“Being (Made) Holy”
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
February 20, 2011
First Trinity Lutheran Church, rural Beatrice, Nebraska
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to all the congregation
of the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I
the LORD your God am holy.’” [NKJV]
IN NOMINE JESU
What does it mean to be holy? We tend to think of holiness in terms
of being good. When we see someone that has some moral fiber in him
or her, we call that person holy. Look at him. He loves his wife and
kids so dearly. He’s a very holy man. OR:
What about her? She volunteers at a soup kitchen and has even given
some homeless people shelter from the cold. She’s definitely a holy
woman. OR:
Do you see that guy? He’s a pastor. He seems to always be either
reading his Bible or praying. So you know he’s holy.
These are just some examples to show how people tend to assign the
characteristic of holiness to someone. More often than not, we, being
in the world, note a person’s good works as a sign of being a holy
person. What this really is is what the Lutheran Confessions call
“civic righteousness.” These are the good works that a person does
and is recognized by his fellow citizens as such. Think about the Boy
Scout helping that little old lady across the street. People see that
and think that what he did for her was a really nice thing to do.
That is a good work in the sight of others—unless she didn’t want to
cross the street after all…then it was a bad idea.
What we might consider holy—a good work—is rather subjective. Some
good works are considered better than others. Some people are thought
of as being holier than others…perhaps even “holier than thou.”
Sometimes those labels are given solely based on what we think of that
work or that person. So what or who may be good or holy one day may
not be the next.
We are subjective people. What we need is an objective God. As our
text for today shows us, God is very objective, and his definition of
holiness does not change one iota. What does God require of us to be
considered holy? We are to be like Him, for He says, “You shall be
holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (v. 2b). As God continues to
speak through Moses, He restates His Law. He commands us to keep His
Law. He demands that we obey His Law—perfectly! Then we would be
holy in the sight of God. To be holy is to be free from sin. Yet who
among us is holy? The Lord has commanded us to be holy, for He has
spoken, “For I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate
yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44a NKJV).
The blessed Apostle St. Peter also writes: “But as He who called you
is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written,
‘Be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Pet. 1:15-16 NKJV). The Lord has called
us to holiness. He has commanded us to be holy, to be set apart to
live godly lives to His glory, just as He commanded those who died in
the faith before us.
We must each be honest and ask ourselves, Am I holy? Have I set
myself apart from the sinful world, so that I would live the life God
wants me to live? Have I lived a life free of sin? Have I faithfully
kept the Ten Commandments? Such questions like these we would do well
to ask ourselves as we prepare to receive the holy things from the
Lord’s Table, such as what Martin Luther puts forth in his “Christian
Questions with Their Answers” in his Small Catechism. We answered
these questions already this morning, when we prayed, “O almighty God,
merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess to Thee all my
sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly
deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment.” We have sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God. We daily sin much and surely
deserve nothing but punishment. This is not the way of holiness. By
and of ourselves, we are not holy people. We do not fear, love, and
trust in God above all things. We have other gods than the one true
God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We misuse His Name, taking it in
vain. We despise preaching and God’s Word and do not gladly hear and
learn it. We dishonor our parents. While most of us have not
physically murdered someone, we are guilty of murder in the Lord’s
eyes by hurting or harming our neighbor in his body, by not helping
and supporting him in every physical need, and by our hatred of him.
We are guilty of adultery, whether we have engaged in pre- or
extra-marital sexual intercourse or even lusted in our hearts. We do
not help our neighbor improve and protect his possessions and income,
and we even look to get some of what he has for ourselves. We tell
lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, and hurt his
reputation; we love to shoot from the lip and wound him, even if he is
a fellow Christian, even if he is a member of this congregation! The
devil does his best work in the Church, attacking her children, you
and me, just as he did to the saints of yore, as he sought to keep
them from receiving the holy things with grateful hearts.
You see, the devil does not concern himself with the
atheists, devil worshipers, or those who worship false gods. He has
them already, though we still pray that the Holy Spirit would bring
them to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Anyone who does not worship the
one true God—the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—does in fact
worship Satan. He is not worried about them. He focuses his efforts
on the faithful, just as he worked on those who died in the faith
before us, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when he seduced Eve
into eating the forbidden fruit, thereby bringing sin into the world.
He wants to get as many of the faithful away from God as possible, to
get them—to get us—to despise the holy things of God and, therefore,
God Himself. He lusts to bring us from being holy to being heathen.
The devil desires that we lack and suffer hunger, as the Psalmist
might say, like the young lions, for, as St. Peter writes, our
“adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he
may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8b NKJV).
In the communion liturgy of the early Church, the priest, after
speaking a prayer in a low voice, would call the faithful to receive
the body and blood of the Lord, saying, “Let us be attentive. The
holy gifts for the holy people of God.” The congregation, kneeling,
would respond, saying, “One is holy, one is Lord, Jesus Christ, to the
glory of God the Father. Amen.” What was holy about the gifts was
that the Lord made them holy. He set the bread and wine apart,
attached His Word to these elements, and made them holy, giving us
also His body to eat and His blood to drink. The Hebrew root of the
word for “holy” (which our Lord uses in our text) can also mean “to
set apart,” “to be sacred,” or “to be consecrated.” In the Lord’s
Supper, all of these definitions apply. He has set apart this bread
and wine and declared it sacred, consecrating it with His very words:
“This is My body…This is My blood.” What is there in Christ’s body
and blood? He gives us the holy gifts of the forgiveness of sins,
eternal life, and salvation. When we by faith receive these gifts, we
are being made holy, for God Himself has made us holy. He has
declared us holy on account of the blood His Son shed on the cross for
us and now gives to us in His Supper.
God has made us holy at the font, where the holy Name of Jesus and
the sign of the holy cross have been upon our foreheads since the day
of our Baptism, having become baptized in and into the Name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Whether you became
baptized at this font or at a font at another Trinitarian
congregation, whether you became baptized as an adult or as an infant,
you received the holy things of God because it is God who makes you
holy, for He Himself is holy. In Holy Baptism God has given you the
holy things: forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil, and
eternal salvation. He has done so through the application of holy
water, water combined with the holy Word of God. He has clothed you,
having robed you in the holiness of Christ. He has clothed you with
His wedding clothes, so that you may come to the Feast.
Our gracious God continues to give us His holy things in
our daily living our Baptism, as “we receive absolution, that is
forgiveness, from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting, but
firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in
heaven” (Confession I). Confession and absolution is the daily living
of our Baptism, which “indicates that the Old Adam in us should by
daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and
evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live
before God in righteousness and purity forever” (Baptism IV). We
lived our Baptism, and received the holy things, this morning as I, in
the stead and by the command of Christ, forgave you all your sins in
the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the same Name into which
we became baptized. God makes us holy. He makes us holy, setting us
aside to be His holy people, marking us at our Baptism, as “All
newborn soldiers of the Crucified Bear on their brows the seal of Him
who died” (LW 311:3). He makes us holy, forgiving our sins for His
Son’s sake. We thank God that He sent His Son, our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, to be baptized by John in the Jordan River, for the Lord
became baptized into His own death—for our sake. There is a wonderful
quality about water: it makes us clean. In Holy Baptism, we are
brought before God dirty by our sins, and we are washed clean by water
and the Word of God; our sins are washed away, for God makes us clean.
Before our Lord became baptized, He was clean, for He is holy and
sinless. But when He came up out of the water, He was dirty, for He
had taken all our sins and the sins of the whole world upon Himself.
Why did He do this? Paul writes: “For our sake He made Him to be sin
who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of
God” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is what we call the Blessed Exchange!
Christ became our sin so that we would appear sinless before our
heavenly Father. Christ was forsaken by His own Father so that we
would be called children of the heavenly Father. Christ bled and died
for us so that we would live. Christ cried from the cross on Good
Friday, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” God said to Him
at His baptism, “You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased”
(Lk. 3:22b). It pleased God the Father to give His one and only Son
over to death because He wants us to live…to live with Him in heaven
into all eternity. As Paul announces to us in Romans 6: “We were
buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just
as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too
might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). That is why He made us.
God did not create us first and foremost so that we would serve Him.
He created us to love us, in spite of ourselves. He loves us and
forgives us. Our service to Him, and to one another, is the fruit of
the faith He has freely given us. These are the holy lives that we
get to live, for the Holy Spirit enables us to love one another, just
as God has first loved us in Christ!
One day we shall see our Lord’s face, but until then we get to behold
Him as He comes to us through hidden means: Word, water, wafer, and
wine. In a few moments we will behold Him as He comes to us in His
body and blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
We get to taste and see that the Lord is good. We who have confessed
the faith confessed at this altar and who, by the Holy Spirit, lead
godly lives—holy lives!—will soon receive the holy things given in
this holy meal, namely, the forgiveness of sins. And, as Luther
teaches us, where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also eternal
life and salvation. These are the holy things. We are the holy ones,
made holy by the blood of the Lamb, who is holy, without blemish or
defect. “Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us
free to be people of God.” God grant this in Jesus’ Name and for His
sake. Amen.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you
faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God
our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and
power, both now and forever. Amen” (Jude 24-25).
SOLI DEO GLORIA
___________________________________________________________________
'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless
otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors;
posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for
redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by
the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is
not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use
in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_.
Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list.
Do *not* reply to the list with your comments, but to the poster.
Subscribe? Send ANY note to: sermons...@cat41.org
Unsubscribe? Send ANY note to: sermons-...@cat41.org
Archive? <http://www.mail-archive.com/sermons@cat41.org/>
For more information on this or other lists offered by Confess And Teach
For Unity, you can contact the CAT 41 list administrator at:
Rev. Fr. Eric J. Stefanski <MoM [at] lists (dot) cat41 <dot> org>
