(National Lutheran Schools Week Sunday)
Sunday, January 29, 2012
“Teaching with Authority”
This week we celebrate with all are other Lutheran congregation our Lutheran schools. This year we are celebrating our 68th year of operating a Lutheran school here in the community of Whittier. We give thanks to the Lord this day for our schools our teachers our students and the families that avail themselves of it.
Perhaps it is the scriptural doctrine of vocation that has made Lutheran schools such an integral part of Lutheran congregations. The teaching that our Lord delivers to us His daily bread, all that we need to support this body and life, through the means of various vocations. Still this could be accomplished and is accomplished through the public schools.
I believe the greater reason that education has been a hallmark and characteristic of Lutheranism is our Lord Jesus Christ’s command to “baptize and teach.” Members of Lutheran congregations were not just interested in an education that would help their children be successful in society but in the saving knowledge of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.Their children were baptized but now they strove to ensure that their children would be able to use their baptism and benefit from this awesome gift that their Lord had bestowed upon them. They made sure that no one else, some other false teaching would take it away.
This was certainly true of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod that led all other Lutheran Synods in the United States in operating schools. In the nineteenth century there were public schools available but LCMS families would rather have in, some cases, their teach their children a liberal arts education than send them to the public school where they may be influenced by the teaching of the enlightenment and rationalism.
As Christian parents today we too and rightly so, should be concerned regarding the influence of our postmodern relativistic culture. A culture that claims you cannot really know anything. Reality is what you feel it is. What is real and true for you may not be real and true for someone else. This would seem to make education a challenge if you can’t know anything. But postmodern education has risen to this challenge by emphasizing the subjective perception over the objective fact. Perhaps post‐modernism isn’t so new, did not the Roman governor Pontius Pilate ask Jesus in a cynical fashion. “What is truth?” Perhaps the same sort of relativism plagued the educated and elite of the Roman empire and was cause for its moral decline. But even further back to one of the darkest times in Old Testament Jewish history after they settled the promised land and before the judges it says that “the people did what was right in their own eyes” and with it a grisly and horrible murder was described. It is not my intention to go there this morning but suffice it to say we do not have to go any further than watching the news to hear similar stories today.
In our culture, absolutes and natural law based upon Biblical truths are denied. The absolute rule and natural order has been discarded as judgmental. But it has been replaced with a truly judgmental and arbitrary standard of public opinion. When it comes to social and moral norms we are divided nation. Who’s to say who is right? This sort of moral uncertainty and ambiguity has also crept into the church. Churches that ordain women, also allow ordination of homosexuals and same sex marriage have substituted God’s perfect and order and law for the chaos of postmodern culture. Church’s and Pastor’s that are faithful and hold to God’s law are considered unloving, judgmental, intolerant and wrongheaded in “their” interpretation of scripture. Even though Jesus says to the church of those who preach His Word, “He who hears you hears me.”
I can tell you faithful Pastor’s do not warn to be unloving, or to be intolerant. They do not follow God’s order because they are misogynists and hopelessly patriarchal. They preach God’s Law not to harden hearts but rather to break them to bring about repentance so that hearts and wills may be made captive to our Lord’s instead of this culture’s which leads to eternal death, for our Lord’s Words are the words of eternal life.
The teaching of the scribes of Jesus time were not much different than the church that was influenced by the culture. The teaching of the scribes had to do more with the rules and regulations for keeping the Sabbath. The Jews had expanded on the law of Moses with many manmade traditions and laws. In their zeal to follow the letter of the law they lost the spirit of law.
When man dilutes God’s law with his own modifications and changes it moves further away from having the backing of the true authority. It is like a government that continues to print currency with nothing of value behind it. Moses had promised that God would send a prophet even greater than He as we read in our Old Testament reading this morning. “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” This prophet is revealed to us as God himself made man in the person of Jesus. What a shock it must have been for the people to hear such teaching that brought out both the law and gospel in the Old Testament promises of God, that they were now being fulfilled, that the Kingdom of Heaven was now coming to them and that the Law was being fulfilled by the Messiah the Son of Man.
Jesus preached with 100 percent certainty because He preached what the Father the author of the scriptures told Him to say. Jesus’ teaching is absolute truth and it has the authority the backing of the Father behind it.
Our Gospel text reads, “And they (the disciples and Jesus) went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he (Jesus) entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus was certainly a teacher, He was a Rabbi, a Pastor of that time. The Sabbath meeting in the Synagogue for the Old Testament period is like our gathering today in the church of the New Testament. Jesus teaching and preaching as I said before was shockingly
bold, confident and certain. Jesus was preaching with authority and the people were astonished.
Then the most remarkable thing occurs. It’s like a scene from a Hollywood movie. A man with an unclean spirit, a demon, enters the service. He creates quite a disturbance as he interrupts Jesus and cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” This is not a statement of saving faith this is a statement of fear. Evidently, word had got out in the demon world that the Son of God was walking the earth. Just prior to the beginning of Jesus ministry He had been tempted by His adversary Satan in the wilderness for forty days. In this encounter Jesus was victorious. He had defeated Satan and not succumbed as the first Adam had to the temptation of glory.
The devil’s knew the score and the promise that these fallen angel’s at the end of time would be defeated and thrown into the lake of fire. In fear they cried out, is now the time? They may have certain powers, like possession, but their powers are limited and they certainly do not know the future. What they do know and what they do see spiritually that which is hidden from the people but is now revealed is that Jesus is the
Holy One of God, that He is the Christ. And this is further revealed by Jesus rebuke and command, “Be silent, and come out of him!” If only the first Adam who was standing next to Eve had told the serpent to be silent or told Eve not to listen to him. Jesus is now silencing Satan and casting him out. With a Word Jesus defeats Satan, and in the process releases man from his captivity. This possessed man was not only exorcised but he was forgiven, and released.
If you sinned this week and transgressed God’s law this is evidenced that you are not acting freely rather you are captive to the devil’s influence. So it is for you that our Lord’s teaching and Word is proclaimed this day. Jesus died on the cross for you serving the sentence for your sin. Justice was satisfied so His sacrifice was accepted by the Father resulting in Christ’s resurrection. By Jesus institution, command and word You were baptized into the name of God. You were baptized into both His death and resurrection, born from above so that the old Adam may be put to death in you and new man may come forth. Satan can no longer accuse you of your sin for Jesus has cleansed you of it by His blood. He is silenced and He is cast out. And with
that word of Christ He is defeated. Yes, Jesus teaches with authority and power and this is good news. And it is by this same power and authority that I can say to you this day, your sins are forgiven.
There is much knowledge you will gain here at Trinity Lutheran School in order to serve your neighbor according to your future vocations but you will also learn to know your Savior who releases you from your sin. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment