Lent 1 Invocabit 2020

2 Corinthians 6:1-10

March 1, 2020

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Think back to your favorite pastor, or Sunday school teacher, or youth worker, or Lutheran school teacher, parent or grandparent. What was it that made them so special? How often do you think they prayed for you? How many hours did they prepare Sunday School lessons, activities, opportunities for you to know Jesus?  St. Paul gives us a godly example of the labor and work of a child of God. This shows the importance of the message.

Oh, the memories of those beloved saints who have preceded us in the faith.  Now think of this.  The Church is always one generation away from extinction in any given place. The preaching of the Gospel is not an eternal, lasting, and continual teaching at every place in every time.  Certainly, the Word of the Lord endures forever and Christ will preserve His Church until His return.  But it may not be here and it may not always be among us or our children. Do not neglect the grace given. Let’s not disappoint those who have brought us the grace of God, nor abandon the faith.  We should live and practice such a life because now is the time of grace. 

For the day of salvation is today. That is what St. Paul was trying to get across to the Christians in Corinth, and it still applies to us.  The Epistle is an admonition to Christians to do what they already know they should do. The words are easy, but carrying them out is hard. All these difficulties that St. Paul mentions such as endurance and afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonment, and the like, it is easy to understand how we serve God in them, since God does not want lazy, idle children. He hits very well at our laziness.  We labor, working together with Him, we serve God but also show that we serve God. 

For in Holy Baptism we received the grace of adoption to be sons of God.  We don’t need to wait for the grace to be given, for it is ours already.  It is ours in spite of the sins of our past, ours to conquer the power of inward sin, and our now, for now is the day of salvation.  Every temptation is directed against our position as redeemed children of God. In the desert, Christ’s temptations were directed against sonship.  We should remember how much we stand to lose if we should forfeit our baptismal birthright because our of sin. 

On this first Sunday in Lent, we enter into a season of intense preparation for Easter. In Baptism, we were buried with Christ into death, and as He was raised from the dead, we also should walk in newness of life. That’s what we focus upon this Lenten season. We examine our lives to discover what of the old life still remains in us or has crept back in our new life. The main Lenten task is to prepare for a Christian life to have God sanctify our heart and cleanse it of sin by the blood of Jesus. 

With sin out of the way, there is nothing to separate us from the holy God. We are His, brothers and sisters in Christ, children of God. God’s children have all their needs supplied.  God will supply all that is needed to remain faithful, feed with the bread of life in Word and Sacrament, guard and protect from all evil, and preserve for His heavenly kingdom. 

For help to resist and overcome, for assurance and strength, we come to the Lord’s Table to receive the grace again, to have our sins forgiven, to have endurance unto the end. The Son of God calls the children of God to His table to assure us that we too are working with Him in our battle against temptation. We eat His body and drink His blood, we partake of Him, we have fellowship, communion, partnership with Him. He joins us to Himself, and so we share in all that He has, in all He has done, and all that He will do for our salvation. 

Do not receive the grace of God in vain, but trust in God to persevere and patiently bear all in Him who defends and delivers in every temptation those who are faithfully His own.