My sermon text was on the Gospel reading from Luke 12. Here is my manuscript, enjoy!
Grace, mercy, and
peace be to you from our Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text for today is from our Gospel reading but
specifically looking at verses 23 and 32.
“For life is more than food and the body more than clothing,” and, “Fear
not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the
kingdom.”
I want you
to picture in your mind something for me.
It will be easy, I promise, because this is something we have all
seen. I want you to picture a child
holding a present, either a Christmas or even a birthday present. If you are a parent this is easy because you
can most likely picture your own child holding a wrapped present you have given
him or her. But even if you’re not a
parent, we have all most likely seen this image before of the smile on his or
her face right before they begin to tear off the wrapping paper as fast as they
can. Now for this specific image I am
going to use a little boy, and he tears off the wrapping paper and sees the
remote control car. The one he has seen
advertised on T.V. and has been talking about for months and it is exactly what
he wanted. And he opens the box and
takes out the car and with Dad’s help undoes the million tiny little fasteners
that is holding it to the cardboard.
Then he pulls out the remote control and after he sets the car on the
ground, with both hands he throws both thumb levers as far forward as he can just
expecting to see the car shoot off like a real race car… but instead it just
sits there not moving at all. It is
just then that mom and dad look at each other and then the box to see that tiny
little phrase that they print on the bottom corner of the box and is every
kid’s least favorite phrase…. “Batteries not included”.
The child
has received this amazing gift and wants to play with it, but it doesn’t work
without the extra little gift of batteries.
Batteries are the necessity to make it work and without them, the car
cannot do what it is supposed to do. The
toy is still an amazing gift to the kid from the loving parents, but they
forgot the little thing that is needed with it, because they didn’t see that
little line on the bottom corner of the box that reads… “Batteries not
included.”
Looking at
out text, we see in verse 32, Jesus tells us it is our Father’s good pleasure
to give us the kingdom. Our Heavenly
Father is a loving Father who has wrapped up the biggest and best gift we could
ever hope for. He has given us His
kingdom, His eternal life, through the forgiveness of sins won for us on the
cross through the death and resurrection of His only Son. He gives us this amazing, most wonderful gift
of salvation, completely free to us, but so dearly pricey to Him. The gift IS free to us, even though we do not
deserve it. It would be like a single
father who has a child, and the child is a disobedient, disrespectful little
brat. But this dad spends all the money
he has worked so hard for all year to get the child one awesome gift that is
even better than all the gifts the child has asked for. The child certainly doesn’t deserve it from
all other human perspectives. However,
when you look through the father’s eyes, you see nothing but pure love for the
child. This is what our heavenly Father
has done. He paid the ultimate price of
his only Son to give us a gift that through all perspectives other than our
father’s eyes, we do not deserve. You
see we are the rotten child who does not deserve the gift. We daily disobey our Father’s will. He has told us how He wants us to live, He
has taught us right from wrong, but instead of listening to Him and being
obedient, we think we know better than Him.
We are the rotten sinful child. And
yet our Father’s eyes are still full of such great and abundant love that He
was willing to pay the ultimate price to give this amazing gift to us, His
Children.
But we hear
this message every week. The
announcement of this amazing gift is nothing new. You have all heard that Christ died for your
salvation. You know Christ died and rose
again to defeat death and the devil, and that this is a gift completely free to
you. Now I am not saying that this
repetition makes the gift any less wonderful, but we heard last week in the
parable of the rich fool the concept of God’s gifts. So why does Jesus go on to continue to talk
about this idea? Why does Luke bother
writing all this down in his Gospel?
You see our
text for today as a whole is a continuation from last week’s Gospel message
which Pastor Wurm preached on. Now I
know you good faithful Lutherans remember every sermon word for word, but for
my own sake I want to refresh the message we heard last week. Last week we looked at the rich fool and how
he made himself into his own little god, just as we do too often. We think we are in control and even worse
think we have to be in control. However,
we were reminded that we are not our own gods, but belong to the one true God
who grants all gifts and it is through His gifts that we are rich toward God,
rather than storing up treasures for ourselves.
Pastor Wurm reminded us that no matter how much or how little we have,
it is all a gift from God. This passage
for today is the clarification of that statement.
There is a
reason Jesus continues on. There is a
reason Luke continues to write down all of what Jesus said. We can look at the parable of the rich fool
and get the point Jesus is making and trying to teach. However, verse 32 says fear not little
flock. Fear not little sheep. Now I am not calling anyone in this
congregation dumb, because you are all very intelligent people that God has
given many talents and brain cells to.
However, we are the little flock of sheep, because even though you are
all smart, we as sinners need to be constantly reminded and have the teachings
of Christ explained very clear to us. I
bet this last week alone, all of us, myself included, committed at least one sin
of being our own god and priding ourselves as the rich fool. We just heard the message last week, and yet
we fall into the same old sin again. The
old Adam in us needs to be daily drown so the new Adam can be brought alive in
us through daily confession and absolution because we fail day in and day
out. We know our salvation comes from
God, and He has given us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We get the big picture, but we let the little
details lead us into sin. We think we
have earned the things we have, or have received them because of something we
have done.
This is the
reason Jesus continues to speak, and this is the reason Luke continues to
write. It is our Father’s good pleasure
to give us the kingdom, this amazing huge gift.
But our loving and gracious Father not only gives us the remote control
car, He gives us the batteries too! And
He not only gives us two or four batteries that it takes the first time, but He
gives us a life-time of batteries. You
see our Father saw that little line on the corner of the box that said
batteries not included. He knew that
even with forgiveness of sins and eternal life, we would still need daily
necessities to make it through this life.
Jesus says in verse 23, “For life is more than food, and the body more
than clothing.” God has given you both
your body and the breath of life that you have as gifts, and again, He not only
gave you these big gifts, but knows the little things, food and clothing, that
it takes to sustain those gifts. He
knows the necessities it takes to keep us going so that we can be His children
who receive His kingdom. Jesus compares
us to the birds and the flowers and says that if God knows to give these parts
of creation the little gifts, the little things it takes to sustain life, won’t
He do the same for ones to whom He gives His whole kingdom. The Gospel truth is our God does gives us His
kingdom, His forgiveness of sins, and His eternal life, out of His grace,
mercy, and love for us. But out of that
same grace, mercy, and love he gives us all the little extra gifts too. So when we wake up still breathing, when we
get dressed in the morning, when we eat three meals a day, and when we lie down
at night to go to sleep in a warm bed, we remember to praise God for the fact
that He has graciously out of His good pleasure given us His kingdom, but we
also praise and thank Him that His gift of life comes already stamped with the
phrase “Necessities Included!” In
Christ’s name, Amen.
