In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The main point of the parable of the unforgiving servant is that we should forgive other people because God has forgiven us. When Jesus told Saint Peter that he should forgive his repentant brother not seven times, but seventy times seven, obviously our Lord was not just picking a new limit that was higher than Saint Peter’s limit. He was showing us that our forgiveness is supposed to have no limits. Whatever amount we might think is too many times to forgive someone when they come to us asking for it, we should multiply it again. In other words, just as God does not stop forgiving us, we should never stop forgiving other people.

Now, even though this is very clear from our text today, and from the rest of the Bible for that matter, our sinful nature constantly fights against it and always tries to come up with different reasons why we don’t have to do it. So, in this morning’s sermon, in light of what Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 18, I’m simply going to respond to some of the most common objections that we hear against forgiving other people. And to clarify things before we get started, because every time this topic comes up I always get the same kind of questions, this text is not about how governments should stop punishing criminals or how there shouldn’t be any boundaries put in place for things like abuse or adultery. Sometimes there are temporal consequences for sins, even though the eternal consequences have been completely removed by Christ. For example, an individual can be forgiven before God in heaven for committing literal murder, but that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have to go to jail. A bank robber can be forgiven for robbing banks, but that doesn’t mean we should make him the treasurer of the church. It’s possible for forgiveness to be given at the same time that other steps are put in place in order to guard against temptation and to teach others who may be watching to take sin seriously. The issue that Jesus is dealing with in our text has to do with things like holding grudges, harboring hatred toward others in our hearts, or trying to even with them for doing us wrong. That’s the kind of forgiveness that He’s talking about. 

And so, here are the most common objections there are against forgiving others. The first one is “I don’t have to forgive them because they don’t deserve my forgiveness.” But statements like that completely miss the point. Not deserving forgiveness is the exact thing that makes it forgiveness in the first place. If we deserved forgiveness, then it wouldn’t be forgiveness at all. It would be restitution. The man in the parable that Jesus told obviously did not deserve to have his debt taken away.  He couldn’t do anything to get out of his debt and what he did was the exact thing that put him into all of that debt to begin with. The master had to forgive him out of his own pity.

And the same is true for us. When we ask God for the forgiveness of our sins, we are not asking Him for something that we deserve. We are asking Him for the exact opposite of what we deserve.  And when we receive God’s forgiveness, we are not getting something that we earned, we are getting something that we could never earn. Remember how Saint Paul describes it in Romans chapter 5. He says, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s how God’s forgiveness come to us. It’s a gift, and as Saint Paul adds for emphasis, a free gift at that.

And so, if God’s forgiveness comes to us freely for Christ’s sake, then how can we turn around and act as if other people need to deserve forgiveness from us when we don’t deserve it from God? How can we say that our brothers and sisters in Christ need to earn our forgiveness before we can give it to them, when the very forgiveness we have from the Lord isn’t something that we earned, but something that was given to us by grace? The reason why the unforgiving servant in the parable was condemned by Jesus at the end of the story was because in refusing to forgive others, he showed that he did not really believe in God’s forgiveness at all. In acting as if forgiveness needed to be deserved, he not only showed that he did not understand how forgiveness works, but he was rejecting the undeserved forgiveness of God. We never deserve forgiveness! Forgiveness is always for the underserving. And that’s why we should still give it to other people even if they don’t deserve it from us either.

Another objection that we often hear to forgiving people is that “what they did is too sinful to be forgiven.” But again, the parable that Jesus tells us shows us very clearly why that is never a valid reason to withhold forgiveness. Consider again the details of the story. One conservative estimate is that in ancient times a single talent could have been valued at more than a year’s worth of wages. The man in the parable owed ten thousand talents. He owed ten thousand years’ worth of wages. In our day and age, that would be the equivalent of someone owing something like 500 million dollars. It was a preposterous sum. It went well beyond carelessness and into the realm of purposeful evil. How on earth does a person even go about racking up that kind of debt? You almost have to be trying to do it. But Jesus uses this large sum of money to drive home the point that the servant obviously could never repay what he owed. It was too much. He didn’t have the means, nor did he have the time. In fact, more time would have probably made things even worse. His plea to the master to “have patience with me, and I will pay you everything,” was just as ridiculous as the amount of money that he owed.

And yet, the master forgave him. The master forgave the man’s debt by paying the debt himself. We all know that despite how some people often act these days, debt doesn’t just go away. Eventually someone always has to pay for it. Whether that is you, or your children, or your children’s children, or the people who lent you the money, somebody is still on the hook for it. And while it is certainly possible to argue that other people who have sinned against us have done things so bad that they cannot pay for them themselves, it is impossible to argue that they have done things so bad that not even God can pay for it Himself. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” It tells us in 1 John chapter 2 that Jesus is the “propitiation [or the payment] for our sins; and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” When Jesus died on the cross, He really did pay for all of the sins of all of the sinners who ever lived. His life was given as a ransom not just for some, but as He Himself says elsewhere, for many, as in, for everyone. Therefore, since there is no sin that Jesus did not take upon Himself and bear as His own when He died for all of our sins on the cross, there is no sin that is too bad to be forgiven. Whenever we are tempted to think that someone else has done something that is too sinful to be forgiven, we shouldn’t just look at them and what they did, we should look at Jesus and what He did for us all.

The next objection that we often hear to forgiving others is that “I don’t have to forgive them because they aren’t actually sorry for what they did.” Now, it’s true that no one who is not sorry for their sins receives forgiveness for them. The Bible teaches us all over the place that forgiveness is only received by those who regret their sins and want to do better. As King David says in Psalm 51, “For when I was silent, my bones wasted away…” and, “I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Or as it says in 1 John 1, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And as we read in the book of Acts, “Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” It’s impossible for a person to receive forgiveness who isn’t sorry for his or her sins and won’t stop doing them.

However, we should be very careful not to give the impression that our repentance is what causes God to forgive us, or that the repentance of others is what should cause us to forgive them either. Repentance does not cause forgiveness. Repentance receives forgiveness. Repentance does not remove sin for our souls. God removes sin for our souls. His forgiveness comes not from the suffering of our guilty conscience, but from the suffering of Jesus’ on the cross. Our guilty conscience does not bring God’s forgiveness to us, our guiltily conscience receives the forgiveness that God gives to us on His own. Did the master in the parable forgive the man’s debts because of how sorry he was, or did he do it because of how gracious he himself was? It was the second one. God does not forgive us because of how sorry we are, but because of how merciful He is.

And besides all that, we don’t always know how sorry a person even is. Yes, sometimes we can see their outward actions, which can be revealing, but only God can see what is going on on the inside. It’s entirely possible that the reason why someone hasn’t said sorry to us is not because they aren’t sorry, but because they’re too embarrassed to say it. What if they haven’t apologized for what they’ve done because they are afraid of us? What if it’s not because they aren’t sorry, but because they’re worried about what we’ll say to them, or how we’ll treat them? If we cannot even examine our own hearts well enough to gage the level of our own sincerity and contrition, why would we think we can do that for someone else? Even when we confess our sins, we confess along with them that not even our confession is completely perfect. And yet, we trust that God forgives us not because of the merits of our confession, but because of the merits of His Son. And that’s why we don’t refuse to forgive other people just because we suspect that they might secretively be not sorry for what they’ve done. We stand ready to forgive. We reach out to them for the purpose of forgiving, and we do our best to bring them the forgiveness that they need even if they end up rejecting it. We forgive as Jesus forgave us. We pray for others, as Jesus Himself prayed for us on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

Now the last and the most dangerous objection that we often to hear to why we shouldn’t have to forgive other people is because “forgiving them will only encourage them to do it again.” This is the most dangerous objection that there is because it isn’t just an argument against our forgiving of others, but worst of all, it’s an argument against God’s forgiving of us. It’s an argument against the Christian Gospel. Some churches teach that if we tell repentant individuals, that is, those who are already sorry for their sins and want to do better, that their sins are freely forgiven for Christ’s sake and that it’s unnecessary and impossible for them to do any kind of special penance to make up for them to God, that we are encouraging them to sin even more in the future. They maintain that if we offer God’s forgiveness for free that it will only make people take advantage of it. But that’s not true.  The Gospel does not encourage people to sin. The Gospel is the exact thing that frees us from our sins and give us the strength to fight it. It is the rejection of the Gospel leads to more sin. It is the neglect of the Gospel, and a misapplication and misrepresentation of the Gospel, that leads to more sin. The problem, though, is never with the actual Gospel. The problem is with those who do not believe the Gospel. Remember what Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 1 that our attitude should be toward the Gospel. He writes, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes.”

No one who actually believes the Gospel despises it. Nobody who has actually received the forgiveness of their sins in faith abuses it on purpose. No one who actually trusts that God has really taken away their sins in Christ sees it as an encouragement to keep on sinning. Yes, there are those who pretend to believe the Gospel, and twist it in order to defend their own sinful behavior, but they prove by their actions that they don’t really believe the Gospel at all. And yet, none of that means that we should stop preaching the Gospel.

There is nothing in this world that is capable of making us fight off our sin like the knowledge that Christ has already removed the punishment for our sin when He suffered for it on the cross. When we forgive others for their sins, because Jesus has forgiven us for ours, we are doing the best thing that can be done about sin.  We are pointing people to where sin has lost its power. It’s not true that forgiving other people who are sorry for what they’ve done and tell us that they want to do better will only encourage them to do it again. In fact, it is the very thing that will help them stop doing it more in future.

Jesus teaches us in the parable of the unforgiving servant that we should forgive other people just as God has forgiven us. We should forgive them freely, and we should forgive them without any limits. Just because someone doesn’t deserve our forgiveness, that is not a reason not to forgive them. We didn’t deserve forgiveness either, but God still gave it to us by His grace. Just because someone’s sin is really bad, and maybe it is, that doesn’t mean that we should not forgive them either. Our sins are bad too. And Jesus died for every sin on the cross, even the bad ones. Just because we suspect that someone might not be actually sorry, that is not a reason to withhold forgiveness from them either. We can’t always tell if someone is sorry, and our sorrow isn’t the cause of our forgiveness anyway, our sorrowful heart receives it. And just because it’s possible that someone might have trouble with sinning against us again later on, that is not a reason not to forgive them either. It is one of main reasons why we should forgive them. Our forgiveness will help them look to Christ, and learn from Him how to love their neighbor. It will give them the strength to fight their sin in the future.

Not only does our neighbor need ongoing forgiveness, but we need it too. And Jesus gives it to us by grace. To quote again the words of Saint Paul, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Jesus set aside our sin by nailing it to cross. May we see our neighbors sin their too, and may we forgive them just as Jesus has forgiven us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The widely accepted position in our society today, so much so that it is taught as scientific fact even to the littlest of children in many of our tax-payer funded schools, is that the world that we live in has come into existence through a long process of transformation and change, and that you and I, if we followed our family history back far enough, could trace our origins to fish swimming in the ocean, and chimpanzees swinging from the trees. In fact, here is a quote from the popular children’s book, Grandmother Fish: “This is our grandmother fish. She lived a long, long, long, long, long time ago. She could wiggle and swim fast. Can you wiggle?... Grandmother Fish had many kinds of grandchildren.” What is being described, of course, in this text geared towards toddlers is none other than the so-called theory of evolution.

Of all the teachings which the Devil has used to lure people away from the Christian Faith, few, if any, have been as successful as this one. How many confirmands have we known who were doing so well in class, only to stop listening, or maybe even quit coming as soon as the pastor brought up the topic of creation? How many college students have gone away to some secular university, only to return home after a single semester renouncing the Bible as mythology and the Catechism as propaganda, because some liberal professor “showed them the evidence” and opened their eyes to the “data.”

Some people, even within our own church body, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, still publicly argue that we should allow space for those who hold to a different belief in this matter than the one give to us by God’s Word. Recently, I was reading a conversation on a website called “Reddit,” which is where you can solicit for advice on all kinds of questions, and the discussion between supposed members of LCMS congregations was whether or not it is necessary to hold to a literal six-day creation. The overwhelming opinion was that, at the very least, it should be an open question. In their minds, everyone should be able to decide for him or herself, and as long as you don’t force your views on someone else, that’s what really matters the most.

People talk and talk and talk about how this world came into existence, but there’s just one problem with all of their talking. None of them were there to see it actually happen. But God was. And this morning, in Church, we get to hear from Him exactly how it took place. So, on the basis of our Old Testament lesson from Genesis chapters 1 and 2 allow me to explain to you all in today’s sermon why it is absolutely necessary for our Faith that we reject the theory of evolution.

The first, and most obvious reason, why we must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the clear Word of God. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s what the Bible says. That’s what the Scriptures plainly teach us. There wasn’t some big bang. There wasn’t some giant collision that started a process where things formed together over long periods of time. Not only did God create everything that exists out of nothing, but He did all of it in six literal days.  On the first day, He created light. On the second day, He created the sky. On the third day He created the land, the seas, and the plants. On the fourth day, He created the stars. On the fifth day, He created the birds and the fish. On the sixth day, He created other animals, as well as His most important creation, humanity. And on the seventh day, when all of His work of creating was done, God rested.

Even though Genesis chapters 1 and 2 give us a very straightforward account of how this world came into existence, there are many people today who do everything that they can to try and justify why they don’t have to believe it. Obviously, non-religious individuals simply dismiss this account as a fairytale, like they do with everything else in the Bible. Even though there are many things that they cannot explain about their theories, and plenty of things that they accept as true without having seen it for themselves, they won’t accept this thing. But, within the Church there are some who try and get around what we hear in Genesis, not by saying that we should dismiss the text entirely, but that we should not read it literally. I still remember how one of my professors when I was in seminary in England told me that the beginning of Genesis was a liturgical text, not a historical one. Well, what exactly does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. It means that you don’t have to believe what it says. 

And certainly, that interpretation would make sense if other parts of the Bible taught us to do it. Obviously, there are some passages in God’s Word that we shouldn’t take literally, but the question is whether or not this is one of them. And all throughout the Scriptures we are taught that it isn’t. First off, the entire book of Genesis is recorded as literal history. This isn’t like the book of Revelation where we are told by the human author that God inspired to write it that it was a vision. Just like Noah really did build an Ark, Abraham really did have a son in old age, Jacob actually did fight with his twin brother Esau, and Joseph really did get sold into slavery, the account of creation is a historical account too. When Moses gave the 10 Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, the reason why the people weren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath day was because that’s when God rested. Moses writes, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” It sounds like Moses wants us to take the creation account literally. Or what about what Jesus Himself says in Mark chapter 10. There our Lord argues against divorce by saying, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” It sounds like Jesus wants us to take the text literally too.

Now, the other fancy way that some people try and hold on to this text at the same time that they also hold onto the theory of evolution, is by arguing that the word “day” in Genesis doesn’t mean a literal “24-hour day,” but that it represents a different understanding of the word which means “millions and millions of years.” But not only is the Hebrew word for “day” used all throughout the Old Testament to mean a literal 24-hour period, but God apparently anticipated this objection and clarified within the creation account itself that He wanted it to be understood in the normal way. What does the Holy Spirit tell us happened at the end of each day of creation, “there was evening and there was morning.” That’s what kind of day it was. It wasn’t a symbolic day. It wasn’t a figurative day. It was a plain old regular day, just like the days we have now where the sun goes up and then the sun goes down.

If we are going to accept the theory of evolution, that means that we are going to have to throw out the Bible. It means that we would be allowed to dismiss the parts of the Bible that we don’t like, until eventually there would be barely anything left in the Bible at all. And sadly, that is exactly how it usually goes. As soon as an individual or a Church body begins to question Genesis 1 and 2, it leads them down the path of rejecting the authority of the Scriptures. And when you belittle the very thing that God uses to give us the gift of saving faith, then faith doesn’t have much of a chance to survive.

The second reason why we Christians must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the dignity of man. Besides going against the clear Word of God, evolution also gives us a totally different understanding of who we are as people. According to evolutionary theory, we humans have the same origin as other animals do. We are the result of fish changing into lizards, who changed into squirls, who changed into monkeys, who eventually changed into people. As one popular podcast host frequently says, “We’re all just a bunch of gorillas.”

But that, of course, is not the way that God teaches us to look at one another, and not the way that He teaches us to think about ourselves. God doesn’t just teach us in Genesis 1 and 2 that He made everything that there is, and carefully designed all of it, but that there is one thing that He made even more special than everything else. And that something is you and me. Unlike everything else in creation, the Bible tells us that God made the first man and woman in His own image and likeness. As our text says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” If we would continue on in Genesis, where God zooms in on the creation account giving even more details of how it happened, we would also learn how He carefully formed the man from the dust of the ground, breathed into His nostrils the breath of life, and took out one of his ribs in order to make the woman from it. 

And God didn’t just make the first man and woman special, He made all of us special too. As we read in Psalm 139, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

When you teach people that, in essence, we are just the same as animals, except we’ve evolved more than they have, it shouldn’t surprise you when they start behaving like animals and don’t apologize for it. When you tell people that they have the same moral accountability as a rat or a tiger, then obviously what’s going to stop them from taking zero responsibility for anything that they do wrong? How do you even know what’s right and wrong? If the entire universe is really built upon the premise of the “survival of the fittest,” then morality is just a myth. But we know that that isn’t true. You don’t need a science book to tell you that when a baby and dog are both trapped in a burning building, you save the baby. Human life matters more than animal life. They aren’t the same.

Isn’t it interesting that the theory of evolution argues for the gradual change of species overtime to perpetuate their existence, when there are many kinds of animals that we supposedly evolved from in the past that are still around today? If we humans came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys? And if monkeys came from frogs, then why are there still frogs? It doesn’t make any sense. What does make sense though is that each and every individual person that we meet is the unique creation of God in heaven, and that they bear special dignity, just by virtue of their existence. You and I are actually important.

And finally, the last reason why we Christians must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the goodness of God, the origin of sin, and whole work of our redemption. The only way that the theory of evolution works is if from the very beginning there was a possibility for the world to decay and change. Evolution requires death. It demands that things be able to die off, so that other, better things, can take their place. The entire premise of this theory is founded upon the idea that death is just the way that it’s supposed to be, and that death is built into the very fabric of the universe.

But, again, when we look at Genesis chapters 1 and 2, we see something completely different. We learn that death was not a part of God’s original design for the world. What was God’s attitude toward every single thing that He made? At the end of each day, our text tells us that He saw that it was good. And how did God feel about all of creation when He was finally done making it? At the conclusion of the sixth day, “God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” That’s what creation was like in the very beginning. It wasn’t just okay. It wasn’t just pretty good. It was very good. Things didn’t need to evolve to get better. Things we’re just right the way that they were. Who can look at something like death and say that it’s a good thing? Who can watch a loved one die, and say that it’s very good? That’s insane. But that’s what evolution requires.

Those who claim that God could have used something like evolution to bring creation into existence, end up blaming God for evil without knowing it. If God always worked through evolution, which requires death, then He would be responsible for death. God would be the very reason why death exists. But God is not the reason why death exists. Death exists because of sin. As the Bible tells us elsewhere, “death is the wages of sin.” The reason why people die, is not because death is natural, but because we bring death upon ourselves through our sin. Adam and Eve brought death into the world when they disobeyed God, and we keep the death right on going when we join them in disobey Him too.

Evolution is not just one false teaching that we can put into a corner and leave all by itself. Eventually that teaching will spread into every other part of Christian doctrine. Why would we need a Savior from sin, if there is no such thing as sin, because sin is just a social construct? Why would we need God to deliver us from death, if He is the cause of death, and death is just another part of life? Why would we need Jesus to heal this world of its brokenness, if it’s not broken, and this is the way that it’s always worked? Evolution takes away our hope. It robs us of our dignity and it undercuts our need for Christ. It makes the cross of Jesus into just another random and meaningless act, which is part of a long, long line of other random and meaningless acts.

