Our Precious Treasure :: Luke 11:14-28
Let’s see what will happen if I start my sermon for you today a little different than normal. Listen carefully; don’t be shy; be bold: I’m sure you’ll know how to respond.
O Lord, Open my lips.
And my mouth will declare your praise (Ps 51:15).
Make haste, O God, to deliver me.
Make haste to help me, O Lord (Ps 70:1).
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Isn’t it amazing how powerful the word of God is? It has taken hold of you! And you are no longer mute! You are like the man at the beginning of our Gospel reading from Luke chapter 11, giving voice to the praises of God, leaving the world around you to marvel (v. 14). This is what happens as we hear the word of God.
It changes our lives forever! God makes haste to help us as we marvel at his magnificence. Suddenly, we realize we are hearing the word of God like never before, and believing it! All of it! That’s it’s all about Jesus, all of the time. You find yourself guarding the promises of God, singing the praises of God. You find yourself treasuring them, embracing them, holding them fast to your heart.
Suddenly, you recognize that you long to respond to life around you differently, leading godly lives now ... here in time and there in eternity. You recognize how the Word Made Flesh gives you strength, as God’s will breaks and hinders every evil purpose and plan of the devil, the world and our sinful nature, which do not want us to hallow God’s name or to let his kingdom come. You realize that Jesus is overpowering Satan in your life (vv. 21-22). You find yourself being led in a different direction, living a life of repentance, seeking the blessing of God: the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
And he gives this to you!
He opens our eyes and lips, and we begin seeing and speaking these verses from Psalms 51 and 70 in the newness of life, knowing exactly what to say, even though you’ve hardly ever spoken them here at Trinity Lutheran Church.
Thanks be to God, we know for sure you Lutherans aren’t mute.
BLESSED ARE THOSE HEARING AND GUARDING THE TREASURES OF GOD.
This is our theme for today.
Most of you heard the word of God for the first time when your parents brought you to this font for your baptism by Christ into his life, death, and resurrection (Rom 6:3-5). This ranks among the greatest miracles that marvel the world.
The Lord announced the Gospel to you and began confirming your faith in Christ. You then began guarding this treasure within your heart, returning to the word and prayer, returning to the divine service, seeking the blessing you long to be reminded of.
But that was then. This is now.
1. Blessed are the ones hearing the word of God and guarding it.
Did you realize the significance of this word of God for you today ... most notably this Third Sunday in Lent, as we sit before the veiled crucifix, as we peer into the beautiful Law of God that reflects who he is and who we aren’t?
Too often we take it for granted.
So today we can thank the Lord and sing his praise that he has heard your prayer, and taken a stand for you. That he opens our eyes and ears and reveals Himself to us in a way that we don’t have to fear.
This isn’t your work. It is his. He does it all for you.
First, the stronger man Jesus casts out the demons from your life, making haste to seek you out again, and to bring you back to the baptism that expels the demons in us. And he continues to pour out that sacrament upon you in his name ... the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Then He tells you who you are, again, and reminds you again of what you actually possess ... eternal life and salvation.
He makes you one of his own children, holy and precious, chosen and royal.
Although the devil and his minions may nag and rag on you, trying to create doubt and confusion, God still makes you holy because he is holy (Lev 19:2).
2. This is his promise to you: To bless you and guard you.
To be blessed by God is a state of being. It is a present and continuing condition.
To be blessed by God is not simply something that happened to you a long time ago. Blessedness is the fullness of life, which is yours now. Though you were once dead in your trespasses and sins, the light of the world has overcome your darkness and given you life and enabled you to see the truth.
But as we were reminded last week, when God blesses you, he also gives us strength and wisdom to hear the word of Guard. The devil has no power over you any more. The Holy Spirit enables you to speak the truth in love ... and to proclaim the Gospel.
Are you doing it?
Our world thinks we need to earn forgiveness. However, God gives it through Christ, who loved us and gave himself up for us (Eph 5:2). This was his work from the beginning. It isn’t something you do. He is the source. He is the giver. He is the gift.
