church

INI
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 30, 2012
Ascension Lutheran Church, Tacoma WA
Paul Naumann, Pastor

WATCH CLOSELY!
Luke 17:1-4

To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has
made us kings and priests to God and His Father, to Him be glory and
dominion forever and ever, Amen. Our text for this morning is taken from the
17th chapter of John, beginning with the fourth verse, as follows:

Then He said to the disciples, "It is impossible that no offenses should come,
but woe to him through whom they do come! 2 "It would be better for him if a
millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than
that he should offend one of these little ones. 3 "Take heed to yourselves. If
your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4
"And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day
returns to you, saying, `I repent,' you shall forgive him." So far the Word of
God.

In Christ Jesus, the merciful One who urges us to have mercy also, Dear Fellow
Redeemed,

"Watch closely!" -Those words could be taken as a warning. When you see a
road sign signaling a school zone, it's telling you, "Watch closely! There may be
children crossing the road!" If you ignore the warning, you may find yourself
responsible for a terrible accident.

"Watch closely!" -In another way, those words could also be taken as an
encouragement. Like a teacher, for instance, encouraging her students to sit up
and pay attention in class. She's teaching them something worth learning,
something that will be valuable to them later on. But if they're distracted and
daydreaming, her instruction won't do them any good at all. Pay attention!
Watch closely!

In our text for today, Jesus says, "Take heed to yourselves." Simply put, that
means, "Watch closely!" Have you ever felt that your behavior, as a Christian,
wasn't very important? That there's really not much you can do to influence
others, that what you do - good or bad - really doesn't make a whole lot of
difference to God or other people? That's not true! How you live your Christian
life is crucially important, the Bible says. And today Jesus talks about two
particular areas in which Christians need to pay especially close attention. First,
He warns us about something we should never do. Then He gives us
encouragement about something we should always do. Our theme this morning
is --

WATCH CLOSELY!
I. Watch yourself closely - so you don't lead someone else into sin.
II. Watch Jesus closely - to learn forgiveness from the Master.

The first subject Jesus addresses is something very important for the Christian
life. In fact, He says that if you're planning on ignoring His advice on this
subject, well -- you'd be better off dead! So pay attention! Jesus is addressing us
on the doctrine of OFFENSE.

First of all, we'd better get it strait what the Bible means by "offense." It has
nothing to do with OF-fense -- like the offense on a football team. "Giving
offense" to somebody doesn't mean making someone indignant, or angry at you.
At least that's not the way the Bible uses this word. In Scripture, "giving
offense" to somebody means leading that person into sin.

I don't know if all kids are as devious as I was, but I remember stringing a rope
between two doorways at ankle level, and waiting for my brother to come
running down the hallway. At which point, naturally, I'd pull the rope tight, and
he'd go crashing to the carpet. It was an awful thing to do, of course -- but it's
also a good picture of the Greek verb, "to give offense." To "give offense"
literally means "to trip somebody up, to cause them to stumble." Only in the
Greek language it's much more serious - some people translate the noun
"offense" as deathtrap. When what you say or do leads somebody else into sin,
you're committing the sin of offense. And it's hard to imagine a sin more
damaging and harmful than that! Jesus' message is clear: Watch yourself closely
- so you don't lead someone else into sin.

This is something you need to be very careful about in your Christian life.
Watch yourself closely, because I'll guarantee you there are people watching
you! People you work with, people in your clubs and organizations, people you
meet in the course of your daily routine. You may not even be aware of them
watching you, but they are. Do you dare run the risk of giving offense to one of
them? What could be worse than if one of those people saw you sinning and
said to himself, "I thought it was wrong to do that, but if so-and-so's doing it,
then I guess I can do it too." Or consider how terrible it would be if an
unbeliever looked at your bad example and said to himself, "If that's the way a
Christian acts, then I guess I can do without Christianity."

Worse yet, Jesus says, is when your behavior leads one of your fellow believers
into sin. It might seriously damage his faith; it might destroy his faith altogether
- you simply don't know. When you allow yourself, e.g., to overindulge in
alcohol, when you take God's name in vain by cursing and swearing, when you
allow literature or movies into your home that don't belong in a Christian home,
when you cut people down behind their back, when you're unfaithful in your
church attendance -- when you do any of these things, of course, you're sinning
against God, which is bad enough. But you may also by your example be leading
a fellow-Christian into sin. "If so-and-so does it," they may be saying, "then I
guess it's alright for me to do it, too!" What kind of example are you setting for
others? It's not what you say, but what you DO that influences them the most.
Does the way you live show them that following Christ is the number one
priority to you? Is your record of church attendance teaching them that nothing
is more important than hearing God's Word -- or is sending them a different
kind of message?

Don't shrug it off! Don't think you can say, "Well, people are going to be led
into sin one way or another, so what I do really doesn't matter." It's true, Jesus
says, that ... It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him
through whom they do come! 2 "It would be better for him if a millstone were
hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should
offend one of these little ones. 3 "Take heed to yourselves. Watch closely! Take
care how you live! Temptations are going to come, Jesus says, but you'd better
make good and sure that those temptations never come through you! How
horrible it would be if the faith of even one little child should be endangered
because of something you said or did. Can you imagine, on Judgment Day,
being confronted by someone who lost their faith because of you? Paul says,
"Each of us shall give account of himself to God. Therefore let us not...put a
stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way." --Rom 14:12-13.

Well, if you're like me, that warning is pretty frightening. I’d have to admit that
I’m ashamed of the poor example I've set at times. Perhaps if you look back at
your life, you can say the same thing. Have you and I been guilty of giving
offense? Have we - wittingly or unwittingly - led others into sin? Yes. What can
we do? How can we possibly escape the awful consequences of this terrible sin?
In the words of the disciples, "Who then can be saved?"

Jesus said, "With God, all things are possible." With this, as with all sins, we
need to go back to the cross. Forgiveness can only be found in the blood of our
Savior, Jesus. The pardon that we seek and crave - the pardon we obviously
don't deserve - is promised to us in the dying love of our Redeemer. Yes we
have sinned, but on that skull-shaped hill of Golgotha, the Lord unleashed his
righteous fury over sin. All that wrath was poured out upon His Son rather than
upon us. There He punished Jesus in our place. There on that cross, our sin
died, and our forgiveness was born. Jesus earned for us a great privilege:
because of what He did, we can now bring our sins to the Lord every day in
repentance, and every day receive complete forgiveness through His blood!

It goes without saying that, when we repent, we will also want to bring forth
the proper fruits of repentance. We'll want to be careful that we don't fall into
the same sins that we just got done repenting of. And that goes especially for
the sin we've just been discussing. We'll want to watch ourselves especially
closely so we don't commit the awful sin of offense.

There's another thing we should be careful about, and that's how we forgive.
Forgiveness is an art. And if you want to learn the art of forgiving, there's only
one Person to learn it from. Watch JESUS closely - so you can learn forgiveness
from the Master.

In our text, Jesus says, Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against
you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 "And if he sins against you
seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, `I repent,'
you shall forgive him.

I think that most people - even non-Christians - believe in forgiveness. Up to a
certain point, that is! If you want to be considered a nice person, most people
agree that you should be willing to overlook a slight or an insult now and then,
without making a federal case over it. But what Jesus is asking us to do here --
well, that's something else again! The disciple Peter once asked Jesus, "'Lord,
how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven
times?'" That seemed like a reasonable limit to Peter; it was certainly farther
than most people would go. But "…Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you, up to
seven times, but up to seventy times seven.'" -- Mat 18:21-22. Jesus' point - and
the point of our text for today - is that there should be no limit on our
forgiveness. Where can we learn such an out-of-this-world style of forgiving
people? From Jesus, of course! Watch Jesus closely, and you'll learn a lot about
how Christian forgiveness is supposed to work.

Jesus' forgiveness is a concerned forgiveness. It deals with the individual, on a
personal basis. If you look at Jesus' ministry, you'll notice that He doesn't ignore
people's sin. Just the opposite: He's very careful to confront people with their
sin. He lets them know what they've done wrong, and what will happen to them
if they don't repent. As Christians, we're not supposed to ignore sin, either.
We're not wishy-washy optimists who run around with blinders on our eyes and
angelic smiles on our faces. Nor should we sit at home and grumble about sin,
and wait for somebody else to do something about it. When one of your
fellow-believers sins, you've got a responsibility to show the same kind of
loving concern Jesus did. "If your brother sins against you," Jesus said, "go and
tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained
your brother." -- Mat 18:15.

Loving reproof is one of the best tools you can use to help a fellow Christian
grow in the faith, and possibly save him from spiritual shipwreck. He may even
thank you for it! Solomon said, "Reproof is more effective for a wise man than a
hundred blows on a fool." -- Prov 17:10. It's not an easy skill to learn, though.
If you can express your concern about someone's sin in a loving way - if you can
admonish and encourage them without coming off as self-righteous and
holier-than-thou, then you've accomplished something truly worthwhile! That is
truly a rare skill, worth cultivating!

What are the limits of Christian forgiveness? There are no limits! The simple
rule Jesus gives us is, "Forgive, as I have forgiven you." Now, think of that for a
moment - think of the way Jesus forgives you. When you come to Him in
repentance, Jesus never says, "Well, now you've gone too far. I'm sorry, but this
time you've sinned once to often!" No, every single time He wipes the slate
completely clean for you. He forgives everything. I ask you: can you turn
around now and put limits on how often you're going to forgive others? Are you
going to start drawing lines past which your neighbor cannot go and still be
forgiven? If you look at it from that point of view, it seems a little silly, doesn't
it? No, Jesus' love for us was unbounded, so let's not set any boundaries on our
love for others. Jesus' forgiveness of us is unlimited, so let's make sure our
forgiveness of others likewise be unlimited. Christ has done so much for us –
out of faith let us willingly do this much for Christ!

"Watch closely!" says the magician, as he prepares to astound his audience
with his illusions. No matter how closely they watch, however, they can never
figure out how he does it. Well, the message of our text for today isn't magic,
and there's no mystery about what the Lord is trying to tell us. Watch yourself
closely - so you don't lead someone else into sin. Watch Jesus closely – and
learn forgiveness from the Master. AMEN.