Sermon Text - Luke 9:28-36
Now about eight days after these sayings [Jesus] took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. 30And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” 36And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.
[Luke 6:27-31] ““Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them”
As He Has Done for Us
When you’re walking down a path, what’s at the end of that path is where you’ll end up. Not what I wish or think, but what is really at the end of that path is where I’ll end up.
Also in life. I’m heading toward what’s at the end of the path I’m on. Adam leads to death. Christ is the way to life. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
“As in Adam all die…” We don’t come from ourselves, and we didn’t begin with ourselves. Our human nature, body and soul, comes from those we’re made out of – our parents and those before them.
We are “in Adam” – by our natural conception and birth, we come from and are made of the fallen human nature of our first ancestor who, by his sin, brought sin, and therefore death, into the human nature we come from and share. We call the sinful nature in us our “old Adam”.
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” [Romans 5:12]. “Because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man” – “one trespass led to condemnation for all men” – “by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners.” [Romans 5:17-18]
This explains the fallen moral condition we all have, in various ways – and the broken physical and mental condition that we experience. What is in us from Adam is broken. In Adam, all die.
“Dying” is more than just physical death. As we’re talking about it here, death, hand-in-hand with sin, is a path we’re walking on “in Adam” which is directed away from God. Death is a fall from fellowship with God and a trajectory of walking away from Him. It is spiritual death. At the end of this path is God’s wrath in hell, a complete separation from His love. In Adam, all die.
What does the path of our old Adam look like? It is seen in the the things that are opposites of God’s commandments, will, and design – such as:
Having other gods besides Him; using God’s name in vain; failing to call on His name in prayer and praise; not gathering to worship Him. Neglecting my neighbor’s physical welfare; unfaithfulness in marriage; unnatural sexuality; stealing, or only looking to my interests instead of the interests of others; gossip, half-truths, and lying; coveting what others have.
And the fallen path of our old Adam is seen in its symptoms: sicknesses, pains, anxiousness, heartache, and physical death. It’s a hard path. And, left on our own, it goes to worse places.
The death at the end of our path in Adam is not merely a natural consequence of the trajectory we’re on but is a debt of punishment owed that must be paid and is forever snowballing. In Adam all die. But…
“In Christ, all are made alive…” There is a New Man, a second-Adam – a new beginning of a new creation in you – a New Man for us to restart from, to be reborn from, who Himself is the Life and the very pathway of Life. [2 Corinthians 5:17; John 14:6]
In Jesus Christ, you are made alive again. In Adam, we were dying because of the pathway we were walking in. In Christ, we are saved because of the pathway He walked. His pathway to the cross for us.
By His perfect life and death on the cross, Jesus redeemed you – bought you back and brought you back to Life. Back to God. In Him “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [Colossians 1:14; Ephesians 1:7]
Jesus is the second-Adam, the new-Man. The Man from God. The Son of God. In fact, He is God-made-man. In Jesus, God became one of us to bring life back to our human nature.
Jesus fulfilled God’s commandments, will, and design for human life perfectly, without sin, in our flesh. He offered up His perfect life as the God-pleasing sacrifice for our life.
On the cross, He carried the sins of the world, of mankind – your sins – in His flesh and went before God on your behalf as the Sinner – sinless, but carrying your sin – and fully suffered the hell that was due for us.
Jesus went all the way to the end of our path in Adam ahead of us, and said, “It is finished” – “It is paid in full” [John 19:30]. And Jesus overcame what our old Adam could not have. He overcame death and took up His life again [John 10:18]. His resurrection.
Jesus saved you by the path He walked. Having saved you, now He sets you on the pathway of His resurrected life. Alive in Christ, you are now on the pathway of life in Christ.
In our Gospel today, Jesus describes this new pathway of resurrected life, which you were set on in your baptism – “in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” [Romans 6:4].
This path of resurrected life, on which your feet have been set in baptism, looks like this: It looks like doing for others what He has so freely done for each of us.
It looks like what we read this morning [Luke 6:27-38]: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” – as He has done for us – “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also” – as He suffered His face to be struck for our sake – “and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either” – as He has covered our sin, freely, by the robe of His righteousness [Isaiah 61:10; Romans 4:6-8].
“Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” As He has done for u. “Be merciful… Judge not… condemn not… forgive… give…” As He has done for us.
“For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” [Romans 5:17].
He has freely set us on the path of life. At the end of this path is the unearned gift of the resurrection of the body and perfect life with God forever – for sinners like us – a gift we don’t deserve.
So, as He has been so good to us, let’s walk on the path of life He’s given us and be good to one another and to those who sin against us. Amen.
[Luke 6:20-26] And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 22 Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.”
