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

When God made the heavens and the earth, He did it in a very orderly way. He didn’t just speak all of creation into existence at once. No, over the course of six literal days, step by step, part by part, He created one thing after another, and put everything into its proper place. When Jesus, who is God in the flesh, multiplied the fish and the loaves and fed four thousand people at once, He did that in a very orderly way too. Jesus didn’t just cause a meal to appear in front of the crowd or zap away their hunger in a moment. No, He made them sit down together in groups on the grass, and then with the help of His disciples, He distributed the food to them and made sure that there was more than enough for everyone.

While these two texts that we have in front of us today from Genesis chapter 2, where we hear more about creation, and Mark chapter 8, where Jesus feeds the four-thousand, both have many unique things to teach us, such as the providence of God, and the divinity of Christ, they are also excellent texts to remind us of the simple but often neglected point that our God is a God of order. As Saint Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, “For our God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”

So, in this morning’s sermon, as we consider this simple but essential truth found in both of our readings, that our God is a God of order, let us unpack it together by answering the following questions: What is the order of creation, and why is upholding that order so vitally important for us to do?

We’ll start by explaining a little bit more about what the order of creation actually is. Again, the order of the creation is simply the teaching from God’s Word that our Father in heaven has designed His creation to work in a very specific way, where each part of it has its own unique role and purpose. While we see this being taught all over the place in the Scriptures, it is especially obvious when we read Genesis chapters 1 and 2. As we heard in our Old Testament lesson today, God carefully and deliberately made a mature and livable world, and then when He was done with that, He formed the first man, Adam, and put him in the middle of the garden of Eden in order to take care of it. The garden, we learn, wasn’t haphazardly thrown together, but carefully designed. It had a river which flowed through the center of it to water the ground, and it had multiple trees placed at different locations, some of which were for eating food, and one of which was so that Adam could exercise his faith in God by being obedient to His Word and staying away from it. If we continued on in Genesis chapter 2, we would also hear about the creation of Eve, and how God eventually made a helper for Adam, because there was no one in the world that was capable of complimenting him as a suitable spouse.

From these little details, God intends to remind us that everything in creation, including us, has its own purpose and function which Him Himself has assigned. Besides there being order in the world in general, where the stars stay in the sky, the water collects in the oceans, and the plants produce their own kinds of fruit, there is also order among God’s most important creation too. There is order within humanity. Not only did God create men and women separately and uniquely, literally giving them different body parts and abilities, but even among men and women, God makes even more distinctions. If you remember from Confirmation class, this is what we learn about in that often-forgotten part of the Catechism called the “Table of Duties.” That’s the place where Martin Luther just lists off all the Bible passages that deal with who should do what depending on what their vocation is. As Luther reminds us, there are three separate estates in which all people exist at once. There is the nation, the church, and the home. All of us live under a government. All of us belong to a family. And all of us through faith in Christ are part of the Church. And within these three separate estates, everybody has something different to do and to contribute.

For example, in the state God tells rulers and bosses to carry out their oversight with justice and fairness, and He tells those under their authority to be obedient to them and respect them. That’s Romans chapter 13, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” Likewise, in the home God tells parents to raise up their children in the faith, and kids to honor their mom and dad and do what they say. That’s the Fourth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.” God also tells husbands to protect and provide for their wives and families, and for wives to be submissive to their husbands and let them do the leading. That’s Ephesians chapter 5, “Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church, and wives submit to your husbands.” And finally, in the Church, God tells pastors to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments, and for those in the congregation to listen to them and support them while they do it. That’s Galatians chapter 6, “Anyone who receives instruction in the Word must share all good things with his instructor.”

It's impossible to read the Bible as the literal Word of God, which it is, and not recognize that God always does things in an orderly way. From the very beginning of creation, even to how His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ carried out His miracles, there is order and intentionality to everything. That’s what the Biblical doctrine of the order of creation is all about. It about recognizing that God has designed people and things in certain ways, for certain purposes, and that we all have our own unique responsibilities and duties.

So, in the next place then, why is upholding this particular truth so vitally important for us to do? The first and most obvious reason why it’s so important for us to uphold God’s created order, and be intentional about trying to live according to His design for the world, is because God’s created order is under attack. Of all the teachings in the Bible that people in our time do not want to listen to, what God’s Word says about the order of creation has to be at the very top of the list.

And to prove that point I’m simply going to read some passages from the Bible that are about the order of creation and I want you to think about how they make you feel when you hear them. Here’s one is from Ephesians chapters 6, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, as if you were serving the Lord, not people.” Or how about this one from 1 Timothy chapter 2, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Or what about this one from Titus chapter 2, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanders or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, submissive to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled.”

These are just a few of the passages from God’s Word where the Holy Spirit gives us very clear instructions about how we are to live within God’s created order. Some of these verses are literally in the Small Catechism. And yet, how are many of these verses often received by those who hear them? We know how they are received by those in the world around us, but how are they received by you? Does what the Bible says in these places make you angry? Does it embarrass you or make you feel ashamed? Before you make up your mind, remember what Jesus in Luke chapter 9. He says, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My Words, of Him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory.” God’s Word should never embarrass us. It should never make us ashamed. And if it does, then we should repent. We should ask God to forgive us for caring more about what the world thinks than what He thinks, and we should ask for His help to do better at honoring His ways in the future.

Besides the fact that God’s created order is under attack, another reason why it’s so vitally important for us to defend it is because whenever we disregard it, it never leads to anything good. Whenever we ignore it, people always get hurt. Just look at what happened with Adam and Eve. When Adam stepped outside of God’s created order and relinquished his role as the teacher of the home to Eve by listening to her voice instead of God’s, he brought sin into the world, and plunged all of creation into ruin and destruction. That’s what happened the first time that God’s order was rejected, and that’s what happens every time God’s order is rejected today too. The sin keeps on going.

You can’t disrupt the way that God made the world to work and expect it not to lead to suffering. Just like you can’t take a fish out of the water and put in on the land, and expect it not to die, or throw an elephant in the middle of the ocean, and expect it not to drown, you can’t confuse the roles of men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents, pastors and parishioners without it having negative consequences. You can’t take a mother away from her new born baby on purpose without it harming the baby. You can’t put a woman in the pulpit, where the Word of God is authoritatively taught, or in the lectern, where the Word of God is authoritatively read, without it hurting the faith of those who hear God’s Word. You can’t have men refuse to lead and provide for their families without it destroying a civilization. Even unbelievers can sometimes recognize that confusing God’s created order, can have disastrous effects on society. When a man pretends to be a girl so that he can enter into a boxing match against a young lady with half his strength and speed, what do you think is going to happen? Be we shouldn’t just care about our precious sports. We should care about our families, our country, and our congregations. We should care about people’s souls. 

Do you what the statistics say happens when a father abandons his God given role as the head of the household and refuses to take his kids to church? When only mom goes to church with her kids, and thanks be to God when she does that, still, the likelihood of the children remaining in the pew when they are adults goes down to 15 percent. But when dads bring the family, it goes up to 85. There are studies upon studies that show us that little children in their formative years are far better off being taken care of by their mothers at home than being pawed off to someone else so that they can immediately go back to work and climb the corporate ladder. Think about what has taken place in every one of those church bodies that have disregarded God’s clear Word and embraced such things as women’s ordination. Now all of them openly support all kinds of activities and lifestyles that the Bible calls sinful. That is because there is an intimate connection between each and every doctrine taught in the Scriptures and none of them stand in isolation to one another.

In the end, the ultimate reason why we should strive to uphold God’s created order and defend every passage that teaches us how men and women, husbands and wives, parents, children, and workers are supposed to live is because everything in God’s Word points us to Christ. That’s what the order is all about. The order of creation serves the order of redemption. It reminds us of the saving work of Jesus, and it gives us a picture of the Gospel. Remember, for example, what Saint Paul tells us about marriage and why husbands should love their wives and wives should submit to their husbands. He says in Ephesians chapter 5, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.” And what about our Epistle reading today from Roman chapter 6? There the Holy Spirit reminds us how not even being a slave is something to despair over because we are first and foremost salves to God. No matter who we serve in this life, we already have a kind and good master who always takes care of us and always give us exactly what we need. We know that because He has given us the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In John chapter 5, Jesus tells us, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have enteral life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” That’s what the Bible does. That’s what every text of sacred Scripture in some way or another is intended to do. God gave it to us to lead us to Jesus. God made the world the way that He did, and explained it for us in the Bible, so that we when our eyes are opened by the Holy Spirit through faith, we can see the love of Jesus and His work everywhere that we look. 

Defending what God’s Word says about government, marriage, family, and the roles of men and women, is not just about defending those things, it is about defending the main thing too. When what the Bible says about creation is rejected, eventually what it says about salvation will be rejected too. When people learn, for example, that being submissive is a bad thing, and that you should never submit yourself to anyone, eventually they won’t even want to submit themselves to Jesus either. But submitting to Jesus is the most wonderful thing that there is. Submitting to Him means receiving from Him the forgiveness of your sins.

The reason why we don’t have women pastors in our Church is not because men are better than women. It’s because Jesus is not a woman. Jesus is a man. And when the called and ordained servant of Christ speaks on His behalf to the congregation, when He represents Christ in the Office of the Ministry, God doesn’t want us to be thinking about anyone but Christ. He wants us to be thinking about the Head of the Church, the Bridegroom of the Bride, who laid down His life to redeem us.

Dear brother and sisters in Christ, our God is a God of order. He designed the world to work in a very orderly way. Just like he put the stars in the sky, the fish in the sea, and the birds in air, he has set all of us in different places too. Some of us are fathers. Some of us are mothers. Some of us are children. Some of us are husbands, wives, workers, pastors, and parishioners. Jesus gives us our different stations in life not in order to serve ourselves, but in order to serve our neighbor. He calls upon us to embrace our God-given roles so that the Word of God itself would not be despised, but so that others, including ourselves, would be led all the more to Him. Just like Jesus had the crowds sit down on the grass and wait their turn to eat the bread and fish that only He could give, our Lord promises to bless us, take care of us, and forgiven us whenever we wait upon Him and His Word.

So, let us pray: “Order my footsteps by Thy Word and make my heart sincere; let sin have no dominion, Lord. But keep my conscience clear.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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

Even though Jesus Christ came to usher in a glorious, eternal, and heavenly kingdom, when we look more closely at the Scriptures, we soon find out that not just anyone or everyone enters it. No, that privilege, we learn, is reserved only for the righteous. As we read very clearly in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Likewise, there is also what we see happening with the sheep and the goats on Judgment Day. In that account, where Christ gives out the inheritance of His Kingdom at the end of the world, our Lord tells us plainly that some “will go into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” And finally, there are also the words of Jesus in our Gospel lesson today from Matthew chapter 5. After explaining how He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, Jesus reminds us how “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God.”

So, given the fact that not everyone enters into God’s Kingdom, but that this privileged is reserved only for those with a certain kind of righteousness, let us consider together in this morning’s sermon what kind of righteousness that is, and how a person gets it.

First, what kind of righteousness is required to enter the Kingdom of God? The unanimous answer given to us by the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures is that in order to enter the Kingdom of God we need to have not just any kind of righteousness but a perfect righteousness. Again, as our Lord tells us in our reading today, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God.” While this statement may not sound shocking to us as twenty-first century Christians, since through reading the Bible, we have come to know the scribes and Pharisees as the hypocritical sinners that they were, it’s important for us to remember that this is not actually how people would have seen them during the time of the New Testament.

In fact, the opposite was true. Far from being the villains, these men would have been known as the “good guys.” The Pharisees were the ones who read their Bibles every day and never missed a Church service. They were ones who kept themselves free from gross immorality and never did anything that was blatantly wrong. Remember what we learn about one of the Pharisees from the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in the temple? That man fasted twice a week. He never had an affair. He never killed anyone. He never stole anyone’s money. Not only did the Pharisee tithe what he was supposed to, but he went above and beyond what God even said, giving ten percent of literally everything that he had to the Church. Or think about what Saint Paul once said about himself when he used to live as a Pharisee. As he writes in Philippians chapter 3, “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more; circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law a pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” There is no one who would have looked more outwardly righteous than the scribes and Pharisees did.

So, when Jesus tells us in our reading today that we need to have a better righteousness than them in order to enter the Kingdom of God, that statement would have been devastating to those who heard it. How could anyone live as good of a life as the Pharisees lived? How could anyone do as many “good works” as they seemed to be doing on a daily basis? How could anyone be as innocent of as many sins as it looked like they were? It would be impossible. And that is the point that Jesus is trying to make. He is trying to show us that the righteousness that we need to go heaven is not just a pretty good righteousness that looks nice on the outside, like the Pharisees did, but a perfect righteousness that is completely clean on the inside. It’s not just your hands that need to be free from sin, your heart has to be free from it too. As Jesus goes on to explain in the second half of our text, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Being righteous in the sight of God, or having the kind of righteousness required to enter into His Kingdom, means much more than simply looking righteous in the eyes of men. God sees beyond what men see. God sees right into the heart. God knows what the motivation is for the things that we do, even if no one else does. God knows what terrible things sometimes pass through our minds even if we never say them out loud. And God is not satisfied by our behavior just because other people might be.  God demands perfection in thought, word, and deed. As Jesus also tells us later on in Matthew’s gospel, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That is the kind of righteousness that is required to enter into God’s Kingdom. We need a perfect righteousness.

So how then do we get it? How do we get that perfect righteousness that is required enter the Kingdom of God? For starters, it should go without saying, even though it needs to be said over and over again, that we cannot get this kind of righteousness simply by the things that we do. It does not come from our own good works. Listen again to what Jesus says in our reading will happen to those who try and pay back God on their own for all the sinful things that they have done. He says, “Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.” If we try to earn a place in God’s Kingdom through our own acts of righteousness, we will never be able to get there. If we try to work our way out of hell by doing things that we think please God and merit His favor, we will only condemn ourselves even more in the process.

The reason why it is impossible for us to obtain the perfect righteousness required to enter God’s kingdom by the things that we do is not only because we have already done things that are wrong and committed enumerable sins against the Lord, so many, in fact, that as the Psalmist reminds us it’s impossible for us to even discern all of them, but also because even when we did do things that appeared to be right, often times our motivations were not. Yes, we may have gotten up in the middle of the night to change the baby’s diaper, but part of us wished that someone else would get up and do it for us instead. Yes, we may have listened to our parents and taken out the trash when they asked us to, but did we always do it joyfully, or did we sometimes do it only because we didn’t want to get in trouble for not doing it? And yes, we may have helped our neighbors in need and went out of our way to take care of them when they were in trouble, but how would we feel if they never said, “thank you?” What would our reaction be if sometime later on in the future we needed their help and they refused to return the favor? We know how we would feel then. We would feel angry. And our anger would reveal that we were not entirely innocent. As Jesus says, our anger would make us liable to God’s judgment.

The best place to look if you want to know what most people think about good works is to a funeral for someone who wasn’t a Christian. Even if they never admitted it out loud, as soon as someone dies who was outside of the Faith, often times people start talking about all of the wonderful things that they did, and how because of those things, the person who died must be in a better place now. But that is the most abominable false teaching that there is. And that completely disregards the Word of Jesus and the central message of the Scriptures.

According to the Bible, there is not a single person on this earth who has the kind righteousness required to enter the kingdom of God on their own. As we read in Romans chapter 3, “No one is righteous, no not one.” Furthermore, God’s Word teaches us that even our most righteous deeds are still not enough to remove our sin and pay God back for all the evil that we have done against Him by breaking His Law. As the prophet Isaiah reminds us, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” That’s what God thinks of our so-called “good works” when we try to give them to Him as restitution for our sins. That’s what it’s like to try and work your way into His Kingdom. It’s like handing God a pile of used toilet paper and expecting Him to be impressed with it.

No, the answer to how we get the kind of righteousness required to enter God’s Kingdom is not found in our own works, but only in the works of another. It is found only in the work of Jesus. That’s where we find perfect righteousness. That’s exactly what our Lord came down from heaven to do. The Second Person of the Trinity did not become a man in order to show us how to become righteous by the things that we do. he became a man to give us His own righteousness as a gift. What did Jesus say at the beginning of our reading today from Matthew chapter 5? He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Jesus came to fulfill the law. He came to keep all of God’s commandments in our place, down to the smallest letter, and then to suffer and die for the full cost of our sins so that none of those sins could keep us out of heaven. Remember what Jesus once said to John the Baptist when John would have prevented Him from being baptized? Our Lord replied, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” From His Baptism in the Jordan river, to His Baptism in blood on the cross, everything that Jesus did, He did so that we could have the rightlessness necessary to enter the Kingdom of God. As Saint Paul writes so clearly in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” And as He also says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, “because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

Jesus Christ is our righteous. He alone has the righteousness that we need to enter the Kingdom of God and we receive that righteous from Him as a gift through faith alone. We receive it simply when we believe the Gospel promise that all of the things that Jesus did, He did for us. His keeping of the law, His death on the cross, His resurrection from the tomb, every miracle and every sign, Jesus did all of it so that through trusting in Him we could have something that was otherwise impossible. We could have the perfect righteousness needed to enter God’s Kingdom. Just listen to how many passages from the Bible teach us that we are righteous in the eyes of God through faith alone and not our works:

Romans 4:5, “And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”

Romans 10:4, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

Titus 3:5, “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”

Romans 1:17, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Philippians 3:9 “[So that I may be] found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

Romans 4:3, “Abraham believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness.”

And Romans 3:21, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

That’s how a person gets the perfect righteous needed to enter into God’s Kingdom and be saved. It isn’t through doing a bunch of righteous deeds. It is through trusting in the righteousness of Christ. We don’t have any righteousness of our own. It may look like we do sometimes on the outside, but God knows what is going on on the inside. And yet, even though we don’t have the perfect righteousness that we need to go to heaven, Jesus does. And Jesus gives it to us as a gift. He takes all of His law keeping, and all of His suffering for our law breaking, and He gives us the credit for it through faith alone. When we forsake ourselves and our own works, and rely instead on the work of the Lord in our place, then, and only then, do we have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Then, and only then, do we have the promise that no matter how unrighteous we have been, someday we will be called great in the Kingdom of God. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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

The miracle of the great catch of fish recorded for us in Luke chapter 5 is all about the work of the Church and the Office of the Ministry. Jesus uses the illustration of fishing to explain to us what our mission is as the people of God and how He wants us to go about doing it. The overarching point of the text is that everything depends upon God’s Word. So, what I want to do in today’s sermon is threefold. First, I want to briefly reflect on some of the challenges that we are facing in the Church today. Next, I want to respond to some of the popular ways that other people have tried to address those challenges in the past. And finally, I want to walk through how this text teaches us to deal with our problems in the Church in a God-pleasing way.

The most obvious challenge that we face in the Church today is really the same kind of challenge that Saint Peter faced when he spent the whole night fishing and didn’t catch anything at all. It’s no secret that for the last several decades now, Church attendance has been in a sharp decline with no visible end in sight. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the Lutherans, the Catholics, or the Baptists, everyone is losing members all across the board. Some statistics estimate that from 1970 to 2010, so in the span of just 40 years, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod had a membership drop of almost half a million people. To put that in perspective, there are only around two million members of the LCMS in total. And none of that, of course, accounts for the fact that often times people remain on the rolls at a given church even if they haven’t stepped foot inside the building for years. When we look back at pictures of old Confirmation classes and compare those to the ones from today, it’s hard not to notice the difference. 

Now, obviously it is not a bad thing to want your Church to be filled and to be sad when it isn’t. We Christians should always want as many people to be saved as possible. But we also need to be careful that in the midst of our good intentions, we don’t lose sight of way in which growth in the Church actually happens. Part of the reason why it is so important for us to be honest about the problems that we face in the Church today is because whenever we encounter problems of any kind, there will always be those around us who offer up solutions to them, and not all of those solutions are necessarily good. In fact, some of those solutions are not solutions at all, but part of the problem itself, and just end making things even worse than they were to begin with.

