Arise and Walk! Ephesians 4:22-28

Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity                             10-October-2021
Sermon Text: Ephesians 4:22-28
Sermon Theme: “Rise And Walk”

I.N.R.I. A homeless lone fugitive running from justice. A paralytic totally dependent on others to move from one point to another. A blind man stumbling through the streets trying to find his way home. What do these three all have in common? The criminal, the cripple, and the disabled all need the same healing medicine. They need forgiveness.
    This isn’t the way our world thinks or operates. Living in fear we just want a shot to will end our fears and restore us to normal. Only to discover that man’s wisdom cannot deliver us from death or take away our fears. We need help and healing from above. We need a life that no virus can ever extinguish. We need hope that is certain. We need peace that cannot fade away. We need the Truth that alone heals us through His spoken Word.
      Like Jacob, the fugitive, we need the assurance in the darkness of loneliness that we are not abandoned, alone, and forgotten. We need the Ladder whose flesh and blood connects us to our heavenly Father while His Word breathes forth the Spirit of peace forgiving us our sins. We need Bethel - the House of the Lord. A place where Jesus is present breathing forth His life giving Spirit filling us with peace through sins forgiven. We need every Sunday to hear Jesus speak to us paralyzed sinners, “Son, daughter - be of good cheer - your sins are forgiven you!” “Rise and Walk!”
      God the Holy Spirit through the pen of St. Paul writes the letter to the congregation at Ephesus. He calls them “saints” for they are “faithful in Christ Jesus.” Their sainthood isn’t something they earned by a life of good deeds - it is the gift of God clothed upon them in Christ Jesus. They are blessed because out of pure grace God the Father chose them in Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless. He predestined them in Jesus to be adopted as His own beloved sons according to the pleasure of His will.
      Our human reason quickly wants to pervert the comfort of our election in Christ Jesus into something we can buy our sell. Like Jacob tricking his blind father Isaac into giving him the blessing of the firstborn son. We look for assurance of our status as God’s children in what we have done, or what we feel, or what we think. In short we want to look back to the law and justify ourselves by what we have done or left undone. We stumble in the blindness of sin. Our father Adam rebelling against Our Creator’s life giving Word and gifts - choose death - spiritual death to life. The Spirit of Truth preaches through Paul that all of us were born dead in our trespasses and sins. We were the walking dead, captive to Satan’s lies, we followed the course of the world following lusts of our flesh. Dead we thought life was found in pursuing the desires of our flesh and mind. We had no hope in ourselves, in our minds, in our feelings, in our good deeds.
      God who is rich in mercy, when we were dead made us alive in Christ Jesus. He who choose us called us by name within His House saying, “I baptize you!” He sealed our adoption with His Holy Name, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” He gathers us at Bethel - His Church every Sunday around one Lord keeping us in one Faith through one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. He preserves us in His gift within His Church through sending forth men - pastor/teachers to preach and teach to us the apostolic and prophetic written Word of God.
      Listen! Eph 4:17-19 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, (18) having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; (19) who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” Christian rise and walk! Not as the world in the futility of their minds with a blind heart rejecting the Creator’s Truth. The Church - Bethel - is in this world, but it isn’t of this world. Its success cannot be measured by what this world holds valuable - money and numbers. Bethel is rich not because of a fancy building, although it is a blessing honoring Christ. Bethel - the Church - is beautiful because Christ Jesus is here. He gathers us together to say to our souls, ‘I am your salvation!”
He doesn’t show us the way to earn our salvation - He is your salvation! He gives you the victory of His cross and empty tomb through His Word of forgiveness spoken into your ears through the fleshly mouth of His called and ordained servant of His Word.
      “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!” Jacob confesses waking from his slumber. We join him, as we wake from the sleep of this world’s lies and deception of our sinful flesh - to see with our ears the beauty of being gathered together around Christ in His Word and gifts. Eph 4:20-21 But you have not so learned Christ, (21) if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: “ We have a living breathing Christ joining heaven and earth together here in this place every Sunday to teach us by hearing Him in His Word and making us alive by the Spirit of Truth. ( Ephesians 4:.22-24)
        The paralytic had no hope of coming to Jesus on his own power to be healed. His friends heard the good news that Jesus of Nazareth restored the broken. They bear the burden of their friend’s dead weight to bring him to Jesus. When the house is full and the door is blocked by the crowd listening to Jesus they are not detoured. St. Mark records that they went up on the roof of the house and opened a way to lower their friend to Jesus’ feet. Jesus sees this man’s deepest need - “Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you!” Speaking it was done. Jesus was taking this man’s debt of sin into His own innocent flesh and would pay it off in full with His holy precious blood upon the cross. The man was freed. Now he could go home at peace. God wasn’t angry at him. He had hope of life eternal. Forgiveness fills us with life eternal and the certainty that sinners like me are saved.   Forgiveness of sins is our greatest need - so graciously God the Holy Spirit forgives you and all believers in Christ within this Christian Church all your sins.  
      If we’d honestly examine our hearts, minds, and lives on the basis of God’s Holy Ten Words - Commandments - nothing could keep us from gladly coming into the House of the Lord to be forgiven by Christ every Sunday, and demanding our pastor to hear our confession and give us private absolution as we struggle with our pet sins. The Scribes scoff that man can forgive sins. Jesus shows that God has given the power for men on earth to speak others forgiven. He commands the paralytic to take up his bed and go home. He is freed from his sins first, and then from his paralysis. He doesn’t lay on his bed and wait for his friends to carry him. Instead he gets up and walks home.
      Freed from our sins we tear off the rags of our former conduct. Daily we step into our baptism and drown our old sinful selfish adam. Sorrowing over our sins, we look only to Christ Jesus for healing through forgiveness. Our old adam putrefies us through deceitful lusts. Deceitful lusts that even masquerade as self-chosen spirituality. ( Ephesians 4:.23) We are renewed by reading the Scriptures out loud, hearing them, learning them, chewing on them, and inwardly digesting them. The Spirit of our mind is renewed only through Christ’s Written Word - the Holy Bible - the Word and promises He speaks to us in our baptism, absolution , and in His Supper. Christ’s Word makes us new again in the font of forgiveness that flows from His crucified side from Calvary. ( Ephesians 4:24) Rising to a new day forgiven. We don’t wear the rags of our old sinful self - instead we are clothed with the new Adam - Jesus risen from the dead filling us with the newness of His life. In Jesus we are restored and have the foretaste of the life that awaits us after death and the grave. We are recreated according to God in true righteousness and holiness. Christ’s righteousness and holiness is now clothed upon you and God the Father remembers your sins no more.
      Now we walk as God’s children in this dying world. ( Ephesians 4:25) Satan is the father of lies, we reject his deception - instead we speak the truth of the gospel to one another. God the Holy Spirit has knit us together in Bethel - the House of God - The Church as members of one another. Just as you wouldn’t cut off your finger if it had a sliver in it - you’d care for it pull out the sliver and apply healing medicine. So also, we seek to care for those hurt by their sin with the healing medicine of Christ’s forgiveness.
        Walking as God’s children we cast all our cares upon our heavenly Father for He cares for us. ( Ephesians 4:26) Satan seeks to stir up our anger and lead us into despair. Social media stirs and promotes anger on its platforms. Righteously we may be angered by the slaughter of abortion, injustice, and corrupt governmental authority. We are not to let the sun set on our anger - instead we take it to the Lord in prayer. Vengeance belongs to Him and He will repay. So we begin and end each day in prayer casting all our worry and anger upon Him for He worries for us.
          Walking as God’s children we learn to treasure that which He treasures. ( Ephesians 4:28). We don’t put our trust in those things that moth eat and thieves can break in and steal. Our treasure is in heaven - never to be stolen through inflation, monetary collapse, or bank failure. Our treasure is our brothers and sister in Christ who are in need. So we work in the vocation the Lord has given us trusting Him for daily bread to provide and care for our family. We are freed to use the excess to care for our brother in need - our faith walks in loving service towards those in need that the Lord places at our doorstep.
            The LWML was organized in 1942 in order that Christ’s Word might establish Bethel’s around this world - that fugitives like Jacob might hear and see that in Jesus’ cross heaven and earth are reunited. That sin paralyzed in fear might hear Jesus speak, “Be of good cheer - your sins are forgiven you.” That we might gather here in person every Sunday and confess, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.” Amen.