Notes

The Lord be with you!
How great are your works, O LORD! Your thoughts are very deep!

This is the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and the greater emphasis of our theme this week is on matters of this world: the role of God’s preacher as a watchman against the devil’s attacks, the authorities that God has placed in this world, or from the King James, they are “the powers that be”, and the importance of settling earthly matters of conflict with our brothers. Yet even when we are focused for the moment on things of this world, we continually remember that all good proceeds from one source, that is our heavenly Father, our Creator, and only by the Holy Spirit can we set our minds on those things that are right.

Let us pray the Collect:
O God, from whom all good proceeds, grant to us, Your humble servants, Your holy inspiration, that we may set our minds on the things that are right and, by Your merciful guiding, accomplish them; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Ezekiel 33:7–9
God’s desire is for His Word to be mediated through a human mouth! Not only Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, but also every preacher who proclaims in His name is that go-between that is so crucial for the people of God. The watchman was essential for the safety of a town, to keep all the inhabitants aware and ready, should danger arrive. God’s watchman delivers His warning and the fate of the watchman’s own soul is on the line. That’s how important it is for God’s true and complete Word to be delivered to the hearer, so that true and strong faith would be placed in the heart by that Word.

Romans 13:1–10
Rebellion against authority is at its very root a rebellion against God, for it is God who has established every authority, even those authorities who serve by the consent of the governed! To be fully autonomous, that is, literally, with a law only for yourself, is really to confess yourself as God and to deny your place in both His kingdoms-that of the left hand with power, control and earthly peace, but more tragically, one is saying no to the right hand kingdom of everlasting life. Thus as Christians, with one foot in each kingdom of God for now, we may be free of obligation to work for our salvation, since Christ has paid our debt of sin in full, yet in terms of Christian love we live in the world in order continually to pay the debt of love toward one another.

Matthew 18:1–20
This passage from St. Matthew follows beautifully after the Epistle from Romans this Sunday. What is an example of the command, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another”? Here it is, one of the best ways to pay your debt of love to your brother, your fellow believer, is to honor your relationship to him through honest reconciliation and forgiveness. The Catechism covers this in the Eighth Commandment in which as new creatures in Christ we are to defend our neighbor, “speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.” There’s no better construction that you can work with than to work toward winning your brother over, because the Gospel is that Jesus went to the utmost to win us back to Himself, rather than let us suffer utter separation from Him.

As we confess our sins against God and our neighbor, let this hymn stanza assure us of the guaranteed outcome, it’s hymn 779, stanza 3:
    With my burden I begin: / Lord, remove this load of sin;
    Let Thy blood, for sinners spilt, / Set my conscience free from guilt.

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

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 6, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Before this year, I had only heard the term, “essential personnel” in one situation, and that was back when I lived in Kansas City. When there was a snowed-out day, schools were closed, businesses opened later than usual, and cars without chains that got themselves stuck on the slick road were ticketed for violating the city’s weather emergency rules, in addition to their unwelcome tow and repair bills. But on the local TV news, in the little crawl at the bottom of the screen, certain institutions like hospitals, nonprofits and churches posted one exception while everyone else was settling in for a comfy snow-day spent at home: “essential personnel only.” They knew who they were, they did the jobs that needed to be done, rain or shine, snow or sun. They weren’t the glamorous, talented, or necessarily highest paying jobs, but they had the assurance that they were essential. This year, we’ve heard that classification of essential a lot, and now it has started to mean just about anything! And just in time for Labor Day, I saw a sign that said, “Are you not protected as an essential worker? Form a union!” So evidently, the sky’s the limit on what can be considered essential these days.

In Ezekiel’s day, about 500 years before Christ, there was one essential worker in particular that everyone knew was important and had earned the title for sure: the watchman. Like many genuinely essential jobs, their everyday importance was often overlooked; the watchman most days was ignored. He had a boring job when there was little to no threats on the horizon. But when an enemy attacked, nothing is more important than hearing that warning from the watchman. You ignore that warning to your own peril. His urgent message and your immediate response are absolutely essential. He had to take his own job seriously, too, because if he neglected his duties and the enemy attacked—the responsibility, with all its painful consequences, would land severely on the watchman’s head.

