10-05-2025

“PASTORS DELIVER GOD’S GIFTS”

Text: Luke 17:1-10

Sunday October 5th, 2025 – Pentecost 17

Trinity – Creston/Mount Ayr

Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Our text for this 17th Sunday after Pentecost is the Gospel lesson from Luke 17 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that you send pastors to teach and deliver your gifts of word and sacrament and to pray for and provide for your unworthy servant to deliver these gifts to give your people what they need.  Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

Today, given our Gospel, it’s appropriate to speak with you about the office of the holy ministry. Part of what I hope will happen through this is that some of you boys and young men will give a little thought—prayerful thought—to preparing to serve as a pastor.

But mostly, I want to talk, as Jesus does in the Gospel for today, about the conditions under which I serve you. Not so much so that I can talk about me—after all, I’m the “unworthy servant” in the Gospel reading—but so that I can give you the comfort that this Gospel text wishes to give.

Let me do a little bit to set the table for you.

It’s important to notice that this entire exchange occurred between Jesus and his disciples. I know that we often think of “disciples” as being anyone who has faith and trust in Jesus as their Redeemer. It’s okay to think like that as long as you remember that in the New Testament, the word disciple 
actually has a more precise meaning: It means a student, as in a student for the office of the holy ministry.

You can see that right in the Gospel for today. Luke introduced this whole episode as an exchange between Jesus and his “disciples,” and just a few breaths later, he referred to those same disciples as “apostles.” All this stuff applies to you—but it applies to you through the office of the ministry.

Now, you might ask, “How could that possibly be the case? How could something that’s entirely about someone else apply to me?”

Simple. You’ve seen police cars. Often they have mottoes. “Protect and serve.” “Duty, honor, sacrifice.” “Honor, integrity, courage.” None of those mottoes are about you. They’re all about the police.

But because they’re about the police, they’re also about you. The police don’t protect and serve themselves. They protect and serve you. They observe their duty, act with honor, and may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice—none of it for themselves. It’s for you.

Consider integrity and courage; those are good things, for sure, and everyone should have them, but when the police have those virtues, it’s the integrity to do the right thing under law for the citizen and the courage to act not on their own behalf but on behalf of those they protect and serve.

So, in this exchange between Jesus and his apostles, Jesus said a handful of things that were primarily about his apostles—but for your benefit.

The first was this: “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin” (vv 1–2).

Jesus came to destroy the power of sin, not to wield it. That’s his whole mission. Sin brings death and eternal death, and Jesus came to give life. Man is mired in sin, and Jesus came to pull him out of his mire.

Imagine an oncologist who set up a clinic to treat cancer, and one of his employees, far from treating cancer, instead exposed the doctor’s patients to cancer-causing radiation or a chemical like Agent Orange. That’s what it would be like for a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ—one of his apostles or pastors—to tempt a believer into sin.

Now, that happens in all sorts of ways. How sad the day when a pastor actually encourages one of the flock to engage in sin! You can see this in the churches flying the rainbow flags and announcing to the world that they are “welcoming.”

They are actually condoning, and by that aiding and abetting, certain kinds of sexual sin condemned by the Lord. Woe to them! How sad the day when a pastor shrinks from handling a popular sin to which members of his congregation are susceptible so as not to become unpopular. Woe to him!

So you should expect from your pastor not only holiness of his own living, you should expect from him straightforward teaching from God’s Word on your own holy living. You should expect him to guide you away from your sin, not toward it.

So seriously does the Lord Jesus take this that he adds a special warning: It would be better for the pastor to have a millstone hung around his neck and be tossed into the sea than to lead any one of his flock into temptation. That’s not why Jesus came!

Instead, Jesus wishes to forgive sins. Listen to him again: “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (vv 3–4). The opposite of letting sin slide is confronting it.

Think back to the cancer clinic we were just talking about. The cancer doctor does no one any good if he just lets the cancer slide. Instead, he’s got to diagnose it and then do whatever it takes to treat it.

That’s exactly what your pastor’s called to do—except not your cancer. He’s called to diagnose and treat your sin.

But there’s a startling difference between the cancer doctor and me. When the cancer doctor diagnoses the cancer, it hurts. It also hurts when the pastor diagnoses your sin.

But the treatment? How different! The cancer doctor surgically inserts a port into your body and then pours cell-killing poison into it that, even if killing the cancer, also makes you sick. Chemotherapy is rough!

But the medicine Christ sent me to give—how sweet it is! Instead of poison, it’s the life-giving water of your baptism, where Jesus’ death to sin on the cross is made over to you sacramentally, as if you yourself had died.

Instead of poison, it’s the sweet medicine of the Sacrament of the Altar—oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! There, through your mouth, and not some port cut into your body, he gives you his body and blood that won your redemption and forgives all your sins.

And instead of the cancer doctor’s constant exhortation to stick with your cancer-killing regimen, the Lord Jesus gives you a pastor with another constant refrain: “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

What a glorious work this is! Sinners made right with God. The death-bound given life, the hell-bound, heaven.

But one last thing. Pastors do their job knowing that by it they open the riches of Christ to poor sinners. For that reason, it’s a glorious work.

But the work isn’t theirs; it’s Christ’s. “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’ ” (vv 7–10).

If pastors’ work was theirs, they could say, “We are worthy servants!” But since the work is Christ’s and not theirs, they have no choice but to say, “We are unworthy servants.” I have no right but to say, “I am an unworthy servant.”

Just like you, whatever pastors have, they have as a pure gift—from the Lord who gave them life and sustains it, the Lord who rescued them from their sins and death, and the Lord who drew them into the holy Christian Church through the same Gospel they’re privileged to proclaim—“with no merit or worthiness” in them. It is Christ who is their worthiness—just as he is yours.

This Gospel reading has great comfort for you. Your pastor has the obligation—I have the obligation—on pain of death, not to deceive you or mislead you into sin, shame, or vice, but to warn you off it, rebuke you when you fall, and bring and offer and give you what Christ our dear Lord has already won for you by his death on the cross: the forgiveness of sins.

That’s the work of a faithful pastor. So pray to the Lord with the church of all times, “Grant unto your church faithful pastors who will preach your word with power and live according to your will,” and encourage me in faithful ministry. Hold me to high standards—God’s standards. For

Christ’s High Expectations for His Pastors
Are for the Sake of Those He Has Redeemed.

And then receive in faith God’s words that come from my mouth: “Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.” Amen.

Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  Amen.