READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
2 Chronicles 28:8-15
Galatians 3:15-22
St. Luke 10:23-37
To you all who are in Accident, beloved of God, called to
be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Rom 1)
Who speaks you this morning saying,
"He
went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him
on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him."
Along with hearing the Good Samaritan, we are also
remembering the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist and have been singing of the
great and invincible faith given to him and to all of us, to stand up straight
and face this world of death.
In that light, we are going to focus on God’s Word that was
presented to us twice today in our Introit and in our Gradual. The words, “Have
respect unto Thy covenant, O Lord” from Psalm 74 play a significant role in
how we understand the Bible, because God makes covenants. And as we remember
the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist today, being his feast day, we will come
to understand that it is not the covenant itself that is important, but the
Promise made by the Covenant Maker.
Yes, God makes covenants and many Christian denominations
have taken this idea of covenants and have held this up as “how to read
scripture” or “the only way God interacts with people”. So for them, God is a
God Who “cuts deals”.
So what kind of deals is God cutting? According to these
teachers, there are as many as 8 different covenants. But don’t worry, not all
of them are in effect anymore, so we can look at them with open eyes. The first
is the conditional covenant of works, made with Adam, in which he was supposed
to obey all God’s commands to earn the right to eat from the tree of life and
merit eternal life. Well that didn’t work.
So, next was the unconditional Covenant of Grace where God
promised a savior to crush the serpent’s head. That one doesn’t end because it
is unconditional. Third was the unconditional covenant with Noah, to never
flood the earth again. Fourth was with Abraham, where the Lord said, “I will
bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you
all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3; 15:5–6).
Fifth was with Moses and the Ten Commands, also called the
“tablets of the covenant” (Ex 34:27). Also called a temporary covenant,
convenient, because Israel couldn’t follow it nor could they stay in the land,
as God promised. Thus it is labelled “temporary by men in order to save face
for God. They are making excuses for what they see as God’s incompetence, at
this point.
Sixth was unconditional from 2 Samuel 7. There God made a
promise that he would raise up David’s offspring and “establish the throne
of his kingdom forever” (7:12–13). Seventh is the new covenant, which you
would think would be last, but there’s one more. they say that while the old
covenant required national obedience, the new covenant requires faith in
Christ, the perfectly obedient Son of Israel. Sounds conditional to me.
Finally, in the covenant of redemption, the Father cuts a
deal with the Son to give Him glory, an everlasting kingdom, and some people in
it, but who knows who that will be.
Repent. Any and every deal you try to cut with God is
conditional, because you think you have something God wants, but you don’t. All
and any covenant talk assumes that you have something that God doesn’t and that
you can keep your end of the bargain, whatever it is, because God wouldn’t give
you more than you can handle, right?. Well let me tell you that our
might-as-well-be-dead man in today’s Gospel has something to say about that.
He was a man that had a covenant with God, being from
Jerusalem. All the covenants. He had the “obey all things” covenant, “and I’ll
bless you”. He had the serpent’s head to be crushed one, the never destroy the
earth one, the blessings of Abraham one, the “follow my commands” one, and the
Messiah one. It seems he was missing one.
It is in this beaten, half-dead, child of God’s covenant
which we see all this nonsense about covenants come crashing to the ground.
Where was the covenant that protected him from harm and danger? Where was the
covenant that earned him the right to priest and Levite to aid him? Where was
the covenant of justice?
Have respect unto Thy covenant O lord! Psalm 106:45 says
that the Lord remembers His covenant (only one!), not because of ends of the
bargain kept, but because of His Mercy. The same mercy Jesus preaches about in
the Gospel today.
And what kind of mercy is that? The kind of mercy that
raises the dead to new life!
First things first. God is the one Who establishes
covenants. Genesis 17:7 says, “And I will establish My covenant between Me
and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting
covenant”. Notice He says “everlasting”. Men cannot do everlasting. Only
God can.
Next, God says, “I will take you as My people, and I will
be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out
from under the burdens of the Egyptians” (Ex 6:7). Of course we are not
under the burdens of Egypt today, but we are under the burdens of sin. Thus,
our burdens from which we need rescue all stem from sin and reflect exactly the
slavery Israel was under when in Egypt.
And our Lord expands on this saying in Genesis 15:13, “Know
certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs,
and will serve them, and they will afflict them.” This now is the same
plight as our half-dead Jerusalemite. He leaves a place where he is living, to
a place where he dies. The Christian lives in a foreign land of sin and is
afflicted because of it.
But what is the purpose of these seemingly ineffective
covenants that fail to help? Leviticus 11:45, “I am the Lord who brings you
up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I
am holy” and “This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your
generations at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord, where I
will meet you to speak with you. And there I will meet with the children of
Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by My glory. So
I will consecrate the tabernacle of meeting and the altar” (Ex 29:42-44).
In Egypt, the Lord spoke through Moses and said, “Let my
people go”, as we all know from our Sunday school songs, but that was not all.
The Lord wanted His people set free, but set free to go to Church! Exodus 3:18
says, “Then they will heed your voice; and you shall come, you and the
elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt; and you shall say to him, ‘The Lord God
of the Hebrews has met with us; and now, please, let us go three days’ journey
into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’”
This is the purpose of any and all covenants, fake or real,
with God: that He may present Himself before His people to forgive their sins.
Egypt, in other words: sin , death, and the devil, do not want you to hallow
God’s Name on the Sabbath Day when the Gospel is preached in its purity and the
Sacraments administered according to it. The satanic twist of the
covenants is that they are taught as “God did something for you, now what are
you doing for Him”.
God is not slow to act. He doesn’t reveal a bit of His mercy
here, in one way, only to scrap that plan and try a new way with later
generations. God gave all of His redemptive plan from the beginning. All of it.
And He did not change the plan or change His mind. This would be true if we
were to read the Bible through the lens of covenants.
But, we do not read Holy Scripture through the lens of
Covenants, but of Promises. Therefore, the promise of the Son to crush the
Serpent’s head is The Only Covenant, and in the light of promises, all
covenants become one, pointing to the coming Messiah.
Look at the Gospel reading again. The good Samaritan is the
one who keeps this covenant of mercy that Jesus demands from the lawyer. Mercy
is needed because the man in need of mercy has nothing to offer in return for
his rescue. He cannot speak to make a vow, he cannot reach for his wallet, even
if he still had it, and he can not even make gestures to give his consent. He
is dead.
And yet the Good Samaritan makes a covenant with him. It
doesn’t matter that the man has nothing of value. All that matters is the mercy
and love shown to someone in need. Especially since that person is dead, as St.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1, “And you He made alive, who were dead in
trespasses and sins”.
Life in sin is not something you can cut a deal in, because
any deal you cut with God or any other existence would be done in that same
sin. Instead God comes to meet with you and bring you His terms and conditions.
And His terms and conditions are all on Him. He will seek you out and find you.
He will dwell with you and open Himself up to you. He will forgive you and
raise you from the dead, all for the sake of His Son.
The very Son, Who is Christ the Lord, Who steps out of
Jerusalem and goes to the whole world, preaching His Gospel of the forgiveness
of sins. Who is waylaid by the very sinners He has come to redeem. These
sinners proceed to strip Him of clothes, honor, and friends. They beat Him,
scourge Him, and crucify Him. They leave Him, Apostles, friends, family,
enemies. They leave Him to His death and to the tomb.
And the day after next, He came back. Jesus did not need a
Good Samaritan. He is The Good Samaritan. He revives Himself and takes His own
life back, for it is His. In His rising again from the dead He does not give
thanks neither does He seek revenge, but He gives mercy. The same mercy He
cried out for, upon the cross: “Father forgive them”.
Jesus went down from Jerusalem, the same Jerusalem mentioned
in God’s covenant where He would cause His Name to dwell forever; He went down
from there to be placed on the cross of the Jericho of sin and death. Not to
condemn, but to save. In His death and resurrection, Jericho’s walls come
crashing down and can no longer hold the dead in their sins.
The robbers who murdered Him have had their hearts turned by
the preaching of His Gospel of forgiveness. The New covenant, or Testament,
that Christ speaks about is not a contract but a declaration, a promise. From
St. Matthew 26:28, “For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed
for many for the remission of sins.”
Not a covenant of works. Not a covenant of grace, or even of
redemption, but a declaration of Justification. A promise made in the Blood of
God that no longer will our sins count against us. For if the ministry of
covenants had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in
glory (2 Cor 3:9). That is that the Law, the conditional deals, had glory and
indeed still retain their glory. But now that Christ is raised from the dead
and regenerates us all to new life, His Life, we are declared righteous for His
sake. That is, that Jesus gives us credit for his fulfilling the deal.
“For the promise that he would be the heir of the world
was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the
righteousness of faith” (Rom 4:13). Not a covenant, but faith. For “a
man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ;
we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of
Christ” (Gal 2:16).
The faith of Christ makes covenants, yes. But He makes them
in the presence of others. It is not done in secret. It is not done with a
counter list of “Do your best and God will do the rest”. It is done by Him, for
His Name’s sake, and fulfilled by Him and His Name’s sake. Christ alone.
Do you have things to do? Yes. God has prepared good works
for you. Do you have your end of the bargain to uphold? No. The New Covenant is
made in the Body and Blood of Christ Crucified, not “sinner crucified”. Its
terms and conditions have all been met on the Cross of Christ. Your response in
faith is to receive the gifts that come with the completion and fulfillment of
this covenant.
That is that how you are now holy, because your God is holy.
You have been brought out of the Egypt of your sin to the Divine Service in the
wilderness. You have been brought to the Tent of Meeting to receive the
blessing that lasts forever. It is not written on tablets of stone, neither is
it held off until you perfectly hold up your end of the deal.
It is poured over you in Baptism. It is fed to you in the
Lord’s Supper and it is declared to you in the Gospel. You are righteous. You
are holy. You have been given the mercy of Christ Himself, Who is both God and
man. And in the declaration of justification made to you by Christ Himself, in
faith you do show mercy, by virtue of His mercy.
For if we are truthful, the question we really have is
whether or not God will keep His covenant with us. This is one of the lessons
of the martyrdom of John the Baptist. The same as the dead Jerusalem man, is
St. John’s imprisonment and beheading. Was God going to uphold his covenant in
the face of all that?
Thankfully, Jesus is our Good Samaritan Who was also all
dead. He is the Good Samaritan Who can walk into the halls of death and bring
back the prisoners there to new life. He can reach into St. John’s prison and
bring him to His side alive and with his head, not just so he can die again in
this life, but to never die again in the next.
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