Found in contempt [Trinity 11]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Genesis 4:1-15

• 1 Corinthians 15:1-10

• St. Luke 18:9-14

 

Grace to you all and Peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus, the Christ.

 

Today, we once again hear Christ speak to us, saying,

“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:”

 

In God’s Word today, you are to find that your repentance and your life of Faith in Church, is not to be used as a weapon against your neighbor. Otherwise, you will find yourself in contempt. Though we have enemies and though we can see God’s enemies in life, that is for God, not us. Our job is mercy and atonement found only in Jesus Christ.

 

As is usual in our current age, we are losing information even though we are in the Golden Age of information with every library, paper, and newscast being at the tips of our fingers. One such piece of information lost is the word contempt, as Jesus used it in the Gospel reading. No one uses that word to describe anything anymore and the only reason we know it is because we watch court dramas on TV and the judges always threaten with finding you in contempt of court.

 

Used then, all we know about it is that we’re in more trouble, not necessarily what it means. Its true meaning is interesting and relevant to what Jesus says today. Being held in contempt of court means you are guilty of “disrupting court proceedings, interfering with attempts to obtain evidence, destroying evidence, disobeying a court order, or intimidating witnesses.” 

Punishments can range from fines to years in a state prison, maybe giving you new insight to Jesus and the Unrighteous Manager going to jail until you pay the last penny, which we heard a couple weeks ago.

 

For the Pharisee, he holds the tax collector in contempt, not of court nor even of the Temple, but of his own gain. For what he prays for is himself, to himself. He doesn’t need God to do anything for him. God has already made all things for him and he’s doing just fine. He’s following all the rules and doing great and has all his churchy things lined up, just like he’s supposed to. If only these tax collector-sinner types would leave the congregation, this would be a great church.

 

The Pharisee wants the walls white-washed. In his temple, there is no room for the dirt and mud of sinful life. There is no way the sinner’s life is equal to his, so he must rise up, as his God does. “Arise, O God, judge the earth”, says Psalm 82:8, “for you shall inherit all the nations!” And, “yet a little while and the sinner shall be not!” (Ps 37:10)

 

In this same spirit, Cain rose up against his brother, in the name of the Lord, and murdered him. Murdered him in the name of justice, in the name of holiness, in the name of love. God’s justice is punishment for the sinner, is it not? God’s holiness destroys all unrighteousness, right? And God’s love purifies the unbeliever, even if it means annihilation. 

 

Repent. Such is the sick and twisted world our sin creates for us, where we are the right hand of God who has begged God, “Here am I! Send me! Send Me!” (Isa 6:8), in order to slay our brothers and sisters. We believe that God’s Kingdom comes to earth and the earth will be cleansed, by murder, and as long as we add the name of Jesus onto the end, it will have been justified.

 

In holding the sinner in contempt, the Pharisee holds God in contempt. He disrupts the heavenly court proceedings of atonement. He interferes with the evidence, preferring sins to grace. And he disobeys the court order of “mercy, rather than sacrifice”. 

 

In attempting to hold Abel in contempt, Cain found himself up against the Lord Himself. In rising up against his brother, Cain encountered his Savior. In murdering Abel, Cain took the Blood of God. Cain's spirit is then passed down, not to pagans, but to those who are super-spiritual and do not need sacrifice made on their behalf. Cain holds God in contempt and is ultimately shown mercy.

 

Our only hope in our lives is to leave it to God. This person may not worship like me or act like me now, but maybe he will in the future. Such is the limit of the spirit of the Pharisees, which we possess. The contempt of man does not create the righteousness of God.

 

But God’s contempt does.

 

The contempt of God creates His own righteousness. And you would think, as the Pharisee, that it will be in the form of punishment and divine judgement. And it is, just not in the direction we, in our sin, want it to be. 

 

God’s own righteousness is His own. His own to create and His own to give out, if, where, and how He chooses. Don’t think you can hold him to some certain magical formula you have found, that, if you follow the recipe correctly, and say the words right, God will just have to give you His righteousness. 

 

Unless you are Jesus, you obeying God’s commands will not gain you this righteousness because of your sin. Unless you are Jesus, you holding your fellow men in contempt will not gain you purity or worthiness. Unless you are Jesus, you will not be able to take the contempt of man and turn it into the righteousness of God.

 

And yet here we are and “Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him. Then, arraying him in splendid clothing, he sent him back to Pilate” to be crucified (Lk 23:11). “Elijah does come first”, Jesus says, “to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?” (Lk 23:1)

 

How is it written? Because, “now You have cast off and rejected; You are full of wrath against your Christ”, saith the Lord in Psalm 89:38. Of you, the Lord says, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you hold your brother in contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10). 

 

And even though we have rejected God from being king over us, in this way, He still declares, “let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself” (Psalm 80:17), “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (Psalm 22:24)

 

Jesus is held in contempt, is treated with contempt, and is crucified in contempt. He rises again from the grave and there is no more contempt with Him. As Psalm 22 said, He has no contempt, He has no abboration, only grace, only mercy, only atonement. 

 

We have despised the Lord’s Sabbath (Ex 22:8) and have not put His holy things first in our lives and hearts, but Jesus regenerates us as worthy. We hold the Lord’s Table in contempt (Mal. 1:7), but that rejected Table, that rejected Stone, is the Cornerstone. Though He had created all things, especially His Church, in the beginning, His Blood repurchases them such that they become God’s House and the gate of heaven.

 

“Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain” (Rev 5:12), not just to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing, but to receive those things as the Crucified. As the God Who Died for contemptable sinners in order that they become the Righteousness of God. 

 

In Jesus, we are not held in contempt. The Father has had enough of contempt (Ps 123:3) and empties it upon the Son. In the contempt of the Father, Jesus is murdered by sinners. In Christ’s murder, He purchases Mercy, Atonement, not for Himself but for those in need of it: those who hold others in contempt, know not what they are doing, and need forgiveness.

 

There is no contempt in the Lord’s House. For one, the Court proceedings have been dismissed. The trial is over. Jesus declared guilty; sinners declared innocent, in Him. There is no more to obstruct. God is no longer holding court, on Sundays, but holding a feast. Sirach 34:31 says, “Rebuke not your neighbor at wine, and hold him not in contempt in his celebration: give him no despiteful words, and press not upon him”

 

At the Lamb’s High Feast, which is brought forward to you today there is only mercy and forgiveness. At the Temple at prayer, there was the same thing, just in a different form. The Pharisee did not believe God’s goodness extended to all or that it could even redeem all. But Christ has come for all. He has no desire for the death of the sinner nor the death of the self-righteous man. 

 

He wants us to live. Jesus wants you turned from your wicked ways of despising Him, in order that you are baptized alive towards God. Dead in sin is the only way to approach God. Eyes covered in the Blood is the only way to see God and to see your fellow man. 

 

Our justice, holiness, and love is Christ alone. His Blood and Body cry out for us, on our behalf, proclaiming innocence. In Him, we judge ourselves and find no guilt. In Him we find mercy and atonement for our sin and also His Church. In Him, the not-guilty festival is already ready.

 

 

Formal Material [Trinity 10]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Jeremiah 8:4-12

• 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

• St. Luke 19:41-48

 

Grace to you all and Peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus, the Christ.

 

Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Church, saying: 

“And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold”

 

What right did Jesus have to throw out all these people from the Temple? Weren’t they doing God’s work?

This is the conundrum we will think about today and it has to do with Authority in the Church. Whatever the Church’s authority is determines what is taught. God want’s us to hear this, because there are many who would lead us away from His Church and want to exert their own authority over us. We must understand this in order to guard ourselves against false prophets.

 

What we have here, in Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple, is a failure to communicate. Not failure on Jesus’s part as to how and what He wants accomplished in His Temple, His Body, but failure on our part to communicate to God how we want things done in His Temple. We want the authority to dictate how we have faith.

 

As Jesus said, this was accomplished in the hearts of the people by the lying pen of the Scribes, heard in our Old Testament reading. They were supposed to be the authority on God’s Word and yet we see them and the Word of God at odds. So who or what has authority in God’s Church and where does it come from?

 

Two important terms you should remember are Formal Principle and Material Principle. These two deal with Who’s voice gets to be heard in Church and what that voice gets to say. When dealing with what you believe, Formal Principal simply means where your doctrine, or teaching, comes from and Material Principle means what that doctrine is. Every church has a different Formal Principle, a different authority on their teaching.

 

Now you may have just checked out of this sermon, but don’t. Because what you may not understand is that doctrine is life; what you believe about something is extremely important. Case in point, all that people are outraged about in the Olympics, recently. If you believe that men can be women, your Material Principle, then you are for women being physically abused by biological males in public. This belief comes from the corrupt world who desperately tries to be progressive, your Formal Principle.

 

Hopefully you see how these work?

 

Let’s return to our Gospel reading with this in mind.

 

Jesus has revealed the Material Principle of the chief priests, scribes, and principal men. It is that Jesus’s House will be a den of robbers. Now how ridiculous to think of God’s things that way and of course they didn’t agree with Jesus’s assessment, which is why they wanted to kill Him. But that is the satanic trick. To make sin seem like something good or even something that God has commanded.

 

So what is their Formal Principle? The Word of God of course, just like you. In Deuteronomy 14, the Lord outlines that you are to bring the proper tithe to the Temple from your own things. However, He makes an exception in verses 24-26, “if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, when the Lord your God blesses you, because the place is too far from you, which the Lord your God chooses, to set his name there, then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the Lord your God chooses and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.”

 

Well, there it is. It was perfectly fine, even according to God, to be doing what those men were doing with and at the Temple. God’s Word said so! Jesus is wrong and He will continue to be wrong until we bring Him before our chief priests and scribes who know the law best, convict Him, and crucify Him.

 

Repent! Not only have we pit God against His own Word, but we will then continue to try and excuse Him by saying something like, the ruling house in charge of the Temple at the time was corrupt, and that’s why Jesus got angry. It was just a “at that time” thing and not a permanent thing. In other words, we become the authority and have no use for Jesus.

 

Yes, our doctrine, our material principle in our sin, is that we are the interpreters. We are the ones to say what God says and does on earth and what He does not. We have experience and reason, which God gave us!, to use in that regard. And when everyone disagrees, denominations, we’ll then say that you can’t know God’s will 100% and everyone has to find their own truth.

 

In all cases, we abandon God first because He doesn’t make sense and second because He doesn’t make sense. There is no winning for God in this world of superior logic and understanding. Since we can understand and have the knowledge of good and evil, there is no use for God. And this is why Jesus weeps.

 

Not just because we reject Him, but because we find solace and security with the enemy. Jesus is the only medicine and He is not mad, not sin-sick, like you. Thus He comes to shine the light on this enemy stronghold and says, “The Scriptures are not for you to wield as a cudgel and excuse any behavior you choose.” “You search the Scriptures in hopes of finding self-justification and eternal life, but these are they that speak of me.” (John 5:39)

 

The doctrine of the Temple needing to be a den of thieves comes from the belief that “we are wise and the Law of the Lord is with us”, so said our Old Testament. True belief comes from Jesus and true interpretation belongs to Jesus. This is why St. Paul can say in our Epistle, “no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit” (v.3).

 

Thus the true and God-sent Formal Principle is Scripture alone. Not simply Scripture nakedly by itself, as some believe today, but Scripture Alone that leads to Justification by Faith Alone. That is both the Formal and Material Principle of authentic Christianity. 

 

Thus, Jesus being angry in the Temple is completely understandable now. When you enter the House of God, there should be Justification by Grace Alone, through Faith Alone, for Christ’s Sake. In sin, we reject the Word. In the Gospel, Christ is the Word made flesh.

 

And Jesus Christ is Lord. In His Unlimited Atonement made on the cross, He bypasses man’s sinful logic and reason to purchase and win the ultimate Bible interpretation tool: the Gospel. Not just the 4 gospels, not just gospel churches, and not gospel singers either. The true Gospel in Jesus hands alone, that is “the good news that we are freed from the guilt, the punishment, and the power of sin, and are saved eternally because of Christ’s keeping the Law and His suffering and death for us.” (LSCE q.84)

 

And since there is only one Spirit, and since He only preaches The Christ, and the Gospel is the power of God for salvation, then our key to correctly understanding the Bible is Christ Crucified. Indeed, in Jesus’s Day, if the enemies of God had truly heard the Scriptures, they would have run across Zechariah 14:21, “And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. And there shall no longer be a merchant in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.”

 

 Because the Gospel is free. The forgiveness of sins and justification by Faith Alone is free. It is a gift of God so that no one may boast. Only Christ can boast. Boast that He has laid down His life to be the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices. Boast that He is the Tithe to end all tithes. Boast that He is the Word come to speak with us and commune with us.

 

 The Word given to Moses, concerning selling in the Temple, was given as a mercy to those who could not be near. It wasn’t to outline a proper religious business model. Those don’t show justification. the Word was given to show God’s mercy and His desire for Joy at the revelation of His Material Principle of Justification.

 

 Remember that verse ended with, “you shall turn it into money…And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household” (v.25-26).

 

The end goal has always been the same for Jesus. When He created all things, they were to be a joy for Adam and Eve. Instead, sin made it a curse. When Jesus gave His Word to His chosen Prophets, it was meant to be a joy in communicating with God. Instead, Jesus has to continue to purge corruption of His Holy Word.

 

The Temple, His Church, and all the yearly celebrations contained therein, are meant to be for rejoicing. There is no rejoicing in keeping a law devoid of mercy. Then you just get more laws, permits, regulations, and jail time all from the mouth of man, not God. 

 

The things that make for peace are what Jesus, Who is both God and man, came to bring. Peace money-changers! You can have your businesses, but do not claim God’s authority with what you do to others. Peace chief priests, scribes, and principal men. You are indeed chosen to lead God’s people, but do not exceed your jurisdiction. 

 

Peace, you sinners. Where God has made peace, do not cause strife. For Jesus brings peace, not as the world gives it, as in everyone just think like me and we’ll get alone. But He brings peace from God and with God. Meaning we no longer have to strive to make God’s kingdom come into this world by sacrifice or business. God’s Kingdom comes, hanging on the cross, without our efforts.