Old Testament 400
times. More than 400 times prophets say thus says the Lord. Jeremiah says 150 of
them. And what prophets proclaimed back then oftentimes wasn’t too appreciated,
certainly not popular. People didn’t like what prophets proclaimed. Case in
point with Jeremiah, right? What was the people’s response to him? You shall die.
That’s putting it mildly, I suppose. But the prophets proclaimed what was written,
what God had already proclaimed to his people through previous prophets,
previous prophets, especially Moses. And in the Old Testament reading today, the
the people are upset that Jeremiah prophesied
about Jerusalem and about the temple.
That’s the house of the Lord mentioned there.
And Jeremiah compares them to the Israelite city of Shiloh,
which at one time had been a great place of worship
for the Israelites, but at the time of Jeremiah,
it had been reduced to ruins.
And Jeremiah uses this example of Shiloh to warn the people, to warn the people of Jerusalem
and of the temple that this could happen to them.
Like Shiloh, Jerusalem, the temple and all the people there could fall under God’s judgment.
Judgment that’s been pronounced against them already, as the reading says.
Kind of a spoiler alert, eventually that does happen but that’s another sermon.
The people didn’t want to hear that.
Not a popular prophecy.
Not an appreciated words of God.
But there was plenty of reason to why Jeremiah is making this prophecy.
Why he’s proclaiming this word of the Lord.
because the people of Jerusalem had for years been committing all kinds of
atrocities against God, disobeying the law, disobeying the commandments of God,
disobeying what the prophets had said before, doing like I said great
atrocities, even sacrificing children to idols. And previously, part of the
Israelite nation had already been allowed by God to be conquered by
another nation. And now Jeremiah is warning the people of Jerusalem that
this could happen to them, and that there’s this confrontation from God
through Jeremiah that this could happen to them.
But Jeremiah also has good news for them.
Maybe you saw that in there.
He says to them,
mend your ways and deeds.
Listen to God and obey Him,
and He will relent of the disaster
that He has pronounced against you.
Basically, it’s not too late.
Correct your wrongs,
and God will save you from destruction.
Christians, especially Lutherans,
we call this proclamation Law and Gospel.
Very beautiful doctrine in the Scriptures.
Especially Lutherans,
we like this Law and Gospel proclamation.
And a very famous Lutheran, C.F.W. Walther,
wrote a rather large book about it here.
there’s actually just part of it that I would really commend to your reading
some theses that he wrote about law and gospel that are really beautiful about
how God’s Word is proclaimed in our world today. Law and gospel is to teach
it’s the doctrine that God’s Word is proclaimed in both bad news and in good
news. In the law, God communicates to us the bad news of our sin, of breaking his
laws, of disobeying his commandments, and the ways that we should relate to others
and relate to God. That’s the law. And breaking God’s law is something that
we’re all guilty of. In our thoughts, in our words, or our actions, or letter D, all
of the above, whether the smallest of lies or the most harmful intentional
suffering you caused someone, we’re all guilty. And like the people of Jerusalem,
God judges us for those atrocities. But God doesn’t proclaim law to us because
because He hates us or He wants to punish us, God confronts us with the law to
correct us. In this way, the law acts as a mirror. It shows our sins, showing us
our sins so that we’ll confess them and seek forgiveness for them because God
God also wants to proclaim to us good news, the gospel, so that he’ll relent of the disaster
that he’s pronounced against us, too.
For our sins, we deserve death and destruction.
But God wants us to mend our ways and our deeds and listen to God and obey Him.
and we do that we mend our our deeds and our ways by confessing our sin and
receiving God’s forgiveness relenting not sending disaster not judging us not
punishing us and all of that that good news comes because of another prophet
One that came to Jerusalem, like Jeremiah, he came to Jerusalem too, but 600 years after Jeremiah.
One that also lamented over the city, about what had happened there in the past.
Lamenting about prophets who were killed there, and that he himself would be killed there.
Of course, talking about Jesus.
And when Jesus was there in Jerusalem, the people said to Him,
you shall die and they did kill him Jesus was killed in part because of what
he also proclaimed law and gospel Jesus was a law and gospel guy there Jesus was
a Lutheran how about that after all Jesus confronted people’s sins and still
does. Jesus confronts sin to correct us, and he did so by dying for them, dying
for us. And because of that, God relents of the disaster of punishing our sin
because Jesus died in our place. The destruction that we should have because
of our sin, death and an eternal damnation, Jesus has taken away, dying in
our place suffering that destruction instead of us and that’s the gospel
that’s the good news that God proclaims through his prophets to us that in the
death and in the and the then afterwards resurrection of Jesus in that instead of
disaster instead of judgment we’re forgiven and Jesus then gathers us under
his wings like a hen gathers her brood, protecting us with his love and
forgiveness. In his death and resurrection, Jesus protects us from what
we really deserve, that destruction of death. We deserve the full judgment of
God’s law and instead he pronounces good news to us. He pronounces the gospel of
Jesus’s death and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins. Yeah, Jesus is a
prophet in proclaiming this to us, but he isn’t a prophet that only proclaims
the gospel, he provides it. Jesus actually, he is the gospel. And again, the Old
Testament is full of prophets, but Christianity has them today, too. We have
prophets today and in fact really in a way all followers are prophets of God.
That is that we all proclaim God’s law and gospel. Yeah pastors do it publicly
on Sunday morning in front of their flock and in at other times but but all
of us can have the opportunities to proclaim law and gospel but like
Jeremiah and even Jesus, what prophets proclaim today isn’t always appreciated.
It’s certainly not too popular sometimes, okay, especially God’s law. There are
issues in culture today that Christians proclaim the law and it isn’t too well
received. There are things that God’s law says is a sin and we proclaim it
to in our culture today. And if and when you do proclaim this, people may not only
disagree with you, but even attack you. Maybe they’re not looking to kill you,
but they’ll say, write, or post things about you, trying to shame you, get you
to change your mind, apologize, and shut up and go away.
Maybe they’re not trying to kill you,
but that can sure make you feel dead.
But that’s what culture does to its prophets today.
No different than it was years ago
with Jeremiah and with Jesus.
What we proclaim as thus says the Lord
is not too popular, not always appreciated.
And you may get labeled with all kinds of isms or phobias or accused of being unloving
and even hateful.
None of that is true and people we interact with have got to understand this or we at
least have to explain that to them that in proclaiming God’s law, it’s not out of hate
or out of fear or that we’re unloving.
it’s actually that we are very loving as Christians speaking against what God
says our sins in our culture today is actually very loving because we are
loving so much to confront that sin and have it corrected examples of that that
happened that nobody questions today it was parents they often confront
misbehaving children. Why? To correct them. And if you have a friend who is
involved in some sort of destructive habits, don’t you confront them to
correct them? That’s love. That’s proclaiming the law in love. Loving so
much that that sin is confronted and corrected. It’s the same with cultural
issues today. Christians, we love people enough to confront, to proclaim warning
about destruction in their sin so that they’ll be corrected. If Christians
have any phobia about some cultural issues, it’s because we fear the
destruction that can come to people. We don’t want to see that. We want them to be
corrected. And this is what’s really important about proclaiming law, when
we’re pointing out sin, about what God says is sin, that as Christians we have
to keep this in mind that we do that to be able to proclaim the gospel, to
proclaim that good news. And we have to keep this in mind and be able to, as
clearly as we can, communicate that to others who are accusing us of hatred
or whatever ism or phobia they want to throw at us
is that we’re seeking lovingly to confront that
and correct it, and then Christify.
I know I just made up a word, okay?
And I made Jesus into a verb.
I understand that as well.
And if you write Christify in Word document,
it puts a little red line underneath it.
And you can’t use it in Scrabble either.
And what I mean by that is by Christify,
to confront, to correct, and to Christify.
What I mean by that is,
it’s our goal in proclaiming the law
of confronting sin and correcting it,
is to point people to Christ,
to that gospel good news of Jesus’ love
and His grace and forgiveness.
so that those that we’re confronting, correcting that they can know Christ in
that. That’s why we proclaim law. It’s not because we’re hateful, not
because we want to punish people or make ourselves look better. No, it’s because we
we love these people. We want them to turn to Christ.
Jeremiah, the prophet, he’s famous for being the weeping prophet, he was called.
He cried a lot. You read the book of Jeremiah and the book of Lamentations,
which he wrote, which is basically a book of crying, anyway, he wept for the sins
of the people that he was proclaiming law and gospel to. And like Jeremiah, we
we might weep for the sins of our culture to see even what are considered
atrocities today we want them to know Jesus too that they will be corrected
they’ll mend their ways and their deeds and turn to Christ we don’t want to see
that in our in our culture we don’t delight in the evil of our culture we
don’t affirm it or celebrate it we want them to be forgiven too so we have to
proclaim the law but we darn better proclaim the gospel and unfortunately
maybe this isn’t seen enough by those that that are confronted in the world
with their with their sin they’re not seeing the gospel a lot of a lot of very
high-profile and public preachers you know rail against the atrocities of our
culture, about the sin of it, but there’s got to be gospel. In fact, as C.F.W.
Walther would say about the gospel, it should always predominate our
proclamation. Not be equal to, not be balanced with law and gospel, there
should always be more gospel. It should always predominate. Like Jesus, you know,
we lament too over the sins of culture and of ourselves, kind of like
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would love to put you under my wings and yet you reject
me. We want them to be gathered with us in Christ. Those who are sinning today
that we confront with the law so that they know the gospel too and we got to
love them enough to confront and correct but also to Christify so that they know
about Jesus. Because we know the joy of that, don’t we? We know the joy of being
Christified. We know the joy of His forgiveness, of His relenting of our
destruction and giving us eternal life instead. We know that. We want that for
others, too. At least I hope you do. I hope you’ve got non-Christian friends,
And maybe even some that are hostile to you, attack you, good.
You got them right where you want them.
Right there to hear the gospel to.
We know that joy.
May we be able to share that joy with them so that they too could be gathered under Him
in His love.
Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in
In the name of Christ Jesus, amen.
