Greetings in the name of our Crucified Christ. I apologize that I am a couple weeks behind. Now that the weather is turning nice again we have been doing a bunch of work to my garage. We got it wired up, insulated, sheeted, painted, and not are doing some trim work now. We built a folding work bench and got the tops done, just have to finish the legs yet. It is now a work garage though and my car sits outside. I also got fancy speakers a guy gifted me wired up. So now I can put on the tunes, spread out all the tools and wood, and have plenty of convenient space to work on my wood working projects. It is a blessing to be able to work on those projects and clear my mind. The problem is I have too many hobbies. I still have this year's deer antlers to mount, I am dying to be out of the golf course, sad ice fishing is probably done for the year, but excited to do some summer fishing with some guys, finish my wooden rocking chair I am building, and thought about starting a cross stitching project. Plus I am on a intermural softball team which will be starting soon. All of that on top of fifty hours of church work and then cooking, cleaning, laundry, and house chores too, no wonder I don't get any sleep. But life is good because God is good!
I saw the movie Noah last week and was as thoroughly disappointed in it as I figured I would be. However, I saw God's Not Dead twice and really enjoyed this one. It has some things that are just to make a drama movie out of it, and there is a touch of bad theology with it; however, for the majority it was a pretty good movie that does teach Christ as Lord and Savior and that faith is important enough to stand up for.
I am going to post two sermons today to make up for the last two Wednesdays. I leave Wednesday night for St. Louis with a high school student. I am taking him down to show him around and give him a tour and feel of the seminary. I will just get back Sunday night and then we have Pastor's conference next Monday and Tuesday. So basically for a week I will be out of the office. So I might get behind again and will apologize in advance. April is going to be so busy with Easter and all the stuff with the college students since they are done the first week of May. It is hitting home more and more that I have basically just over three months of vicarage left. It will really hit home at the end of April when we find out if they will have another vicar next year. But again, God is good and I couldn't ask for more than what He daily and richly spoils me with.
Here is my sermon from two Wednesday's ago on Psalm 38.
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our Text for tonight is Psalm 38, looking specifically at verses 5-8 and 21-22. “My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness, 6 I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. 7 For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. 8 I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart… Do not forsake me, O Lord! O my God, be not far from me! 22 Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation!”
The medical field has made such huge advancements in the last century. From a town doctor who would travel by horse to the person’s house with a small medical bag filled with a few pieces of equipment and a couple bottles of medicine to the hospitals we have now that are filled with numerous electrical devices from heart monitors to MRI machines. They have entire rooms full of supplies and other rooms full of medicines. Pharmacies are filled with thousands of different types of drugs and medicines. Researchers keep coming out with new ones all the time too.
We as a culture have grown to put great faith in our medical system. We get sick, we go to the hospital and trust they will be able to make us better. We are optimistic for researchers to cure the incurable diseases. The latest break through being the possibility of stopping or at least slowing down Alzheimer’s disease if diagnosed soon enough. What a miracle that would be to be rid of or at least reduce such a terrible disease. We trust doctors have the cure, the right medicines, the ability to heal our sickness, fix our brokenness, or correct our defects. And this is a good thing that the Lord has blesses us with such advancements to live longer healthier lives.
However, there is one sickness, one brokenness, one defect no doctor, medicine, or surgery can fix. It is the festering and stinking wounds of the psalmist. It is his burning, crushed, feeble flesh. Yes we are all infected with the same sickness and brokenness that this psalmist is describing here in psalm 38. We all have the stinking festering wounds that are causing him so much grief and agony. Sin is the disease, sin is the brokenness, sin is the defect that we all have and are infected with. And no amount of medicine, no team of doctors, no amount of surgery can ever correct, heal, or resolve us of this diagnosis.
So we receive this diagnosis that we are infected with sin, how do we respond, what do we do about it? Well there are three ways that people tend to treat this diagnosis that are problematic or wrong. This first wrong way is to ignore it. We let ourselves think that we are not infected. They tell themselves, “I am still a good person; I haven’t done anything that terribly wrong.” They compare themselves to others saying, “I am not as bad as him or her. I am not a sinner, you want to see a sinner, look at that guy over there, now there is a sinner for you.” They simply ignore the fact that they have any problem at all, and if there is no problem, then there is no need for a cure.
The second wrong way to deal with this diagnosis is to think there is a home remedy. People think there is something they can do to heal the disease and fix the problem. They think they can do the right things to reverse this diagnosis. If I live a good enough life, if I do enough good deeds, it will make up for all the wrong deeds I have done. If I pray just the right prayers or go to church enough times, this disease of sin will be cured. I have a sickness, I have a defect, it is up to me to fix it or heal it. This is my problem, I can solve it on my own.
