Choose the Right Target

[00:00:00] In the name of Jesus, Amen. [00:00:09] Welcome, school families. Thank you for joining us this morning. [00:00:15] I want to start off with the gospel reading. I'm sorry, the epistle reading. [00:00:21] And one line in particular. [00:00:29] There is no distinction. [00:00:31] Now, verse 23, there is no distinction. [00:00:34] For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. [00:00:40] Now, that image of falling short, you can think of it like an arrow. [00:00:46] An arrow falling short of the target. [00:00:50] Is there anyone in here who, a couple weeks ago during the foundry, shot arrows with a bow for the first time? [00:00:59] First time, I don't know. Okay. Or did it at all? [00:01:03] Did any of you miss the target altogether? Like, just miss the target? You don't have to raise your hand. All right? [00:01:11] But I was there for at least some of you, and there was a lot of. [00:01:15] Right, a lot of missing the target. It's kind of tough. [00:01:19] It takes some practice. [00:01:21] And yeah, we had a lot of beginning archers and there was a lot of missing the target. That's what this is here when we hear, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. [00:01:35] Since ancient times, like before this was written, that word sin has been illustrated with the idea of archery and missing a target. [00:01:47] Sinning is like missing a target, right? We're supposed to be aiming at the proper goal, but then sinning is missing that goal. Now it says, we've all sinned and fall short. [00:02:03] That's not just because we're bad archers. It's not just because we're all trying to hit the right target. [00:02:11] And we can't hit it in the Christian story, right at the beginning in Genesis, the first sin, alright, the way it's told to us is meant to teach us that the problem really is that we've chosen the wrong target. [00:02:29] It's like if we went out there where we set up the targets and there were no targets, and we were like, here's a bow and some arrows. [00:02:37] Have at it, right? It's like, well, where should we be shooting? We should probably know that we should probably all aim in the right direction and preferably at a target. [00:02:51] But God had told Adam and Eve where to aim. [00:02:56] He had given them instructions. [00:03:00] He said, you can eat all the fruit in the garden, but don't eat from this tree. [00:03:04] Alright? Now you've got something to aim at. [00:03:07] But they said, well, we like the idea of the serpent. Eve listened to the serpent and the serpent said, well, you know, I've got a better idea for you. [00:03:18] And the aim changed. [00:03:22] The proper target was removed. A new target popped up. It's like, oh, that seems like a pretty good target. [00:03:31] And from there, we were off track, falling short, missing the target, because we weren't even aiming at the right target. [00:03:39] That's what sin is like now. That's why we're all stuck in it and choosing the wrong target, making up our own targets. [00:03:51] It's a trap that we can't get out of. If we don't know where the target is to aim at, how are we going to hit the target? [00:03:58] There's no way. [00:04:00] So Jesus in the gospel reading says, anyone who sins is a slave to sin, just stuck not hitting the target. [00:04:13] But he has a way out. [00:04:15] There's a way of escape, there's a way to freedom from the impossibility of hitting the target. [00:04:23] If you abide in my word, he says, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth. [00:04:30] You'll know the target, and the truth will set you free. [00:04:38] Now, there's a sense in which it kind of seems like not having to aim at the target would be freedom. [00:04:45] Right. Like, Pastor, I taught a little bit of archery. Right. A couple weeks ago, and it's not going to be me moving forward mostly, but it's like, pastor, can't we just not aim at the target? [00:04:58] Why are you making us aim at the target? [00:05:01] No, no. You need a target. [00:05:05] It could seem like not having a target would be freedom, but it's not really. Freedom is knowing the target. [00:05:13] You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. [00:05:19] And how. [00:05:22] By abiding in Christ's word, by living in His Word, remaining in his word. That's how we learn the target at all. That's how we aim at the target. It's by abiding, by living, dwelling, remaining in Jesus word. [00:05:42] That's what the Lutheran Reformation was all about. [00:05:45] Today's Reformation Day, we get to think back to the Lutheran reformation in the 16th century, and we won't dwell on it a whole lot here in this sermon, but the Reformation was about abiding in Jesus word. It was about remaining in His Word in order to stay on track, to not get off target. [00:06:07] It was about kind of returning to Christ's Word, where in some ways, the church had stopped aiming at the proper target and had gotten distracted. [00:06:20] It was a Reformation in order to reform what had become misshapen. [00:06:28] But today in our world, it's not so much about Reformation, about reforming what's been misshapen, it's become about revolution. [00:06:41] It's been about tearing down targets of the past just to tear them down because they're out of fashion. [00:06:54] They seem like old fogey stuff. [00:06:59] Our movies, the heroes of our movies are the ones who buck tradition, who don't follow the ways of the past, and who strike out and do new things. Our artists are creatively moving on from the past and from convention. [00:07:22] And the best modern art is the modern. It's like the new stuff, the stuff that's never been seen before. Oh, he did something different, she did something different. [00:07:36] We've come to believe that new and different is better in itself. [00:07:43] We're starting to get the fruit of that. We're starting to see what constant revolution does, what tearing down all structures does, like tearing down the family identity, male and female, all of these things that are targets. [00:08:03] It's like, yeah, the conventional family worked when we all believed in, was a target to aim at. And now it's like we don't believe in targets anymore. [00:08:21] We've torn them all down. [00:08:23] We know where that leads. We're finding out where that leads. [00:08:29] We need a reformation. [00:08:32] Not a revolution, but a return to God's Word. Not a return to tradition for tradition's sake, but, you know, traditions were set up to hold us in the truth or to hold us in God's Word. It's a tradition that we come to church on Sundays. [00:08:51] You know, it doesn't make it bad. [00:08:55] It's a pattern that was set up in ancient times in order to hold us in God's word so that we would abide in Jesus word, remain in his Word, and know the truth, and that the truth would set us free and we can free ourselves from that tradition. [00:09:11] But then unknowingly, we're losing something good. [00:09:16] Eating dinner as a family around a table is a tradition that, well, holds us together as a family. [00:09:25] And if we just say, like, well, it's from the past. And the new way is to rush around to sports practices and everything else and to. To give our kids all the experiences in the world. And then in doing so, we lose our family. [00:09:42] We're missing out. [00:09:44] That might seem disconnected from God's word, but it's just another one of those structures that was designed to hold us together and to give us targets to aim at. [00:10:03] If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. [00:10:11] The answer is not just to find those traditional targets and have a sort of traditionalism and return to the past that way. The answer is the same as it always was. How do we reform? [00:10:28] What's the Reformation? We need today, it's to hold Jesus up in front of us and to be his disciples, to follow him around like his disciples did and to learn from him, to watch his every move. [00:10:42] We do that as we hear his teaching in the Gospels. We do it as we remember his crucifixion for us, his path to the cross, to death, sacrificing himself for us. [00:10:57] We are his disciples as we watch him rise from the dead and ascend into heaven and say that he's going to return again. [00:11:06] We're his disciples as we meditate on His Word, as we meditate on him and call him our teacher, then we're his disciples. And disciples imitate students, imitate their teacher as they pay attention. [00:11:25] Children imitate their parents as they pay attention to them. [00:11:31] That's what the Reformation is about. [00:11:33] It's about holding on to Jesus, abiding in His Word, and then letting him grow in us, letting him shape our lives to be like his. [00:11:46] See, Jesus himself is the target. [00:11:50] If we've lost sight of what it looks like to be human properly, what it looks like to abide in God's word, we can look at Jesus Christ himself, God become a human being for us. [00:12:06] You want to see what a human being looks like? You just look at Jesus, and then it doesn't look like becoming the best at everything. [00:12:14] I mean, surely Jesus could have been the best at everything, right? I don't know. [00:12:18] Don't hear anything in Scripture about him being a soccer star or a basketball star. [00:12:26] He didn't set himself up on a throne, although that certainly belonged to him if he wanted it. [00:12:36] We put our kids through all these experiences to try and build them up to be the best they can be. And, well, experiences are good in a sense. [00:12:48] Look at Jesus and what he came to do to love his friend, to lay down his life for his friends. [00:12:58] If you just think about that, think, like, what would it look like for me to lay down my life for those around me? [00:13:07] Like, if my life were just about serving those around me, that'd be a good thing. [00:13:16] You know, my life is not always about serving those around me, because I've lost the target in many ways. [00:13:26] If you abide in my word, if you chew on me, meditate on me, have me before you. Jesus says, if I'm your teacher and your Lord and master, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. [00:13:52] Now that freedom also doesn't look like just getting better and better so that, like now, you are the superstar People, People look at you and they're like, wow, hey, you've really changed. [00:14:03] Okay? It's not the way it looked like for Jesus either. [00:14:06] He went to the cross and he looked weak. [00:14:10] And looking back with faith, we see what Jesus was about and we see that there on the cross, he's wearing a crown of thorns and really deserves to be exalted. He is the highest there in his suffering on the cross. [00:14:26] But it didn't look like that to the world, not even to the disciples. [00:14:31] Our path isn't just a path of glory, an exciting adventure that others will recognize as valuable necessarily. [00:14:43] It's a humble path, unexciting, full of suffering. Jesus tells us, he says we get to share in his suffering as we lay down our life for our friends, as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, pleasing and acceptable to God. But the thing is, it doesn't matter. [00:15:03] We don't need honor and glory from those around us because Jesus forgiveness covers us. [00:15:15] Jesus glory is our glory. We don't need it. [00:15:21] Jesus life is our life. [00:15:26] He's given us everything that he has united us to himself. And he says it's no, don't worry about it. Like Paul, you can say, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. [00:15:41] You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free from. [00:15:45] From your desire for recognition or honor, will set you free from your desire for pleasure and your fear of pain. [00:15:56] The truth will set you free to live as God's creature, able to receive from him anything. St. Paul said. I know what it's like to be hungry and to suffer the loss of all things. [00:16:12] I can handle it. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. [00:16:18] If you abide in My word, Jesus says, you will be my disciples. [00:16:24] You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. [00:16:27] May God give that to each one of us and not just individually, but all of us together, that we would look to Christ and live in his word and. And be free to be content in all circumstances. [00:16:41] Be free to just look to him and to love one another in Jesus name. Amen.