Trinity 4
Lk
6:36-42
7/14/19
Now don’t get me wrong. The
professors that I had at the seminary were very smart guys. There were among them minds that were not
just bright, but also dedicated to pondering the depths of God’s Word, and what
that revelation from God means for the lives of Christians and the Church as a
whole.
Among the best of them, their
command of the material – the depth of their knowledge – was something that
initially blew me way. But it didn’t take
very long before I realized something that put things into perspective. Yes, these professors were talented and
knowledgeable. But on the other hand, they taught and talked about this
material every year. Many of them had
been doing this for several decades. The
amazing insights were things that they shared year after year. For the
most part, this was not stuff that they were coming up with on the fly. Instead it was a stock body of knowledge that
they had acquired, and over the years, and they had honed the delivery of this
material through repetition in class after class.
This is really just the nature of
teaching anything. Certainly one always
is looking to learn new things. But there is usually a certain body of
knowledge that needs to be communicated.
Do this enough times and you figure out the best and most helpful ways
to do so. This is not a matter of completely reinventing the wheel every time
you are going to teach a group of people.
Our Lord Jesus was no different.
Yes, he was the omniscient Son of God and Creator of the universe. But he also had a body of knowledge –
essential truths about the Gospel, about the kingdom of God – that he was
teaching people during his ministry. And
while Jesus was incredibly gifted as a teacher – something even non-Christians
recognize – that does not mean he said something completely new and different
every time that he taught a group of people.
During three years of teaching in different parts of Israel, with
different groups of people, he certainly repeated things. This fact in itself helped the apostles lock
into their minds the content that we now find in the Gospels – something that
they were far better at than would could ever be, because they lived in an oral
culture.
Our
text this morning is part of a sermon – a time of teaching – by Jesus. Luke introduces it by saying, “And he
came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his
disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the
seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their
diseases.” Now you will notice that
Jesus stood “on a level place.” For this
reason, it has often been called “the sermon on the plain.” Yet when you look
at Matthew’s Gospel you find much of the same material, and there it is
introduced with the words, “Seeing
the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his
disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them.” This, of course,
we know as “sermon on the mount.”
So was it a
sermon on a plain or a sermon on a mount? The answer is yes. Surely our Lord shared this same teaching in
sermons like these, and lots of other places as well. At the same time, the
fact that Jesus repeated it should catch our attention. Because this morning,
he sets it before us. He repeated it because he really means
it. It really is true. And it is really is true for us.
Our Lord
begins our text by saying, “Be merciful, even
as your Father is merciful.” Jesus says that we are to be merciful and
compassionate, just as our heavenly Father is merciful and compassionate. This
statement concludes one section of the sermon, and also introduces the part
that we have in our text this morning.
The mercy that God the Father has for us, becomes the pattern for how we
are to treat others.
Jesus
has just said, “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good
to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who
mistreat you. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to
them.” Love your enemies. Bless those
who curse you. Pray for those who harm you. Treat all people the way you want
to be treated.
This
is not how we naturally act. This is not how we want to act. So in case there is any confusion on our
part, our Lord adds, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to
you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to
those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the
same.” Anyone can love the person who
loves them in return. Anyone can do good to the person who does good to them.
You don’t have to be a Christian to act in that way.
But
what Jesus describes is something very
different. And so in the verse before our text he says, “But love your
enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward
will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is
kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” This action that looks nothing like the
world finds its source in God. As Jesus
says, God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. That’s the way God is, and so Jesus says in
our text, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” It turns out,
that’s the way we are supposed to be too.
Now
we haven’t even arrived at the main part of our text, and no doubt you are
already thinking: “I don’t do those things.
I don’t want to do those things. I am not able to do those things.” And
you are right – at least in part. You often
don’t do those things. You don’t love your enemies, or pray for those who wrong you.
And you are right, that you don’t want to do those things. That’s how the old
Adam is – the fallen, sinful nature that clings to us. But when you think, “I am not able to do
those things,” well, that’s where you are
wrong.
The
sermon on the plain is introduced by a description that people “came to hear
him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with
unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him,
for power came out from him and healed them all.”
