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.

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

Even if a person knows nothing else in the Bible, more than likely they can still rattle off those words from Jesus that we heard in our Gospel today from Luke chapter six. You know exactly the ones I’m talking about. There Jesus says very famously, “Judge not, and you will not be judged.” And yet, despite the fact that almost everyone seems to know this verse, given the way that it’s often used, it is painfully obvious that most people don’t understand what it means at all. How many of us have been in a conversation with another person before and had this verse used against us? You’re talking with someone about some moral issue that’s clearly defined as wrong in the Scriptures, something like homosexuality or abortion, and before you can even make it through the Biblical argument, everything gets derailed when the other person interjects and says, “Jesus says you aren’t supposed to judge.”

So, what I want to do in today’s sermon is simply take some time to explain the correct interpretation of this passage. By using the rest of Bible, and not cherry-picking only certain parts of it, I’m going to explain what Jesus means and what He doesn’t mean when He tells us that we shouldn’t judge other people. 

We’ll start with what Jesus doesn’t mean first. Clearly, when you read the rest of the Scriptures, and even the surrounding context of this particular verse, it becomes very obvious to anyone who’s being intellectually honest that the words “judge not” cannot possibly mean that we Christians are required to be silent on moral issues, and that we should never tell anyone else that what they are doing is wrong. Right after Jesus says, “Judge not, and you will not be judged,” in our reading He talks about the process for how Christians should go about showing someone else their sin. Jesus says in verse forty-two of the same chapter in Luke’s gospel, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck that is in your brother’s eye.” Notice that Jesus does not say in these verses that we should ignore other people’s sinful behavior entirely, which is more or less the argument of those who use the words “judge not” against Christians. Rather, Jesus tells us that we should help our brother remove their sin, and that we should do this after a time of self-examination. The problem is not with pointing out another person’s sins altogether and telling them that what they are doing is wrong. The problem is with doing so before or without admitting your own sin first. That’s the kind of judging that Jesus is condemning. It isn’t about ignoring sin entirely, or God forbid approving it, it is about addressing sin everywhere that is exists, beginning with ourselves.

And if the context of this particular verse was not enough to convince someone that “judge not” cannot possibly mean approving or ignoring someone else’s sinful behavior, there is also the context of the rest of the Bible too. Consider, for example, what Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter eighteen. There are Lord literally says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” Jesus even adds in that passage that if the individual won’t listen to you, or to two or three other witnesses either, then you should go tell it to the whole Church. And if he or she won’t listen to the Church then you should treat that person like a gentile or a tax collector.

Or think about what we learn in 1 Corinthians chapter five. In that instance, Saint Paul had to rebuke the Christians living in Corinth precisely because they were refusing to speak God’s Word or judgment against a man in their church who was living an openly sinful life. One of their members was engaging in gross, unrepentant sexual sin, and even though they knew about it, the rest of the congregation did nothing at all. Perhaps they even said, “Who am I to judge?” But what did the Apostle Paul say to them in response? He said, “For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and if present in Spirit, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.” Paul told the Christians living in Corinth that not only should they pronounce judgment on that man’s sin, they had to. It was their Christin duty to call him to repentance and excommunicate him from the Church so that he learned put his sin away. Otherwise, the man would never realize that what he was doing was dangerous and that, despite what he thought, he was actually outside a state of God’s grace. So, clearly, not judging someone cannot possibly mean that we never tell them that what they are doing is wrong or that we approve and accept their sinful behavior. It is impossible to get that impression from reading all of the Bible together.

While the Bible does forbid certain kinds of judging, which we will discuss later on in the sermon, there are many kinds of judging that it endorses and that it even commands. For example, we Christians must judge our teachers. We must evaluate what our preaches talk about in their sermons and in Bible class and compare it to God’s Word. And if we encounter false teaching, we are supposed to turn away from it and try to show our teachers a better way. Remember what the Bereans did when Saint Paul first came to them in the book of Acts? We read that they judged Paul every single day by comparing what he said to the Bible. And remember what Peter and John said to the Sanhedrin when the religious leaders told them to stop preaching that Jesus was the Christ? They said, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Besides judging things like doctrine on the basis of the Bible, every Christian also has to make judgments in their daily vocations. Parents need to discipline their children and teach them to obey those in authority over them. Police officers and other civil servants need to make judgments all of the time in order to protect those that they serve. In some instances, Christians are even called upon to act as literal judges, who sit behind a desk with a gavel, hear cases that are brought before them and then give sentences to criminals in accordance with their crimes. All of that is not only permissible according to the Bible, it is required. As God Word tells us in Romans chapter thirteen, “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

Every day, as the people of God, we are required to judge all kinds of different things. We judge doctrine. We judge behavior. We judge situations. We judge sin wherever we see it, including and especially in our lives. It is not judging in general that our Lord condemns, but judging things in the wrong kind of way.

And so, that is what I’d like to discuss in the last part of today’s sermon. Since Jesus’ words, “Judge not, and you will not be judged,” cannot possibly mean that God forbids all kinds of judging that there is, the question becomes, “what kinds of judging does it forbid?” The simple answer is that Jesus forbids the kind of personal judging which is not informed by God’s Word. On the one hand, this means judging things according to our own sinful thoughts and opinions instead of in accordance with what we read in the Bible. It is wrong to give a judgement against something that God is silent on. It is wrong to tell someone that they are sinning for doing something that the Bible never calls a sin. For example, during the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church said that anyone who did not fast from meat on Friday’s during Lent was sinning against God and needed to repent. But where in the Bible does it say that a person has to fast from meat on Friday’s? It doesn’t say that anywhere. In fact, in Colossians chapter 2, Saint Paul explicitly says, “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” So, that kind of judging is wrong.

However, when we Christians tell someone, for example, that is sinful for two men or two women, or anyone who is not married for that matter, to be engaged in a sexual relationship with each other, we are not making a personal judgment on their actions. We are simply communicating to them the judgment that God has already revealed in His Word. When we tell someone that abortion is murder because life because at conception and even Jesus was a little baby in the womb, or that fornicates and adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God unless they repent, and that those who refuse to come to Church and despise the means of grace will not experience God’s grace in eternity, all of those things, and many more are judgments that have already been given to us in the Bible. They are not our judgments. They are the judgments of God. As Jesus tells us elsewhere in John chapter twelve, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.”

And yes, of course, we should never presume to speak God’s judgment against someone else’s sin, unless we are examining ourselves according to those same judgments too. Obviously, before we call others to repentance, we need to be living a life of repentance ourselves. Otherwise, as Jesus says, we are hypocrites and the truth is not in us. If we are going to condemn homosexuality at the same that time that we are living with someone outside of marriage, obtaining a divorce without Biblical grounds, or watching pornography with no intention of trying to stop, then, as Christ tells us in our reading, “the measure that we use will be measured back to us.” But it’s not that we should ignore these sins and not judge any of them; rather it’s that we should speak God’s Word of judgement against all of them. We should listen to the Bible and turn away from everything that it tells us is wrong. Because again, the point here is that God’s Word is what gives us God’s judgment. And judging things by another standard, such as our own personal standard, is exactly the kind of judging that Jesus forbids in our text.  

Now, while every kind of judgment that a person makes which is not informed by God’s Word is wrong, there is one kind of judgment in particular that is the worst kind of all. And that is the judgment of trying to make God’s final judgment on person’s soul before the Lord Himself has given it. The Bible tells us very clearly that “after death comes judgment.” And it tells us that Jesus will come judge the living and the dead on the Last Day. What that means is that before the Last Day comes, or before a person dies, we should never presume that they are past even the possibility of repentance. It’s true that there is such thing in the Bible as the hardening of the heart, also known as the sin against the Holy Spirit. Jesus talks about this sin in Matthew chapter twenty-three, where He laments about how He would have gathered the people of Jerusalem as a hen gather’s her brood, but they would not come. And yet, even though it is possible for a person to plunge himself into this spiritual state where nothing will convert him, it is not up to us a Christians to determine when that has actually happened. We should never act as if no matter what takes place, we know for certain, that someone could not possibly repent and believe the Gospel. We should never withhold the Word of God from them thinking that not even God’s Word can help them. That is a terrible kind of judgment.

And once again, the context of our Lord’s Words helps us see that this is the exact application that Jesus is trying to make in Luke chapter six. Right before our reading today Jesus tells us that we should, “Love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.” The reason why we should do all of those things is because as long as they are living it is still possible for our enemies to become our friends. It is still possible for those who despise us because we love Jesus and His Word, to be encouraged by our witness into loving Christ and His Word too. And if we withhold the love of Jesus from them, if we refuse to speak God’s Word of Law and Gospel to them, thinking that nothing could ever convert them, then we are withholding from them the only thing that possibly could.

Who are we to judge that someone is incapable of coming to faith? Who are we to say that even the most hardened of sinners could not become one of God’s most beloved saints? Were we free from sin when the Lord gave us the gift of eternal life? Were we godly people before Jesus came to us and made us God’s own dear children in our Baptism? No! We were God’s enemies too. As the Bible tells us, we were dead in our sins and trespasses, hostile to God, and living in league with the Devil. It was only by the Lord’s mercy that we were given God’s grace to begin with, and that is why we should never withhold His grace from others. As Jesus Himself says in our reading, “be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

We are merciful even as our Father is merciful both when we seek to gently show others their sins and when we give them God’s forgiveness as soon as they repent of them. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful, when we speak out against immorality even if it means that others get mad at us for it and want to hurt us because of it. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful when we endure hatred, and persecution, and are even called bigots and haters ourselves, simply because we try and get others to listen to what God’s Word has to say. And we are merciful even as our Father is merciful when we tell people that their sins have truly been atoned for by Jesus, no matter how bad their sins have been. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful, when we do onto others as we would have them do unto us. God saved us even though we didn’t deserve it, and that is what we should want for others too. We should not judge them by assuming that, no matter what, they could never possibly repent and believe the Gospel. We should preach the Word to them, and we should let God’s Word do the judging for us.

As I’m sure you know, many people do not come to Church nowadays because they think that Church is a judgmental place. In one sense, those people are right. You do encounter God’s judgment when you go to Church. When you listen to God’s Word it judges your entire life. It exposes all of your thoughts, words, and deeds, and shows you just how sinful they are. But that is not the only judgment that God gives us when we come to Church. Besides showing us our sins, and calling us to repent of them, God’s Word also tells us how Jesus died for them. It tells us how God’s very own Son came to from heaven to endure the full judgment that we deserve so that through faith in His sacrifice we would not have to experience any of that judgment at all. The Bible tells us that Jesus was judged in our place. He did that so that everyone who repents and believes in Him would have a place waiting for them in heaven. He was judged on our behalf, so that on Judgment Day we could stand before His throne in confidence.

So, may the Lord supply us with His mercy so that we would judge things only according to His Word, and in doing so, help others be spared from God’s judgment along with us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.