Faith is true worship [Trinity 18]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Deuteronomy 10:10-21

• 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

• St. Matthew 22:34-46

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love. (2 John)
 
Who speaks to you this morning saying,

“On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

 
First things first: we must repeat one truth of the doctrine of God: God wishes us to believe Him and receive from Him blessings, this He declares to be true divine Service. Meaning, Him serving us faith in Christ, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life and us sitting still and receiving it is what it really means to “worship God”, what it really means to obey the greatest commandment of God.
 
But this is not what we think in our sinfulness, nor is it what the rest of the world thinks regarding obedience or worship, even, unfortunately, those who proclaim to be Christians. For the world can easily be divided into two, as in there are only two religions in the world. The religion of “Do this” and the religion of “Done”.
 
On the coat-tails of Columbus Day, we get a good example. The people who change their Facebook profile picture or make a declaration about how they acknowledge the land they're on was stolen and that they respect the culture it was stolen from don’t really believe what they are declaring to the world.
 
The reason you know they don’t believe their own words is that they are not giving up their land to the people they are “advocating” for. This is called “virtue signaling”. When you say that you stand for something, usually the outrage of the day, but your actions betray you, as in you are a do-nothing. At the end of the day, you still retain your land, buildings, business, and money and no one is un-oppressed.
 
Jump to our “Do this” religion and worship takes on the same air. Changing their flag outside their house to a “christian flag” and they make the declaration about how God gave His only Son and it was so tragic, but now I’m going to do things for that God and all y’all gonna hear about it.
 
Now, they are not lying, because they will go out and “do things” for God, or at least try to give Him credit, but what they don’t do is what He actually says to do. They will throw verses in your face to justify themselves. Verses like Matthew 19:17, “If you would enter into life, keep the commandments”, and Romans 2:13, “the doers of the law…will be justified.” Yet they forget verses like, Ezekiel 34:15, “I will feed my flock…”, thus saith the Lord.
 
Their actions betray them, and though they say “give glory to God”, but also say things like “I did it”, “I experienced God”, “I decided to follow Jesus”, or “I invited Jesus into my heart”. At the end of the day, they have given nothing to God and still retain their own honor, their own decision-making, and their own feelings. They worship themselves and their “doings”. Their love of “what they think is God” is what they depend on to justify them in front of God.
 
In the gospel reading this morning, this is exactly what the Pharisees were attempting with Jesus. For we know that these Pharisees and Sadducees are wonderful churchmen and would be welcomed and coveted by any congregation, if only for their apparent adherence to all God’s words, as the Pharisee and Tax Collector reveal to us: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get” (Luke 18:11-12).
 
Repent. Jesus turns the tables on you “doers” in continuing the questioning, in the gospel. He goes on to ask you about the Christ, the Messiah promised in Holy Scripture. What does this have to do with being a doer of the Law, obeying the commandments? Everything. For in calling attention to Himself, Jesus has placed Himself, rather belief about Himself, as more important than external obedience.
 
Here, God Himself reiterates our primary point today, that belief in God and receiving blessings from His hand are what constitutes true worship, true obedience. All the commandments may hang on the Law and Prophets, but justification hangs on the God Who hanged on a tree. 
 
This is the God Who creates His own religion, not the religion of “do this”, but the religion of “Done”. As in “done for you”. And what was “done for you” in place of you “doing” the Law and the Prophets? David’s Lord is David’s son. That is that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God took on a rational soul and flesh of the virgin Mary.
 
What does Jesus praise about His Christians through St. Paul, in our Epistle? He praises the holy blessings that He gives to them! He sanctifies, He calls, He gives grace and peace, He enriches in all speech and knowledge, His gifts have no lack. He reveals Himself, He sustains you, He is faithful, and He brings you into His fellowship.
 
Jesus said LOVE the Lord and Love your neighbor. Love is the command. Jesus is Love (1 John 4:8), love fulfills the Law (Romans 13:10), therefore you are justified by grace for Christ’s sake through faith, not by your obedience.
 
Is the love of God simply your love which you produce in this world? True love hangs on the Law and Prophets and the Law and Prophets make the form of a cross, in this world. If you are doing things for God, then you are listening to what God says. All of it. And what He says is “receive”. The Law and the Prophets do not look like instructions for you, in faith. They look like the gift of Christ Crucified.
 
Our Epistle reveals that you are not lacking in any gift, in Christ. You are not lacking, in Christ. Before you give glory to God, He gave glory to you, by suffering and dying on your behalf. Before you experienced God, He gave you His experience of being forgiven. Before you decided to follow Jesus, He had already completed His journey and is at rest at the Right hand of God. Before you invited Jesus into your heart, He had already bought it back from sin, death, and the power of the devil.
 
What is left except to believe? God is not loved until we apprehend mercy by faith. For, as our Augsburg Confession states, “before we fulfil one tittle of the Law, there must be faith in Christ by which we are reconciled to God and first obtain the remission of sin. Good God, how dare people call themselves Christians or say that they once at least looked into or read the books of the Gospel when they still deny that we obtain remission of sins by faith in Christ? Why, to a Christian it is shocking merely to hear such a statement” (AP III:38).
 
We cannot deny that love is the work of the Law, but it does not justify and it is not what God demands from us for true obedience. For as the Law and virtue is higher, and our ability to do the same exponentially lower, we are not righteous because of love. Especially because, in sin, we work in ourselves our own sort of love, not God’s love.
 
That virtue justifies which apprehends Christ, which communicates to us Christ’s merits, by which we receive grace and peace from God. But this virtue is faith. For as it has been often said, faith is not only knowledge, but much rather willing to receive or apprehend those things which are offered in the promise concerning Christ. True obedience towards God, then, is to wish to receive the offered promise, and is no less a divine service than is love. God wishes us to believe Him, and to receive from Him blessings, and this He declares to be true divine service. (AP III:106-107)
 
On account of Christ, we preach foolishness here and are fools in return. “We preach the foolishness of the Gospel, in which another righteousness is revealed namely, that for the sake of Christ, as Propitiator, we are accounted righteous, when we believe that for Christ’s sake God has been reconciled to us” (AP III:109). 
 
We preach this foolishness boldly, despite how far distant this doctrine appears from the judgment of reason and of the Law. We believe this foolishness despite the fact that the doctrine of the Law concerning love makes a much greater show of things. in our works; for it is wisdom. 
 
But we are not ashamed of the foolishness of the Gospel. For the sake of Christ’s glory we defend this, and beseech Christ, by His Holy Ghost, to aid us that we may be able to make this clear and manifest among us also. And we beg our Creator to keep us in the one true faith, hearing God’s True Command, and having faith in the words “given and shed for you”.