No Christian in good conscience can accept the theory of evolution without completely undermining the Gospel. Yes, there are some questions which can be asked in good faith, some of them we can use our sanctified reason to answer, and others we may have to simply be content with the knowledge that God has given us. For example, I’ve often heard the comment from well-meaning Christians, “If the world isn’t as old as the scientists say, then why does it appear so old when we look at?” Certainly, we can recognize that God made a mature earth. He made a livable earth. Even in the creation account we hear about God making trees fully grown and rivers already flowing. When we look at the mountains and the canyons, we are seeing things that God may have made exactly that way from the beginning. Another question has to do with fossils and the existence of certain animals that we don’t see walking around anymore. As for the fossils, perhaps they could have arrived at their unique destination buried under layers of rock through some kind of catastrophic event. One time in the Bible, God flooded the entire world for 150 days. He opened up the vaults of heaven and allowed water to burst forth from the deep places of the earth. My guess is that something like that event probably led to some animals dying and being buried in some strange places. As for the animals that no longer exist, such as the so-called dinosaurs, there are plenty of animals that don’t exist anymore, some of which have died off even in our own lifetime. I heard a statistic the other day that there are more tigers in captivity in the state of Texas, then currently alive in the wild. Certain kinds of animals not being around anymore should bother us in the slightest.

These are reasonable responses to some of the questions that we might get asked as Christians who believe in Genesis 1 and 2. And yet, we should not be so naïve as to think that they will satisfy our opponents. Not matter what we say, some people are still going to think that we are simpletons and idiots for believing what the Bible says. We need to be okay with that. As Saint Paul says in Romans 3, “Let God be true though everyone were a liar.” What do we care about what other people say? We know what God’s says, and that’s all that matters. On the other hand, I don’t think that we should so quickly give into the accusation that what we believe about creation is unreasonable. What’s easy to believe, that we humans came from apes or that we are the unique creation of a loving God? If you were driving down the street and you saw an abandoned house on the side of the road, how would you assume that it got there? Is it more probable that it just popped up spontaneously, or that it morphed into a house from a tree? Or does it make more sense that someone built it? It’s the same when we look at creation. When we behold this beautiful and intricate world that we live in, how could we not believe that somebody made it?

In Genesis chapters 1 and 2 we get God’s own account of how He did it. There is so much meaning for our lives packed into these few verses. We aren’t governed by chance and everything isn’t simply utilitarian. Our existence actually matters. You and I aren’t just a clump of cells, which when broken down are no different than any other clump of cells. We have value. We have purpose. We are precious in the sight of God our Creator.

God proved how important we are to Him not only in the way that He made us, but also in the way that He redeemed us. When the second person of the Trinity entered into our world, He didn’t take on the form of a butterfly or a tree. He became a Man. The author of creation, stepped into His creation in order to heal it of its brokenness. He took on our flesh, to make up for our failures. He was born, lived, suffered, and died, to forgive us of our sins and put us back together. 

That’s how much God cares about this world. That’s how much He is involved in this world. That’s how much He loves it. And that’s how much He loves you. He made you. It didn’t happen by accident. He redeemed you. That didn’t happen by accident either. So don’t let yourself be troubled by demonic and dumb teachings like evolution. Trust in God’s Word. It isn’t just right. It’s better. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On All Saints’ Day we remember our loved ones who have died in the faith and are now in heaven with Jesus. For many of us, this is one of our favorite days of the Church Year. Even though there are many things about it that make us sad, nothing gives us more joy than to think about what Christ has promised to those who love Him. I think it is fair to say that on All Saints’ Day we get to sing some of the best hymns that have ever been written. Hymns like “Lord Thee I Love with All My Heart,” or “Behold A Host Arrayed in White,” and my own personal favorite, “For All the Saints.” On top of that, there are also these magnificent readings. Jesus’ words from Matthew chapter 5 about how despite their suffering, God’s people are truly blessed in Christ no matter what they experience in this life. Or the words of Saint John from his first epistle, and how we are God’s children now, and even though we don’t know everything about what our life will be like in eternity, we know that will be like Jesus, because we will see Him as He is. And, of course, who can forget the beautiful picture of heaven from Revelation chapter 7? The saints of God from every time and place gathered around the throne of the Lamb, free from sorrow, free from sin, free from sickness and suffering, singing praises to the Lord forever and ever.

The entire service today reminds us of what a good Lutheran funeral should be all about. It shouldn’t be about how great the person was who died, or all the things that they liked to do while they were still living. What does it matter what our favorite football team was or how many mountains we climbed when we are lying in a casket and our family and friends are standing next to us wondering what to do next? Memories, however powerful they might be, do not have the power to bring our loved ones back from the dead. And that is why they should not be the main focus of the service. Rather, a good Lutheran funeral should be about Christ. It should be about the comfort that is found only in the Word of God, and what the death and resurrection of Jesus means for those who put their trust in Him.

And so, that is what I would like to talk more about in today’s sermon. As we sing these wonderful hymns, and hear these wonderful readings, and think about the wonderful things that Christ has done for us and those we love, let us consider together the true comfort of All Saints’ Day.

The first comfort of All Saints’ Day is that everyone who has died in the faith is not truly dead, but is even now alive and with the Lord Jesus in heaven. Again, that is what we see taking place in our first reading from Revelation chapter seven. As Saint John writes, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” Who is it that Saint John is talking about in this passage? He tells us just a few verses later, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

What Saint John saw was a vision of what we call the Church Triumphant. We are the Church Militant, those Christians who are still fighting the good fight of faith in this world. The Church Triumphant are the people of God in heaven. They the baptized children of God who are now at rest from their labors. They are the saints of Jesus Christ, who were made holy not by their own strength, merit, or works, but by the precious blood of Christ. They are those who put their trust in Jesus in this life and are now with Him in eternal life.

The Word of God tells us that when a Christian dies and their soul is separated from their body, immediately, they are transported to the nearer presence of Christ and experience unending fellowship with Him and the whole company of heaven. In fact, that is what heaven is. Heaven is unending fellowship with God. It is communion with Jesus and all His saints that never comes to an end. Remember what Saint Paul says in Philippians chapter 1, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” and “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” Remember also what happened to poor Lazarus, and how the Bible tells us that when he died the angels came and carried his soul to Abraham’s side. And remember, of course, what Jesus once said to the thief on the cross, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” 

Nowadays, when people talk about heaven, they usually describe it in terms of whatever they like to do the most here on earth, especially while skipping church. “So and so” is having a great time working on their car in heaven. Or “so and so” is have a blast fishing and playing cards in heaven. But that is not what heaven is like according to the Bible. According to the Bible, heaven is unending worship. As Saint John also tells us in his vision, “Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple.” Heaven is a Church Service that lasts forever. The only difference is that unlike how things can be for us now because of our sinful nature, heaven is the kind of Church service that we won’t ever want to come to an end. 

There are a lot of questions that we Christians still have about eternal life in heaven. Will my dog be there? Will that person be there who I desperately want to be there, and if they aren’t there, will I even be aware of it? Even though God does not give us all of the answers about heaven in His Word, He does give us the one answer that we need. As Saint John writes, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Whatever heaven is like, there is nothing about it that will cause us grief. Regardless of who is there, or what is there, we will be there with Jesus, and Jesus will be enough, because Jesus is always enough. Again, that is the first comfort of All Saints’ Day. It is that everyone who has died in the faith is not truly dead, but is even now alive and with the Lord Jesus in heaven.

The second comfort of All Saints’ Day is that our loved ones who have died in faith will one day rise again from the dead and we will join them in the resurrection on the Last Day.  Sometimes people forget that heaven, or that “in between time,” when our souls are with the Lord while our bodies are buried in the ground, is not actually our final destination as Christians. As we confess every Sunday in the Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” Eternal life is not complete until we are complete. It is not truly begun until Jesus returns in glory and brings us back together as we were made to be in the first place.

Listen to how Saint Paul describes it for us in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them.” And remember what Job said in the middle of his terrible suffering, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!”

We live in a time where people have a very low view of the body, and that especially comes out when a person dies. Sometimes when a person died the body is ground up into dust and scattered into the wind as if it were being reunited with the earth like the pagans teach. Sometimes even well-meaning Christians will try and comfort others at funerals by saying that it is not really their loved one who is lying there in the casket. But if that isn’t our loved one, then who exactly is it, and why are we so sad about it? We are sad, because we know deep down that it is them. We know that our bodies are just as much a part of who we are as our souls, and that without our body, something would always be missing. We don’t just want to be with our loved ones someday spiritually. We want to be with them physically. We want to talk with them again. We want them to open their eyes and hug us with their arms. We want to hear the sound of their voice and we want to see the smile on their face.

