Sermon Text: Matthew 21:33-46, October 8, 2017

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 Matthew, the 21st chapter:

“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “ ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet. 

Thus far the text.

My dear friends in Christ,
     Jesus cannot help but keep hitting at those who challenge Him for the right to rule Israel.  Last week, we heard that the chief priests and the elders were questioning where Jesus was receiving His authority to do everything, and Jesus made it clear that the sinners of the world were going to enter into God’s rest before they ever would.

     And that’s really the thing.  People who know that they are sinners, and confess those sins, are absolutely forgiven.  Yet, those who grasp onto their sins, or those who deny their sins, or those who do not seek to leave their sins for the sake of Christ, those do not know the greatness of the Lord and His desire to forgive.

Bible Study: Proverbs 1:8-19, September 24, 2017

A Bible Study taught by Pastor Lewis Polzin on October 1, 2017 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Proverbs 1:8-19. Play the audio by clicking here.

(Sorry for the audio hiccups. I'll try to fix it for next week.)

A Quick Study: Reformation, Part 8, October 1, 2017

This quick study on Reformation History was given at the end of service at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on October 1, 2017. The text of the study is included and you may play the audio of the study here.



Luther had a problem.  The indulgence selling was tantamount to paying someone to earn salvation.  This was horrible.  Luther had just started rediscovering the Gospel, that the benefit of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was completely free.  You couldn’t do anything to earn it; you never would.  Luther was happy with the idea that through the graciousness of the pope then, heaven could come faster to those who believed.  He was still okay with Purgatory, at least for a little while.  He was still sort of okay with indulgences.  But Luther’s problem was that he could stay silent no longer.
So, on October 31, 1517, Luther went to the place where he knew he could start a good discussion.  You see, back then, they didn’t have Twitter, they didn’t have Facebook, they had the church doors.  They were like a bulletin board.  When Luther wrote down his 95 points of discussion, his 95 theses, he wasn’t trying to get all dramatic.  There wasn’t a soundtrack behind him, he didn’t march up there in anger, he didn’t make a show of it.  He wrote his theses in Latin, the dead language of academia, the language that, theoretically, no one outside the university or church knew, and he placed them on the Wittenberg church door.
He just wanted to start a discussion about the practice of indulgences.  And they were decent theses.  Most people have at least heard of Luther’s first thesis, “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said, ‘Repent,’ willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”  And this is true.  Not all of the 95 theses that Luther wrote are good orthodox, Christian doctrine.  But, some are.  I think my favorite thesis questions the pope and essentially demands that, if he has the power to release souls from Purgatory by his own will, why doesn’t he do it for everyone out of love instead of taking their money.
Regardless, Luther wanted to start the discussion in the academic circles he ran in, trying to get a handle on what had been happening.  He tried to be humble and gracious, but with a good amount of biting wit (not that he could really help it–this was his personality, after all). What happened instead was that a few students, we suppose, saw Luther’s posting on the church door, thought the content incredible and salacious, and took it to a local printer.  At the printer, the Latin theses were translated into basic German, so that the people could read it.  Thousands of copies were printed.  They spread out all across the Holy Roman Empire, they spread outside the Empire, the spread down into Rome, and ultimately into the hands of Pope Leo X.
Now, in reality, Luther had no thought as to forming his own church body.  He only wanted the discussion to bring Catholicism back into line with the Scriptures.  Yet, once the document spread, the writing was on the wall.  People Leo X and his authority were offended.  They could not be questioned in such a way, and Luther, one way or another, was going to have to pay.  Luther, knowing that the document had spread but ignorant to all of its consequences, went through the rest of 1517 and most of 1518 oblivious, but still engaging the debate as well as others.  One day, however, he received a summons to appear in Augsburg before the pope’s personal representative.  If Luther was a ship, he had fired the first volley.  The Pope heard it, saw it, received it, saw no damage, and thought that if he fired back, surrender would be immediate.  Little did the Pope, or even Luther, know that the 95 Theses were more than just a dull cannon ball; they were a time bomb, set to explode in his face and send the pope’s ship into the shark-infested water, ready for the lay people to eat up whatever they could.

