The Eighth Sunday after Trinity

 The Eighth Sunday after Trinity – August 10, 2025

Psalm 48; Jeremiah 23:16-29; Romans 8:12-17

St. 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 7^th through 13^th 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.

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[1] Genesis 3:1.

[2] Exodus 32.

[3] St. Matthew 15:9; cf. Isaiah 29:13.

[4] St. Matthew 7:21.

[5] Romans 14:23.

Lent Midweek 4

Lent Midweek 4 – April 2, 2025

Psalm 122; Ezekiel 36:23a, 23c-28

St. John 9:1-38

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

When the disciples as Jesus, ‘Who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind?” they are asking Him to explain the Law. It is as though they were asking, “Teacher, what does the bible say about this man’s condition? Is it the result of his sin or his parents’ sin?” Their question is understandable. In the 5^th chapter of St. John’s gospel, they saw Christ heal a paralytic who had been lying by the pool of Bethesda. When the miracle was complete, Christ said, “Go and sin no more.”[1] It was a natural conclusion for the disciples that this man’s blindness is also related to sin.

Christ’s response to the disciples tells us that the disciples are on the right track but have made a slight error. The man’s blindness is related to sin, but not to sins committed by this man nor his parents. This blindness is related to original sin, the sinful condition of man, the opposition to faith.

In fact, this miracle stands in the middle of the long-standing debate between Christ and the Pharisees over who Christ is. The miracle then stands as a testament to the work of God, namely, the recreation of man in the image and righteousness of Christ.

The Holy Spirit, working through St. John, has already set this Gospel in the context of creation when the first chapter begins with a summary of creation focused on Christ. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”[2] This Word is the light of the world, something Christ applies to Himself in our text.[3]

The theme of light and darkness, also present at creation, serves for the distinction between the absence and the presence of God. The wicked “do not know, nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness.”[4] “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”[5] “In that day, [the day of the Lord], the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.”[6] “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”[7]

This light and darkness is manifest in sight and blindness. Those who see rightly, see by the light of Christ. Their eyes are open to the glory of God, manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. This Word of God is the light to our feet and the lamp to our path.[8] Darkness is blindness, a complete lack of sight, not to mention seeing rightly. It is a confusion of vision. Our first parents’ eyes were open to their nakedness and sin at the same time that they were closed to the righteousness of God. In seeing, they became blind. Christ will say the same of the Pharisees who condemn the man born blind when they refuse to acknowledge that He is the Son of God.[9]

As Christ goes to heal the man, there is no discussion of what the blind man desires nor what he would have the Christ do. Our Lord simply spits on the ground, makes clay, anoints the man’s eyes, and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. Our Lord’s conduct in this miracle is very revealing. This man was born blind, born dead in trespass and sin. Being dead in sin, he could not plea for his salvation. He could not make a decision to be relieved from sin. The Lord is the first and only actor in the man’s salvation.

And how does He do it? He mixes water and clay, the very elements of the first creation, then speaks to the man. In the beginning, God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.[10] Our Lord is signifying that He has done much more than heal this man’s malformed body. He has called this man to faith, bestowed faith upon him. He has recreated this man in the righteousness of Christ. The miracle comes to fruition when the man washes himself in the waters of Siloam. This washing signifies Holy Baptism, when the man made of dirt is washed clean of his sins.

The event which follow the miracle are also very instructive for the life of the Christian. We see that the man does not immediately comprehend everything that has happened to him. His faith is not entirely formed. His sins are forgiven but he does not understand the source of that forgiveness, not entirely. We could liken this to the faith of a child but a better comparison would be the faith of the saints of the Old Testament. They looked to God for salvation but until the time of Moses, they did not have His name. Even then, they had a title for God, “I AM,” but they did not know His personal name.

Over time, more was revealed of precisely how God would save them from their sins. They looked forward to the birth of the Christ, the very Son of God, but they did not know His personal name. He would be Immanuel, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.[11] It was not until a lowly virgin gave birth to the Son of God that the world would know the Christ, that we would know Jesus, the name at which every knee in heaven and on earth will bow.[12] This revelation of the name of Christ is the light to lighten all the nations of the earth.[13] In the name of Christ, man is reborn through the waters of Holy Baptism, born from above, born a child of the Heavenly Father.

Just as it took time for this revelation to come to the people of God in the Old Testament, so too it took time for the man born blind to see Who it was that restored his sight. Even then, it is not until Christ reveals Himself to the man that he fully understands what has happened. And immediately, the man confesses “I believe!” and bows before Christ in worship.

The journey of the now seeing man is analogous to the life of the Christian, especially in enduring affliction. From the time of his healing to his confession of Christ, he is bombarded by interrogations, first by his neighbors and then twice by the Pharisees. Each time he speaks, his confession of the miracle he has received becomes clearer, more specific. In the history of the church, it was always times of persecution and controversy that led to a greater understanding of God’s Word. The creeds were written against heretics. The Reformation occurred to correct the errors of the medieval Roman church and under constant threat of death. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

So too, as we face physical pain, sadness at the loss or suffering of loved ones, and persecution in our jobs, communities, and families, we find opportunity for faith to grow. The affliction of this man was so that the works of God would be revealed, made manifest in him.[14] Pain and suffering are real but Christ is the greater reality, the light no darkness can comprehend, let alone overcome.

In Holy Baptism, we are not just made new creations set loose to wander in the world. We are created new in Christ. We are grafted into His Body, the Church, wherein we find our home. We are made new as the Old Adam is drowned and washed away. He is our light and our sight. Being made new in Him, we have new sight to see and receive the mighty blessings of God, even if our eyes of flesh see only the pain and suffering of this world. You have been given the new eyes of faith, that with the man born blind, you might confess, “Lord, I believe.” In that confession, you have more than anything in this world can give you. You have the Christ. You have the mercy, grace, and love of God, who is the light of the world. You have the name of Jesus, who is present with you always, to light even the darkest of places.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] St. John 5:14.

[2] St. John 1:1.

[3] St. John 1:4-5; 9:5.

[4] Psalm 82:5.

[5] Isaiah 5:20.

[6] Isaiah 29:18.

[7] 1 John 1:5.

[8] Psalm 119:105.

[9] St. John 9:41.

[10] Genesis 2:7.

[11] Isaiah 9:6.

[12] Philippians 2:10.

[13] St. Luke 2:32.

[14] St. John 9:3.