“Lord, Have Mercy!”
Matthew 11:20-30
02/21/07 - Ash Wednesday
Tonight is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the
season of Lent, a season of repentance and reflection upon the
sacrifice of Christ and just what it was that put Him on that
cross. It is a time when we are brought to the realization of
just what we deserve on account of our sins, and that our Lord Jesus
Christ paid that price for us with His blood shed at Calvary. It
is a time not only for hearing the woes of God’s words of
judgment, but for hearing His words comfort and peace for the sake of
His Son, who has taken our burdens upon Himself as if they were His own
and carried them away.
Tonight’s text gives us words of both woe and
comfort. The words of woe are directed against those cities who
refused to repent at the preaching of Jesus. The woes reveal just
how angry God is at sin, especially the sin of rejecting the only
Savior that He has sent as the atoning sacrifice for sin. Jesus
says that the judgment against Tyre and Sidon will be more tolerable
than it will be against Chorazin and Bethsaida, and that it will be
more tolerable for Sodom than it will be for Capernaum on that
day. Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon were all judged by God because of
their idolatry and immorality. The prophets of the O.T. declared
this judgment against them. But Jesus holds the cities of
Chorazin and Bethsaida as more responsible, because He came to them in
the flesh, proclaiming the Gospel, and performing miraculous signs that
confirmed His deity. The O.T. cities did not have this
advantage. Jesus says if they had, they would have repented in
sackcloth and ashes. But not Chorazin and Bethsaida! Even
though God Himself had visited them, they refused to repent and believe
the Gospel.
Now, we might respond by saying, “Well, of
course they deserve to be judged more harshly! How stupid they
were for rejecting Jesus, who was right there in their midst,
proclaiming words of forgiveness, and showing by His miracles that He
had been given the authority to take away their sins and heal them of
the effects of sin.” But what about us? Are we any
better off than the people of those cities among whom Jesus walked,
preached, and performed mighty works? Are we not just as guilty
and just as responsible for our disobedience to the Word of God as they
were? In fact, we are more responsible, because Jesus is among us
in the flesh here today. He is proclaiming His Word and doing His
might works among us today - works like washing away our sins, making
us holy, and clothing us with righteousness in the waters of Baptism,
giving us to eat and to drink His body and blood in His Holy Supper,
and absolving us of our sins with His words of forgiveness, all done by
the hands of another - the pastor, but done nonetheless by Christ
Himself. But how do we treat these things? How do we treat
His Word? Do we listen to it, believe it, and do it? Or
does it go in one ear and out the other. Do we doubt and
disbelieve it? Do we use His forgiveness as a license to live in
sin? What kind of judgment and wrath do we deserve from
God? If Adam and Eve were given the sentence of death for simply
eating a piece of fruit which they were commanded not to eat of, if
Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon were destroyed because of their sins, and if
Chorazin and Bethsaida will be judged more harshly, because they did
not repent at the words of Jesus, how much more do we deserve to be
judged when we treat words and gifts of the Lord with contempt, living
our lives as if Jesus were not among us, as if He had not redeemed us
with His blood, as if we were not His holy people, as if His Word were
something we only listened to on Sundays but ignored the rest of the
days of the week?
The fact is, we deserve to hear words of woe from
our Lord. Woe to us, who have lived as if God did not matter and
as if we mattered most. Woe to us, who have not honored our
Lord’s Name, His Word, and His gifts as we should. Woe to
us, who have faltered in our worship and prayers. Woe to us, who
have not let our Lord’s love have its way with us, and so we have
let our love for others fail. Woe to us, who have hurt our
neighbors, who have failed to help them when we should have, and whose
thoughts and desires are soiled with sin. Dust we are, and to
dust we shall return.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that we can
somehow help ourselves out of this situation, that we can somehow
escape the woes of God’s judgments by our own efforts. Our
dust is contaminated dust. We could not improve our lives even if
we wanted to. Jesus speaks the woes to us, not in order that we
might try to turn over a new leaf, change our ways, or just try harder
at living a holy life, but so that we might confess what His Word says
about us - that we are poor, miserable sinners, deserving of both
God’s temporal and eternal punishment, and that there’s
nothing we can do to save ourselves. Our help is in the Name of
the Lord alone.
Jesus puts us in our place with His woes, so that we
might come to Him who put Himself in our place under His own woes, in
order that we might live under His mercy and peace. This is why
Jesus came to this earth. This is why He came to cities like
Chorazin and Bethsaida - so that they might repent and confess their
sins at the preaching of His woes, and then hear the Gospel that He had
come to take those woes upon Himself and nail them with Him to His
cross. Jesus did not come to burden you with condemnation.
He simply reveals that you are already burdened with that condemnation
on account of your sin. He came to relieve you of that burden by
taking it upon His own shoulders and instead giving you the burden of
the Gospel, which is really no burden at all; it is light and
easy. It doesn’t demand anything of you and doesn’t
condemn you. It gives you Jesus and His righteousness and it
comforts you with words of mercy, forgiveness, and peace.
As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “God did not send
His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through Him.” Our Lutheran Confessions
call it a strange work of Jesus when He does what He does here and
proclaims words of woe. But He only does this so that He can do
His proper work of proclaiming His words of mercy and peace. He
brings us down with His words of woe, so that He might raise us up with
His words of Gospel. He kills us, so that He might bring us to
new life. He does not want to destroy us; He wants to save us.
Tonight we are reminded again of this fact, that in
order to save us, Jesus came and took up into Himself our dust, so that
when our bodies do return to dust, they might not remain dust forever,
but be raised from the dead on the Last Day, just as Jesus’ body
was raised from the dead and now lives and reigns forever in
heaven. Dust we are, and to dust we shall return, but because God
has had mercy on us and redeemed our dust with the blood of our
crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ, He will not leave us in the
dust. Jesus will come back for us just as He promised to take us
to be with Himself, that where He is, there we might be also.
And so, when throughout the season of Lent we hear
words of woe spoken to us on account of our sin, we must confess what
God says of us, that yes, we deserve His woes. But we must also
confess what God says of us in Christ, that Jesus has taken our woes
away and given us His blessings instead. Let the woes drive you
to say, “Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner.” And
then hear that mercy spoken over you, that you are declared righteous
and forgiven all your sins for Christ’s sake. He is your
gentle and humble Savior, who has taken your heavy burdens upon Himself
and given you instead His easy and light burden. In Him you will
find rest for your souls. Amen.