Sermon Audio: Matthew 21:23-32, October 1, 2017

A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on October 1, 2017 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Matthew 21:23-32. The text of this sermon may be found by clicking this link and you may play the audio of the sermon here.

Sermon Text: Matthew 21:23-32, October 1, 2017

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 Matthew, the 21st chapter:

And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. “What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him. 

Thus far the text.

My dear friends in Christ,
     I sometimes to wish, to be honest, that God was not as patient and long-suffering… with other people.  Of course, I never wish that for myself.  I never think that I’m such a demanding burden on others that they’re probably praying the same thing about me.  But, I digress. The reality is that God is patient, and He is long-suffering.  He puts up with so much from people, giving them the opportunity to repent, to turn from their sins, to turn from their sin-filled lives.

     But, just because He is patient doesn’t mean that He will endure this behavior forever.  Indeed, the day is coming that the Lord Jesus Christ will return from the right hand of the Father, descending upon the earth with all of His saints to welcome them and all of creation into His glory forever.  The patience of the Lord regarding sin will run out and it is drawing to a close.

Bible Study: Proverbs 1:1-7, September 24, 2017

A Bible Study taught by Pastor Lewis Polzin on September 24, 2017 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Proverbs 1:1-7. Play the audio by clicking here.

(Sorry for the audio hiccups. I'll try to fix it for next week.)

A Quick Study: Reformation, Part 7, September 24, 2017

This quick study on Reformation History was given at the end of service at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on September 24, 2017. The text of the study is included and you may play the audio of the study here.




Martin Luther had a problem.  He was okay with the idea of indulgences, that piece of paper that seemed to get you time off of Purgatory, but he wasn’t okay with buying them.  He felt it akin to the idea of Jesus scourging the Temple, not because there was money in the church, but because it seemed like there was a way in which you could buy your salvation.  That didn’t seem right; in fact, the Scriptures outright condemn such a thing.  So, when he started to think about these issues, he found himself confronted with his own personal archenemy, Johann Tetzel.
Tetzel was a German preacher and monk who made a bit of a name for himself.  It seems he was quite the orator and could have been said to charm the light off of the sun.  It so happens that he was quite skilled in theology as well, and was promoted as the head of the inquisition in Poland.  That meant that he basically got to decide if people were teaching and believing heresy, and, if they were, kill them.
Somewhere along the line, Tetzel just disappeared.  No one quite knows where he was for a couple of years, but in 1517, having gone back to his monastic order, he was promoted to Grand Commissioner of Indulgences in Germany.  Now, remember that Pope Leo X began selling indulgences in order to get the Vatican out of bankruptcy and rebuild St. Peter’s Church.  Indulgences were the only way, it seemed, to do this.  So, Tetzel, preacher extraordinaire, was promoted to bring in the cash, keep the money rolling, send the bread and butter all the way to Rome.
And he did.  Tetzel was good.  He was really good.  Tetzel knew how to work a crowd, and more than that, he knew how to give the crowd what they wanted before they even knew what they wanted.  I would call Tetzel an innovator when it came to his methods; he was very innovative.  If that sounds like a good thing, it’s not.  I can tell you that there really has never been any point in history that, when someone decides to innovate in the Church that it ends up well.  Innovation usually leads to spiritual death.
Now, Tetzel was pure Roman Catholic.  Just about everything he taught and did was right along with Roman theology.  But, when he began innovating, when he began to run horribly awful plays to scare people into buying more indulgences, plays akin to the scariest horror movie you’ve seen, when he began innovating, he got careless.  He is famous for saying, Every time the coin in the coffer clings, the soul from Purgatory springs.  He even said he could forgive the sins of the person who did unspeakable things to the mother of Christ.  Tetzel’s methods lead to careless doctrine.  And careless doctrine in Wittenberg got Luther’s attention.
No longer was Luther just concerned with indulgence selling.  Now he was concerned with how they were sold.  And as he pondered the methods, he began also began to question the entire practice, where it was found in the Scriptures, why certain things were occurring, until one day, October 31, 1517, he left his cloister, hammer in hand, and went to the town’s church and tacked a small document to the door.  We talk about Luther’s 95 theses next week.