St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church – Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Pentecost 20 – October 18th and 21st, 2001
Luke 17:1-10
1Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people
to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. 2It
would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around
his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. 3So
watch yourselves.
"If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. 4If
he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and
says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him."
5The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our
faith!"
6He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard
seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’
and it will obey you.
7"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking
after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field,
‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8Would he not rather say,
‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink;
after that you may eat and drink’? 9Would he thank the servant
because he did what he was told to do? 10So you also, when you have
done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we
have only done our duty.’"
Dear Children of God,
This morning we are going to go into battle. Put on your military uniforms and your comfortable military boots, and let's get ready to fight. But before we go into battle, we are going to train so that we are prepared for the things that we will face during this battle. I know that their some among us this morning who might be past our prime when it comes to be in the military, but all of us this morning are going to participate in this battle. For this reason, all of us need to train for this battle. We also need to realize that this training is going to guide us, strengthen us and give us the motivation to live through this battle against sin and the devil. We will see what we are training for and what happens when we are full of strength from all of our hard training.
As we look at this work out for this morning, we will see that we have the best spiritual leader that there is in the world. This leader has the best equipment to make us ready for what lies ahead, and this leader knows just exactly what kind of training we each need. But first of all why do we need this training? We need this train because without it we will be run right over. We will lose our most important gift, which is our faith that was worked in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So this morning let us begin our spiritual training under the theme:
Theme: Let us Find Strength For Hard Times
As with all people who train, we need to know what we are up against, and why we need to increase our strength. So then what exactly are we up against? What we are up against is unbelief and sin. That is the only enemy that we need to worry about. As we live on this earth, we will be in this fight until the day that we die. This opponent is here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, every day of our lives. Sounds like the toughest fight that we will ever have to endure, and it is! Just think of what I just said. We live in a world of sin, and Satan and our sinful flesh are there everyday of our lives. Satan does not take the day off for holidays or weekends. Our sinful flesh, our original sin does not take a day off. The sinful world around us does not take a day of either. If this is the case, we can see the reason why we need to work and train so hard. We can see why we need the best trainer and the best ways to make us ready for what is ahead of us.
Jesus was talking to his disciples and was telling them some of the ways that they will encounter difficult things in their lives. In reality he is talking about our lives as Christians. He is talking about how we are to live as Christians motivated by the love of God. We are to be holy and righteous looking to God and his saving message for salvation. We are, as we learn from God's law, to be perfect as God is perfect. We are to live our lives out of love and thanks to God for sending his Son to die on the cross for our sins. If there was ever the impossible mission, this would be it. Sounds like quite the difficult life for us as Christians. Jesus in our text gives us a few specific ways that Satan and our sinful nature tempt us away from God's perfect love. Jesus first of all talks about leading someone to sin. We could use the term of causing an offense. This offense is more than we normally think of. This offense is causing a person to sin. Jesus writes, "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come." Here we see that Jesus tells us that sin is in the world, and it is going to happen. We can't stop this.
But it is what he tells us next that shows that it is more difficult than it seems for us as Christians. We can't just say that sin is in the world and I can't help all my sinning. Jesus takes it a step farther. He writes, "But woe to the person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea....than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves." These words say an awful lot for us. These words begin to tell us some of what God expects from us as Christians. These words begin to show us why we need to work on our spiritual strength everyday of our lives. As we can see from these words, Jesus tells us that sin will happen, and that people will lead others to sin. But as Christians we do not want to be the person to lead a person to fall away because of something we said or did. For instances we know that there are many things that God has neither commanded nor forbidden in his Word. At the same time he tells us to watch out that we do not test the faith of someone whose faith is weak. If someone is led astray because we are speaking something false or because our lifestyle is the opposite of what God tells us to live, God tells us that he will punish us. It actually boils down to the fact that many times we need to live for those around us rather than ourselves.
Another one of the tasks that we will encounter is that of someone who sins against us or who sins in general. Either way this person's soul is in jeopardy. With this in mind Jesus tells us to rebuke that person. He tells us that we are to point out to that person that what he is doing is wrong. God wants us to do this in a gentle and tactful way, yet not in anyway disregarding the truths of God's Word. We are to let this person know that what he has done is wrong in the eyes of God and if he continues in this sin his punishment is death in hell.
It is at this point that Jesus tells us if that person repents after we have shown him his sin from God's Word, we are to forgive him. If this person sins again and again and repents over and over again, we are to forgive him over and over. This is difficult isn't it, because if someone sins against us we like to hold that grudge. But we need to see what God's Word says. God's Word tells us that if we withhold forgiveness to one who has repented, we are the ones who are wrong. We are to forgive and forget as many times as it takes. Just think of how many times God has forgiven us -- too many to keep track of.
2. Where
do we find the strength?
With these two instances we can see how our sinful flesh and Satan use many ways to fight against our greatest gift which is out faith. With this in mind we need to have the greatest strength that has ever been known to mankind. And what is this strength? This strength is the faith that has been worked in our heart by the Holy Spirit. The disciples upon hearing all that Jesus said would be in front of them asked Jesus to increase their faith. They know that not leading someone to sin and forgiving others was going to be very difficult -- almost impossible on their own. They knew that they could not win the battle on their own. They knew that what laid in front of them was more than they could possibly handle in their sinful state. Yet Jesus tells us what it takes to fight all that is against us. He uses the picture of a mustard seed. A mustard seed is very small. Yet with faith as small as a mustard seed you can do wonderful and mighty things. Jesus is not worried about how great your faith is at this point in time. He tells us to use whatever faith we have for God's glory. Sure, Scripture tells us that we will always want to seek to grow in our faith, but at the same time do not let us hold back from using the great gift of faith that we already have been blessed with. The faith that we already have in us is the greatest blessing that could ever be imagined. He isn't telling us to move trees with our faith, but he is emphasizing how much our faith can do.
As we look at how we can apply these words to our own lives, just think of what we were talking about in the first part of the sermon. Could we ever live without causing someone to sin without faith in our hearts? Could we ever forgive all those who sin against us and repent of their sins without faith in our hearts? Absolutely not! Without faith we could accomplish nothing for God's glory. We could not even keep the smallest of God's commands. This is important as we plug it into the battle that we spoke of in the beginning of this sermon. We said that we are in the toughest battle known to this world, and now we have seen how we can win in this great battle. It is through the faith worked in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
But faith in and of itself means nothing. Faith without works is dead, and that is why we need to always remember the last words of Jesus. We are full of sin and cannot stand up to sin without faith in our hearts, but we now see that we are to practice this faith in our lives. Jesus uses the picture of a Master and a slave. We are a slave and God is the Master. The slave is to obey his Master, because he owes everything he has to his master. The slave is happy and grateful for the blessings that his master gave him. Our Master Jesus Christ has given us all that we could ever imagine. He has redeemed us a lost and condemned creature purchased and won us from the power of the devil. Jesus came into this world to save us as lowly sinners. That is all that we as sinners have to hold on to. We cannot hold on to ourselves. We cannot hold on to our sinful lives. We cannot hold on to our own reason or strength. If we do in anyway we will fall and be crushed by Satan. Instead we have the greatest strength to hold on to and that is the knowledge that our sins are forgiven and that we have life eternal. Faith comes from looking at God and what he has done to save us from our lost condition, rather than us looking at ourselves. This is our joy and above all this is our strength.
This is the strength that we have been given in abundance. This is the strength that we need to exercise daily through daily looking to God and his Word, and by using the Means of Grace that he has given to us. This includes daily bible study. This includes the regular use of the Lord's Supper. This includes the regular attendance at God's House for worship, as we together with our fellow believers are uplifted and encouraged through the hearing of God's Word. As we started out this sermon we said we would be going through a spiritual training. We did this as we saw our goal, and were led to that goal by the gift of faith and the hearing of God's Word. As we sat here this morning we might not have even noticed that we were training for battle. But we were, because Jesus was working in us through his holy Word. But today's one workout is not enough. Today was just one workout among the many daily workouts that are needed to hold on to the only strength that we have which is faith in Christ Jesus. Let us thank God for that Strength he has so graciously given us. Let us remember all that God has given to us, and let the goal of eternal life lead us in our fight on this earth. Amen.