2 Chronicles 29:12-19
Then the Levites arose, Mahath the son of Amasai, and Joel the son of Azariah, of the sons of the Kohathites; and of the sons of Merari, Kish the son of Abdi, and Azariah the son of Jehallelel; and of the Gershonites, Joah the son of Zimmah, and Eden the son of Joah; and of the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and Jeuel; and of the sons of Asaph, Zechariah and Mattaniah; and of the sons of Heman, Jehuel and Shimei; and of the sons of Jeduthun, Shemaiah and Uzziel.
They gathered their brothers and consecrated themselves and went in as the king had commanded, by the words of the LORD, to cleanse the house of the LORD. The priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD to cleanse it, and they brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD. And the Levites took it and carried it out to the brook Kidron. They began to consecrate on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the vestibule of the LORD. Then for eight days they consecrated the house of the LORD, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished.
Then they went in to Hezekiah the king and said, “We have cleansed all the house of the LORD, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the table for the showbread and all its utensils. All the utensils that King Ahaz discarded in his reign when he was faithless, we have made ready and consecrated, and behold, they are before the altar of the LORD.”
Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving us your precious Word, which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Guard us from false teaching and idolatry which rob us of the comfort we have in Christ. May Your unchanging message of the Gospel, the Good News of salvation by grace alone continue to be boldly proclaimed for the comfort of every troubled sinner. Amen!
The Unchanging Message of the Gospel
In Christ, “who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification,” dear fellow redeemed!
Our Savior taught that we cannot be saved by our own good works or efforts. When the crowds heard Jesus say that unless their righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, one cannot enter the kingdom of heaven—they were all struck to the heart. The scribes and Pharisees were the most holy people they knew! If they couldn’t even enter the kingdom of heaven, who could? Jesus preached the law and showed that no man can save himself. But Jesus did not leave us just with the law. It was for this very reason, that God’s only begotten Son became man, so that he could be the life and light of all people. Jesus said, “I Am the way, the truth, and the life, no one can come to the Father except through me,” “I Am the resurrection and the life,” “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.”
This was the same Gospel message—the Good News—that Jesus sent his apostles to preach. The Apostle Paul declares, “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith . . . Where is boasting then? It is excluded. . . . Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law” (Romans 3).
The unchanging message of the Gospel is that we are saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, which is revealed to us in Scripture alone. While this Gospel message has been attacked, covered, and muddied by the teachings of man since the beginning—the gates of hell will never prevail against the true teaching of Christ and his church. The true teachings can be traced throughout the centuries.
In the second century, a theologian named Diognetus wrote: “But when our iniquity was fulfilled and it had been clearly shown that its reward of death and punishment awaited us and the time came which God had appointed henceforth to manifest His goodness and power… He gave His own Son as a ransom in our stead, the Holy for the transgressors, the Innocent for the guilty, the Just for the unjust.. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By whom was it possible that we, the lawless and ungodly, be justified except in the Son of God alone? O sweet exchange, O inscrutable operation, O benefits surpassing all expectation, that the iniquity of many should be hid in a single Righteous One and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!” (Reconciliation and Justification, p. 160).
In the twelfth century, Bernard of Clairvaux, who is the author of the Lenten hymn “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” wrote: “[W]hile we were yet sinners, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son… where there is reconciliation, there is also remission of sins. And what is that but justification?… by the death of the Only-begotten we obtain that we have been justified freely by His blood, in whom, as St. Paul says again, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Reconciliation and Justification, p. 3).
The Gospel message that we enjoy today is the same message that has brought comfort to sinners in distress for the past two thousand years, and really, since God made his first promise to Adam and Eve. The Gospel message has never changed. By God’s grace, as long as there has been the preaching of the Word, the true teaching of Scripture has been believed and confessed since the time of the apostles. However, false and man-made ideas and traditions have, at times, crept into the church and covered, confused, and rejected the clear teachings of Scripture.
In our Old Testament lesson today, we learn about the reformation and return to God’s Word during the reign of King Hezekiah. Under the reign of King Ahaz, the temple in Jerusalem had been desecrated and defiled. The true worship of God had been abandoned, and idol worship was promoted. But this only brought about God’s wrath and disfavor. So, when Hezekiah began his reign, he sought to restore the proper worship of God, beginning at the temple. He charged the priests and Levites to cleanse the temple and prepare it for worship. While our lesson may seem to include some insignificant details, they aren’t. When the services and sacrifices of the temple were properly carried out, they were attached to God’s promises of grace and mercy. Hezekiah knew that while his fathers had been unfaithful, if they returned to the Lord, he would be merciful.