Jesus
Christ wasn’t just there teaching to order to give good advice or to tell
people what to do. We see this in the
way that power came out from to Jesus to heal all. In fact, his word itself –
his teaching - was different. When our
Lord first began his ministry in Capernaum we learn that the people “were astonished at his teaching, for his
word possessed authority. Indeed, Jesus’ teaching and miracle went hand
in and hand we are told, “They were
all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is this word? For with authority
and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!’”
Jesus Christ
taught and healed as the Son of God anointed by the Holy Spirit at his baptism.
At the synagogue in Nazareth he read these words from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He
has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” And then he declared,
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Anointed by the
Spirit, our Lord came to bring the kingdom of God – the reign of God to fallen
people in a fallen world. That mission was always directed towards one place;
one moment; one event. He, the sinless
One, defeated sin and the devil by taking our sins and making them his own on
the cross. He received God’s wrath and
judgment that culminated in death.
And if that
were the end of it, I would agree that you are not able to do the things Jesus
describes in our text. But on Easter, God raised Jesus from the dead through
the work of the Holy Spirit. And as the ascended and exalted Lord, he has
poured forth the Spirit. Through the
world and baptism you have received the Spirit of Christ. And so it is Christ
who is at work in you, both to will and to do those things that Jesus teaches.
Jesus begins
our text by saying, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” You have received
God’s mercy in the ministry of his Son, Jesus Christ. You have received compassion. You have been
forgiven. And so now Christ’s Spirit leads and enables us to act in mercy and
compassion towards others
What
does that look like? Jesus says in our text, “Judge not, and you will not be judged;
condemn not, and you will not be condemned.”
In those settings in life where God has not placed us in the vocation
with a responsibility to oversee the actions of others, we don’t look to judge
and tear people down. We don’t look for opportunities to condemn.
Our Lord
illustrates this by saying, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's
eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let
me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the
log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own
eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your
brother's eye.”
We confess the sin in our own
lives. We admit it and live in the
forgiveness that God has given us in Christ.
When we are living in this way in Christ, then we are able to speak to our neighbor in love and care – in
ways that are meant for their well being, seeking to help and build them up,
rather than to tear them down.
Jesus says in our text, “forgive,
and you will be forgiven.” Our Lord’s
ministry to bring the reign of God, has given you forgiveness. You are baptized. You hear absolution spoken to you. You receive the true body and blood of Jesus
Christ. But to be forgiven in Christ, must result in you forgiving others. It
will have this result, that is, if we want Christ to continue to forgive us.
Like love,
forgiveness is not an emotion – though it can indeed at times be accompanied by
moving and powerful emotions. In its
essence, forgiveness is the recognition that I cannot choose to hold something
against another person. I cannot choose
to return to the wrong and bring it up.
I can’t do it, not if I want God to forgive all of my wrongs and treat
them as if they never happened because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
It is the
Spirit of the risen Lord who makes this possible. And we pray that over time the Spirit will
also bring about healing in us so that we feel at peace with those we have
forgiven; so that our emotions “catch up” as it were with the act forgiveness
worked by the Spirit.
How does this
happen? Well, we listen to Christ’s
word, because it is still a word that has authority. It is still the word in which the kingdom of
God – reign of God – comes to us. We
receive all of his Means of Grace regularly,
because through them the Spirit is at work to strengthen the new man in
us.
And we engage in
something that Jesus tells us to do in our text as he says, “pray for those who
mistreat you.” Just do it. Pray for that
person, even if at first those prayers seem to be nothing more than rote words
that we force ourselves to say. Pray for
that person. Keep praying for that person.
Praying for that person is forgiveness put into action. And over time
the Spirit uses this to change us so that the whole of our person is brought
into sync with Christ’s forgiveness for us that we are passing on to others.
In our text
today, Jesus says, “Be merciful,
even as your Father is merciful.”
God the Father has been merciful and compassionate to you in his Son
Jesus Christ. Yet this action of being
merciful is not something you now do on your own. The very act of being merciful to us in
Christ was achieved through the work of God’s Spirit. Conceived by the Spirit; anointed by the
Spirit; raised by the Spirit, Jesus has now given us the Spirit who makes it
possible for us to be merciful, and to do those things that Jesus describes in
his sermon.
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