24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
Up When You’re Down
We’ll start today with a short test, a quiz. I won’t make it too hard. I won’t ask you all 10 Commandments, but only the first. What is the First Commandment? You shall have no other… gods.
But here’s the next question: What does it mean to have a god? That question takes a little more thinking. What does it mean for a someone, a something, or a god to be my God? Whether a false god or the true God.
We have, in our churches, the Small Catechism, which you probably used for confirmation. We also have what’s called the Large Catechism. In our Large Catechism, we ask this question, “What does it mean to have a god?” And here’s the answer given:
“What does ‘to have a god’ mean, or what is God? Answer: A ‘god’ is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart… Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.”
“There are some who think that they have God and everything they need when they have money and property… So too those who boast of great learning, wisdom, power, prestige, family, and honor and who trust in them have a god also, but not the one, true God.” [Martin Luther’s Large Catechism, the First Commandment]
The good things in life can be blessings from God, for which we give God the credit, or, so often, those good things can become false gods, false idols, that rule our hearts. And “no one can serve two masters” [Matthew 6:24].
In our Gospel today, our Lord Jesus speaks blessings and woes which seem contrary to our natural experiences in life – yet they make perfect sense when we understand what a blessing it is to have the true God as our God.
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” – “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
With God as my God, I am rich even when I have nothing else. I have God and His kingdom, which are more than all else. But if earthly riches become the love and trust of my heart, I am all the poorer for having them.
And it’s not only the wealthy who cling to riches. “Riches” can be any cheap thing – or a dream of riches – whatever has strings pulling at my heart. But the more God is my God, the more I can say, “Blessed am I” in all circumstances.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied” – “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.”
With the Lord as my God, I have the One who is the “Bread of Life” who alone satisfies – “The bread of God is He who comes down from heaven… Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst” [John 6:33-35]
Only when Jesus is our Bread of Life will we ever be satisfied. We are never satisfied by an abundance of food – we still eat like we’re starving, more and more. In this life, we either suffer the hunger of want or the bad health of abundance. Our food lets us down.
Jesus is heaven’s Bread. A little satisfies us, yet the more we have the more we can eat. The more we overeat the Bread of Life, the better our health of soul and heart. A little crumb of the Word of God leaves us full, yet no great amount is ever too much.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh” – “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”
Jesus says, about His final coming on the Last Day, that all the world will be “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” and that day will come upon them suddenly, unaware and unprepared [Matthew 24:37-39].
Eating and drinking, laughing and enjoying each other, getting married and celebrating – these are all good things, blessings from God who made them. But these good things can also become our reason for forgetting God. When all is well and life is joyful, our sin-fallen nature forgets that there even is a God.
But our times of weeping send us more deeply into that One who is our only Consolation. If our weeping, grief, and trouble sends us closer to God, then these truly are our greatest blessings. Blessed are we when heartache and troubles direct us to our Savior.
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day… for so their fathers did to the prophets” – “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
The favor or good opinion of others – especially that of my coworkers or family or friends or neighbors – can become the false god of my heart. We do not like to be isolated or excluded.
But it’s far better to be isolated from man, for what may seem like strange beliefs to them – like our belief in the physical resurrection of the body [1 Corinthians 15:1-20] – than to be isolated from God by being ashamed of Him and His Word [Mark 8:38].
Speaking the truth in love, as fits the occasion – and being faithful to God’s Word in our speech and conduct among other – if we suffer bad opinions for this, this is pleasing to God and an undeserved honor for us sinners to be counted worthy to suffer for Jesus’ name [Acts 5:41].
“Blessed are you.” “Woe to you.” The truth is, we do sin against the First Commandment. We do find ourselves on the “woe” side of these statements. We do cling to riches. We do forget God. We do sometimes value our neighbor’s good opinion of us over God’s.
Who alone is the Blessed One who fully held God His Father as the only God of His heart? It’s Jesus Himself, God’s own Son. He is the blessed one.
Jesus was poor, with no place to lay His head – Jesus was hungry for forty days in the wilderness [Matthew 4:1-4] – Jesus wept [John 11:35], bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows [Isaiah 53:4].
“And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” [Philippians 2:8]. Jesus alone lived by unwavering faith, trusting even on the cross and committing His spirit into His Father’s hands [Luke 23:46].
Jesus alone lived perfectly, and Jesus alone died perfectly for us – giving His perfect life into death as the redemption price to forgive our sins [Colossians 1:14].
Jesus alone was perfectly blessed, and we are blessed in Him.
“You shall have no other gods.” As a commandment, we fall short of the test. But as a promise of God – as a promise of His work of salvation in Jesus – you do have God as your God and as your Savior. Thanks be to God. Amen.
