Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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. (Amen.)
Whether between parents and children, spouses, teachers and students, employers and employees, pastors and people, or government and people in a country, state, or city, we all arguably have our own issues with authority. We might even ask by what authority people are doing things and who gave them that authority, as the Jewish leaders asked Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading. As we heard, Jesus’s question in reply to the Jewish leaders also centered on the matter of authority, and ultimately His further teaching, the so-called “Parable of the Two Sons”, centered on people’s response to authority. Considering primarily today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme, “God the Father gives His authority in order for us to believe”.
For today’s Gospel Reading, our series of Readings has again skipped forward in St. Matthew’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account. Important for our understanding is that the interaction between the Jewish leaders and Jesus that we heard about today comes the day after Jesus on Palm Sunday entered Jerusalem to the praise of the people (Matthew 21:1-11), drove out of the Temple all who bought and sold, and healed the blind and the lame who came to Him in the Temple, to the indignation of the Jewish leaders (Matthew 21:12-17). And, the interaction that we heard about today is the first of several similar interactions with different groups of Jewish and other leaders that continue to the end of the next chapter (Matthew 21:33-22:46), about which other interactions we will hear more in the Gospel Readings the next four Sundays.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s answering the Jewish leaders’ question with a counter-question might sound to us as if Jesus is being evasive, although answering a question with a counterquestion reportedly was a common form of debate at the time. If anything, the Jewish leaders’ not really answering Jesus’s question about John the Baptizer is evasive, although, with their answer to Jesus’s question about the two sons, they did not successfully evade His indictment of their unbelief. And, the disobedience of unbelief arguably is the real issue. The Jewish leaders recognized that children should do the will of their father, but they failed to recognize that God their Father had given John the Baptizer and Jesus His authority in order not only for the Jewish leaders, but also for the tax collectors and prostitutes, and even for us today to believe.
The Jewish leaders arguably would not acknowledge John’s and Jesus’s authority because the Jewish leaders did not want to confess that they were sinners. Of those who did confess that they were sinners, the tax collectors and prostitutes were regarded as among the worst sinners of Jesus’s day. Whom would we regard as the worst sinners of our day? Members of the political party opposed to us? Drug dealers, child molesters, or other sexual deviants? God knows them, and God knows us. God knows that by nature we all are equally sinful and unclean and that we all have sinned against Him and our neighbors by thought, word, and deed, both things that we have done and things that we have left undone. Because of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. But, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Ezekiel 18:1-4, 2532), God has no pleasure in the death of anyone, so, through those like Ezekiel to whom God gives His authority, God calls us to turn from our sin and live. When, called and so enabled by God, we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin, then we all are equally forgiven. God forgives us our sinful nature, and all our actual sin, including our previously failing both to acknowledge God’s authority and to confess that we are sinners. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
John the Baptizer called for people to turn in sorrow from their sins (for example, Matthew 3:1-12), and John identified Jesus as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36). Likewise, Jesus called for people to turn in sorrow from their sins (Matthew 4:17), and Jesus said that He came not to be served but serve by giving His life as a ransom for all (for example, Matthew 20:28). Jesus is God in human flesh, to which human flesh was given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18; confer Matthew 11:27). Jesus perfectly did the will of His Father, keeping all of His Commandments and paying the price for our failing to keep all of the Father’s Commandments. Jesus willingly submitted to the authority both of the Jewish leaders who sentenced Him to death and of the Roman leaders who crucified Him. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Philippians 2:1-18), Jesus was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. But, His death on the cross was for us and for our salvation. Jesus died in our place and then rose from the dead, so that, when we believe that He died for us, then we are forgiven.
In order for us to have such saving faith, God instituted the Office of the Holy Ministry, which preaches the Gospel and administers the Sacraments, through which means God gives the Holy Spirit, Who creates faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel (Augsburg Confession V:1-2). “God the Father gives His authority in order for us to believe”. Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Holy Supper of Christ’s Body and Blood create and sustain faith, as well as serve as signs by which people are outwardly identified as Christians (Augsburg Confession XIII:1). Today’s Gospel Reading may make us think especially of Holy Baptism, part of the way of righteousness in which John the Baptizer came, but the Jewish leaders did not believe him, even after they saw others believe him. The Jewish leaders, the Divinelyinspired St. Luke’s Gospel account says, rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by John (Luke 7:29-30).
As the Jewish leaders asked Jesus about His authority in today’s Gospel Reading, so earlier the Jewish leaders had asked John the Baptizer about his authority (John 1:25), and later the Jewish leaders asked Jesus’s apostles about their authority (Acts 4:7). Their authority is all of the same character, and their authority was all given by God the Father in order for us to believe. And, as our believing leads to our forgiveness, so our forgiveness leads to our good works. In the Parable of today’s Gospel Reading, the father had two sons, the first of whom rudely said that he was not willing to do what his father asked but then changed his mind and did go, the second of whom politely said he would do what his father asked but then did not. We might think of other possibilities, such as saying that we are willing and actually going, or saying that we are not willing and not going, and those possibilities are not even to mention what is being thought. Neither of the two sons in the Parable thought, said, and did, what they were told, and, when it comes to God’s Commandments, neither do we think, say, and do, what we are told. However, Jesus’s question to the Jewish leaders asked which one of the two sons did the will of his father, and Jesus’s application of the Parable in the context of today’s Gospel Reading is not on our keeping God’s Commandments as God the Father’s will but on our believing as God the Father’s will so that we receive God’s forgiveness for our failure to think, say, and do God’s Commandments.
“God the Father gives His authority in order for us to believe”. Our rightly regarding our Lord and His ministers’ authority ideally leads to a right ordering of authority between parents and children, spouses, teachers and students, employers and employees, pastors and people, and government and people in a country, state, or city, but, we live in God’s forgiveness for when it does not. And so, we praise the Lord, for, as we sang in the Introit (Psalm 147:1-5; antiphon v.6), He is great and abundant in power—and, we might add, abundant in authority, for us!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +