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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Humanly speaking, we have lots of reasons to rejoice. For example, this past week many observed July 4th, rejoicing and giving thanks to God for the blessings of this country, especially its freedom of religion. Even in today’s Gospel Reading, the 72 men, whom the Lord had appointed and sent on ahead of Him, returned with joy saying that even the demons were subject to them in the Lord’s Name. The 72’s submission of spirits in their short-term mission trip sure seems like a good reason to rejoice, but, in one of the Bible’s few negative commands about rejoicing, the Lord essentially told them to stop rejoicing over that but instead to rejoice that their names were written in heaven. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “Reason to Rejoice”.
You may recall that in last Sunday’s immediately preceding Gospel Reading Jesus had set His face to go to Jerusalem, sent messengers ahead of Him to a Samaritan village that did not receive Him, and encountered three would‑be‑disciples with questionable commitments to Him (Luke 9:51-62). In today’s Gospel Reading, with some Old Testament precedent (Exodus 24:1; Numbers 11:16), Jesus sends out 72 others, at least short‑term laborers of the plentiful harvest. Although many of Jesus’s specific commands to them are no longer really relevant, especially those commands which He Himself reversed on the night when He was betrayed (Luke 22:35‑36), their and their successors’ message about the Kingdom of God—its law and Gospel, its repentance and forgiveness—comes down even to us today.
Certainly none of us has authority from Jesus to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and to be hurt by nothing—authority needed in the apostolic era to give the apostles’ Word authority but no longer needed now that that Word has its own authority. And, you do not have the same authority that I have, authority that Jesus gave His apostles to forgive and retain sins committed against God (John 20:22-23), though, based on today’s Gospel Reading, we probably can say safely that my having that authority is not reason for me to rejoice. As one pair of commentators point out, joy in such authority, even authority in Jesus’s Name, “can be a treacherous thing” for us, as it can turn our faith from the power of God to our “own religious prowess” (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Luke 10:17-20, p.68). We should rejoice not in what we or someone else can do, but we should rejoice in what God has done! And, what God has done should lead us to rejoice not only some of the time but to rejoice always, even when we might be sorrowful for other reasons, including our suffering as Christ suffered (1 Thessalonians 5:16; 2 Corinthians 6:10; Philippians 4:4; 1 Peter 4:13).
Whether we sin by sometimes rejoicing over authority God has given to us or whether we sin by not always rejoicing over the things God has done for us, we sin, in countless ways, for we are sinful by nature. For such sin, we deserve both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless, as we are enabled by God, we repent. Jesus’s words and deeds, the 72’s words and deeds—such as wiping off of their feet the dust of an unrepentant town—and today’s pastors’ words and deeds all are God’s means of calling and enabling us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. In the Gospel Reading, we heard Jesus speak of less-bearable judgment—apparently greater degrees of torment—for at least the unrepentant people of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum who did not hear Him but rejected Him, but we know that when we repent, whether or not we do so in sackcloth and ashes, then we are not brought down to hell but exalted to heaven.
We can rejoice that our names are written in heaven because on the cross Jesus died in our place the death that we otherwise would have deserved. On the cross Jesus cast out Satan, the ruler of this world (John 12:31), whom Jesus had seen thrown down to earth after the beginning (Revelation 12:8-9) and repeatedly saw fall like lightning further with each exercise of Jesus’s followers’ authority over Satan and his evil angels. The ancient enmity between Satan and the Offspring of the Woman led not only to Satan’s bruising Jesus’s heel on the cross but also to Jesus’s there bruising Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15). So, before the foundation of the world, God wrote, in the Book of Life of the Lamb Who was slain, the names of us who repent and believe (Revelation 13:8; Isaiah 4:3; Philippians 4:3; Hebrews 12:23; Revelation 20:12; 21:27). Those who do not repent and believe are not enrolled among the righteous, but their names are blotted out, as it were, from the book of the living (Exodus 32:32-33; Psalm 69:28; Revelation 3:5; 20:15).
As we repent and believe, we subjectively can be certain that our names are so written in heaven because God objectively acts to save us through His Means of Grace. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus essentially said that the one who hears the ones He has sent hears Him and that the one who hears Him hears the Father Who sent Him. Through those He appoints to the Office of the Holy Ministry and sends, God reads and proclaims His Word to groups such as this, and, through those same ministers, God applies the Gospel to us individually with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in individual Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. In regard to hearing God through the pastor, our Lutheran Confessions especially draw our attention to individual Holy Absolution’s strengthening and consoling one’s conscience, because we believe the voice of the pastor no less than we would believe a voice coming from heaven (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XII:40; confer Small Catechism V). Yet, in all of these ways we can rejoice because God extends to us the peace of His Kingdom, comforting us, as the Old Testament Reading described, as one whom his mother comforts (Isaiah 66:10-14).
Although the extent of the need for laborers in the harvest may be debated, there always is a need, and so we pray for laborers, encourage qualified men of every age, and ourselves go as the Holy Spirit calls us. In a timeless statement, the Lord says that such laborers deserves their wages, a statement apparently quoted by St. Paul in writing to Timothy (1 Timothy 5:18), although, in today’s Epistle Reading (Galatians 6:1-10, 14-18), St. Paul expressed it in his own Divinely‑inspired words, that the one who is taught the Word is to share all good things with the one who teaches. And, you who are not so called and sent have your own vocations in which you confess the faith as you love and serve God in the persons of your neighbors, as St. Paul put it in the Epistle Reading, as we have opportunity, doing good to everyone, especially to those who are of the household of faith. There is opposition and persecution to our living as Christians in our respective callings, and we never do it perfectly, but that is why we return here, to the presence of God, for His forgiveness.
We have lots of fleshly reasons to rejoice, and we have lots of spiritual reasons to rejoice, too. Considering today’s Gospel Reading this morning we have focused on the “Reason to Rejoice” of our names being written in heaven. Because of God’s love, mercy, and grace in Jesus Christ, each one of us who are redeemed is important enough to have our names written there (confer Schrenk, TDNT 1:769-770). Our God-given salvation is more important than any God-given authority we might exercise. So, as we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 66:1-7; antiphon: vv.8-9), we shout for joy to God, sing the glory of His Name, and give to Him glorious praise—both here now and in heaven for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +