The Eighth Sunday after Trinity – August 10, 2025Psalm 48; Jeremiah 23:16-29; Romans 8:12-17St. Matthew 7:15-23
In the Name of the Father, and of the +
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Thou shalt not take the Name of the
Lord, thy God, in vain.” The Second Commandment consists of two parts: the Name
of God and the proper use of His Name. The Name of God of course refers to the
many ways He has given to us to address Him: God, Lord, Almighty, Father, Jesus
Christ, Holy Spirit, etc. His name also refers to every statement that He has
made about Himself. Another way we could think of this is pure doctrine. The
teachings of the Scriptures are God’s own Words, and they reveal Him to you. As
such, everything we belief, teach, and confess is a statement concerning God’s
Name, and is governed by the Second Commandment.
The act of believing, teaching, and
confessing regards the proper use of His Name and everything that He has
revealed about Himself – including His will for the salvation of man and our
conduct in accordance with His Word. In the Small Catechism, we state that this
commandment means “we should fear and love God that we may not curse, swear,
use witchcraft, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble,
pray, praise, and give thanks.” To curse, swear, use witchcraft, lie, and
deceive in God’s name is to confess a false doctrine. The false prophets of
whom Christ speaks preach false doctrine in the name of the Lord. In this, they
violate the Second Commandment on top of whichever other commandments they
violate with the wicked fruits of their actions.
Wolves in sheep’s clothing have plagued
the church from the very beginning, when Satan donned the robes of a serpent to
tempt Eve.[1]
Aaron, appointed high priest by God, led the people of Israel in the false
worship of the golden calf.[2]
Many kings of both Israel and Judah led the people in the worship idols, doing
evil in the eyes of the Lord. During Christ’s ministry, the Pharisees and
Sadducees claimed to teach the word of God but, in reality, they taught the
doctrines of man.[3]
St. Paul taught against the Judaizers and St. John against the Gnostics. There
were the heretics of the Early Church, teaching such blasphemies as denying the
Trinity, that the Son of God was a creation of the Father, or that the Holy
Spirit was nothing more than an emanation of power from the Father and not a
Person of the Holy Trinity.
During the Middle Ages, prior to the Reformation, there were many false prophets who claimed the Name of God. The Paulicians, Bogomils, and Cathars (covering the 7th through 13th centuries) each preached some form of dualism in which the material world was evil and only the spiritual world was good, denying that the Almighty God was Lord of heaven and earth. Of course, there were the false teachings of the pope, including the invocation of the saints, indulgences, monasticism, and a form of Semi-Pelagianism in which man must add his righteous deeds to the work of Christ in order to receive salvation.
During and after the Reformation, we
see the multiplication of false teachers, each with his own agenda and method
of blaspheming God’s Name. Many of these begin with the denial of the Holy
Sacraments and eventually lead to the errors so rampant today: salvation by an
act of man’s choosing God, the “prosperity gospel,” salvation by equality or
social justice, dispensationalism, Zionism, the denial of the orders of
creation, and the denial that Scripture is the very Word of God.
Not all false teachings are equal. It
is entirely possible for a person to go through life believing that Holy
Baptism is an act of obedience telling God that he has accepted Him into his
heart and still be saved. But to believe that Jesus Christ is not truly God or
that God does not exist as three distinct Persons in One Divine Godhead, closes
the door to salvation. Every false teaching is like adding some number of dead
bugs to your soup. Can you eat a bowl of soup with one bug in it? Sure. But
every bug, including the first, carries the possibility of adding a deadly
toxin to your food. Likewise, every false teaching adds a little leaven to your
faith, such that at some point, the whole lump of your soul will be leavened.
Now, we don’t have the time to
describe, define, and refute every false teaching in the world. However, you
likely already think of the various false prophets as falling into either
doctrinal error or moral error. This morning it is important to realize that
this distinction doesn’t matter. Christ says, “Not everyone who says to Me,
‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My
Father in heaven.”[4]
False morality is false doctrine, and false doctrine will show itself in false
morality.
After warning His disciples to beware
false prophets, Christ tells them that these false prophets will be known by
their fruits. These fruits are both the teachings that come out of their mouths
and the actions of their lives. A good tree bears good fruit because the tree
itself is good. Yet we, as humans, cannot see the inner quality of the tree. We
cannot read the hearts of man. We must judge the quality, the character, of the
tree by what we can see and hear, that is, the fruits which the tree produces.
And when our Lord speaks of the last
day, when many will say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast
out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” He speaks of
everyone who claims the Name of Christ without holding the purity of His
doctrine. They have persisted against the Second Commandment and yet claim to
have done mighty wonders in Christ’s Name.
So what then of the noble pagan, the
unbeliever who does objectively good things in this world. Don’t their fruits
point to a righteous heart? From our point of view, the fruits of such a noble
pagan look delicious. So did the apple offered to Snow White yet it was filled
with poison. “Anything done apart from faith is sin.”[5]
Apart from faith, all the noble works of the unbeliever are sin and a disgrace
to the Name of God. If a work is done without thanks, praise, and in service
and obedience to God, then it is sin before Him. So though our eyes are dulled
by the sin which clings to us still, even such an appealing fruit reveals the
rot within.
There is not much on the surface of
this text in the way of comfort. It is a text of warning; warning against the
false teachers of this world, against false belief, and the consequences of
believing false doctrine.
At the same time, the circumstances of
the text provide nothing but comfort. Why does a father require his teenage
daughter to be home by 10pm? Because he loves her and because he knows the
dangers of the world. What comes across to the daughter as strict warning and
even unfair limitation is in fact an act of love. Christ warns you concerning
false doctrine and the breaking of the Second Commandment because He loves you.
It is Christ who wept at the fall of
Adam and Eve and death of Abel. It is Christ who longed for His people to
delivered from the hand of wicked Pharaoh. And it is Christ who shoulders the
great weight of your sin and carries it to Calvary. That weight was so great,
He stumbled twice on His journey to death. Then, after defeating death by His
own glorious crucifixion, He descended into hell to proclaim His victory over
the grave. This is the victory He has won for you. He nailed your guilt and
shame to the cross that it would forever be left behind in the tomb.
And having done all this for you, He
wants you to receive the eternal rewards that are your inheritance through Holy
Baptism. This, this great love for you is why He is warning you against false
doctrine, false prophets, and sinful living. He has given you His Name as a
sign and seal of your salvation when He put it on you in Holy Baptism. You have
been given His Name to use it, to honor it, and to glorify it. You sons and
daughters of God, who have received the Spirit of adoption and are heirs of
heaven with Christ, flee every false way and seek the will of the Father.
In + Jesus’
name. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment