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

Many times throughout the Scriptures the Holy Spirit records for us true events that also have deeper spiritual meanings. For example, in his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul explains how the Old Testament account of Sarah and Hagar, while being entirely real, and historically accurate, also serves as a picture, or an analogy, of the Law and the Gospel. He writes, “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born though promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants.”

This is also the sort of thing we see taking place with the Passover Lamb, Jonah and the whale, and Noah’s Ark. Again, while all of these events truly did happen in the exact way that the Bible tells us, God also uses them for certain purposes. They’re not just a bunch of history lessons like George Washington crossing the Delaware river. Rather, within the details of these accounts, God reinforces His doctrine and teaching. He uses the stories to reveal to us Divine truths. Now, besides the ones that I already mentioned, another excellent example of this is what we see taking place in our Gospel lesson today from Luke chapter 18 with the healing of the blind man. In fact, in this one short passage from God’s Word, our Lord summarizes for us all of the basic doctrines of the Scriptures.

The account begins with a blind man sitting on the side of the road begging for help. This is a description of our spiritual condition prior to conversion. It’s what all people, including ourselves, look like without Jesus. According to our nature, that is, according to the way that we are from birth, we are spiritually helpless. Just like the man in our reading who suffered from physical blindness, we are blind too. Except our blindness is far worse. Instead of not being able to see earthly things such as shapes or colors, we are unable to see heavenly things. We lack true fear, love, and trust in God and His Word, and we can’t do anything to change that on our own. In fact, the state of our spiritual condition is so fallen and so corrupt that not only are we incapable of doing the things that make God happy, we don’t even want to. We actively fight against the Lord, and are completely delusional to the reality of what’s going on. We don’t even realize that we’re His enemy. That’s how black the darkness is.

As Saint Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” This passage, along with the analogy provided by the blind man in Luke chapter 18, depict for us what’s called the doctrine of original sin. 

Sometimes people talk about sin just in terms of the bad things that we say and do. And even though that’s part of what sin is, the Bible also tells us that the extent of our sin is much worse. It’s not just about bad behavior or bad actions, it’s about having a bad heart. Every single one of us, from the moment of our conception, has inherited from our first parents the same wicked heart. That’s why we call it original sin. Because we can trace it back to that first sin, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sin entered the world. From that day forward, all creation, including humanity, has been corrupted by a spiritual disease that leaves us completely unable to save ourselves. Just like the blind man in our reading, by nature, we are sitting on the side of the road in complete and total darkness.

But what happens next in the story? Jesus comes along and He gives the man healing. This part of the text is obviously intended to reminds us of the doctrine of grace alone. We aren’t saved by the things that we do, we are saved solely through the work of Christ. Jesus comes to us in our state of spiritual blindness, and He restores us to spiritual sight. He does that in the first place by taking our darkness into Himself and overcoming it. That’s exactly what Jesus predicted would happen in the first half of our reading. He said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For He will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” Remember what literally happened to Jesus at the moment He was being crucified and these words were being fulfilled? The Bible tells us that during the middle of the day, there was darkness over whole region. That’s because Christ is the Light of the world, and through His death on the cross, He brings salvation and healing for all people.  

The only way to be saved is through the merit and mediation of Jesus Christ alone. Again, consider the details of our reading today. When the blind man heard about Jesus, and cried out to Him for help, what did some of the other people around him do? They told him to be quiet and tried to get him to shut up. They worked very hard to separate him from Christ and keep him from coming into contact with his Savior. This same thing happens to us because we live in a sinful world. There are many voices around us that work very hard to try and push us away from the Lord. Some of those voices do so by telling us that there are other paths to heaven, and that it doesn’t have to be through Jesus alone. But that isn’t true. Every other supposed path, whether that is by trusting in a different god, or trusting in your own works, will eventually lead you to hell. As Jesus Himself says in John chapter 14, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.”

But in addition to the voices that we hear outside of us, pressuring us to stay away from Christ, and find salvation somewhere else, more often than not, the loudest voice comes from within. There are the feelings of unworthiness and guilt that can try and silence us from seeking out the Lord’s help because we know we don’t deserve it. When then happens, though, we should ignore those voices and not listen to them. We should do what the blind man did in our text, and cry out to Jesus all the more. We should be reassured that He is a merciful and loving God, who does not desire the death of the wicked, but wants nothing more than to hear the pleas of the repentant, and forgive them and make them whole.

How do we receive the salvation and healing that comes from Jesus? We receive it in the same way that blind man received his sight in our text. We receive it through faith alone. As Jesus said in our reading, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” The way that we get all of the forgiveness, and all of the cleansing, that Jesus gained for us when He suffered and died for us on the cross is by believing His Word. It is through trusting in the promise of the Gospel, which tells us that for Christ’s sake all of our sins have been forgiven. 

Even though Jesus didn’t do it here in this text, the other time that he healed a blind man, He did it by spitting in the dirt, and putting mud on his eyes. This reminds us that God gives us His salvation through means. Jesus uses common and mundane looking things to bring to us the extraordinary gift of His forgiveness so we can trust in it and know that it’s for us. He does it through His Word and Sacraments. Speaking of people getting healed from blindness, do you remember what we’re told about the apostle Paul from the book of Acts when he got healed from blindness? It says that when he heard the preaching of Ananias something like scales fell off his eyes, and he was baptized immediately. Well, that’s exactly what happens in our Baptism too. When we are washed with water and the Word, God cleanses us from our sins and makes us see again. He fills us with the Holy Spirit, so that we recover our spiritual sight. We get healed from blindness, just like the man in our reading did.

And the last basic teaching of God’s Word that the story of the blind man reinforces for us is the doctrine of sanctification. What do we do after Jesus gives us healing? Do we just go back to our old way of life and keep on doing the same sinful things that we did before? No, we do what the blind man did in our text and we follow after Christ, glorifying God with our lives. Once we are given eyes to see things clearly, we use them to walk with our Savior in obedience and holy living. 

Going back to your sin, and doing the same sinful thing again on purpose, after receiving God’s forgiveness would be like if the blind man went back to begging on side of the road after he got healed. Or, to use a more graphic example from the Bible, such as the one that Saint Peter uses in his epistle, it’s like a dog returning to its vomit. Yes, it’s true that even after our conversion we continue to fall into sin repeatedly. Our sinful nature does not go away entirely when we come to faith, but now exists at the same time alongside the New Man. We are engaged in on ongoing struggle internally over who gets to be in charge. But if our attitude towards our sin becomes one of apathy and tolerance, then the Bible warns that we become entangled by it just like we were before. As Saint John warns us in 1 John 3, “If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” Taking a stroll in the darkness is not the same thing as stumbling through it. Committing sins in weakness is much different than willfully sinning on purpose and deliberately choosing to do what you know it wrong. One of them is inevitable, the other one pushes away the Holy Spirit.

Instead, the Scriptures admonish us put our sins to death through daily contrition and repentance. That means that if we find ourselves doing something that God’s Word says is sinful, and our sin is brought to light, we need to stop doing it immediately and run to Christ for forgiveness. We should keep on doing that as many times as it needs to be done, and the Lord will restore us and receive us back every time we do. Sanctification is just as much about going to God continually to get His forgiveness as it is trying to keep God’s Law and do the things that He commands. Both of them are in included together it what it means to walk with Christ like the blind man did. 

Again, many times in the Bible God uses real life stories to communicate to us Divine truths. As Saint Paul writes in Ephesians chapter five, “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” That’s the entire story of the blind man from Luke chapter 18, and that’s your story too. You were blind also. Dead in your sins and trespasses, separated from God and any hope of salvation. Wallowing in complete and total darkness. But the Lord Jesus sought you out, found you, and gave you healing. He suffered for your sins on the cross, and then in your Baptism He gave you His forgiveness and caused the scales to fall off your eyes. He restored you to sight, and now He calls you to use that sight to follow Him. To walk as a child of the Light and honor Him in the way that you live. That way others can see the glory of His Light reflecting off you, and be brought into that Light themselves. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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

One of the main themes for this Sunday in the Church Year, called Sexagesima, because we’re 60 days away from Easter, is the power and effectiveness of God’s Word. In our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah chapter 55, a very famous passage, Isaiah compares God’s Word to the rain and the snow that come down from heaven and water the earth. He writes, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” These verses show us several important things about God’s Word and what our attitude should be towards it as Christians.

First, they make it very obvious that the Word of God itself is the only thing that causes growth in His Kingdom, so we should focus our attention on preaching and teaching it faithfully, and not be concerned with anything else.

Sometimes in the Church, especially when we aren’t seeing as much numerical growth as we have at other times in the past, people can start to become restless. They can begin to think that we must be doing something wrong, or that something needs to change dramatically. In the worst possible cases, congregations and pastors are tempted to stop saying certain things from the Bible that others find offensive, and only talk about the stuff that they like. Topics such as sin, and especially popular sins, get brushed under the rug to make others who are doing those things feel more comfortable.

But that’s not how God says He gives growth in His Church. It doesn’t happen through withholding the teachings of the Scriptures, or putting less attention on them, it happens through proclaiming them more and more. Image what would happen if a farmer tried to get his crops to grow by not watering them on purpose. That wouldn’t make any sense! It would kill the crops and do the exact opposite thing that he wanted. And that’s what always happens whenever a church refuses to say what God’s Word says on certain subjects, and shies away from proclaiming the whole counsel of God. Even if it results in greater attendance at their services, that doesn’t necessarily equate to true growth in the eyes of the Lord.

During the time of Elijah there were more people in Israel who worshiped Baal than worshiped the one true God. Well, so what? Did that mean that the Baal worshipers were right because they had more people who came to their church on Sunday’s? Of course, not! And we should not be concerned if not as many people are at our church either. What we should care about it is whether or not we are being faithful to God’s Word. Are we doing the things that the Bible says, and putting the teachings of the Scriptures at the front and center of everything that we do, or are we not? That’s the only thing that matters, because that’s the only way that God gives true growth in His Church.

In fact, every error that has to do with growing the Church, always comes back to same error of not having enough faith in the Word of God. All of it stems from the false belief that we can make things better through our own striving and efforts apart from the ways that the Lord chooses to work. If we just have more fun programs, or do this or that new thing in worship, then our congregation will be bursting at the seams. But that’s not what the Bible tells us. Instead, it teaches us that the Holy Spirit grows the Church, and that He does it through the faithful preaching and teaching of God’s Word alone.  As Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” 

We don’t need to, nor can we, do anything to make God’s Word more effective and powerful than it already is by itself. If we try, what will happen is that we will obscure God’s Word and hinder it in the process. All that we are called to do is speak it and trust in it. As Paul also says, “Preach the Word in season and out of season,” meaning, whether its popular at the time or not. Then we can have the assurance that God will be with us and bless us no matter what happens.

Another thing that this passage from Isaiah chapter 55 reminds us about God’s Word is that we need to have patience with it. Yes, the Word of the Lord is powerful and effective, and it alone has the ability to bring about true spiritual growth, but sometimes that growth takes time. Just like it takes time for a plant to grow, and we shouldn’t expect it to be a mature tree overnight, it can take time for God’s Word to bear fruit too. This is true on a personal level as well as in general.

On the one hand, we shouldn’t expect to understand everything in the Bible and have a perfect knowledge of it just by reading one verse and moving on with our lives. Growing in your faith requires constant study of the Scriptures. It takes consistent and ongoing watering from God’s Word.

What that means practically speaking should not be that hard to discern. Obviously, one of the things that it means is going to Church every Sunday. God gives us an entire Commandment about not neglecting the day when Christians come together for corporate worship. Remember how Martin Luther explains the 3rdCommandment in the Small Catechism. He says, “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” Only going to Church on occasion, or when it’s convenient in our schedule, is not holding the Word of God sacred. It’s not treating it like it’s the most important thing in our life. Nothing good ever happens from skipping Church. In the same way that a plant will wither and die if it goes too long without getting water, our faith can wither and die if we don’t water it enough with God’s Word. But unlike a plant, you can’t ever over water your own soul. Hearing more of God’s Word will always be better for you than hearing less of it.

In addition to weekly Church attendance, the other thing that this absolutely applies to is taking advantage of whatever Bible classes are available to us and doing home devotions. Yes, it’s very important to be in God’s house regularly, but if His Word is never read or spoken in our own homes, it can give the impression that it doesn’t actually belong there. But that isn’t true. Being a Christian isn’t just a Sunday morning thing, it’s an everyday of the week thing too. I don’t think it’s being legalistic at all to say that every Christian is expected to read something from their Bible at least once a day and if there are people in our lives that can’t read, like little kids, we need to read the Bible to them. If we can watch TV for multiple hours of the day, and doom scroll on our phones late into the evening, we should have no problem finding time to open the scroll of the Scriptures instead. And if we neglect God’s Word, if we continue not to use it, we risk the possibility of not knowing it enough when we really, really need. We put our faith at risk of getting chocked out and dying, like Jesus talks about in the parable of the Sower.

Furthermore, besides being patient with God’s Word when it comes to personal growth, and maturing in our own lives of faith, we also need to be patient with others too. We should not assume that just because every interaction we have with those around us doesn’t result in their immediate repentance and conversion that nothing is happening at all. We don’t know that. Yes, it’s possible for a person to reject God’s Word, and refuse to listen to it, but it’s also possible for God’s Word to soften a person’s heart and break it down overtime.

The same thing applies to churches. We can’t force people to believe in Jesus and come and worship Him with us as His altar. We can’t trick them into becoming Lutherans, nor should we even try do that. Instead, we should be upfront and unashamed of who are, if who we are is guided by God’s clear Word. Rather than grumbling about the fruit that God hasn’t given us, in a particular moment, we can be thankful for fruit that He has. 

And that leads me to the last thing that this passage from Isaiah reminds us about God’s Word, and that is that it never returns void. In every place and time where the Word of God is proclaimed in its truth and purity, and the Sacraments are administered rightly, the Holy Spirit promises to be present and active to draw in God’s elect. The harvest isn’t a maybe, it’s a certainty. God will bring it about in His own good time. 

The only thing is that we to have a correct understand of the Church in order to recognize it. The true Church is not merely one local congregation here or there. It is the whole Body of Christ. It is everyone who hears the voice of the Good Shepherd and follows after it. Just because we don’t necessarily see numerical growth at St John Lutheran Church in Denver Iowa, that doesn’t mean that God’s Kingdom is not advancing. It doesn’t even mean that there won’t be a harvest somewhere else because of what we are doing here. Think about the story of Noah. For a hundred years Noah faithfully preached God’s Word and warned the people around him about the coming flood. As I’ve said before in the past, I can guarantee that he was a better preacher than any of our preachers today. But how many people got onto the boat? It was only 8. Only Noah’s family listened to God’s Word and was saved.

And yet, through those 8 souls that got on the Ark, what did God do? He repopulated the whole world. The harvest seemed small and insignificant in the days of Noah, but the fruit that was borne from their faithfulness, kept on spreading. I hope you can see what I’m trying to get at here.

It’s true that we might not have as many people attending this congregation as we used to in the past. Maybe God will change that in the future. Maybe He won’t. But our calling remains the same. We are called to be faithful to the Word of God and rely on completely on its power. In everything that we do, from the way that we worship, to the things that we say, God wants us to ask, does this teaching or practice agree with My Word and promote it, or does it work against it and obscure it? Like any good farmer, we put our attention on the watering and the planting, knowing that the growing is ultimately out of our control. But that is a good thing too. Because we have a merciful God who desires the salvation of all people. The Lord Jesus wants others to be saved even more than we do. And through His Word, He promises that in the end there will be a harvest. As He says in Isaiah 55, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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

At the end of the parable about the workers in the vineyard, Jesus summarizes it by saying that “many are called, but few are chosen.” This is a mysterious verse from God’s Word, which introduces to us an even more mysterious topic. And that is the so-called doctrine of election, also known as predestination. In several places in the Bible, the Holy Spirit reveals to us that even before God created the heavens and the earth, He elected or chose all those who would be saved. As Saint Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 1, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.” Similarly, the apostle Paul also writes in Romans chapter 8, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son… and those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.” From these few passages alone, we can easily see just how impossible it is for someone to reject this particular teaching, without doing serious injury to their faith. God gave us everything in the Bible for the purpose of saving our souls. Nothing is intended to hurt us, but all of it is supposed to help us. And that includes the doctrine of predestination.

So, in this morning’s sermon, what I’m going to do is simply walk through some of things that we need to keep in mind if we want to get this teaching right. Lots of times I think that the reason why people don’t want to talk about predestination, or even think about it, is because they don’t really understand it. Instead of considering it in light of God’s Word, they come to conclusions based off of their own reason. But’s that not how we do theology! We don’t think our way to the correct beliefs, we listen to Scriptures, and we let them do the thinking for us.

The first thing that we need to remember if we want to get the doctrine of predestination right is that God truly does want everyone to be saved. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, the Bible literally tells us, “This is good, and it pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” Likewise, in 2 Peter chapter 3 we read this: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

And, that, of course, is exactly what we see taking place in the parable of the workers in the vineyard too, isn’t it? On the one hand, the owner of the vineyard, who obviously represents God, goes out of his way to invite people to come and work for him. Despite the fact that many of them are standing idle in the marketplace, and definitely don’t deserve to be there, he still compels them to come in. He offers them a place in his vineyard, just like God offers all men a place in His kingdom. Again, what does Jesus say in our text today? He says, “Many are called.” That means that God’s call is universal. His grace is for everyone. The Lord wants all people to be saved.  

Even at the end of the parable, when some of the workers are mad at the master, and stubbornly walk away from him, what does the master still call them? He calls them his “friends.” He says, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong.” This shows us that even when a person rejects God’s grace, and dies and goes to hell, that was never God’s desire for them. It wasn’t because He hated them, or wanted them to be lost from the beginning. They might not have wanted to stay with the Lord, but the Lord always wanted to be with them.

The monstrous idea that is taught in some churches that God has predetermined to send certain individuals to hell from eternity, and that those who end up there, He must have never actually wanted to save, is completely contractionary to the Scriptural witness. Yes, the Bible does tell us that God has absolutely elected some to salvation, and that He knows what will happen to all people, but it never says that He has elected others to damnation. The true application of this teaching only goes in one direction. It only applies to Christians.

And that leads me to the second thing that we need to remember if we want to get predestination right, and that is that the reason why some people are lost is not because of God’s fault, but their own. Remember what Saint Stephen once said in the book of Acts. Right before the people picked up rocks to kill him, he said, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” That’s very similar to what Jesus once said about the people of Jerusalem in Matthew chapter 23, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” He cried, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” From these verses we learn that the cause of someone’s damnation is not located in the heart of God, but in the heart of man. The reason why some people don’t go to heaven is not because God doesn’t want them to, but because they resist the means that God uses to bring them there.

Yes, God desires that all people would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. But how do we come to that knowledge? We come to it through the preaching of God’s Word. That’s how the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith. That’s how He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ. He does it through the proclamation of the Gospel. So, when someone refuses to listen to the Gospel, or ignores it and plugs their ears to it, even though God wants to save them, their salvation isn’t possible. 

Again, think about the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The owner of the vineyard repeatedly called people to come and work for him and promised them a certain amount of money. He went out at the first, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and even the eleventh hour. But what would have happened if someone didn’t listen to that invitation? They wouldn’t have gotten the denarius. Even though it would have been there waiting for them, they wouldn’t have got to receive it, because they refused to have it. That’s how it works when a person goes to hell. It isn’t God’s fault when that happens. It’s their own. 

On the other side of the coin, though, the third thing that we need to remember if we want to get predestination right is that no one is allowed to take any credit for his or her salvation. Sometimes the fact that the Bible says that individuals are responsible for their own damnation, makes people assume that they must at least have some role to play in their salvation too. “If I can do things to dam myself,” the argument goes, “then certainly I must be able to do things to save myself as well.” But that’s not what the Word of God teaches us either.

All throughout the Scriptures we learn over and over again that a person is saved solely through God’s grace alone. It isn’t the result of anything that we do, but purely the work of our merciful Lord. For example, in Titus chapter 3 we read, “God saved not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy.” And as it says in Ephesians chapter 2, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Literally, the entire point of the parable about the workers in the vineyard is that salvation is not a reward for our good works, but a gracious gift of God. Some people in the parable worked all day long. Other people in the parable only worked for an hour. But at the end of the day, everyone got the same thing. That shows us that we don’t get into heaven by the things that we do. We get there through what God does for us. 

One popular way that people have tried to solve the mystery of predestination in the past is by suggesting that God must have elected certain individuals to salvation in view of their future faith. He must have looked ahead in advance to see who would “make a decision for Christ” and then He made His decision based off that. But the problem with that explanation is that that’s not how faith actually works. We don’t come to faith by a decision of our own free will. Our will is bound in sin apart from Lord. We are spiritually dead prior to our conversion and can’t do anything to bring ourselves to faith at all. Rather, faith is gift that God gives as a result of His own gracious will. It isn’t something that we cause to happen, it’s something that the Holy Spirit causes to happen to us. As Jesus says in John chapter 15, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” And as He tells us in John chapter 6, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent me draws Him.” God doesn’t elect people to be saved because He saw that they would one day decide to accept His grace. His election is what lead to them receiving His grace to begin with. 

Nothing highlights the truth that we are saved by grace alone more than the doctrine of predestination. When did God choose to save us? When did He determine to call us to faith and preserve us to the very end? The Bible says that it happened even before we were born. As Saint Paul writes, “He chose us, in Christ, before the foundation of the world.” 

And finally, then, the last thing that we need to remember if we want to get the doctrine of predestination right is that the only purpose of this teaching is to comfort Christians who are sorry for their sins. It’s to humble those who think that their salvation is caused by their own good works, and console those who are looking to Christ for salvation because they know that their works haven’t been good enough. What does Jesus say right before He says, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” in our text? He says “the last will be first, and the first last.” That’s a summary of how things work in God’s kingdom. Those who consider themselves worthy of a place in it because of themselves will not enter it. But those who know that they should be outside of it, and yet trust in the Lord to be merciful to them and let them in anyway on account of Christ, will stay in it forever.

If you’re thinking about predestination in such a way where gives the impression that you can do sinful things on purpose and it won’t make any difference because you’re one of God’s elect, then you’re not thinking about it in the right way. You aren’t using it to comfort sinners; you’re using it to harden them. And if you’re thinking about predestination in such a way where it makes you terrified that you might not go to heaven, regardless if you repentant of your sins, and look to Jesus for forgiveness, then you aren’t thinking about it correctly either. What you’re thinking about isn’t even the real doctrine of predestination. It’s something else entirely. 

We seek out the answer to our election always, and only, in Jesus Christ alone. As our Lutheran Confessions point out, He is the Book of Life in whom all the names of the saved are written. That means that you don’t figure out if you are one of God’s elect simply by sitting in the corner of a room and wondering if God chose you. You look to His Son Jesus, who died for the sins of the whole world, meaning He died for you sins too. You look to the promises that God made to you in your Baptism, where the Bible says that He called you by name into His kingdom, just like the master in the parable called the workers into His vineyard. You listen to the word of the Gospel, which assure you of everlasting life for all believers. And after all that, then you marvel at the mystery that God planned your salvation and chose you for it even before the world began. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.