Blessedness is not found in worldly success or prosperity; worldly joy or happiness. You may be blessed by good health, a successful job, a nice house, a comfortable retirement, but those are only temporary. However, Christ’s promised blessings are eternal. As he says, the kingdom of God is now yours. You will be satisfied; you will laugh; and your reward is great (Lk 6:20-23).
3. Blessed are the ones hearing this word.
Notice: Jesus doesn’t say blessed are the ones who heard the word of God, but those who are hearing the word of God. It is a present tense, a present reality. It is a state of being now. It is not because you are here in this room, making your presence felt among your peers that makes you blessed.
I can’t belabor this point well enough. The Pharisees had heard the word of God. They knew what the word of God said. But they weren’t blessed. They didn’t think the word of God did anything. They treated it as static ink on a static page.
Sadly, too many in the world and throughout history are still doing that, even as they attend church week after week. They do it by reducing God’s word into a good word about good living, modeled by a good man. They do it by cherry-picking the scriptures, silencing the judgments in Jeremiah, plucking out only the words they want to hear.
They then become determined to purge sin and the devil from their lives by their own means ... on their own merits ... dedicating their lives to God ... as if they could be holy apart from hearing the word.
So Jesus says, but when the demons and sin return ... and they will ... they find your house swept and decorated. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself. ... And the last state of that person is worse than the first (vv. 24-26).
Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God.
Putting your house in order, sweeping it and decorating it, is a fine outward exercise for your lives, especially during Lent. We need to purge the immorality and foolish talk from our lips, as Paul reminded the Ephesians (5:3-6).
But it does us no good if we don’t put our house in order with the good things of God: The treasures of His word and sacraments. As Luther reminds us, when you find yourself wondering if you really need the sacraments today, put your hand on your heart and check for a pulse. If it is still beating then you know you need to hear the word of God and receive the sacraments. These means of grace are God’s word actually delivering to you what it promises: forgiveness, life, and salvation.
They are for your good and God’s glory.
These means are ways God puts our house in order on our behalf.
4. And they enable you to guard that word of God in your lives.
The English Standard Version translated verse 28 with the word keep. It is literally guarding the word. That’s why Mary, the mother of God, is blessed. She guarded the word of promise to her. She preserved it and protected the promises of the word within her. And that is why you are blessed today, too.
Mary isn’t blessed because she became the mother of God, giving birth to Jesus. Mary isn’t blessed because she nursed the Christ child (v. 27). She is blessed because she guarded the word of the promise that she continued to hear (Lk 1:46-55). She treasured the things above, the gifts of God (Lk 2:19), not the things of the earth. More than that she continued believing the promises and made them her own, accepting all that God had to say. That is what it means to guard the word.
Like her, we know how the word of God is living and active (Heb 4:12) ... that it can’t be broken (Jn 10:35), that it is written (Mt 4:4) and spoken (2 Pt 1:20) so that you who are hearing it and believing the promises of Christ are being saved (Jn 20:31). This word of God tells us first and foremost of what Christ is doing for us, to us, through us.
While the world continues to accuse Jesus of being less than he is ... just a good man ... the world fails to recognize how strong the finger of God really is.
But you recognize it ... don’t you? ... as you continue hearing the truth about what our incarnate Lord has done, will do and is doing in our lives?
That truth is this: God took on flesh and became a man, born of the virgin. He lived a life without sin for you so that he could overpower the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh which do not want us to hallow God’s name or to let his kingdom come. He was then crucified for you, so that he could atone for all your sins and appease the full wrath of God against our sin. And more than that, Jesus has risen from the dead for you to give you the living hope that you have the present reality of eternal life with him.
You can now actively hear this Gospel, can’t you? Let this word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Col 3:16).
Yes, Lord, Open my lips.
And my mouth will declare your praise (Ps 51:15).
Make haste, O God, to deliver me.
Make haste to help me, O Lord (Ps 70:1).
It is a precious treasure! In Jesus’ name.