And the Bible tells us that for those who endure in the faith until the end, we will. Again, as Saint John writes in his first epistle, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that we he appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” No, we do not know exactly what our bodies will be like in eternal life, but we do know that they will be our bodies. They will be the same bodies that we had in this life except they will be free from all of the things that made them wrong in this life. They will be free from sin. Just like Jesus is free from sin, we will be free from sin too. Just like Jesus has a body, and it is the same body that died and rose, except now it is a body that has been glorified so that is incapable of ever dying again, that is how it will be for our bodies. If there is something that is not right with our body now, it will be made right in eternity. If there something that we don’t like about our body, even if it is not something that needs to change, what will change is how we see our body. We will see it for the gift that it truly is. 

One of the things that always get asked when this topic comes up in Bible class is, “Will I be able to recognize my loved one in heaven?” While there are many questions about heaven that we do not have the answer to, that is a question that I actually think that we do. And the answer is a resounding, “yes.” When Saint John saw a vision of the Church Triumphant, he recognized people for who they were. He saw a multitude from every nation, from every tribe people and language. John saw all of our distinctiveness and everything that makes each one of us unique. John could tell who was who. On top of that, we also have the witness of Saint Peter from the mount of Transfiguration. Even though Peter had never met Moses and Elijah before in his life, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was still able to identify them by their appearance. How could we be in perfect fellowship with God and all His saints if we didn’t even know their names? No, as the Bible says, “We shall know fully, even as we are fully known.”

Again, that is the second comfort of All Saints’ Day. It is that our loved ones who have died in faith will one day rise again from the dead and we will join them in the resurrection on the Last Day.

And the last comfort of All Saints’ Day is that our loved ones who have died in the faith are with us now in the Means of Grace. Yes, the souls of our loved ones are in heaven with Jesus. And yes, the souls of our loved ones will be reunited with their bodies at the return of Jesus in glory. But let us not forget that Jesus is still with us. As Jesus promised in Matthew chapter 28, “Behold I am with you always, to very end of the age.” And because Jesus is still with us, we know that our loved ones who are with Jesus, are with us too whenever we are with Him. 

The place where we Christians have fellowship with Jesus is always in God’s Word and Sacraments. The Bible tells us that when we are baptized into Christ we put on Christ. It tells us that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ Name there He is among them. And it tells us that whenever we eat and drink the bread and wine of Communion, we are consuming the true Body and Blood of Christ. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 Saint Paul writes, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one Body for we all partake of the one bread.” I don’t know if you have ever thought about what those words means for you when you take the Lord’s Supper, but I know when I first started to think about it myself. As some of you know, my parents are both already with the Lord in heaven. When my dad died, I was very young. I don’t remember everything that happened, but I do remember what my mom told me and my brothers the first week back to church after his funeral. She said to us, “Your dad was there with us at the altar.”

Mom was right. And it was not just wishful thinking on her part. It was what the Bible teaches and what the Church has always confessed in the Liturgy. As the author of Hebrews tells us, “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” And as the pastor says right before we sing the Sanctus, it is “with angels, and archangels, and the whole company of heaven that we laud and magnify God’s glorious name.”

If you want to be close to your loved ones who have died in the faith, go to where Jesus promises to be close to you. Jesus doesn’t tell you that you get closer to Him by taking a walk in the woods or playing eighteen holes of golf. He doesn’t tell you to search for His presence hidden in your feelings or bound up to your emotions. He doesn’t tell you to look for Him in bird signs, in sunsets, or reincarnated in the form of cat. And that is not where we find our loved ones either. If they were Christians, we find them in the place where all Christians are found. We find them in Church. Again, that is the last comfort of All Saints’ Day. It is that our loved ones who have died in the faith are with us now in the Means of Grace.

There are many things about today that make us sad. But in the midst of all of that, we Christians still have comfort. We have the only comfort that matters and the only comfort that lasts. We have the comfort that comes from Christ. It is the comfort that is ours because of His death and resurrection which paid for all our sins and promises eternal life to all believers. As we remember our loved ones who have died in the faith today, let us also remember what the Word of God teaches us about them. They are with the Lord in bliss. Jesus will raise them up on the Last Day. And until then, we are united with them every time we take Communion. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.