No doubt about it, the God who reveals Himself to us in the pages of Holy Scripture is different from us. We’re limited. He’s not. No matter how much we may know, our knowledge is just a drop in the bucket compared to the perfect knowledge God has of His creation. We are by nature sinful and unclean, while God is absolutely holy. Since God is so utterly different from us, it’s no wonder that He sometimes says things in His Word that strike us as odd, trouble us, or even offend us.

That’s the case with today’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew. There our Lord Jesus Christ says some startling things, things that may walk all over some of our cherished beliefs and values. He tells us that we shouldn’t suppose that He has come to bring peace to the earth. No, God’s Son came in the flesh not to bring peace, but a sword. In fact, Jesus says that He came to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – and a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.

That’s pretty strong stuff. It grabs our attention because it go against the grain of the way we feel about our families. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. There’s more. Our Lord goes on to say that if you love your father or mother more than you love Him, you aren’t worthy of Him. If you love your son or daughter more than you love Him, you aren’t worthy of Him. If you don’t take up your cross and follow Him, you aren’t worth of Him. And finally, if you try to preserve your life, your place in the world, your own little kingdom of comfort and control, you’ll lose it all. But if you lose your life for Jesus’ sake, He says, you’ll find it.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you, Jesus says. God’s kingdom and His righteousness are found in Jesus only. Not in you and me. Not in our assumptions. Not in the things that we highly esteem but which, according to Jesus, are an abomination in the eyes of God. Not in any good deed we do or in the personal holiness of our own lives. God’s kingdom and righteousness are found in Jesus only, God made Man to be the Savior of the world. Scripture says that Jesus is the wisdom and righteousness and salvation of God for us who have been baptized in His name and marked with the sign of His holy Cross.

You want God? He’s in Christ, the One in whom God reconciled the world to Himself. You want forgiveness of your sins. It’s made a reality through Jesus alone, who carried away the sins of the world when He suffered and died on the Cross. You want peace? Then know that God has justified you through faith in His Son, and because He’s freely done that for you, you now have peace with God. This is the peace that passeth all understanding. This is peace not as the world gives – not in a million years-- but given to us by Jesus who through His death and resurrection has atoned for all our sins and has overcome the world.

God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s peace, God’s salvation are found only in Jesus Christ. When Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that our first allegiance is to be to Him, He’s simply restating the First Commandment: You shall have no other gods. He’s restating the First Table of the Law: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. He’s saying that not even those we love can be allowed to come in the way of fearing, loving and trusting in God above all things. Not even those people dearest to us can be permitted to compromise our loyalty to Jesus and His Gospel and His holy Word.

Jesus can make this absolute claim upon our loyalties because He is truly God in the flesh. Only God can dictate to us such terms of loyalty. Only God can rightly counsel us not to let any earthly tie, no matter how deep and precious, come between us and our allegiance to God’s Word and the Savior that Word proclaims. Only God can tell us to take up our Cross and follow Him in the way of discipleship and trust, and then promise that those who do so will find their true life through Him.

What Jesus demands of us, He has first done Himself. His primary loyalty was to His Father in heaven. Our Lord’s food was to do the will of the One who sent Him, and to finish His work. Not even love for His mother Mary could prevent Jesus from completing His work of fulfilling the Law for us and dying on the Cross on behalf of us sinners.

So in obedience to His Father’s will, Jesus completely fulfilled the demands of the Law in our stead. He fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of us the unrighteous. He suffered the wrath of God in our place, for our sins. On the Cross He shed the holy precious blood that makes us clean from all our iniquity. He gave us newness of life through our Baptism which united us to His death and resurrection. Through His Word He gives His Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the Sacrament so we can eat and drink in humble faith for the remission of our sins. God’s gift of forgiveness, life and salvation isn’t found in your husband or wife. It’s not found in your son or daughter. It’s not found in any earthly tie, or in any earthly thing. It’s offered to us only in our Lord Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven to be the life and salvation of our sinful world.

Yesterday, June 25th, was a special day on the calendar for us Lutherans. It marks the 475th anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, and the 425th anniversary of the publication of the Book of Concord. The Book of Concord contains a summary of the chief teachings of Scripture. It sets forth the biblical teaching about sin and judgment and salvation as God’s free gift through faith in Jesus Christ alone. It teaches us, as the Scriptures do, that no one can be saved by their works, but only through humble trust in the gracious, saving work of Christ. It confesses the Scriptural teaching of the new birth through the Word and water of Holy Baptism, and the real presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the elements of the Sacrament. It teaches us what it means to be Lutheran, and I as a pastor and you as a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod have vowed to order our life together according to the biblical teachings set forth in the Book of Concord.

Now I would be less than honest if I didn’t tell you that if we at Mt. Olive truly want to be faithful to the Scriptures as a Lutheran congregation, it’s not going to be popular with some people. As Americans we live in a religious environment that doesn’t look kindly on doctrinal distinctions -- doesn’t cotton to the notion that if one thing is true then its opposite is necessarily false. But we’re either saved entirely by God’s grace in Christ Jesus or we aren’t. Christ’s Body and Blood are either truly present in the Sacrament for the forgiveness of sins or they aren’t. There’s no middle ground. There’s no mediating position. There can be no compromise.

The early Lutherans who endorsed the Augsburg Confession 475 years ago understood this. Most of them were laymen, by the way – not pastors. These men were willing to die for their faith and their confession. On account of their loyalty to Jesus, they were willing to lose their very lives by taking up the Cross of martyrdom and following in their Lord’s bloody footsteps. They recognized that nothing was more important than clinging to Jesus by holding fast to His doctrine. Life, family, friends, livelihood, reputation were all important, to be sure. But nothing was more important than the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ. As Luther put it in his hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”: And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife, Though these all be gone, Our victory has been won, The Kingdom ours remaineth.

As citizens of Christ’s kingdom, we too are called to confess Jesus and His pure Gospel in a culture that at worst despises these things, and at best gives them only lip service. We are called to love and trust in Christ more than we love and trust in the beloved members of our family. We are called to recognize that true, lasting peace will never be found in this fallen, rebellious world, but only in the life of the world to come – the life made known to us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Finally, we are called to take up the Cross and follow after our Lord in the way of His forgiveness and salvation, loyal to Him, loyal to His Word, loyal to the true doctrine He taught, even in the face of opposition.

And as we endeavor to do these things we must recognize that none of us is sufficient to accomplish this on our own. Our competence, our strength is in Christ alone. Our strength is in the One who through His Gospel has made us members of the Triune God’s household. Our help is in the Lord who made heaven and earth. With that in mind, it’s fitting as a conclusion to this sermon to pray the collect appointed for The Presentation of the Augsburg Confession. Let’s do that together now. Please take out your hymnal and turn with me to page 110 in the front. . . Let us pray:

O Lord God, heavenly Father, pour out Your Holy Spirit on Your faithful people, keep them steadfast in Your grace and truth, protect and comfort them in all temptation, defend them against all enemies of Your Word, and bestow on Christ’s Church Militant Your saving peace; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.