One such “solution” to the problem of declining Church attendance that was very popular in the recent past, the remnants of which are still around today, was the so-called “Church Growth Movement.” The Church Growth Movement was a philosophy that developed in the latter half of the twentieth century in response to shrinking churches. Proponents of this movement recognized that more and more people had stopped coming to Church. So, in an attempt to deal with this problem, they applied marketing strategies used in the business world in order to try and make the Church to grow. Often times, those strategies were veiled in religious sounding language and then pawned off as spiritual principles. For example, one of the main principles of the Church Growth Movement was something called the “felt-needs” principle. Basically, the “felt-needs” principle suggested that whatever non-church going people said that they were looking for in a church, whatever they felt that they needed, the Church was supposed to give it to them if they wanted to succeed and grow. 

Not only did the self-proclaimed experts of the Church Growth Movement say that Christianity would never survive and thrive if the felt-needs principle was not met, but they also said that things like doctrine and liturgy would only get in the way of that happening. Since many people often complain about how boring traditional church services are to them, the Church Growth advocates said that church services needed to fundamentally change. Instead of teaching the mysteries of the Faith and delivering solid Biblical teaching through time-tested hymns and centuries old orders of worship, these religious entrepreneurs emphasized things like entertaining messages about daily living and achieving your own personal goals. They advocated for music that resembled the culture’s music instead of that of the historic Church. And they stressed an overall informal and casual atmosphere in the service. The focus in many churches became more about what the worshiper felt, instead of what God had to say in the Bible. If a person felt good when they left Church, that service was said to be successful. And if they didn’t feel good, or if they didn’t feel anything at all, then it was said to be a failure.

The felt needs principle of the Church Growth Movement has been around now for more fifty years. Clearly, as the numbers themselves even show, it has come up empty in its promises to grow the Church. But even if it had led to greater Church attendance, which isn’t the same thing as real Church growth, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It wouldn’t have mattered because the Church Growth Movement was wrong. We are not called to conform ourselves or the Church’s teaching and practice to our own felt needs. We are called to conform our entire lives to the Word of God. It doesn’t matter how many people are sitting in the pews on Sunday morning.  That is not necessary an indicator that what we are doing is right. Only eight people went into the Ark before God flooded the earth and destroyed it in the days of Noah. There were only a few thousand faithful people left in all of Israel during the time of Elijah who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Does that mean that those men were failures? Does that mean that they weren’t doing the right thing? Of course, not! Because true growth in the Church is not an achievement of our own making. It is gift that comes from God. It is a gift that the Holy Spirit gives when He works faith in the hearts of people through His Word. Remember what Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter three, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Being faithful is always more important than the numbers.

Just think about what we heard in our Gospel lesson for today from Luke chapter 5. No doubt, Simon Peter knew a lot about fishing. Peter had been a professional fisherman for his entire life. He had a very good idea where the fish were supposed to be and what you had to do to catch them. His experience and His reason told him that the best time for fishing with a net was not in the middle of the day, and it certainly wasn’t in deep water. But nevertheless, when Jesus told Peter to let down the nets once more, after a whole night of catching nothing, Peter replied by saying, “At your word, I will let down the net.” Instead of doing what he thought would work, Peter did what God said. Instead of listening to his heart, or submitting himself to his own ideas and opinions, Peter submitted himself to God’s Word. And we need to do the same thing today. We are called as God’s children always to believe and act according to the Words of Jesus.  It is at His Word, and His Word alone, that we take our orders. We submit ourselves to what our Lord tells us, even if it stands in contradiction to our experience, our reason, or our feelings. No matter what Jesus says, even if doesn’t appear to be working, we are called to listen to it, and to receive it in faith.

God speaks to us not through the felt needs of our own sinful hearts, but through the infallible and inerrant Words of the Bible. The Bible tells us that the way that you make disciples is by baptizing and teaching. It tells us to preach the Word in season and out of season, meaning whether people like it or not. It tells pastors to hold fast to the doctrine of the Scriptures for in doing so they will save both themselves and their hearers. The Bible tells us do those things and not worry about anything else, because it is only through those things that the net of salvation is let down into the water of this world and sinful fish are drawn up and saved. That is how God catches sinners and declares them saints. That is how the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. That is how God gives growth in His Kingdom. He doesn’t do it through gimmicks, tricks, and marketing strategies. He does it through the pure preaching and teaching of His Word.

The proponents of the Church Growth Movement promote the problem and call it the cure. The problem is not with things like doctrine and liturgy. The problem is that people are ignorant of Christian doctrine and they don’t realize what is happening in the liturgy. And because they don’t know the basics of the Christian faith and have never even tried to understand what is going on in the historic church service, they don’t know what they need, and they don’t seek it out. 

God’s Word teaches us that our felt needs are not necessarily the same thing as our real needs. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 15 that is it out of our heart that comes all kinds of sinful desires. We read in Jeremiah chapter 17 that the heart is deceitful above all things. And just look again at what happened to Saint Peter in our Gospel lesson. When Saint Peter realized that he was in the presence of the living God, he was terrified and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Peter knew that he was a sinner and that he deserved punishment for his sins. Peter could feel his sins in his conscience. And when Peter thought that he was going to die, Peter was afraid of what his sins might mean for him. So, in response, Peter did what he felt was best and told Jesus to go away from him.

But that, of course, is where Saint Peter’s felt needs did not match up with his real needs. Yes, part of what Peter felt was right. His sins were real and it is unsafe for sinners to be in the presence of a sinless God. But Peter’s response to his sins was not right. What Peter needed in that moment was not for Jesus to go away from him, but for Jesus to stay with Him. It was not for Jesus to forget about him, and leave him alone. It was for Jesus to stay with Him and save Him. And that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus did not abandon Peter to deal with his sins by himself. Jesus did not forsake Peter to sink in the boat and drown along with his guilt and shame. Instead, Jesus said to him, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” Jesus told Peter not to be afraid, because there wasn’t anything for him to be afraid of anymore at all. Since Jesus had come to die for Saint Peter’s sins, his sins could no longer condemn him.

What we feel or don’t feel at a given time does not change the Church’s Mission. No matter what is going on in our life, what we need the most is the exact same thing that Saint Peter needed. We need to hear God’s Word of Law and Gospel. We need to be shown our sins, and then be absolved of them for when we repent. We need to confess our wretchedness to the Lord and then receive from Him His cleansing forgiveness. We need to stay with Jesus in the boat of His Church so that He can save us from ourselves. We need the humble gifts of God’s Word and Sacraments over and over and over again. That is our greatest need. And so, that is what the Church is called to do. 

The Church does not adopt the standards of the world to market what she has. She preaches Christ crucified. She preaches a Law that condemns everyone and a Gospel that excludes no one. She names sins by name and tells people to turn away from them. And then, when they do, She assures them that there is forgiveness to be found in Jesus. Everything that we do in Church, from the sermons that our pastors preach, to the songs that we sing, to the way in which we move and act, all of those things need to point us to Christ and away from ourselves.

Sometimes it feels as if what we are doing in Church is not working. Sometimes it feels as if we have been laboring all night and the catch is small and insignificant. But when that happens, Christ our Lord speaks His Word to us again. He says to us what He once said to Saint Peter, “Let down your nets for a catch.” Do not stop preaching and teaching God’s Word. Do not stop insisting on pure doctrine and rightly applying the Law and Gospel. Do not stop doing devotions with your kids and making them memorize the Catechism. Do not stop singing good hymns that actually teach the Faith and don’t ever get bored with following the Liturgy. Keep on letting let down the nets of God’s Word and they will not come back empty. For that is something that God promises us in His Word too. Remember the picture of heaven that we get from Revelation chapter 7, “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.” Even if the catch doesn’t seem that big to us now, on the Last Day we won’t even be able to count it.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, at the end of our reading today our text tells us that when the disciples brought their boats back to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus. What this means is not that all of us must take a vow of poverty in order to be Christians as some other churches falsely claim. But rather, it is yet another reminder that our Lord Jesus Christ and His Word must always come first. God’s Word is more precious than all of stuff that we have. God’s Word forgives us of our sins and makes us spiritually wealthy, even if we are physically poor. Through faith in God’s Word, we possess all the treasures of heaven. And through His Word, Jesus will sustain His Church until the end of time. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.