02/17/2024
Ash Wednesday
February 14th, A.D. 2024
Trinity Lutheran, Goodland, IN
February 15th, A.D. 2024
St. John’s Lutheran, Rensselaer, IN
Pastor: The Rev. David R. Mueller
Old Testament: Joel 2:12-19
Epistle: 2nd Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Gospel: 6:1-6, 16-21
Title: “Ash Wednesday; WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS. . .”
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Remember that YOU ARE DUST, AND TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN.”
“DO NOT LAY UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES 0N EARTH, WHERE MOTH AND RUST DESTROY, AND WHERE THIEVES BREAK IN AND STEAL; RATHER LAY UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURE IN HEAVEN, WHERE NEITHER MOTH NOR RUST DESTROYS, AND WHERE THIEVES DO NOT BREAK IN AND STEAL. FOR WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE YOUR HEART WILL BE ALSO.”
There’s your sermon outline for this evening. It’s quite simple and hopefully, what I’ll be delivering to you the rest of the time is nothing you don’t already know. But sometimes, we forget the “simple” stuff, and even if we don’t, it’s good to hear it again. For “FAITH COMES BY HEARING, AND HEARING BY THE WORD OF CHRIST.” In fact, that’s what we’ll be doing through each of these midweek services: Reviewing the foundation of the Faith. But, in the end, what else can that Foundation be but Christ, and Him crucified?
“DO NOT LAY UP TREASURES FOR YOURSELVES ON EARTH,” after all, not only do those “treasures” decay from moth and rust, and disappear from thieves, swindlers, the IRS, inflation, and so on, but “YOU ARE DUST AND TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN”. Remember the story of the rich fool that Jesus told! “GOD SAID TO HIM, ‘FOOL! THIS NIGHT YOUR LIFE WILL BE REQUIRED OF YOU; THEN WHOSE WILL THOSE THINGS BE WHICH YOU HAVE PROVIDED?’”
“BUT LET A MAN EXAMINE HIMSELF . . . AND SO LET HIM EAT OF THE BREAD AND DRINK OF THE CUP.” Examine yourself, then: Where is your treasure? WHAT is your treasure?
So how do you determine that? Think about the time of your days, the things you spend your time doing, thinking about, saying. What does all that say about where your heart and mind are? That which you consider your most precious treasure will, naturally, be the place your heart and mind spends itself. Certainly, not every waking moment can be spent consciously there. There are so many different legitimate things of THIS world to which we, even as Christians, especially as Christians, have the duty to turn our minds, love in our hearts, spend our time on. But what lies at the true foundation of all that? WHY is it necessary and good that you spend your time and heart and mind on those things? Honestly, one could examine each aspect of his life — the things he has, wealth, health, property, reputation, pleasure; the things that he does — career, family, various forms of service, leisure, eating, drinking, ALL of it, and ask himself that question: “Why, ULTIMATELY, do I have this, do this? Why does it matter at all?” In other words, what is the One Thing Needful, the One Thing that matters eternally, which gives any true value or meaning to anything else in our lives?
To be sure, when you examine yourself, you will find that there are some “treasures” that are simply bad. Sinful, in and of themselves. Those things you know without much thought are not treasures worth your eternal soul, even if it’s hard to part with them. But there are plenty of things that are not sinful per se — indeed, an enormous amount of our lives — which we can and do, nevertheless, turn into “treasures” that our lives slowly get “centered on”, and that One Thing Needful gets lost.
“FOR WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE YOUR HEART WILL BE ALSO.” Really, that’s simply another way of saying, “Who is your God?”
And so, I ask you that question! What is your treasure? Who is your God? And you’ve been listening long enough and thinking enough, I pray, to know that as you examine yourself, the answer may not be quite as clear as you know it should be.
Nevertheless, answer it as you know you should! Give me that wonderful, simple, beautiful “Sunday School” answer! (That answer you use in Sunday School when you aren’t sure what the answer is, but you know it’s the best place to start!). Jesus!
“LAY UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES IN HEAVEN.” Well, what does that mean? It’s worth remembering that in Matthew’s Gospel, especially, the word “Heaven” (as in “the Kingdom of Heaven”) is mostly an indirect word for He who IS Heaven in the ultimate sense, the King of Heaven, God. Lay up for yourselves treasures with God! But where is such treasure that our Creator Himself would count as ETERNAL, and truly worthy of our lives, our hearts, minds, bodies, and so on? You just sang it! “What is the world to me? My Jesus is my Treasure!”
Of course He is! Thanks be to God, you know that Sunday School answer, and you are in this place to hear of Him, and even receive Him, your priceless Treasure.
But I need to warn you of something with regards to even this “right” answer, for the devil is always trying to pull you away, and substitute some other treasure, even one that he tries to convince you IS “Jesus”, but isn’t. For there are all kinds of “Jesuses”, false ones out there, and our own sinful hearts are all too happy to buy into them, or invent our own false “Jesus”.
I am concerned about the “Jesus” of the “He gets us” ad campaign, for instance. I’ve not seen any of those that ever mentions His substitutionary, sin-atoning sacrifice for us on the cross. I MIGHT be able to use such to start a conversation about the Jesus of the Holy Scriptures, the real Jesus, but if it’s not the Jesus who dies on the cross and rises again for the justification of sinners, it’s a false Jesus. And if such a “Jesus” never preaches or teaches about any sin and its consequences of condemnation, except perhaps whatever “sins” those “other people” are so guilty of, who irritate me so much, . . . if that’s my “Jesus-treasure”, what good was His death on the cross? What good did it accomplish? Like one of our Lord’s Supper hymns puts it:
“For what purpose was My dying
If not for your justifying?
And what use this precious food
If you yourself were pure and good?” LSB, #627, v. 8
“FOR WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE YOUR HEART WILL BE ALSO.” But that’s the question: WHERE? Where is the real Jesus? And thus, where will your hearts be? And where will your lives reflect the fact that your heart and your Treasure is Jesus?
Simply put, where He has promised to be, to be your forgiveness, for Life both now and eternally, your salvation from your own sin, and death, and the devil. “WHEREVER TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED IN MY NAME, THERE I AM IN THE MIDST OF THEM”. In His Name — in His holy Word, around which His Body, the Church, gathers, where She is CREATED as such by the work of the Holy Spirit through that Word — Word of the Name of the Holy Trinity combined with water in the ‘WASHING OF REGENERATION AND RENEWAL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT” in Baptism, Word of Jesus through the pastor that says, “I forgive you all your sins.” Word of Jesus in the Holy Communion of His true Body and Blood joined even to our lowly bodies, “FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN.”
What does a life lived reflecting that Jesus is our Treasure look like? Well, first of all, it looks like someone who “moves heaven and earth” to get to the Divine Service all the time. One more warning here: There are the Christians who have, to some extent, bought into the devil’s lie that “as long as I have Jesus in my heart,” I don’t HAVE to go to church to be saved.” And that’s his typical subtle twisting of the truth: For indeed, it’s NOT YOUR “good work” of going to church that saves you. It’s Jesus who has promised to be there in the Divine Service to forgive you, who you simply trust according to His Word, that saves you, forgives you. And the one who rests on “Jesus in my heart,” without the Scriptures daily and Sacrament as often as possible, to keep the real Jesus in his heart, will slip away and sinfully substitute a false Jesus more and more until, at some point that person has thrown the real Jesus out entirely.
But such a life reflecting the fact hat the real crucified Jesus is my treasure also means a life reflecting Jesus’ life and death, as we confess this real Jesus and everything He says and does in His Word in what WE say and do for all around us, whether they think it’s “Christlike” or not, whether they love us or hate us for it. Because that’s the life of Jesus’ love in us, and remember that His life went the way of the cross.
This is the repentance of Lent, the repentance of the entire life of the Christian. This is what Ash Wednesday is all about. This is what those “Six Chief Parts” of the Catechism, and all the rest of the parts, are all about. It’s about each person learning all over again, and again, and again, to know and confess that it really is “me”. MY sin. “DUST YOU ARE AND TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN.” That’s MY death God is speaking of. That’s His justice upon ME. I have earned countless times, countless ways, and continually that death into the dust and the eternal hell that rightly should follow. But the true Jesus, whom God Himself reveals and gives to us in the preaching of His cross, and in the absolution and forgiveness pronounced even on ME, corporately and privately and in the cross-shaped bloody waters of Holy Baptism, and in the crucified and risen body and blood of Jesus in the Sacrament, THIS. . .
“. . . Jesus is my treasure,
My life, my health, my wealth,
My friend, my love, my pleasure,
My joy, my crown, my all,
My bliss eternally! . . .” LSB #730, V. 4
For all my sin and everything I have earned by it He has taken upon Himself, died for it and left it there nailed to the cross, as He rose from the dead in order to guarantee that though I die someday still I shall rise WITH Him, to live before our truly loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in righteousness and purity forever. THIS is the treasure in Heaven that cannot be lost, cannot fade; will not ever be taken away. He is your heart and love.
And thus, this is your most precious Treasure now: the declaration of Jesus Himself, through His lowly servant, that you are forgiven for all your sin.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen..