The third wrong way is to think this diagnosis is incurable, ultimately the end of the end. To think this way is to think there is no cure at all for the disease of sin, there is no solution possible. This way of handling it will drive the person to utter despair. To lose all hope, give up all together, and just let the disease win. If there is no cure, then there is no point in even trying at anything anymore because I have a defect, a sickness that cannot be healed. They have no hope in anything left.
So these are three ways to handle the diagnosis of sin. Nonetheless, I told you they are three wrong ways, so what is the right way to handle this diagnosis? First, accept that you are infected, you are broken and defected, and you do indeed need special attention to cure you of this problem. Secondly, know there is a cure, there is a solution that heals this disease and reverses this diagnosis. However, it is not a home remedy or anything you can do. It is curable but not by you or your actions. So do not ignore that you are infected with sin, but do not let it drive you despair either. Have hope in the cure, not the cure that you can do, but that you receive.
Christ our Lord is the physician who can heal our sickness, fix our brokenness, and correct our defect. He alone is the one who is capable of providing the cure for us. In fact, He has provided the cure for us. Christ our physician, healed our disease of sin by taking the disease onto Himself to remove it from us. He was incarnate in our feeble and crushed flesh, He took our stinking and festering wounds, He became broken, infected, and defected for us. He took all sin into Himself to completely remove all sin from us. As St. Peter says in our Epistle for today, “By His wounds, you have been healed.” He became wounded so we could be healed. By His dying on the cross, we have our cure from the diagnosis of sin. Then after He was wounded, infected and killed by our sickness, after He died to take away all of our sins, He was raised from the dead. He himself was healed, brought back to life, and resolved of all sin that He took into Himself on the cross. We have our cure in His death and resurrection. We have our hope that we are cured, we will live forever, the terminal disease of sin no longer is terminal for us. We have life, a clean, healthy life in Him, in Jesus Christ our holy physician.
So to ignore that you are a sinner is to not believe the Word of God, not to believe the Scriptures that tell us we are indeed sinners and infected with sin. To ignore that we are infected with sin, is to ignore Christ’s command in Mark 1:15 where He says, “repent and believe the gospel.” If we ignore the diagnosis of sin all together, then we have no need for a cure or a savior, holy physician to give us that cure. If we aren’t sinners, we have no need for Christ. However, again His own words confirm that we are indeed sinners and we do need to repent and believe the gospel.
To think there is a home remedy for the diagnosis is works righteousness. To say that Christ’s death, His cure for us is insufficient. It is to deny the gospel that He died for all sins of all mankind. His death was sufficient for all sins of all mankind. The author of Hebrews writes, “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.” Christ is the single sacrifice, the single cure, the only solution to the diagnosis of sin and to think we still have to do something to gain that cure is to deny Him as the physician.
Lastly, to be driven to utter despair, to think we have no hope is to deny the Word of God. If we let the Devil whisper in our ear that we are too great a sinner, too awful of a sinner, that God could never possibly forgive someone as terrible as us, then we deny that His gospel is for all people. We doubt that His desire is to save all people. St Paul says in 1 Timothy, “God our savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” In Mark 3, Christ Himself says, “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter.” Christ’s cure is for you, He offers forgiveness to all men and women. Do not doubt but believe. Do not let the Devil drive you to despair, but know our Great Physician has the cure and He gives it to you.
Don’t ignore the diagnosis, don’t deny the cure is sufficient, and don’t doubt His cure is for you, but believe. Believe God’s Word that you are a sinner who needs to repent, believe God’s word that His death and resurrection in the one and only sufficient cure, believe that His cure is for you because He desires for you to be cured and saved.
See God did not ignore the problem, no He sent His Son to be born into the feeble flesh. He sent His Son to preach the message of “repent and believe” so we would know that we are infected, we have the diagnosis. He sent His Son to be infected by all the sin of all the world, and die to pay for the sin, be brought back to life to be the cure of all sin once and for all. He sent His Son to be the one and only cure and solution to our diagnosis. He sent His Son to be the salvation of the world because He truly does desire all people to be saved.
So believe! Believe His Word that you are cured, you are healed, do not ignore it, do not deny it, do not doubt it, but trust in Him, receive His healing forgiveness and know you are cured. Our Physician who gives us our diagnosis also gives us the cure when He tell us in Mark 16, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” To ignore, to deny, to doubt are all not to believe and be condemned. However, if we believe, we will be saved. Through Christ, our great physician, we have our cure. When we believe His Word, when we believe in Christ as the true Son of God, the great physician, the savior of the world, we truly are healed of our sickness, fixed of our brokenness, and corrected of our defect. Repent and believe in the Gospel, believe that “By His wounds, you have been healed!”
In the name of our Great Physician, Jesus Christ, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment