Not a TED Talk: Beware the Ravenous Wolves

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

You ever wonder how the song "Christmas Song: Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" came to be? It was a hot summer, and the guy who wrote it, Mel Tormé, was trying to stay cool by thinking cool, and so he wrote a Christmas song in the middle of summer because it was so hot. And I thought, you know, on a day when it's going to be 102, it might be good to sing "See Amid the Winter’s Snow." The prize that is there for us—the prize of Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God Himself in the flesh. Because there is great temptation to leave Him there in the winter snow and to ignore Him. There is great temptation to worship ourselves, to elevate ourselves, to make ourselves the most important thing there is. Or, even worse, to not rock the boat—to tell you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear. But my job as your pastor is not to tell you what you want to hear. It's to tell you what you need to hear. That is how you are supposed to judge me.

These three readings, Jeremiah 23:16-29, Acts 20:27-38, and Matthew 7:15-23, are directed at leaders in the church. They are directed to remind you that we gather here not because of Pastor Ross, but for Jesus Christ, who this church is named after—Christ Lutheran Church. You gather here not for a TED talk or a pep talk, but to be reminded of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name, to take the meal of immortality, to be reminded that you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world, and to be confronted with where you fail. See, in Jeremiah's time, there were lots of prophets saying, "Peace, peace. The Lord is on our side. Nothing bad's going to happen. It doesn't matter that the Babylonians are outside our gates—God is in control." We are God's chosen people, and so therefore we're going to win, and we're going to win bigly. We're going to win majorly. We are number one. And that didn't turn out so well for those prophets, because guess what happened? Jerusalem fell, because they were false prophets and the people had walked away from the faith.

The Lord God is reminding the people: I did not send these people but listen to the one that I sent. And what did Jeremiah call the people to do? To repent of their sins and turn to the Lord—to stop worshiping the false gods, but to worship the one true God. Paul warns the people that when he leaves, false prophets, ravenous wolves, would come in after him. And if you read his letters, you find that is so true. If you read the letters of John, you find that is true. The apostles would go out, they would plant churches, and as soon as they were gone, somebody who thought they were in charge, who thought they were more important, would come in and start leading the people astray.

And this still happens today. About 12, 10 years ago, I was invited to go to a conference. I wound up not going, because I was looking at all the promotional materials for this conference, and Jesus wasn't even spoken of once. This was supposed to be a pastor's conference, a non-denominational pastor's conference, and Jesus wasn't spoken of once. But the pastor who was hosting was talked about all the time. And unfortunately, the pattern that a lot of people saw became true. He was forced out of that church for conduct unbecoming of a pastor—for having his hand in the till, so to speak—because it became about him, and he became the most important thing. What would make him happy, what would make him look successful, became the defining characteristic of that church, and it led to its destruction.

Jesus warns us: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves."

We are sinners. I am a sinner. As Paul says, he is chief. I would argue with him about that—I think I am chief of sinners. To put me forward, to put my ideas forward, would lead you all to bad places. I say this a couple times a year: if we were in charge of the world, if we could get our way, if our solutions fixed all the world's problems and we made the world in our image, it would still be a broken world with a whole bunch of problems, and you'd have roughly seven billion people who disagreed with you.

We are not God. We need to recognize that there is one God and Lord. That's why the First Commandment is the First Commandment: you shall have no other gods, which includes yourselves. It includes me.

We need to be confronted with our sin. We need to sit in the uncomfortableness. And we need to ask ourselves, where have I gone astray? Where have I not listened to God? Where have I sinned?

And when that law rends our hearts, and we beat our breast in mourning and repentance, then the clear word of the Gospel needs to be said: your sins are forgiven. They have been removed from you as far as the east is from the west. This is the point of Jesus coming. God rescues humanity not from far off, but He enters into humanity. He wages war on Satan, and hell, and sin itself. And He wins, and He wins victory on the cross.

God came, and He was born as a baby. He soiled His diapers. He stubbed His toes. He fell. He had to learn how to read. He embodied humanity in all its fullness, except without sin, so that He would suffer even death—the death of a criminal on a cross—because He took all our criminality, all our sin, upon Himself, and He defeats death three days later when He kicks open the grave's door, and the promise of everlasting life is ours, because the promise of forgiveness is given to us.

Don't let anybody lead you astray. The law can be uncomfortable. I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy when people tell me that I'm wrong. Raise your hands if you enjoy being wrong. No hands? Okay, all right, it's unanimous. We’re not God.

So the law confronts me with my sin. The law confronts you with your sin. And yet here comes God's Gospel, which binds our wounds, restores us to one another, brothers and sisters living in Jesus Christ. And He feeds us with the meal of immortality, the body and blood given for the forgiveness of sins, so that we leave this place full.

We leave this place restored. There is happiness and sorrow in leaving this place. There is a happiness, because we have gathered around Christ and His good gifts. We have gathered around the triune God, and He has come to us with those good gifts. But there is sorrow, because we're going to go out into the world, and we're going to forget it. Sometimes we won't even make it out of the parking lot before we forget it, and we're already at odds with one another.

But we take the fullness that we receive here, and we take it out into the world, to where the world does not measure up to God's law. We call the world to account. And when the world is contrite, whether that's in a person or an institution, and it repents, we proclaim the forgiveness of sins. That is our job as Christians. That is my job as your pastor.

Sometimes people ask me, "Pastor, what do you do all day? I know you do visitations and things like that, but what do you do all day?" And they're very surprised to find out I read. "You read, Pastor?" Yes—believe it or not, you pay me to read. You pay me to read the original languages. You pay me to read the Bible. You pay me to read historic Christian thought, so that I could come here and give you the full counsel of God. Because believe it or not, God has not given me His full counsel—I have to learn it. And it is my job to go and learn it and to bring it to you in a language that you understand.

So hold me to account. Make sure that I am giving you the goodness of God. Make sure that I'm giving you the things of life—the law, which kills you, and the Gospel, which resurrects you. And examine your own hearts under that same measure. Where do you need to repent, and where can the Gospel come in and restore? Because this is the purpose of God: to give you eternal life.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.