Rightly Understanding the Necessity of Works

The Gospel Reading and Jesus Healing the Deaf and Mute Man

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, the seventh chapter.

Glory be to Thee.

Jesus returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. And they begged him to lay his hand on him.

And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers in his ears. And after spitting, touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Ephatha, that is, be opened.

And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed him. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well.

He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Now, I need to note something here. We Lutherans get a bad rap. And we have to address this, like, head on.

Grace Alone, Faith Alone, and the Necessity of Good Works

Because you'll note that it was Martin Luther, you know, that rascally reformer who was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church. The reason being is he stood his ground on what Scripture teaches. That we are saved by grace.

God's unmerited favor. By grace, through faith. All on account of Christ. In other words, we, contrary to what Rome teaches, do not merit the Lord's forgiveness by our good works. And over and again, I've noted that on social media, whenever I put out status updates or send out a tweet or something, affirming what the Scripture says.

That we are saved apart from works. Somebody comes out of the woodwork. It's like the bat signal goes off somewhere. Bing, bing, bing. And they come swooping in. Well, Chris, if you talk like this, you make it sound like salvation is too free.

That God's grace is too gracious. And if you start talking like this, then people are going to think that they have a license to sin. I used to think this way, too. I really did. And so, it's important for us to recognize this.

The Lutheran church, the Lutheran confessions, affirm what Scripture teaches regarding works. And I want you to hear the words. Good works are necessary.

They're necessary.

The question is necessary for what? Are you saved by your works, even by a little bit?

No.

Not at all.

Good works are necessary by virtue of the fact that you have been raised from the dead. Now, here's the thing. Because we are Christians, that's the reason why we do good works. Oftentimes, people will pit, like this epistle text from James, they'll pit it against Paul.

See, James, he disagrees with Paul. He says, just as the body that is not breathing is dead, faith without works is dead. Paul agrees. He 100 agrees. I want you to consider in this context here, before we even get into our epistle text, in Ephesians 2, those three verses that we all know by heart, verses 8, 9, and 10, they read such.

For by grace you have been saved, past tense, through faith. This is not your own doing. Kind of let that sit in. This is not your own doing. It's the gift of God. How many Christmas gifts do you pay for, friends and family?

This year for Christmas here, I'm going to give you $50. Would you give me a gift card to Walmart, a Red Lobster? Is that a gift if you pay for it? Of course not. Okay? Of course not. Now, you may treat yourself, but still, you're working off your wages, right?

So, it is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. It is not the result of works. What isn't the result of works? Salvation. You have been saved by grace through faith. It is not your own doing. It's the gift of God.

It's not a result of works so that no one may boast. And here's the thing. We Lutherans get a bad rap as if somehow we stop there and ignore verse 10. We don't. Verse 10 then says this.

Oh.

Oh, I see.

I see.

So, good works are necessary. You know why they're necessary? Because God has prepared them in advance for you to do and we are his workmanship and we are created for good works. Think of it this way.

We're not saved by our works. We're saved unto good works, which is all the more reason why it's absolutely deplorable when Christian churches and congregations become the scenes of, well, much unlove and unrest and backbiting and gossip and slander and just turmoil and anguish and rancor and blech, right?

This is not to be happening. And yet it does. And so you'll note, what do we do when we have, well, issues as it relates to sin manifesting in our own life or sin manifesting within the life of our congregation?

Well, we go back to the basics and we never leave the basics. We need to hear the law, which will convict us of our sin. We need to hear the gospel, and the gospel assures us of our forgiveness. And then we always need to remember that we are saved in Christ unto good works, not by them.

They are necessary by virtue of the fact that we are a new creation in Christ and that even our good works are a little bit weak and paltry, but sometimes because we have our old sinful nature still hanging around our necks, sometimes we have to pull the riding crop out and remind ourselves that these are the things that we are created in Christ Jesus to do.

Another way to put it is that have you noticed that sin isn't freedom? Have you noticed that? Sin is an absolute slavery, absolute slavery. And so Christ has set us free from slavery to sin, death, and the devil, and we, well, our sinful nature wants to go back to Egypt, back to slavery.

And no, Christ continues to have us walk through the wilderness. So in this regard then, we'll note that Paul and James, they actually teach the same thing. In James 1, James affirms salvation as a gift from God.

So the question is, what is he writing about then? Why is this talk going on about faith without works being dead? Answer, well, what had happened is that you'll note that Paul, when he writes against the Judaizers, those who are saying we're saved by our works, he doesn't cut them any slack.

Well, the people that James is writing to, they had been influenced by some kind of form of Gnosticism. And Gnosticism teaches that, well, historic Gnosticism teaches that your body, what you do with your body really doesn't matter.

Because matter that you see and smell and taste and touch, that's all an accident anyway. And so the goal is to get off the wheel of reincarnation. They actually believe in reincarnation. And to become one with God and spirit.

And so because you still have your sinful flesh, I mean, you don't really need to worry about anything. So you can do with it whatever you want. You want to engage in debauchery and drunkenness, sexual immorality?

No problemo, right? And worse, within that way of believing is also a latent form of what's called antinomianism. That's a big word. Anti, against. Namas, law. Antinomianism is against the law. So you refuse to hear the preaching of God's law or to allow yourself to be convicted by it.

What you end up doing is taking the gospel and saying, Thank you, Jesus, for forgiving me. And then you just live like hell. You want to see what a modern-day example of this looks like?

All right.

Let's have an uncomfortable conversation, right? Well, there are entire church denominations now that affirm sexual immorality and claim that God blesses it, but he doesn't. And if you don't think that conservative congregations are not complicit in this, they also are because they've gone, well, how shall I say it, really silent when it comes to sexual immorality within their own ranks, as long as it's heterosexual sins, right?

I'm just saying, right? And so the question comes up, what do you believe the gospel does? Do you believe the gospel sets you free so that you can be enslaved to sin? That doesn't make any sense. And so the idea here is that James is addressing an issue, and he's going with something that is a very glaring, obvious disconnect.

And watch where he goes with these antinomians. He goes all the way back to what?

The law.

Seems weird, right?

Okay.

But that's exactly what he does. And so he says, my brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. Show no partiality. Let that one ruminate for a second here.

Now he's going to point out that, well, back in his day, just like in our day, that people, they give preference to the rich, the powerful, those who wear nice clothes, have, well, jewelry and things like this, right?

Do we not do the same thing?

Of course we do.

I mean, pardon me, but haven't you ever watched TikTok? Where people literally, you know, they film themselves like a movie star. They're doing a dance or something, and somebody famous walks in, and they just lose their minds, and millions of people watch the video, right?

Millions. Oh, my goodness, did you see what The Rock did? Did you see what Celine Dion did? It's nuts, right? If I were to, you know, decide that we're going to have our own version, the Kongsvinger Academy Awards, right, and we're going to invite some church people and maybe some folks from Grand Forks, and maybe we're going to give out awards to the guys who work for the Waste Management District, or we're going to give some awards out to the truckers that make it possible for us to have groceries and stuff like that, send out a press release to the media, do you think that people would show up to our red carpet event?

No.

Who are you guys, right? Who are you guys, right?

But if I invited a movie star, and the movie star took us up on it, the media would be here to cover it, right?

Why?

Because he's famous.

He's rich.

He's powerful, right? And everyone would want autographs. Everyone would want to take selfies with the person.

That's the problem here.

That's a form of partiality. You do know that this is going to be the third week in a row. You do know that movie stars poop, right? I'm just pointing this out. But let's talk about another way in which people show partiality.

Let's talk about another way in which people show partiality. Racism. Isn't racism partiality? It's exactly what that is. Racism, this ridiculous belief that somehow your skin color, if you gather together with other people who have the same skin color, that as a group you are superior to people who have a different skin color, are you out of your mind?

What does Scripture say? That in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female. Does Christ show partiality?

No.

And so we'll note that hatred towards people and showing partiality based upon something as shallow as their skin color or their ethnic heritage, it's a sin. It's a form of partiality. And so listen to what James says because he's preaching to all of us here.

So if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in shabby clothing comes also, I want you to think about this. Sometimes I get asked the question, what do I wear to church?

What should I wear? Especially people who haven't been to church in a while. Do I have to buy a suit?

No.

This text notes that the poor sometimes show up in shabby clothing.

Why?

Because that's all they got, right? So a poor man shows up in shabby clothing, and you say to the rich man, you sit here in a good place. Here's our VIP seat. Where's our VIP seating here at Kongsfinger, by the way?

The back row. Good Lutheran answer to that one. There's always a fight for the back row. So we allow the rich to sit in the back, and a poor man shows up and we make him sit in the front, right? Boy, that would be terrible.

All right.

But you say to the poor man, you stand over there or you sit at my feet. What a horrible thing to say. You sit at my feet like you're a dog. But remember, in the ancient world, they didn't have a middle class.

They really didn't. Not this time in Roman history. They had the wealthy, and then everybody else. And everybody else, they were far away from the wealthy and the landed and the powerful. And so you'll note that Christianity, the message of the gospel has reached rich and poor, and that in church, there's rich and there's poor.

And what are they doing? They're bringing the world's partiality and sinfulness into the church, and then treating each other horribly accordingly. I mean, seriously, we're talking about a baptized, penitent believer in Jesus Christ who is one who has an inheritance like you and I do, all given as a gift in the new earth by Christ.

And in this world, you're going to treat him like a dog at church? What kind of church is this?

Right?

That's kind of the point that he's getting at. He says, when you do this, have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? So listen, my beloved brothers. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?

The answer is yes, he has. You'll note God has shown no partiality. God doesn't sit there and go, well, you know, you're only making about $20 ,000 a year.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure if there's any salvation for you. Maybe you can ask for a waiver. Does Christ do this?

No.

Why do we treat people as if Christ does? Because that's the thing. When we as Christians treat each other poorly as Christians, this reflects on Christ, as if somehow Christ is making these distinctions and that's why he's having to peel this all back.

But underneath the hood here is a belief that, I don't need any good works to show that I'm a Christian. That's not exactly true. So listen, my beloved brothers. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?

Yeah, he has, which he's promised to those who love him. But you've dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Now that I think about it, yeah.

You ever notice how litigious the rich can be? Because they can afford the attorneys and they know how to work the system in their favor. Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?

Yeah, that's generally true. So if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, then you are doing well. And then you'll note the scriptures, the 10 commandments are called the royal law and that we as Christians are called to what?

Love our neighbors as ourself. And every single infraction of any of the 10 commandments is not a love for God, it is not a love for neighbor, it is a complete, utter love for you over and above other people.

I mean, think about it. Let's kind of review some of those 10 commandments. Second table of the law. You guys are familiar with this stuff. I love what Luther does in the small catechism because not only does it tell us what the commandment forbids us to do, but he also reminds us what these commandments require us to do.

That's from the catechism. Fourth commandment, we'll look at the second table. Honor your father and your mother. What does this mean, Luther says? Well, we should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities.

You'll note that even political power comes by virtue of the fact that it's granted to them by families and fathers, right? But what are we to do then? We are to honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.

Do you slander your boss? How about your president? Yeah, you see, all of a sudden,.

You're sitting there going, eww.

Yeah, okay, I see where this is getting at. How about one that we haven't committed? Thou shalt not murder. Anyone here murdered anyone? Not physically, right? But here's the issue. When we consider what Christ says in regard to this commandment, we're kind of in trouble.

Let me explain. So the commandment says you shall not murder.

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need. That's kind of where James is gonna go here because he's gonna talk about the person who says they have faith, but they have no works, and he's going to use an example regarding somebody who is in absolute physical need.

Their bodily needs are not being met. They're not making it financially, and somebody within the congregation has the means to help them and doesn't. So note that, yeah, the answer to Cain's question, am I my brother's keeper, is yeah, you are.

And then also keep this in mind. Jesus makes it clear that if you hate your brother or you're angry at him, that you're guilty of breaking this commandment. So even if you've never, you know, put a knife in somebody's back and helped them assume room temperature, that by every way in which we hate and harbor anger and grudge and, well, you get the idea, towards our neighbor, and rather than help them, we're guilty of breaking this command.

You shall not commit adultery. We're all in the clear here, right? No, actually we're not, because even if you've looked at another person with lust in your heart, you're guilty of breaking this commandment as well.

We should fear and love God so that we lead sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife are to love and to honor each other. Listen to that last part. Husband and wife are to love and honor each other.

Yeah, but you don't understand what he's like. You don't understand what she's like. Yeah, I do. I'm one of them, right? And so you'll note that we all fall short in this way too. Don't steal.

Yeah, we've done that.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. We could talk about all the ways in which that happens, but so you'll note here, this is where we make an important distinction. As we walk through the Ten Commandments, for Christians they do two things.

One, they convict us of our sin. This is why Lutherans say lex semper accusa. The law always accuses. So every time we walk through the Ten Commandments, we sit there and go, uh, I'm not measuring up.

And we also trust the good news that Christ has bled and died for every one of our infractions against his commandments. And the third use of the law then gives us a guide. It shows us where our good works are to be done and the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do so we don't invent our own, which we are prone to do horribly, which then ends up putting us into the category of breaking the first table and committing idolatry.

So our good works are to be expressed in love towards each other in the ways that God has commanded us. And, well, just like the folks that James is smashing over the head with the law and saying that they've become transgressors, we recognize the truth about ourselves that we have.

Christ the Perfect Neighbor in the Decapolis

But this is where we recognize the gospel. And let's put the gospel in at this point. In our gospel text, we heard that Jesus had traveled to the area known as the Decapolis. And if you were to kind of imagine in your mind the Sea of Galilee, right?

So you've got the Sea of Galilee, you've got the Jordan River coming down. On the northwestern side of the Sea of Galilee, you have Capernaum and the place where the Jews live, right? But on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, you have the Decapolis.

The Decapolis is a region where you have Roman colonizers. You have people who've moved from Rome to colonize and to take advantage of the expansiveness of the Roman Empire. And they've built ten cities.

Decapolis means ten cities. And in those ten cities you're going to find, well, temples to Zeus and the pantheon of the Roman false gods. And you're going to note here, Jesus goes there to preach the gospel as well.

Jesus considers Gentiles to even be His neighbor. And when people come to Him in physical need, beyond what money can fix, that only God can fix, Jesus doesn't send them away. Jesus meets their needs.

You'll note that Jesus perfectly loved His neighbor as Himself. And this is important for us. So listen again to our gospel text. Jesus returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Decapolis.

They brought Him a man who was deaf, had a speech impediment, and they begged Him to lay His hand on him. And taking Him aside from the crowd privately, He put His fingers into His ears, and after spitting, touched His tongue.

And He looked up to heaven, and He sighed and said to Him, I love even the Aramaic word,.

Ephetha.

It's an interesting word. It's a breathy verb here. Ephetha, that is be opened. And His ears were opened, His tongue was released, and He spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them not to tell anyone, but the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.

But listen to what they said. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. In fact, Jesus indeed has done all things well.

And this is good news for us. And the reason why it is good news for us is because you're going to note that in our epistle text, James says some very terrifying things. And one of the terrifying things that he says is that if you break one commandment, you're guilty of breaking all of them.

I want you to think about that for a second. We have this weird habit that we engage in. We think of the Ten Commandments kind of like a Plinko game or something like that. You got Commandment 1, you got Commandment 2, and 10 little things down at the bottom of Plinko.

And so when you commit a sin, the thing goes into one of the categories. Well, I've done this sin, but I haven't done that one. As if somehow there's some kind of a column, so the Plinko things are coming in and just doing their thing.

That's not how it works. James is very clear here, very clear, that whoever keeps the whole law but fails even in one point has become guilty of all of it. Well, I haven't committed that one, the big one, whatever the big one is.

People think differently about what the big one is. I beg to differ. You have. You've done the big one, you've done the small one, you've done all the little ones, middle ones, medium-sized ones in between too.

If you've committed one sin, you are guilty of, well, the whole thing. But our Gospel text says that Jesus has done all things well.

All things.

And this is important for us because you'll note that the requirement for the sacrifice of sins, it must be a spotless, sinless sacrifice. And that's exactly what Christ is. Where we have failed to love our neighbor and to love our God, Christ never failed.

He did all things well. And He then, well, in your greatest need, gave you exactly what you needed even though you didn't even ask Him for it. He bore your sins in His body on the cross and He went to the cross, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world.

He bled and died in your place. He suffered the wrath of God in your place. Money couldn't buy this. You don't have any power to free yourself from slavery to sin. Jesus has done this all for you. Where you have fallen short, He never fell short.

And He didn't fall short in order to rub your nose in how you have fallen short. He didn't fall short so that He can give you as a gift His perfect, sinless righteousness which you need to stand before God on the day of judgment.

But He didn't set us free from sin in order to serve ourselves and our sinful passions. So James asks the question, well, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him? And James' point is this, that person doesn't have faith. You are created in Christ Jesus for good works, Paul says. So the person who basically says, I'm going to be a spiritual couch potato and I'm not going to trouble myself with the law at all.

I refuse to even hear that I'm a sinner anymore. Jesus has forgiven me of my sins so I can do whatever I want. James says, can that faith save him? He says, so if a brother or sister is poorly clothed, lacking in daily food, one of you says to them, go in peace, be warm, be filled without giving the things needed for the body.

What good is that? Well, you know, he's a poor person so he just came here looking for a handout. Why would he think that he could get that here? Could it be that we are commanded.

To not murder.

And not giving somebody what they physically need.

Is to murder them?

Now you're making me uncomfortable, Pastor.

I know.

I make myself that way too because I can think of far too many ways in which I have not done good for my neighbor. Someone will say, well, you have faith, I have works. He says, show me your faith apart from your works and I'll show you my faith by my works.

You see, just as the body that is breathing is not dead, faith without works is dead.

And remember, our good works.

Are defined by the Ten Commandments, not by stuff that we invent. And no, we're not required to no longer sin. We confess our sin daily and much to Christ. But it's through the power of the Holy Spirit given to us that God gives us the strength to mortify our sinful flesh so that we stop focusing in on ourselves so that the only person that we ever think about pleasing is ourself.

And instead, our eyes are bent away from us and towards our neighbor so that we now serve them. And Paul himself makes it clear that we are to consider others to be better than ourselves. This is only possible for somebody who is regenerate, someone who has been made new in the waters of baptism, whom the gospel has reached and God has raised from the dead.

Faith always seeks to do good works and your sinful flesh always seeks to serve itself. And so, it's not that, well, the best way to put it is perfection isn't the thing that we're called to as Christians even though Christ says be perfect.

He recognizes that we sin much. The issue is, are you just giving yourself over to sin to where you care nothing about other people? That's not Christianity. And you, like me, need to hear the law and the gospel preached again to you.

So that you rightly understand that even your best good works are still soiled with sin. And as for those works, they demonstrate to our neighbor that our faith is alive. So, Mark is here and since he spends so much time in Florida, I'm sure he takes a lot of naps in the afternoon and stuff like that.

So, if we were to see Mark this afternoon taking a nap, I've heard that he sleeps really soundly, so sound that it's hard to tell if he's even alive or not. Now, not being a medical professional, I would have no way to tell whether or not you had a heart attack and gone on to be with the Lord if I saw you napping.

So, if I had to check to see if you were still alive, I would go back to an old tried and true method because I don't even like the idea.

Of touching a corpse.

In case you died. I'm just not going to do it. So, what I would do is I would grab one of those hand mirrors, the kind that your wife keeps in your purse, right? And I would take that mirror and I would hold it up to your nose.

And if you fog the mirror, I know that you're alive. That's the point that James is making is that we are not saved by our works. We are saved by grace through faith. But if there are no works, that's a corpse.

Just like a body that doesn't fog a mirror is dead, so faith without works is dead. Works show our neighbors that our faith is alive and that's their function. That's why they're necessary. They're necessary by virtue of the fact that you're alive in Christ.

And the reality is this. If you're having any anxiety, you are so far rich in works, you don't even recognize how many works you do. Over and again, when people think of works, they think of something spectacular like I sold everything I had and I went on the mission field and I went and preached the gospel to an indigenous people group who've never heard the gospel before.

By the way, that's a good work. But when we think that that's the standard for what defines a good work and everything else that isn't that isn't, we misunderstand totally. Go back to those 10 commandments.

Being a good husband, a good wife, that's a good work. Protecting your neighbor's reputation,.

Good work.

Helping your neighbor take care of his physical needs,.

Good work.

And if you're not sure who's your neighbor in this regard, let's think about those little children that God gives us, right? He delivers them to us naked and hungry. Have you noticed? That's like the first order of business.

Gotta clothe that little thing and gotta give it something to eat, all right? So taking care of our children, feeding and clothing them, meeting their bodily needs,.

That's a good work. And they're going,.

Well, then I guess I have those.

Right.

And so the idea here is that we are then instructed in Scripture to not despise the good works that God has called us to do. He's called us all to these amazing good works. And so note this then, that even our good works are soiled with sin, but Christ has done all things well.

He's bled and died for even your best good work that's soiled with sin, and He admonishes you again to deny yourself because that's what sin is the opposite of. Sin is all about, well, helping yourself, focusing on yourself, being number one, taking care of self without any regard for the consequences for other people.

And so Christ, He admonishes us to again deny ourselves, hear that we are sinners, have confidence that we are forgiven because He has done all things well for us, and through the power of the Spirit then, not in anxiety as if somehow we have to earn it, but through the power of the Spirit, then breathe out those good works that Christ has called us to do, and do so more and more.

Because indeed, Scripture is clear, works are necessary because faith without works is dead. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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