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THE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST August 10, 2025 Pastor Tom Steers Christ the Saviour Lutheran Church, Toronto Brothers and sisters, peace, grace and mercy be to you through God our Father, and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. Our Bible readings for this Sunday are: Old Testament – Genesis 15:1-6 Psalm 33:12-22 Epistle – Hebrews 11:1-16 Gospel – Luke 12:22-40 A Sermon on Luke 12:32-40 – We are all in a war. And the war is very old. It goes right back to the Garden of Eden when Satan challenged Eve's faith and said, "Did God really say…?" The battle will continue until the day Jesus returns to take His bride, the Christian Church, the body of believers, home with Him. The war goes on, and we’re the battlefield. Because as believers we are both saints for our faith in Christ, and yet still, in this life, sinners. It’s our nature. A short time ago we confessed, "O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment." When we’re infants, we appear to have no conflicts the world. In that early stage of life, we think we have peace. But as we get older, and the friction with the world’s cares, troubles, and conflicts happen, when we run up against the world’s brokenness and our own – we worry. It’s a human tendency, a predicament. And we can ask: why is there so much anxiety in the world, and in our lives? Especially when God rescued us from this situation. He Himself took on human flesh and came into the world. He was born and lived His whole life without sin. Because He had no sin of His own, He was able to take our worries and anxieties, in fact, all our sins, onto Himself. And when God poured out His wrath on sin, it struck His Son and resulted in His crucifixion and death. Jesus took the brunt of sin’s debt in our place. Yet He converted the shame of death into a triumph of life as He rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven. God has rescued us through Christ, yet in this life we’re still part of the Great War. Through Baptism, God killed our sinful nature and gave us a holy one. And this is where the battle begins. Satan doesn't care that the sinful nature is dead. He uses it to attack us anyway. Like a vampire from a horror movie, our dead, sinful nature continues to battle the holy nature God placed in our hearts. Every Christian in this world has a holy nature, provided by God, and a sinful one, our old, dead selves that try to destroy our faith and return to rebellion against God. As I said earlier, and Martin Luther wrote 500 years ago that we are at the same time both saints and sinners. In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus was teaching His disciples and followers. He knew they were both saints and sinners. He was teaching them about one of the weapons that our old, dead, sinful nature uses against us. And that weapon is anxiety. Anxiety uses the seduction of the things of this world. The treacherous nature of anxiety is that we need things in this world. If we don't eat, we’ll eventually starve. If we don't have clothes, we’ll get wet in the rain, burn in the sun, freeze in the winter. And we can say the same for all the resources we need to support this body and life. But our old, sinful nature uses the needs of this life to drag us into the trap of anxiety. Today's Gospel message picks up where last week's Gospel left off. Jesus had just finished telling the story of the Rich Fool. This man was a fool because he trusted in the gifts that God gave him, instead of trusting in the God who gave them. We learned that the ‘Rich Fool’ was committing idolatry and therefore lost his soul. His wealth wasn’t the problem. It was the worship of his wealth, rather than God. Ultimately the Rich Fool suffered eternal damnation because he was secure in his wealth -- he felt he didn’t need God. Jesus condemned this idolatry with the words of Luke 12:21: "So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." Today's Gospel continues right after that passage. Jesus continues teaching about our attitude towards wealth with these words: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” Jesus is encouraging us to look at our possessions from a Heavenly perspective. While our lives and bodies are in this life, we need the support and protection of food and clothing. On the other hand, our souls, our true lives, don't end in this world. In fact, they don't end, period. Therefore, Christ tells us life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Jesus used the examples of food and clothing because they were important to the people in his day. We, on the other hand, in our day and in our society generally have food and clothing, but Jesus’ words still apply to us. Even though we’re wealthy beyond the dreams of most people in this world, we worry. And when we become anxious, fixated by worry about things, we can take our eyes off God. We limit ourselves to the view from this world alone. We forget we’re eternal beings and trap ourselves into this time and space. When we become anxious and worried about something, it becomes our top priority, it can become our ‘god,’ because we worship that thing with undivided attention. In our Gospel text, Jesus tells us that anxiety is a worthless form of worship. Christ asked: "And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?" We know if anything, anxiety shortens life. This is the way the faithless worship; for Jesus said, "…all the nations of the world seek after these things…" Let’s think for a second about the worldly way of life. Wake up - eat - work - eat - go back to sleep. That can be so empty, without God. Because without God and His presence in our lives, we have to ask: Is simple survival all there is? What treasure can we have and hold on to in this world? All worldly treasures wear out. The stock market goes down – unemployment up. Our favourite clothes wear out; the cell phone dies. The car begins to use oil. Or the roof needs replacing. Eventually, purely material things give out. And people who rely on them, alone, have hassles, frustrations, and ultimately, nothing to show for it. But the Holy Spirit gives a holy nature to us when He places faith in our hearts. Each of us is also a saint. And how different it is when we view life through a saint’s eyes, through the eyes of a Christian believer. The saint looks at his or her experiences and sees the Father at work, and His promises. Jesus said, "Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than these birds!" Christ said, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive today, and gone tomorrow, how much more will he clothe you … ." The people listening to Jesus knew the Old Testament ceremonial Law said ravens were unclean, but here’s Jesus reminding them that God feeds them. Lilies became fuel for the oven, but our Father dresses them with more glory than Solomon. If God cares for these things which exist only on this earth, and even then, only for a short time, how much more will He care for us? If He sacrificed His own Son for us, will He hold back any of the other things we ultimately need? After all, His Son died for us and we’re entitled, as believers, to spend eternity with Him. But while we’re on this earth, we’ll always be both saints and sinners. And while we struggle on this earth our sinful nature will tempt us to worship the things of this world with anxiety and worry, and we will fail to be perfect. Ultimately, we’ll be visited by fear, the fear of knowing that under the law we deserve nothing but punishment now and in eternity. So how comforting it is to know the power of the Gospel, that Christ paid for our failures and imperfections. And that, despite them, it pleases God to give us His kingdom. In today's Gospel passage, Jesus said, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." That kingdom provides us with wealth that won’t disappear; it’s a treasure in Heaven that doesn’t fail, where no thief gets in and no moth destroys. How comforting to come before God's throne, confess our sins, and hear the words: "I forgive you all your sins." How comforting to know that our faith is in Christ, who guarantees believers eternal life in Heaven. Despite our sins. We don’t have to save ourselves with our righteousness or ‘good works’ – our perfect Saviour, Jesus, did that for us. Our salvation is a free gift. While we’re on this earth, the battle between saint and sinner never stops. There will be times when our struggles seem to overwhelm us, and we’ll want to cry out like the Apostle Paul, in Romans 7:24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Thankfully, the Holy Spirit inspired Paul with an answer to that question in 1st Corinthians 15:57, “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” As believers, we await the day Christ will take us to live with Him. There we will see only with Heaven's eyes. There we will no longer be saints and sinners, but simply saints. And it is to that day, when we are in God’s Heavenly kingdom together with our Saviour, that we can look forward to in trust and faith. Amen. http://christlutherantoronto.org/