The Kingdom of Grace

Matthew 18:1-20

September 7, 2008

Pentecost 17

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Our Lord hates sin.  He hates sin because of what it does to you and what it does to others.  Sin hurts you, it cuts you so deeply that it kills you.  It makes you go astray from the One who loves you so much that He made you the crown of His creation.  Sin is what kills us and our Lord’s Words in the Gospel text tells us how it affects us and others.  …but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck to be drowned in the depth of the sea (Matt. 18.6).  Our sin not only affects the sinner but others too, for if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.  Sin affects the whole body of Christ. 

He knew with the choice He have Adam and Eve that if they did not follow after His command they would cut themselves off from Him, they would even die.  God didn’t say you might die because of your sins, but that you will die!  Adam and Eve had a choice and they decided to see what life was like apart from God, and they chose death.  Sin cuts us off from our Lord and from our brothers and sisters.  For the brother or sister who sins against you cuts themselves off from you and from the Lord.  For the one who does not acknowledge their sins they are to be as a Gentile or a tax collector.  God knew what would happen because of sin. 

That is why our Lord spoke these Word’s to His disciples and to the Church.  That is why He has given the Church the Office of the Holy Ministry and has sent men to be pastors to speak His Words.  He has given the same words for His ministers to speak as He spoke to Adam and Eve.  If you sin (eat of the fruit) you shall surely die.  If we do not turn from our evil ways we will stray away and surely die.   We are always in danger, in danger of causing others to sin and leading ourselves into sin.  We won’t just stray away but if we remain in our sin we will surely die eternally.

We are conceived and born in sin.  From the very moment we begin to grow in our mothers’ wombs, we are heading for the grave.  But if that’s true than why do we need pastors and other Christians to tell us what we know ill happen to all?  The reason is because of eternal death. 

It is invisible to our eyes.  We can’t look to the ground and see the fires of hell that are reaching out for the unbelieving world.  When sickness, war, famine, and diseases try to drag unbelievers into the grave, Satan tries to use these trials to sow seeds of despair and unbelief. 

Satan’s greatest desire is for all people to die outside of God’s love for them on the cross.  Satan isn’t just content with those who don’t believe.  If he can use the trials of this world to make you stumble and fall, he will do it.  In fact, he is working endlessly to draw you away from your Savior.  That is why our Lord uses some very graphic language in our Gospel for those that cause others to fall away.  For we look at those around us and at the trials and struggles they undergo and believe that God is no longer watching over us.

Satan’s other trick is to get us to believe that God no longer will redeem us.  That our sins are so many and so vast that the Lord will not redeem us from them.  That after a while, God’s grace might be overused, His love may lose it specialness, and as a human shepherd may just decide to give up on that one sheep, for what’s one sheep out of a hundred?  That’s what Satan wants you to believe.  And unfortunately many believe Satan, even some in the church.

II.

But Christ is not a normal Shepherd.  He is one who will leave the ninety-nine in the field and go after the lost lamb. 

If the Lord did not desire you, little lambs of God, than He wouldn’t have warned you about the consequences of sin.  Not just death, for that happens to both the righteous and the unrighteous, but to the second death, the eternal torment of being separated from Him in Hell.  If He didn’t care about you he would let you live a life of death and misery that would last an eternity.  The same goes for you.  Throughout our Gospel reading and from Ezekiel, we hear words of warning for the watchman and for the brother.  When you see your brother fall into sin, is it loving to sit back and watch?  There is no compassion in allowing your friend or even your enemy to hurt themselves and others by transgressing God’s Law.  The loving thing is to warn them.  You may not say as Ezekiel did, O wicked one, you will surely die.”  But you may say something like, “I’m concerned about you what you are doing.  I know how much sin hurts me when I do it, and I don’t want you to do anything that would harm you or someone else.”

So today the Lord has sent you a shepherd.  The Lord comes to you in the Divine Service with His loving Word of Law; He does not want you, the sinner, to die.  He does not want you to stray away from Him and the rest of the flock.  By continuing in our sinful walk of life we will only stray further and further from the Shepherd.  People loved by God, it is our sins, yours and mine, that put Jesus on the path to His death.  When your Savior was nailed to the cross the Father laid all our iniquities upon Him and Satan cheered.  He cheered as if He won.  But when Jesus died he was the one with the angels and the archangels and all the company of heaven who cheered, for when Christ rose from the dead three days later He had paid the penalty.  He forgave you.  He won life and salvation for you for all eternity.  He brought you back into the fold.

The Lord takes no pleasure in our sins and our straying away.  He desires for us to remain with Him and the flock and live.  For us to realize that we have strayed He preaches us the law.  You have committed adultery.  You have murdered, you have stolen, you have coveted, and you have not loved your neighbor as yourself.  When we hear the Law and we know we can do nothing right and have been convicted of our sin, in our helplessness we can’t get back to the flock.  The Shepherd has to come and retrieve us.  Each and every time.  Thanks be to Christ that it is not a burden for Him to retrieve us each time.  For if He left us just that one time, He would no longer show us His love.

Christ continually has forgiven and restored you.  He brought you into the flock, maybe for the very first time in your baptism, when He brought you together with the rest of those that belong to Him.  Over and over again He forgives and restores us as He promised in the prayer He gave us, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  You experience His restoration to the flock each and every time you receive the Lord’s Supper.  Thanks be to God that we can receive it often.  You experience the restoration to the flock each time you year the Words, “I forgive you all your sins in the in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Lord hates sin.  The Lord hates sin that He went to the cross to free you from its bondage.  But He loves you so much that He will come and retrieve you from its awful grip, over and over again.  Thanks be to God that it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.  Amen.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your heart and mind in faith in Christ Jesus.  Amen.