It was no accident or mistake that the Lord God addressed His prophet Ezekiel as a watchman for the house of Israel. No, he wasn’t going to climb a city wall and gaze out to the horizon for intruders. The people among whom Ezekiel lived were actually removed from their home and from their holy city Jerusalem and most importantly, the Temple was destroyed, burned to the ground and the golden and bronze fixtures were carried off by the Babylonian army. In the physical sense, these people had nothing more left to protect with an ordinary watchman. There was on the contrary a spiritual enemy that was threatening them, and the only watchman’s warning they would hear from Ezekiel was a spiritual message of urgent repentance from their hearts, rather than some outward preparations done with their hands. God could have chosen any of a number of ways to get His message across to the people He had chosen. He decided to designate a son of man, Ezekiel the man from a priestly family, to bear the Word to his fellow Israelites in this essential official job. Like the Jerusalem watchman, Ezekiel was required to remain vigilant, even during those times when it appeared that God was as far away as the familiar Judean landscape. When you’re used to hills and mountains all over in your backdrop (like we have here), then a vast, flat agricultural plain in between two rivers seems to be the farthest thing from home. People were becoming swayed by the feeling that God had nothing more to do with them now that they lived in Babylon.

However, God was not absent. He had in mind to bring His people back to the Promised Land. He also had the additional promise of a Savior, another Son of Man, Jesus who would be born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, preaching three years in Galilee and crucified and raised over the course of three days in the rebuilt Jerusalem. Ezekiel’s watchman message of repentance and renewed faith in the Lord of Hosts was essential for those who may never have made it back to see Palestine with their own eyes, but would finally close their eyes with confident faith that the future Messiah would set them free from their sins and give them eternal life and rescue from the attacks of the old Evil Foe.

The watchman message of repentance and renewed faith in Christ is essential for us today, including our crazy, 2020 world of this is essential and that is newly essential, but so few seem to know what is truly and absolutely necessary for everlasting life. It’s easy at times for us to ignore the familiar story of salvation, and tempting for us to keep calm and carry on, doing what feels right for us, despite what God says This is what I have in mind for you. In terms of what we read today from Matthew 18, when a family member or fellow Christian hurts you, your preference is to fight back rather than go out of your way to achieve reconciliation. You need a watchman, a preacher who is vigilant over your soul, responsible even before the mighty throne of God Himself to give you not only all the warnings of the Law, but also to announce to you the sweetest Gospel comfort that Jesus has paid in full for your entry into the Father’s eternal kingdom.

Jesus is your true watchman, the only truly reliable protector whom you can trust whenever you are attacked by the devil and his allies in this evil world. Whenever you feel like you are exiled from the loving, gracious face of your Creator, Jesus assures you that He is with you. The abandonment was not yours to endure, but His, when He said on the Cross, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? He even sends you today His own loyal angels to guard you in all your ways, to remind you that you are His precious child. He feeds you His very own Body and Blood as a Promise and assurance that you are essential to Him, and that His blood-bought forgiveness is yours permanently, no matter what you may face in the rest of your life here on this earth.

Our confused, turned-around world is never going to get it right when it comes to what is essential and what is not. All the world knows is advice like, “If your brother sins against you, tell everyone who sees your Facebook and social media pages that he is a dirty rotten scoundrel and then block every attempt they make to contact you and try to apologize.” You know where to turn, and it is your watchman who gives you God’s Word who will dependably set your gaze on the true horizon, that is, the life of the world to come. The devil will never cease to attack and his tactics are ever so subtle and tantalizing, but you have nothing to fear. Jesus your watchman has not only spotted the Enemy, not only has He warned you to follow what authorities say in His stead, but He has most importantly defeated sin, death and Satan. Nothing is more essential to the Church than the promise of your Savior, that where two or three are gathered in His name, He is here to grant you His most lavish gifts and the assurance of eternal life.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Ezek. 33:7–9 So you, son of man: I have made you a watchman
Psalm 32:1–7 I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”
Rom. 13:1–10 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities … love is the fulfillment of the law
Matt. 18:1–20 If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray