Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Luke 14:1-11 Remember the Sabbath Day By Keeping it Holy

October 12th, 2025

Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy.

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.

What is it with the Pharisees and Jesus and the Sabbath day? Seven times in the Gospels Jesus has healed someone on the Sabbath day and six of those are a direct challenge to the Pharisees teaching of the Sabbath day. Clearly a right understanding of the Third Commandment is important for Jesus. What don’t the Pharisees understand? I mean the Pharisees knew God’s Law. They could recite the Scriptures from memory perfectly. Their intent wasn’t evil. They were trying to please God and live righteously.

The Pharisees were the faithful and frequent good church going kind. The pious, weekly fasting, tithing of all you own, God first before anything else sorts of people in the church. They would have been the ones you looked up to and wanted to emulate.

Imagine if we had 300 members today in our church who were as zealous to live righteously and follow God’s Law as the Pharisees were back then. The pews would be full every Sunday. We’d have to add an additional service on Sunday morning to just to fit everyone in. Maybe even a Saturday evening service. Just like the good ole days! We’d need to build an education house because we wouldn’t have enough room in the church for all the kids in Sunday school. I’d be alright with all of that.

The Pharisees actually took the Third Commandment seriously. Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.

How often do you, or those not with us this morning, choose work, play, or sleep over Jesus and His gifts? Willfully despising preaching and His Word and the Sacrament. Forgetting the vows they or you took at confirmation to hear the Word of God and receive the Lord’s Supper faithfully. Not just when you feel like or when it fits into your schedule. But actually scheduling your life and everything in it around this one hour every Sunday morning.

And then you or they bristle at the preaching, the letters, and the admonishing to attend the Divine Service. Obstinate, stubborn, blind, and deaf are a few words that come to mind to those who scorn the gifts of Jesus and the Third Commandment.

If all our members were as zealous for God as the Pharisees we’d have a full church every Sunday. On top of a full church, the alms bags would be full. Tithing would be a thing of joy. You’d be tithing out of everything you own, not just your money, all of your possessions. Our financial problems would dissipate. We’d have money in the bank with a surplus. We wouldn’t be waiting for 2029 in hopes of raising the funds needed for the church renovations. We’d already have it.

That all that sounds pretty good. A full church. A full bank account. Renovations complete. Maybe we should all become Pharisees.

Of course that’s ridiculous and spiritually deadly. Don’t go to the Brickhouse this week, to that back table, you know the one, and tell everyone Pastor Zoske said we all need to become a bunch of Pharisees. Don’t do it. Jesus doesn’t want you to become a Pharisee.

Salvation is not found through obedience to the Law. It’s not found in crowded pews. It’s not found in overflowing alms bags. It’s found in Jesus Christ crucified and risen for your sins and nowhere else. And all the goods from that one sacrifice for the sins of the world are delivered to you in here every Sunday morning.

Becoming a Pharisee would mean rejecting Jesus and the free gift of salvation through His bloody Cross. You would lose your faith. The path of salvation through works and obedience to the Law ends in hell. You don’t want that road. The Pharisees, despite their zealousness for God’s Law missed the mark, by a long shot.

The Third Commandment isn’t a Law we must keep in order to please God or show Him or anyone else how righteous we are. If you come to church in an attempt to please God, you miss the mark. You have nothing to offer God except your sin and failure. That’s why God wants you to obey the Third Commandment. God’s got work to do in here on you in the Divine Service every week. You only hurt yourself if you reject the gifts of Jesus offered here. If you despise preaching and His Word you damage your faith.

Despising, rejecting, or even minimizing the Third Commandment is deadly for your faith. Most of you should be well versed in the reasons why. You hear it constantly from this pulpit and in Bible classes. You’ve received letters detailing the reasons why you need to be in the Divine Service faithfully and frequently. Many of you actually listen and get it and you are faithful and frequent. You are fed often the food your faith needs.

Many of you are still shutting your ears and being offended at the continued preaching and admonition to be in church every Sunday with rare exceptions. Obstinate, stubborn, blind, and deaf. Repent.

Listen to God’s Word. Let it shape you and form you. God will work as He sees fit with His Word and Spirit. It’s the reason we began the Membership Renewal Plan last December with an end date of October. It’s now October. Of course when October ends the work set in motion with the Membership Renewal Plan will continue in this church. It’s necessary. Unless God repeals the 3^rd Commandment, which He won’t, it will always be important for the health of St. Paul Lutheran Church.

