A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the eleventh chapter:
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Jesus prays to his Father and, right off the bat, I think we should find great confidence in that, that the Lord of Life, the one who promises to be with you in everything and in all that you do, prays even to his father for you. There is no exception; all people pray to God, and Jesus then also does the same. He is your brother and he is your Lord and He lifts you up to the Father even in this prayer. And in this prayer, we find wonderful things for us, things we find that Jesus tells us. We see here that God the Father has hidden these things (and we'll get back to what these things are in just a moment) from the wise and understanding and has revealed them to little children.
You are little children. In fact, John even through his Epistles continues to call you little children, children of God, not necessarily children of John or children of Matthew or even really children of Jesus in terms of his second personhood of the Trinity, but you are children of God and he has revealed these things to you. What things are they?
Well, the things of the Spirit, the things that God is for you and not against you, the things that tell you that salvation is a free gift of God to all through Jesus Christ, the things that tell you to look to your baptism, the things that tell you be strengthened in the Supper, the things that tell you that we are the church and God has given gifts to the church, gifts you can find nowhere else in the world, but you can only find in the bride of Christ.
These things God has hidden from the wise and understanding, the people who put themselves out there as the arbiters of truth, the people who look at all things and say, “Hmm, I wonder what this means,” the philosophers, the stoics, the wise, God has hidden these things from them and this should tell us, too, even as we make our way through the world today, that these things are still hidden from them.
It's true that our Western Society is based on Christianity and the understanding of Jesus being the creator of all things, being the good God who has given to us all things to understand. Science bows the knee to religion, for religion reveals the true God who is behind all of them. And so now, when scientists try to reveal knowledge outside of the Scripture, we find that they really have no foundation.
It could be that they happen to find their way into some truth that's found in science or in terms of rationality or some kind of philosophy. But without the truth of God in Jesus Christ, their truth, their wisdom, their understanding is useless. What good does it do to the entire world if we should understand why it is that the stars twinkle in the sky at night and yet we have no Jesus? What good does it do for us to understand the DNA of the virus that's been going around this world for the past months if we do not have Jesus? What good does it do us to understand the different philosophies of life that are out there if we have Jesus?
Instead, your Father has revealed the true things to you, the truest things of the church to you and has even added them to you in terms of the general revelation that is in the world and is giving you all these things because you believe in Jesus. And thank God even foreknew that you would believe in him and he has revealed these things to you before you were even born knowing that this day you would be sitting in your pews and that you would hear the good news of Jesus Christ. God has revealed these things for you out of his gracious will. God loves you so much that he has made you to be a Christian and he has called you to a specific place at a specific time that you might hear the things of God. This is God's good and gracious will.
But notice what Jesus says next: all things have been handed over to me by my Father. Jesus is the one, if you will, who doles out all the gifts. Jesus is the one who gives to you all good things. In fact, all good things come to you through Jesus. From the beginning of time, all good things came through Jesus. And not just that Jesus, the Son of God ,was wandering around and gave things to Adam and Eve and all the Patriarchs, but that all things were given to this world because Jesus would come to shed his blood on a tree for the forgiveness of the entire world.
God foreknew long before the foundation of this earth that he would send his Son to die for you and, in so doing, God had mercy on this entire world and now all things have been given by the Father to Jesus that you might have them all. Jesus is the one who doles out the gifts. It's almost as if you could think of it like our food pantry. Imagine the workers inside the pantry, those who are creating all of the wonderful things that go out and Jesus is the one who stands at the side of the cars and gives to them all that they need. That is what our Jesus does for you.
But then Jesus says something weird. He says all things have been given to me but no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Notice again here: all good things are being handed out to this world, but unless you know Jesus, you don't know anything. You can have all the riches and the knowledge and wisdom of this world. But if you have no Jesus you have nothing.
Jesus’ revelation of the Father is everything for us. For in this revelation, we find a God of mercy and grace. If it were not for Jesus’ revelation of the Father, we would look at this world and conclude that God is a capricious, vengeful, wrathful God.
After all, what kind of God loves you when you have a virus going around this world and destroying it? What kind of God loves you when he continues to do things that seem to harm people? What kind of God would love you if he goes throughout this entire world and shakes them down and there's violence and there's wars everywhere? You look at the world and you try to find God, and you find a God who doesn't love you at all.
