Reformation Sunday

SERMON

Text: Jeremiah 23:28-29

“The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?” says the Lord. “Is not My word like a fire?” says the Lord. “And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?”

In Christ Jesus who belongs to you as your Savior, and who has given you His Word that you may rejoice and celebrate—dear fellow-redeemed:

“A new car!” Years ago, while watching “The Price Is Right” those were the words that would almost always guarantee that the person standing next to the host would jump up and down…screaming, laughing, crying for joy. Not always did the contestant win the car and then the thrill and excitement of owning a brand new car disappeared because it wasn’t theirs.

In the recent explosion of “make you rich quick” television shows, contestants are filled with joy, excited, and celebrate their “big winnings,” but later when they pay the taxes they find out that it doesn’t all belong to them. Even if they are wise investors and don’t foolishly waste their prize money they will find out that NONE of it is truly theirs, for when they die it will profit them nothing. Millions of people throw away hard earned money in the lottery just for the POTENTIAL of being able to celebrate and enjoy the momentary ownership of a lot of money.

The rich farmer in one of Jesus’ parables was filled with joy and celebrated his bumper crop. He said, in effect, “I’m going to live it up now! It’s MINE! All MINE and so much of it!” As Jesus tells the story you can almost see the farmer with the extra spring in his step joyfully going about building new barns. Then one night God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?” (Luke 12:20). It turns out that the farmer was celebrating the ownership of things that really didn’t belong to him…he just had them for a time and then they were gone.

So it is with anything and everything on this earth—even the earth itself is temporary. All of this is the very reason Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”(Matthew 6:19-20).

Today we are celebrating “the Reformation.” Into the title “the Reformation” we lump together all that God did to bring back—to restore—the true teaching of His Word in the earthly church. All of this happened about 500 years ago, but we’re still celebrating today because what we have received out of the Reformation is something moth and rust can’t destroy. It is something the thief can’t take nor the tax man expect his percentage. It is something that not even death or the Devil can take from you. What we have received from God through the Reformation is everything we receive out of the truth of God’s Word…or put another way, everything we would lose if we didn’t have God’s Word.

The Gospel, the faith which the Gospel creates, salvation from sin, the certain hope of heaven, the confidence to go forward in this often difficult and sorrow-filled life…all of these come from God’s Word! So REJOICE! CELEBRATE! GOD’S WORD (this wonderful gift!) BELONGS TO YOU!! It is I. A Word of Substance II. A Word of POWER III. A Word of TRUTH.

I.

When we go shopping we are normally looking for something substantial to equal the value of the money we are spending. We want to get our money’s worth. Imagine how disappointed and angry you would be if you purchased a gallon of orange juice and found out later that it was only colored water. Or if you purchased a bag of flour only to find out that it was filled with sawdust. You bought ORANGE JUICE…you bought FLOUR…you want SUBSTANCE for your money.

If we want substance in what we buy in food for our bodies, much more so should we want substance for our souls. There are many “substance-less” things upon which our souls can feed. Jeremiah writes, “The prophet who has a dream let him tell a dream; and he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?” [v. 28]

As I was growing up, one of my chores for awhile was to take care of the family parakeet. The bird would scratch through the seed, eat a certain amount, and leave a layer of chaff on top of the remaining good seed. The day’s feeding involved taking the cup of half eaten seed and pouring it into a can. When that can eventually became full, then it was time to take the can outside hold it high, pour the contents into another container and watch the chaff all blow far away. When the chaff was gone, good seed was left which could again be fed to the bird.

As we see combines out in the field and see dust and chaff swirling around the machine. All of that is waste product, light and dirty, without value; but in the combine is grain—the thing of substance and value. Chaff is SO different from grain that the two can’t even be compared in value or any other way!

So too, the Word of God when compared to anything else our souls might feed upon is not worthy of the comparison. Anything less than God’s Word is chaff…emptiness…it flies away, it is worthless. The Word of God has substance!

Everything in the earth is emptiness and temporary because it is all one day going to fade away and be destroyed. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon speaks of all the different things he accomplished, all the things he pursued in his life and one right after the other he concludes that ALL things are vanity…everything is empty, it’s a chasing after the wind. It is totally worthless. It is chaff.

Every single sinner, at some point, senses the emptiness in his life and needs SUBSTANCE to fill it. Martin Luther’s own story is an example of this. He felt the emptiness of trying to please God. He understood that he needed something so that he could stand “right” with God and not face God’s eternal damnation. So, Luther went searching. He tried beating himself, he tried to live a holy life, but NOTHING could fill that void which he felt because he was pursuing things that had no substance—he was pursuing chaff.

If that void and need which we have is filled with our self…its chaff its going to disappear. If we fill it with the things of this life getting as much as we can…its chaff, its going to disappear. If we fill that void in our hearts and souls with what our ears are itching to hear by nature—as Paul says, “…they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers…will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fairy tales” (2 Timothy 4:4)—if that is how we seek to fill the void, its chaff, it has no substance.

God’s Word, on the other hand, is SUBSTANTIVE. It is substance, it has substance. It provides the REAL way to salvation. It is the REAL salvation that won’t blow away when time comes to an end.

The SUBSTANCE of God’s Word is what the crowd recognized when Jesus preached. We heard at the end of the Gospel reading that the people were amazed because the word which Jesus preached was so much different from anything that the scribes preached. The scribes were preaching their own laws, their own ideas. Their preaching didn’t have substance, it was chaff; but Jesus preached the SUBSTANTIVE Word of the Lord.

When we understand that the Word of God does have SUBSTANCE we also understand that this can make it rather difficult to follow—to put into action in our lives. Paul speaks to the Corinthians and makes a comparison between milk and solid food. He wrote, “I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able” (1 Corinthians 3:2).

It takes far more digestive capability to digest meat than it does milk. There is MEAT in God’s Word because it is a word of substance. We’re not going to be able to digest God’s Word based purely on our own ideas and with our own logic. There are going to be things that are going to be hard to understand but that is the nature of the truth of God’s Word. When you have SUBSTANCE it won’t always be easy. If we are looking for an easy way to apply some "spiritual" meaning to our lives, that’ll be chaff because it doesn’t have substance.

On one occasion (after the feeding of the 5,000) Jesus made a comparison between Himself and the bread of the miracle He had just performed. He told the people, “I am the Bread of Life.” Jesus went on to expound upon that and when He was done, many of His disciples left Him because, they said, “this is a hard saying, who can understand it?”(John 6:60).

Peter writes in his 2^nd epistle, “…as also our beloved brother Paul (the apostle Paul), according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15-16).

If people are only looking for a “quick fix,” something to “feel good,” something to get them through the moment, they are looking for chaff and when they find it they will stop. They won’t dig into God’s Word to find the meat.

There were “hard sayings” in what Luther told the people of his day too. Many would not accept what Luther preached, especially the leaders of the church. The Word of God can be hard to take for a sinner who wants to give credit to himself. The Word of God can be hard to take for a sinner who is condemned by his sin; but the Word of God has substance because it has the Gospel as well. The Word of God is the Word that gives us the substance that says, “Jesus died for all your sins.” Anything less has “gutted” God’s Word and left it “substance-less.”

YOU HAVE THIS WORD OF SUBSTANCE and because it is a word of substance it is also a WORD OF POWER.

II.

We sang just a short time ago: “Thy strong Word did cleave the darkness, at Thy speaking it was done!” All we need to do to find the POWER that is in God’s Word is to look to creation. By the POWER of just His Word: “LET THERE BE!” this whole world came into existence. Everything you see and are amazed by is the result of His powerful word.

Jesus’ life demonstrated His power in the miracles He performed. “Even the wind and the sea obey Him” (Mark 4:41). Even death could not hold someone if Jesus said, “live!”—that is POWER! Jesus didn’t need “hocus-pocus.” Jesus didn’t need some incantation or some strange remedy. He SPOKE and it was done!

The power of God’s Word also includes the power and authority to judge. God says through Jeremiah, “‘Is not My word like a fire?’ says the Lord, ‘And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?’” [v.29] This judgment of God would fall upon the peoples’ sin. His Word is powerful and strong to destroy all who oppose, to crush human pride, to destroy the sinful supposition that I can be god and don’t need the true God.

Make no mistake, God’s powerful Word can and will judge. A little earlier in Jeremiah God said, “Because you speak this word, behold, I will make My words in your mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them…” (Jeremiah 5:14). The prophet Jeremiah was speaking God’s Word and that word had the power to destroy, to cut, to break, to hammer sin down.

God’s law does cut. It cuts to the heart and leaves exposed a bleeding sinful mess. When God’s Word comes upon our sinful hearts there is no hope that we can find in ourselves. There is no power to save. God’s law digs deep. God’s Word can penetrate and find the sin that we ourselves have managed to deny. We hear in Hebrews “For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Just as powerful as God’s Word is to judge and to crush, He comes with equal power to heal. Again turning to Luther’s life, he was terrified because of this power of God to crush…to judge. He was stricken with fear and did not know what to do because he had an incomplete understanding about the power of God’s Word.

The power of God’s Word that judges is also the power that gives life. The same power of God that created the universe, the same power that hammers the sinner’s heart, is the power that brought Christ back to life on the third day. In Ephesians, Paul speaks “of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places…” (Ephesians 1:19-20).

The power of God’s Word that raised Christ from the dead is the same power by which He has raised up a new man in our hearts by bringing us to faith. “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

It was a powerful miracle by the power of His Word that God created the universe. He used His power through the Gospel to create faith in the hearts of sinners and through that faith—through trust in our Savior Jesus—He gives perfect healing to bind up the broken heart. The psalmist says, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3) because it is the power of salvation. It is the power of His Word that assures us our sins are washed away because Jesus is our Savior.

The power of God’s Word give us the POWER to speak. Jeremiah says, “His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back…” (Jeremiah 20:9). Jeremiah wanted to hold back from preaching God’s Word because of fleshly reasons; but he said he couldn’t do it any longer because that powerful word was inside needing, aching, to get out. God’s Word is the POWER and motivation to speak and to do so with courage as Luther did when faced with his enemies.

The POWER of God’s Word is the POWER to PROTECT. Paul wrote the Corinthians…“the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

The power of God’s Word is demonstrated when Jesus stood before the Devil himself and three times (as recorded in Scripture) defeated the Devil’s temptations with nothing more than God’s Word—that POWERFUL Word. Luther wrote in His reformation hymn, “…one little word can fell him (the Devil).” [TLH #262, st. 3]

That powerful word of God is what gave Martin Luther and other reformers the confidence to do what they did—to preach the truth in the face of opposition. That POWERFUL WORD is YOURS…to use and to treasure!

III.

The setting from which these words of Jeremiah is taken is a larger section in which the Lord mourns that the prophets were teaching, not His Word but their own ideas. God said, “‘I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in My name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” How long will this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies? Indeed they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart…Behold, I am against the prophets,’ says the Lord, ‘who use their tongues and say, “He says.”’”(Jeremiah 23:25-26,31).

In our text, God says, “The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream.” [v.23] If you are going to tell dreams and your own fanciful notions, that’s fine, but declare it to be a dream. However, if you have something of SUBSTANCE, and if you have a Word of POWER then by all means declare IT. By all means, speak the truth of God’s Word because it is a Word of Truth.

Many search for many things and call them truth, but they are all false. There is no higher more reliable truth than what we have right here in Scripture.

Truth makes Scripture searchable with the knowledge that if I search into Scripture I can find the answer. I can find what God’s will is because it’s truth, it doesn’t change. It is reliable. No matter how far I pick it apart and study it deeply, it is still there, it is still truth, and it won’t change because the Word of the Lord stands forever.

Truth is what made the Reformation possible. If not for truth there is nothing on which to take a stand as Luther did at the Diet of Worms. Without the TRUTH there is nothing upon which to build our faith, our hope. TRUTH is what will lead us home to heaven. TRUTH is what will keep us walking in the way of the Lord all the way to that heavenly goal.

In Proverbs we hear, “Buy the truth, and do not sell it; also wisdom and instruction and understanding…” (Proverbs 23:23)—all of these are found in the Word of God. This calls to mind another of Jesus’ parables in which a man finds a treasure in a field, sells all that he has, and buys that field so that he might have the treasure. The treasure is God’s Word.

The treasure of God’s Truth would have remained either way—Reformation or not. God’s Word stands forever. The truth will endure. It won’t change. But the Reformation is the way in which God brought that truth to US. It was the way by which He made OUR heritage. God’s Word is substantive, powerful, and truthful regardless of us, but it is a miracle of God’s grace that He has given it to us, entrusted it to us, and preserved it among us.

The Reformation is, in a very real sense, what brought God’s Word to you. Therefore, we owe our ownership of the Word of God and of His gift to the Reformation—to God who accomplished this through the Reformation.

Luther wrote in one of his hymns:

Dear Christians one and all rejoice with exultation springing
And with united heart and voice and holy rapture singing.
Proclaim the wonders God hath done
How His right arm the victory won;
Right dearly it hath cost him. [TLH #387 st. 1]

REJOICE! CELEBRATE! The Word of God and His salvation belongs to YOU!! It belongs to you by God’s grace and through what He gave us in the Reformation! Amen.

—Pastor Wayne C. Eichstadt