All Saint's Day
Jesus Opens His Mouth to Teach You.
Matthew 5:1-12
November 2, 2014
Grace,
mercy, and peace be to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. Amen. In the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Greetings to you, all the saints of God. In today's text we see a
great crowd following Jesus. They come
from everywhere. In the previous chapter
we hear they come from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea,
and from beyond the Jordan. But why are they following him?
He is proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every
disease and every affliction among the people. His message is simple, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And as Pastor Steeh taught last week, to
repent is to have sorrow for your sins and faith that Jesus indeed dies for
them.
Jesus
sees the need to help them understand what they must repent of for these souls
in our text are clinging to Christ who have had their eyes opened to a teaching
of mercy and grace. And so our text
begins, Seeing the crowds, he
went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. Elsewhere we read about Jesus seeing crowds
following him, that they are like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus has great compassion on His
people.
These
people who follow him believe that he has come to do great things, they are his
disciples, they are catechumens, in need of being taught. Just like today, you remain catechumens. Yes your formal catechesis may have ended
decades ago, or you may be going through it even now but you never cease being
taught. For guess what?
JESUS
OPENS HIS MOUTH TO TEACH YOU.
I.
Jesus
did not have to open his mouth for you.
He could have come into this world and seen the deplorable shape that it
is in and left. He could have spoken to
God the Father and said these people don't deserve saving. He could have simply left and
disappeared. He has shown that on
numerous occasions as he simply walked through crowds that wanted to stone him
or disappeared from their sight. But
instead Ezekiel prophesied that he would come to save the world. He says in Ezekiel 24:25-27, “As for you, son of man, surely on the day
when I take from them their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of
their eyes and their soul’s desire, and also their sons and daughters, on that day a fugitive will come to you to report to
you the news. On that
day your mouth will be opened to the fugitive, and you shall speak and be no
longer mute. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the
Lord.”
He
does not flee instead he comes into the stronghold of the Jews, Israel itself,
for the Jewish leaders think that having this earthly kingdom is what shows you
are part of the Jews. What was the news
that was reported? John the Baptizer's
time as forerunner had come to an end for he had been arrested. So now Jesus mouth is open to the fugitive.
Think
of this, you are fugitives in this land, you need guidance, you need his
sustanance, and he provides it as we pray in Psalm 145, "You open your
hand; you satisfy the desire of every living
thing." You need a Savior who will give you all things,
in fact it is this same psalm where you hear, "The Lord is
gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."
The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. Everything is provided for you. for
while you have realized that you are not where you are supposed to be, without
someone to lead you, to speak to you, you would be captured and fall under the
snare of the devil.
Today
his mercy is extended as he opens his mouth for you. He opens it and speaks Law and Gospel. You very likely will not like to hear
how you have failed. In fact Jesus opens
his mouth for three chapters, one of the longest running narratives of Christ
in the Bible. And not much of it sounds
good. In fact it is very
condemning. He shows you how you have
failed. He proclaims the Law to
you. When he says blessed are…he is not
saying you did a god job. Instead he is
saying, look, this is how you have failed, you would be blessed if you did what
you are supposed to do, but instead you have failed.
But
this law that beats you over the head is not to lead you to despair. For remember the first words that came out of
his mouth, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. These harsh, condemning words are meant for
you, but there is also a complete flip of the coin. The Gospel.
These difficult words for your ears are given first so that you may know
and believe what it means to repent.
He
calls you to repent because he has good news for you. And so you read at the end of this sermon on
the mount in Matthew 7:28, "And
when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority,
and not as their scribes." They aren't mad at him for speaking the Law
as we see so often today happening amongst people, but instead you see they are
disciples who come to him eager to hear him and know this good news. The same for you, you have your eyes opened
to the fullness of your sin as you hear Jesus' words more and more. No one can come away from the beatitudes and
think they have done each of these.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake? Blessed are you when others revile you
and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account? Blessed are the pure in heart? You have failed, even one time when you
weren't pure in heart, makes you guilty.
And
yet the crowds can't wait for more. And that is because he reveals what he has
done for you. Jesus continually opens
his mouth and when he opens it, you can plan on it being helpful to you. To hear the Law proclaimed to you is
good. Because it shows you what Christ
has done for you. It is Jesus who is the
keeper of the beatitudes and because he is your substitute for your sin, his
substitutionary work is also yours. Because
Jesus died on the cross, he who knew no sin became sin for us. Because he rose from the grave, you too, will
rise from the grave. This is what it
means for our Lord and Savior to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. He is your Savior. Because he does the work
of each of these beatitudes, blessed are you.
Blessed are you for heaven is yours today.
He
opens his mouth to speak to the Father on your behalf. He says, "The kingdom of heaven is
yours. I paid the price." He says,
"I have prepared for each and every one of these disciples of mine an
eternal inheritance which will not perish or fade." And my friends you know this is true because
today we celebrate All Saint's Day. On
this day we give thanks for our Lord has procured and guaranteed that heaven is
for the believers who trust in Christ alone.
We rejoice that our loved ones who have confessed this faith are with
Jesus in heaven.
II.
And
so why tell us what he does and what we have failed to do? Because he opens his mouth to teach you. This is why your catechism begins with the 10
commandments because you can't have the good gifts of the gospel if you don't
know why you need the gift. He teaches
you what it means to be a disciple. Here
is what he gives you to do. He gives you
his sermon on the mount and tells you this is what you are to be.
You
know the saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Well Jesus here proclaims old dogs can learn
new tricks. Whether you're one month old
or 120 years old, he proclaims to you today that you can be taught. Blessed are you. Jesus says these nine statements not so that
you can just do whatever you want. These
are the good works he teaches you to do.
It's
this precise problem that Luther sought to correct and what Lutheranism's
primary Christian teaching is still today.
You're saved not by what you do, but by what Christ has done for you,
and knowing what He has done, he teaches you how to live this Christian life
redeemed by his blood. This is what
every saint has ever trusted in to this day and what we continue to trust
in.
You
are blessed because you already have all these.
He gives you all your blessings through the Word and Sacrament. It is being baptized into the name of our
Triune God that tells us we are blessed.
It is receiving Christ's body and blood that makes us blessed. It is the words of Christ falling upon ears
that blesses us with the gift of eternal life.
That is what our sainted friends and family trusted in, not in what they
do, for they realized that they cannot do these beatitudes instead they knew
that they must trust in Christ who has always taught that He is the fulfiller
of all good things.
Does
this mean that you can now ignore these Beatitudes? Of course not. Here is what the saints in Christ now do
having been already given the second half. Hear them again realizing that
Christ has done them, given you the gift, and has now prepared you for the
ability to do each of them now. “Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those
who mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive
mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. “Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. “Blessed are those who
are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute
you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and
be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the
prophets who were before you."
You
are blessed because you already have these in Christ. So instead hear these beatitudes flipped
around. Blessed are you for having the
kingdom of heaven which now allows you to be poor in spirit. Blessed are you who have been comforted which
allows you to mourn. Blessed are you who
have inherited the earth you are now able to be meek, and so on. To read these in the sense that you must do
them to receive the blessing goes against that beautiful doctrine of
Justification that we heard last week.
That also is the beauty of Martin Luther posting those 95 theses the day
before All Saints Day, in that short document he brought us right back to what
Jesus teaches us. This is why the
blessed apostle wrote in our epistle, "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we
should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does
not know us is that it did not know him." We know God because He has
made himself known to us through Christ alone by faith alone through grace
alone.
Blessed
are you oh saints of God for Jesus opened his mouth to teach you, his children,
in order that, you may receive all the blessings of God. We continue in our life striving to hunger
and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to be
peacemakers, be willing to receive persecution and even be reviled by the world
because yes we have already received the crown of everlasting life. Your name oh believer, is written in the book
of life, not because of you, but because of the one who died and rose for you,
and may that teaching ever be on our sainted mouths. In the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