That's who God seems to be without Jesus. But with Jesus, that he has revealed the Father to you, you may know the true character of God. God is not doing these things because he hates you; God does these things because he loves you. We may not understand them. We may never understand them, but we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God.
And thus, God must be working these things for your good. If you are a Christian, this is your understanding. God is not eking out some kind of judgment over this earth through all these things. He’s not looking at specific sins and saying, “Well America, you’ve become a little too complacent with the homosexual agenda. You become a little too racist. And so you must suffer.” He's not looking at that and saying, “I'm going to send this to you.” He's doing these things because he loves us. He's doing it, in fact, to make us more the church every day.
And truly it is when we look at Jesus Christ and the gifts that he would give to us, we find all the mercy that God has given to us in all things. How much more grateful are you now having these restrictions lifted a little bit to be joined together and worship again with people? How much more grateful are you now for all the gifts that we have in the church during this time and even forever on?
We find that through all of these things God is disciplining us, not discipline in the “I'm going to bend you over the knee and spank you,” but discipline in teaching you. How often did you pray during this pandemic? How often are you praying?
God sends these things, indeed, to us to make us rely more upon him and that even has been revealed by the Scriptures. We depend on our God in these things. I can't defeat a virus on my own, can you? And even if I were, even if ,in my own body, I could defeat a virus or turn something back, it’s only because of God's good provision for my body to be able to overcome these things. And it's not because I can do it. It's not because I can sit here and think really hard and cast the virus out of my body, but it's because God has given me the good gift of an immune system that these things are within. It comes from God and I know this because it has been revealed to me that God is good. And he has created me, He has created me to worship him, He has created me to worship with you. He has created me and so many things, that I might be able to appreciate him and love him for he loves me and he loves you.
In fact, this is why then Jesus says this, “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” The last couple weeks, out of Paul's letters to the Romans, we have found the topic of slavery come up again and again. So you remember, in the old world slavery was different than what we see American slavery was. American slavery was a sin and an abomination, where we treated people as less than people, where we treated people as some kind of opportunity to do with as we please. Slavery in the old world, the Biblical kind anyway, seems to be more like an employer-employee relationship, and yet still there was an aspect to it where you could not get out of it. Once you entered into slavery, you are set there until the master released you or until your time of service was done. That's the way that it worked. And so Paul talks about slavery in this way because, through his words, we find we have a master. It's either going to be sin or it's going to be Jesus, and Jesus here invites you to be his slave, to be his servant, if you will, if that's a little bit more comfortable to use today. Come to Jesus. Let him be the master. You who are Christian know that he will be your master.
Don't labor, don't work out there for your salvation. Go to the one who instead, as your master, will give you rest, for even in the work that he asks you to do, not the work of salvation, but the work of bringing his message to the world, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. He is gentle and he is lowly in heart. He does think too much of himself, which, for God, would be a pretty easy thing. God can do whatever he wants and Jesus being God should be the most magnificent being of all and yet he humbles himself to take on your flesh that he might dwell with you.
Our Jesus, in this way, tells us exactly who he is and what his character is, that he is the one who will help you, who will guide you, who will be with you. Jesus is the one, our master, who brings to us all things that we might indeed enjoy them forever. You see, Jesus here is telling us he is in control of all things, for his father has given to him everything and in his control over all things, He has decided that you no longer need work for your salvation. You need no longer work for any good thing, but that all good things are handed to you as a free gift of God through Jesus Christ himself.
Jesus tells you he will make it easy for you. You do not have to work, not for that, you work in love and service to your neighbor. But there you find that it is easy. You find no fear of punishment. You find no fear of death in these things, for Jesus has control over that and he has already told you what the end is: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the rest that has been prepared for you since before the foundation of the world.” If Christ has been since, before the foundation of the world, portrayed as crucified, if the plan is always been for him to die for the forgiveness of your sins, then your rest also has been planned since before the foundation of the world and you can rest easy now in Jesus Christ, for he is your goal and he is your master and he will give to you all good things, including all wisdom and understanding to lead you into salvation forever. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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