One of the great weaknesses of Israel was that they constantly fell for the gods of the pagan nations around them which promised fruitful harvests, earthly pleasures, fertility, and peace. These gods were man-made gods. Since they were made according to man’s reason, they tended to be quite appealing. If you do these certain things, you can make yourself pleasing to the gods and they in turn will bless you. It makes natural sense to our human reason that if we do certain things for a god, we can or should get certain things in return. While Israel often did not totally reject God, they tried to worship both the true God and these other false gods which offered earthly blessings. But there is no neutrality with God—you are either for him or against him. As soon as you introduce something else, whether that be a god, your good works, or anything else—you lose your true Savior because you are not fearing, loving, and trusting in him above all things. You are placing your trust in something other than your Savior.
The Lutheran Reformation had its beginning on October 31st, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg Germany. In these statements, he voiced his concern over the misuse of papal indulgences, which are pieces of paper that supposedly set souls free from purgatory. People bought indulgences for their loved ones who they had been taught to believe were trapped in purgatory. John Tetzel, an indulgence salesman, made this promise to those who bought his indulgences: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” Indulgences confused the preaching of Christ crucified for us and misdirected peoples’ trust away from Jesus to their own works and pieces of paper.
At the heart and center of the Reformation was the most important question that can be asked: how does a sinner become a saint? On what basis will God let me into heaven? The Medieval Catholic church taught that if you do the best you can do, God will give you grace to do better, and by cooperating with God’s grace, you will become good enough for God. However, if you do not become good enough for God in this lifetime, you would go to purgatory when you die and would there complete the process of becoming a saint through penance.
Not only is purgatory not taught in Scripture, but this false teaching of salvation is based on works. It emphasizes what you do for God, rather than what God has done for you. While this is appealing to our human ego, it only leads to pride or despair. Am I good enough? Have I done enough? This led Martin Luther to despair. He knew he was a sinner and that he could not keep God’s Law. He was terrified of standing before God’s judgement seat. Yet, through his study of Scripture, Luther learned that God justifies sinners, he declares them righteous, he saves them, not by anything we do, but only on account of what Jesus did for us. We are saved completely by God’s grace alone. Salvation is a gift from God! What a relief! What a comfort! It was this renewed confidence and joy which Luther received from the pure teaching of Scripture, that gave him the confidence to stand before the Medieval Catholic Church and the most powerful emperor in the world, Charles V. If he lost the Gospel, he had nothing even if he lived. But if he had Christ and the forgiveness of sins, he could say with the Apostle Paul, “To live is Christ, to die is gain!”
The most important teaching in all of Scripture is the teaching of objective justification—that God has declared the world not guilty, forgiven, on the basis of Jesus’ perfect life and holy death on the cross. His resurrection is proof that Jesus has accomplished our salvation. The Lamb of God did pay for the sins of the world. It is finished. This salvation is given and distributed to us through the means of grace and received through faith in Jesus.
But this salvation—this free gift of God, which was promised to Adam and Eve, believed by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, proclaimed by the prophets, fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and confessed by Peter, Paul, John, Diognetus, Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas of Celano, and Martin Luther—will always be under attack. God wants to comfort us with this teaching, which is why the devil wants to take it from us. God wants to assure us that it is all his work, which is why our sinful flesh dislikes it and tries to make salvation something in which we participate in.
We might not have idols like Israel or indulgences like the Medieval Catholic Church, so how does this happen? We live at an interesting time in history, where the ungodly world and immoral living is on broad display for all to see. It is certainly a temptation for us to look at the world around us and the lifestyles of many, and think, “I might not be perfect, but at least I am not like them!” “Thank God I am not like that tax-collector!” As members in a small Confessional Lutheran Church, it would be tempting to have a “holier than thou” attitude. But then where are we putting our trust? In ourselves? In our Synod?
Pride only leads to despair—they are two sides of the same coin. When we take pride in what we do or don’t do, we are making “saviors” of ourselves. But it only leads to despair, because God’s Law is not based on comparison, but perfection and holiness. And you and I lack both. We are sinners who struggle to look in the mirror—we’ve said things we can’t take back, we’ve hurt those who we love most, we’ve gotten angry, we’ve damaged our neighbor’s reputation, we’ve sinned against God and man. Is this the record you want to have standing before a perfect and holy judge on the last day?
This is why we preach Christ-crucified every Sunday. We are not ashamed of the Gospel—because Jesus, the Lamb of God, is our only hope of salvation. He shed his blood for you and me. He promises forgiveness to those who confess their sins which is why we live a life of repentance. And we thank God, that the Gospel message has never changed. No one is beyond God’s saving help—because Jesus died for the sins of the world. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). This was what the Reformation was all about. This is what our church is all about. We preach both the Law and Gospel, because we need to be reminded of our sins and that we have a Savior from them. This is how we continue in the spirit of the Reformation today! Amen.