Be Reconciled to God

The Gospel Reading from Matthew 6 on Secret Righteousness

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. Matthew, chapter 6, verses 1 -6 and 16 -21. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Thus when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.

Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. Your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others.

Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head, wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who is in secret will reward you.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Years ago, my family took a family vacation. We hopped into the FJ Cruiser, and we traveled from Southern California to, well, Estes Park, Colorado.

We were camping. We were roughing it. Well, not really. But it was a lot of fun. And then the kids came up with this wonderful idea. Why don't we go on one of those horseback riding excursions? And they can climb up a trail.

And so we thought, well, why not? Let's go horseback riding. So we got there, and we waited in line. We paid the money. And then they eventually kind of shuttled us out to the corral area. And the lady who ran the place took one look at me and kind of sized me up and says, I think I know the horse for you.

And she did that kind of horse whistle thing. And they called out Big Gus. And Big Gus came on out. And I proceeded to get on Gus. And I am not joking. As soon as I mounted him, I heard Gus go.

Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo. And then.

We proceeded up the trail. And one of the things I noticed about horseback riding is that I'm awful at it. And there's this thing called balance that you need to have. And so while riding on the trail, I noticed that sometimes I would lean this way, and that was not a good way to lean.

And I would overcorrect, and then I would lean this way, and that's not a good way to lean either. And kind of staying centered was really hard. Being a Christian is a lot like riding Gus when you don't know what you're doing.

I have a tendency, as Christians, we have a tendency to fall over to the side of legalism, overcorrect to the side of license. One time we're really prideful, and then we're, well, you get the idea. We can never seem to get it straight.

What an interesting text that Jesus has to remind people, and how silly is this, to not practice their good works in front of everybody so that they can be seen. It's not that good works are a bad thing.

They're not. Do you think that fasting's bad? No, fasting's a good thing. Do you think that praying's bad? No, praying's a good thing. We ought to be praying. Right? You notice these, should we be giving to the poor?

Of course we should. But isn't it like us that, well, even when we're doing the right thing, we have found a way to do it for the wrong reason. It's just absolutely aggravating. In fact, it's downright frightening if you consider just how sinful and wicked that is.

Facing Death, Repentance, and the Call to Lent

And then, as a pastor, nobody prepared me for one of the more difficult parts of this job. And that is the task of sitting bedside with somebody who is literally days away from dying. It kind of shocks you into reality when you hear their final confession.

At the end of their course, literally, you can see the finish line approaching. And you hear the things that they wish that they had done, and the things that they wish that they hadn't done. And you realize just how vain and ridiculously foolish we can be in our sinful state.

It's a mess. And so, as we begin this Lenten tide, keep this in mind. This is a good thing for us to reflect on our lives. To reflect on God's law, but also on Christ's suffering. To reflect on God's law and pay attention to those ways in which we come short.

And if you are like any red-blooded Christian who still also has a sinful flesh, there are times in your life when you really, truly desire to do better than you're doing. And there are many other times that there is feeble desire.

Desire that is pathetic, distracted, too busy to consider the depths and the magnitude of what it is that Christ has called us to do. And as a result of that, let us use Lent as a time to consider these things.

And what's very helpful, what's very helpful is to reflect back, not just on your own shortcomings, because there's many different ways in which you and I all fall short. Consider the Ten Commandments.

To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. To not take God's name in vain. To not despise His Word by keeping the Sabbath day holy. To honor your father and mother, which also means your boss, or your husband, or those in authority over you.

To not murder, to not steal, to not lie, commit adultery, covet. We all fall short so badly. And this is a time to confess our sins. This is a time to fast and to lament. This is a time to say, God, I am truly sorry.

And a time to say, I really desire to do better. Because I know that You will that I do better. Please, Lord, in Your Spirit, give me the strength to do better. Not for me. Not for my glory. Not for my ego.

But to do better for those who need me to do better, whom You have given me to love and to serve. For their sake, not mine. So with these opening thoughts, let us return again to our Epistle text. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 20.

Therefore, we, that's all of us, brothers and sisters. We. It's a big word. We. We are ambassadors for Christ. Sometimes we're really awful ambassadors. Sometimes I feel like Jesus gets complaint letters.

That ambassador that you've chosen for that Kongsvinger place, do you know what that ambassador is doing? But we are ambassadors for Christ. Keep this in mind. God is making His appeal. His appeal to the whole world through us.

So we implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. And that reconciliation was won by Christ. And that's what He says next. For our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

See, our reconciliation with God is won by Christ. And now that we are reconciled, God is making His appeal to your neighbors. To the people of Oslo, Alvarado, Warren, East Grand Forks, Grand Forks, Devil's Lake.

He's making His appeal to them to be reconciled to God through us. So working together with Him then, we appeal to you to not receive the grace of God in vain. For He says, in a favorable time I have listened to you.

In a day of salvation I have helped you. And behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now today is the day of salvation. And this is a stern warning for Christians. A stern warning to not despise the grace of God, to not turn it into a license to sin, to not squander the day of salvation and basically thumb our nose at God and go about our merry way still in bondage to sin, death, and the devil.

The grace of God is the thing that set us free from that. And God is calling us to walk in freedom. So today, today is the favorable day. Today is the day of baptism, of the Lord's Supper, of the absolution of the Word of God.

Today is the day of our wilderness wanderings towards the promised land, of being fed heavenly manna. Today is the day that God is leading us by faith and not by sight. Because of that, we put no obstacle in anyone's way so that no fault may be found with our ministry.

And yet, the reality of the situation is that if we're honest, then we'll tell you the truth that sometimes our own sin, our own selfishness, our own behavior, our own vanity, our own fill-in-the-blank does put an obstacle in the way of God's grace.

There are plenty of pagans out there who are all too happy to point out our hypocrisies. That's an obstacle. But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way. We commend ourselves in every way by great endurance and afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.

That's just one verse of this list. And which of us, if this verse, verse 5, were to be the description of our lives, would think that we had done something wrong? That we had somehow misstepped, made a big mistake, maybe was being punished by God?

You see, true Christian sanctification is that process by which our old sinful flesh is mortified. Mortified by the Word of God, mortified by the sacraments, mortified by the absolution, mortified by our striving against it, taking our old sinful Adam and holding him under the waters of our baptism until the bubbles stop.

And in that process, God brings forth the fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. And notice it says the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of you.

This is the fruit that the Spirit bears in us. And that fruit of the Spirit gives us the strength to bear up under afflictions, to bear up under hardships, and calamities, and beatings, and imprisonments, and riots, and labors, and sleepless nights, and hunger, because the fruit of the Spirit teaches us to not look to ourselves, but to look and do everything we do for the sake of our neighbor.

By purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech, and the power of God, with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left. And yet how many of us do not wield the weapons of righteousness that have become quite skilled in wielding the daggers of the devil, which we foolishly cut ourselves with.

Through honor, dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters and yet are true, as unknown and yet well-known, as dying, and behold we live, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

Repentance, the Fruit of the Spirit, and the Ministry of Reconciliation

And how can that be? How can we have nothing and yet possess everything? To have nothing is to admit that you are a creature, that you brought nothing into this world, you will take nothing out of it when you leave.

I assure you of that. And yet, by having Christ, or even better yet, by Him having you, you have everything. As Joel said in his prophecy, even now, declares the Lord, return to me with your whole heart.

Return to me with fasting and with weeping, with mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, and here's the reason why. Because He's gracious and He's merciful. He's slow to anger and He's abounding in steadfast love.

And He relents over disaster. And that's indeed what He does. You see, the reason He relents over disaster and the greatest disaster that you will ever face is the fires of hell. And this is what we have all earned by our rebellion against God.

By going our own way, thinking only of ourselves. This is what we have earned. But our God, who is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, He stepped in and took our place, took our punishment, so that God may relent of the disaster intended for us, the fires of hell.

And that's the way you keep from slipping off the horse, either to the left or to the right, in self-righteousness or self-denial, all designed to make yourself look holy, is by, again, considering the scourging of Christ, Him being strapped so that He couldn't move while they opened His back with a cat of nine tails, Him being punched in the face and spat on.

Each of those punches, each of those whips was for your sin and mine. And then marching Him out to Golgotha and nailing Him to the cross while He was pinned between heaven and earth, straining with each breath to continue to live, all the while, while bleeding for your sins and mine.

For all of our sins of omission, the things that we ought to have done that we didn't, all of our sins of commission, that we knew was wrong and yet we just jumped headlong into it and then wallowed in it like a pig and slopped, not just for a day or an hour, but for a whole season of our life.

That's what it cost to save us, was His death. And then, finally, on the cross, as the darkness fell and the Father turned His face away and Christ cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Knowing that He was forsaken so that you would not be. So that God would relent of the disaster. Knowing that this is what it cost to save us, to forgive us, kind of rules out that vanity, does it not?

What on earth do I have to boast about when He took it all for me? I don't understand that kind of love. That kind of love compels me to want to be better. That kind of love compels me to deny myself.

That kind of love compels me to tell the world about the God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting over disaster. These are good thoughts to consider as we begin now forty days.

Forty days, and you don't count Sundays. Forty days of fasting. Forty days of pondering. Forty days of repenting. Forty days of thinking on Christ's sufferings and death and what it cost Him to save and redeem poor sinful beings like me and like you.

In the name of Jesus,.

Amen.

Closing Announcements and Distribution Notice

If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax-free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church 15950 470th Avenue NW Oslo, MN 56744. And again that address is Kungsvinger Lutheran Church 15950 470th Avenue NW Oslo, MN.

56744.

We thank you for your support. All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message. And again, thank you for listening.