2023 LCMS Convention Sermon
Acts 26:12-32
August 1, 2023 – Office of Matins
Milwaukee, WI + LCMS 2023 Convention
To see the video of this sermon, click here.
Paul stands before a king. He has no fear. He’s already been in the presence of The King. He heard His withering interrogation: “Why are you persecuting Me?”
Jesus shows Paul who he is. A murderer.
“Only in desolation can we see salvation.”
Paul couldn’t see his sin until he was knocked to the ground. Only in desolation can we see salvation.
Paul deserves death. But Jesus doesn’t give Paul what he deserves. He deserves death. He gets life.
It’s a life of profound joy, but not the sort of joy that looks to win an election, secure a retirement, or build a successful parish. Paul’s parishes are riddled with divisions and false doctrine.
On the Damascus road, the trajectory of Paul’s career goes from a rapid rise to a torturous trial. His retirement is martyrdom.
No matter. What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?
Everything changes for Paul. From that moment, he has one purpose: to preach Christ crucified and risen. “I will speak of Your testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed” [Ps. 119:46].
His conviction costs him. Paul gets an opportunity to make a defense. He doesn’t take it, not for himself. His defense is Jesus. Before Festus and Agrippa, Paul accuses himself. “I persecuted the saints, but Jesus delivered me.” Paul’s defense is Jesus.
They cannot understand it. “He could have gone free,” Agrippa says, “if he had not appealed to Caesar”!
Why does Paul appeal to Caesar? Not to save himself. He wants to save Caesar, and Rome, and the world. Paul wants to bring the Name of Jesus into the heart of Empire, that all may know that Jesus is Lord, and at His Name every knee shall bow, those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Paul doesn’t care about his own outcome. He already knows it. He serves the One risen from the dead.
Paul has one concern: “That [the world] may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.” Make no mistake: Satan is the ruling power in the unconverted men of the world. No earthly new measures can defeat this power. Satan is overcome only by the Stronger One, Jesus the Christ. His Word, His Cross, His Name defeats the evil one, “that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in [Jesus].”
Forgiveness and deliverance from darkness belong together. St. Paul speaks autobiographically. Paul's ministry is bringing to others what he himself received: His eyes were opened, turned from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God. Forgiven, Paul finds a place among the sanctified. That is now the Church’s message to a blind world.
The preaching is first directed at ourselves. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, He willed our entire lives to be one of repentance.
Today God’s Word calls to us: “That they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.”
What is the relationship between these deeds and faith? The great 17th c. dogmatician, Johann Gerhard, put it succinctly: “Good works are the fruit of repentance…. The new obedience … is not a part of repentance but is the necessary consequence of it … as fruit follows the tree.” [Commonplaces: On the Gospel, On Repentance, p209]
Everything is grounded on Christ’s work, not our own. The light comes from outside of us, into our darkness. This is “what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, He would proclaim light.”
Now what’s the only reasonable response to this? “And … Festus said with a loud voice, ‘Paul, you are out of your mind.’”
Isn’t that what this world keeps on saying to you? And perhaps it’s crept into your own thoughts, as well: On Sunday afternoon, when you wonder if it’s all worth it. Or when you’re sitting in a meeting at church and once again, they’re arguing and vying for control. Or when you pick up that piece of bread at the altar and the blasphemous words enter your mind: “How can this be the body of Christ, this little cardboard disc?”
This is the voice of the devil: “You’re out of your mind!”
You’re out of your mind for believing that a baby is worthy of life.
You’re out of your mind for thinking that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.
You’re out of your mind for thinking that a man should not lie with a man as he does with a woman.
You’re out of your mind for thinking that God made the world from nothing.
You’re out of your mind for thinking that Jesus is the enfleshed God, risen from the dead, who lives and reigns to all eternity.
This article of the resurrection is the heart of it all. Perhaps the world will allow that there is some afterlife, a disembodied spirit realm. But dead bodies stay dead, and if you think otherwise, well, you’re out of your mind.
At Athens, they laughed at Paul for preaching the resurrection. Here, Felix calls him insane.
And if Jesus is not risen from the dead, then we are of all men most to be pitied. But now Jesus is risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that sleep.
Paul is not out of his mind, the world is. We often are. Conversion to Christianity is not to lose your mind, but to find it. The prodigal son “came to himself.” God became man to bring man back to God, back to H/himself.
Confessing Jesus to be the way, the truth, and the life is not madness.
The true madness is selling your birthright for a bowl of soup.
The true madness is abandoning eternal love for a momentary lust.
The true madness is despairing that the Lord Jesus who raised the dead cannot repair every problem in our congregations, our Synod, and the whole Christian Church on earth.
Paul could have been set free. He could have saved himself. But to save your own life is to lose it. Paul counts the truth of Jesus as the one thing needful.
In chains, Paul knows that the Word of God cannot be chained.
In bonds, Paul knows that the Word of God cannot be bound, but has free course. The Word accomplishes the thing for which it is sent.
God works by the foolishness of His Word.
Though the world call you insane, and threaten to put you in chains, stand firm! Jesus is risen from the dead. In Him there is forgiveness. In Him there is joy deeper than tears. In Him will we live. In Him will we die. His shall we be forever.