Pentecost 2 2 Corinthians 4:5-12 “We Preach Jesus Christ.”
Deuteronomy 5:12-15, 2 Corinthians 4:5-12, Mark 2:23-28
“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:1-5) I’m sure most of you know that Isaiah was speaking about the Christ when he wrote these words.
The Christ was the One who would come to save us from our sins. God had made a promise to Adam and Eve to send a Savior. God made the promise again to Abraham and sent prophets to remind His people that He always kept His promises. According to God’s promise, He would send a Savior who would not only obey the law perfectly but He would also make full atonement for the sins of all mankind. Now the Christ, the very Son of God had come to fulfill all of the Old Testament prophesies concerning the Christ.
But the Pharisees had distorted God’s plan of salvation. They saw the Old Testament as a book of rules and regulations to be kept as the way to earn salvation. However, they did not see that the law with all of its regulations demonstrated that they could not save themselves because they could not keep those laws perfectly as the law required. And to make matters worse, they overlooked the passages about the Savior and preferred to set up a system of rules and regulations that went way beyond the original law that God had given them.
Furthermore, the Pharisees wanted to earn their own salvation. They wanted to be honored by God and by man for their piety. They simply did not realize that they needed a Savior. Consequently because the crowds were following Jesus, the Pharisees were also jealous of Him.
Now that the Savior was among them, instead of looking at Jesus as the One who could save them, they were looking for ways to get rid of him, even if it meant killing Him and His message. So rather than actually listening to His message, the Pharisees were always looking for ways to trap Jesus.
But we shouldn’t be too hard on the Pharisees. By our sinful nature we are all legalists and would prefer to think that we can earn our own salvation. Our sinful side tends to make us believe that the purpose of God’s law is to show us how we are to save ourselves. And like the Pharisees, we also want to add human rules to the holy will of God. So we, like the Pharisees, need to be reminded of the lessons that Jesus demonstrated throughout His earthly ministry.
In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus and His disciples were walking through a grain field and His disciples picked some grain and ate it. This was permitted according to the law Moses had written down in Deuteronomy. (23:25) But the Pharisees protested because the disciples were doing this on a Sabbath. Over the years the Jewish interpreters of the Law of God had defined what was considered work on the Sabbath and what was not. They had determined that harvesting grain was work and therefore was forbidden and since the disciples were picking the grain, they were harvesting and therefore breaking the Sabbath law.
Jesus’ disciples however were not guilty of breaking God’s law. The Pharisees had added their own laws to God’s laws and some of those laws even contradicted God’s word. Jesus would later tell them, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites, These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.” (Mark 7:6-8)
The Pharisees had gone far beyond what God’s Law required and worse yet, they had completely misunderstood God’s purpose for the law to begin with. Jesus pointed out their error by pointing out that David and His companions had eaten the consecrated bread that was meant only for the priests.
And no one then or now, including the Pharisees would have accused David or his men of sinning. Jesus made it clear that if David was not guilty of sinning, His disciples were not guilty of sin either.
Our Lord continued to tell them that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. God had established the day of rest for the benefit of man. The Sabbath was meant to serve man, not to become a burden placed upon Him. Even medical science will tell you that there is a great physical and emotional benefit in taking a day off to rest from your work.
But God also had something else in mind; He intended the Sabbath to be a benefit to His people spiritually, not by making it a law to be obeyed at all costs, but by offering the believer a special opportunity to worship, study and learn about God’s plan for salvation. God never intended the Sabbath to be a legalistic requirement that man would have to meet in order to save himself.
Jesus invites you all to partake of that rest when He tells you, “ come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” The Pharisees did not understand this nor did they understand him when our Lord said, “So the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Jesus Christ revealed Himself as the Sabbath rest. Our Lord and Savior reveals Himself as the Lord God of love but also as a God of Justice, who hated sin so much that He was willing to pay the full price of sin, so that we could find comfort and rest from the burden of sin. Still, the Pharisees did not get it and they continued to persecute Jesus. Eventually they succeeded and Jesus was put to death on the cross. With His death on that cross, the work of our salvation was complete. You are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone and not by your works. (Ephesians 2:8)
That is what we preach. As Paul tells you in our Epistle Lesson, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.” During Paul’s ministry, there were men in Corinth who were attacking His ministry. They criticized His teachings because of Paul’s poor speaking ability and his humility. Even though God himself taught Paul, these men led the people of the Corinthian congregation to believe that true apostles of God are powerful and great in worldly ways. Paul was not rich or powerful in a worldly sense. Some theologians believe that Paul even stuttered when he spoke.
The sinful nature in all Christians that still wants to believe that we can save ourselves by obeying the law always wants to take some credit for what God alone does. And people listening to a preacher may try to give credit to how eloquently the man speaks or to how confidently he preaches or to anything he tells them that they must do in order to win salvation.
These men, who Paul sarcastically called “super-apostles”, had all of these traits. They did not deny that Jesus Christ died for them. However, they were confusing the Corinthians by appealing to the sinful nature of the people to think they need to do more than just believe in Christ. These so called “Super-Apostles” were not Apostles at all, but rather they were very similar to the Pharisees that Jesus dealt with.
Paul was being pressed on every side. No part of Paul’s life; mental, physical, or emotional was unaffected by the contrast between Paul’s helplessness and God’s power. Satan plagued him. He had an affliction he called a thorn in his side. He was surrounded by sinful people, and by false apostles always telling him that he was wrong.
And yet even with all of his doubts and anxieties pressing in upon him, essentially killing his body, he continued to proclaim Christ crucified and risen as His Lord and Savior. Still he took no credit for Himself. He gave all of the credit for His steadfastness to the Light that God had shone into his heart and that light shone through his weak body out into the dark world.
And Paul accepted this knowing that even though the world was essentially killing his body, his soul was alive because the love of Jesus Christ lived inside of Him.
And Christ’s love was shining out into the hearts of others thereby giving them eternal life. Paul made it a point to tell this to his congregation so that they would realize that their salvation was not dependant upon how great Paul or any other man was but rather upon how great, merciful and loving God is.
So we still preach Christ on the foundation built by Paul and the Apostles. We do not preach that worship is a good work, but rather worship is a gift from God whereby we receive forgiveness of our sins for our benefit. We do not preach that Baptism is a work that we do but it is a gift from God meant for our benefit.
We do not preach that we have to make a decision for Christ, but rather that Christ has come into our hearts. We do not preach that the Lord’s Supper is a work that we do, but it is a promise made to us for our benefit where Jesus enters into our very bodies giving us the assurance of eternal life. We preach Christ and Christ alone, now and always.
You can take comfort in knowing that even though the world hates you, you can stand firm in your confession, not by your own strength but through the strength of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God! In Jesus Name, Amen.