Since December you’ve received two letters with details about the reason and purpose behind the Membership Renewal Plan. The reason and purpose for the plan has everything to do with understanding the Third Commandment rightly. Not as the Pharisees who believed falsely about the Third Commandment. Turning the focus on their work and perfection instead of seeing the Sabbath Day fulfilled in Christ and His work on the Cross.

Christ is our rest. In Him we cease our striving to live perfectly in an attempt to save ourselves. Jesus does what we can’t. And Jesus wants to gift us the fruits of His work in here every week in the Divine Service to keep our faith alive and save us. Understanding the Third Commandment rightly is to see that gathering together in the Divine Service is the way God has chosen to feed and strengthen your faith. If you choose to stay away you will get weak, sick, and eventually your faith can and will die. It’s a matter of life or death to feed on the gifts of Jesus in the Divine Service weekly. You’ve heard this over and over again.

The Spirit is willing the flesh is weak.

Since December, hundreds of letters have been sent out encouraging and admonishing delinquent members to not despise preaching and the Word of God, but to hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. Come back to church. Hundreds have rejected those words of God to come and join us in the Divine Service to have their faith fed. You can see some of the results of the membership renewal plan in the voter’s packet available today. Next Sunday at the voter’s meeting it will be official.

It will be tempting to feel angry, or sad, or think isn’t there a better way? True Christian love is not always easy. True Christian love must speak the hard things to those who persist in their sin. Our delinquent members are persisting in their sin. They are rejecting the Third Commandment and the gifts of Jesus. They are killing their faith. So in love we speak God’s Word to them, all of it. God will work in His time and in His way. The Gospel is right here waiting for those who once again hunger and thirst for the gifts of Jesus.

Don’t focus on the negative. Thank God for what you are given in here on a Sunday morning. For all of your brothers and sisters in Christ who gather together with you around the gifts of Jesus every Sunday morning. And remember, for a year and a half now you have been receiving the body and blood of Jesus every Sunday. That’s not the case in so many of our Lutheran churches. There are many Lutheran churches in our LCMS that would die to have the pews this full, the fellowship this strong, the joy as vibrant, and the Sacrament offered weekly, as you have at St. Paul Lutheran Church every Sunday morning. We are blessed. See it.

Look around you on Sunday morning. It’s a pretty good place to be. There is joy in here on a Sunday morning. And then in fellowship and Bible class following the Divine Service there is laughter, good hearted joking, good discussions about God’s Word – good Christian fellowship. All because God is at work with His Word and Holy Spirit.

I thank the good Lord for St. Paul Lutheran Church in Williamsburg, Iowa. I think you do too.

And all those people who left, who willfully chose to not be members here anymore. The door is wide open. We will welcome the obstinate, the stubborn, the wayward, the delinquent, the self-excluded back with open arms if they choose to come back in those doors. It will be a joyous day if that happens.

We are not Pharisees. Thanks be to God. Our eyes of faith have been opened to see and believe the Truth. We are sinners in need of being saved. We love the Law of God. We love the Third Commandment. Not because we think we can keep it perfectly and save ourselves. We know we have failed miserably and fallen short of the glory of God, each and every one of us. But we know the Law must do it’s good and Godly work on us.

It must show us our sin and failure. It must kill us. It must bring us to our knees crying out Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy! And when the Law has done it’s good work the Gospel comes rushing in and saves us. Washing us clean in the blood of Jesus. Sins forgiven, cast into the sea. Hearts cleansed and made pure. Once again right in the eyes of our Heavenly Father who only sees the perfection of Jesus when He looks at you. You are loved. You are dear children of your Heavenly Father through the Bloody Cross of Jesus.

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Third Commandment requires humility. You are passive recipients of the gift. You don’t do the work. Jesus does what you can’t. Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross for you. Today you come here in humility. You come here to receive what God wants to give you. It’s all Jesus.

You cry out, God have mercy on me a sinner. And He does. Jesus has come down to the lowest place in your flesh in order to lift you up and exalt you in Himself. Believe it. Continue coming here to receive it. That’s the good work that must be done to you. Let it be done. Thanks be to Jesus. In Jesus name. Amen.