They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah 31:34

For my sermon today, I want to spend some time answering a very simple question: What do today’s Scripture readings teach us about God? What can we learn, from all four of these readings, about the God we worship today? More than anything, that is what the Bible does – it shows us, in many and various ways, who God is. It reveals God to us, the true God, who created heaven and earth, and who sent his Son to be our Savior, and who continues to be present with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit. But there is so much we can learn about God from the Bible. It can teach us new things every time we open it, and a lifetime would not be enough to learn all that it teaches us about our Creator. So, today, I would simply like to share with you four things that we learn about God from today’s four scripture readings. 

A God Who Forgives 

First, from the prophet Jeremiah in our first reading, we learn that our God is a God who forgives. “They shall all know me,” God tells us, “from the least to the greatest … For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). The God we worship today is a God who is eager to forgive sin. We all know this, of course, but it needs to be remembered and emphasized, because forgiveness is not a widespread quality in our world these days. 

It seems to me that today’s world is more about permission than forgiveness. Our world likes to think that all is permitted, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. But if we do hurt someone? Especially when it is seen by others? Well, that is almost unforgivable. This is now what the Bible teaches, and this is not who God is. The Bible teaches us that not all things are permitted, even if they don’t hurt someone. And when we do hurt someone, the Bible teaches us that we can always be forgiven. God wants to forgive all our iniquity; God wants to forget our sin. Jesus died to offer us this gift. And to show us how to offer this gift to one another. 

This is one of the reasons why the Bible and the Church continue to be important to our culture. Because here we are taught that sin is real, and that forgiveness is just as real. Here we are taught that all is not permitted, but that all can be forgiven. Here we are taught to forgive ourselves, which we often need to be reminded of. And here we are invited to accept God’s forgiveness. And here we are urged to forgive one another, as God forgives us. Here we learn that our God is a God who forgives. 

A God Who Offers Refuge and Strength

From today’s Psalm (Psalm 46) we learn a second important quality about our God: We learn that our God is a God who offers us refuge and strength. The nations rage, this Psalm tells us, and the kingdoms shake; the earth moves, the mountains shake, the waters rage and foam. But we are not afraid, because God is with us; God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 

This Psalm was a favorite of Martin Luther’s, and he based his most famous hymn on it, the one we sang at the beginning of this service, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The world was changing in Luther’s day, too, perhaps even more than in ours. And he was part of the reason, standing up for his faith, speaking truth to power, calling the Church back to the Gospel. There was a price on his head. He had to be kidnapped for his own safety. But he was not afraid. Why? Because he knew that God was his refuge and strength, his mighty fortress, and was with him come what may. 

And God is with us, too, just as much now as in Luther’s day. Yes, the world seems to be falling apart. Truthfully, it always does, at least in my memory. So, what keeps it together? God, of course, and people like you and me, praying and working for justice and peace, loving one another, serving in the ways Jesus taught us. It’s simple, but not easy. And it never seems enough, but it always is. Because God makes it so; God is our mighty fortress, who offers us refuge and strength, now and forevermore.  

A God Who Makes Things Right 

In Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we learn many wonderful things about our God. Today, Reformation Sunday, we learn that we have a God who makes things right, a God who justifies us. In Romans 3:24, Paul tells us that we are “justified by [God’s] grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” We are made right with God by God’s grace through faith. For us as Lutherans, it all starts here – with believing that we cannot get any of this life right without God’s help. We will keep making a mess of things until we ask God for help. 

When you think about it, many spiritualities these days focus on what we can do to better ourselves, or on what we must do to be saved. The emphasis with these spiritualities always ends up being on us, not God. Our Lutheran spirituality teaches us that when we focus on ourselves, the end result is inevitably despair, because we simply can’t do it ourselves. As much as we’d like to, we simply cannot. And so Lutheran spirituality is wonderfully honest: it begins by acknowledging what we cannot do. We cannot make it right, not without God. But the good news, indeed the gospel, is that God – through Jesus – does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We are justified on account of Christ through faith when we believe these things. 

Our God is a God who wants to make things right. And one of the ways that God does that for us is through our faith and trust in God. We are justified by grace through faith. Our faith is important. God won’t do these things without our consent, and the way we consent is through our faith and trust. But where does this faith come from? 

As Lutherans, we believe that this faith is also a gift from God, a gift of the Holy Spirit. But the way that we obtain this gift is through the Word and the sacraments – that is how we are given the Holy Spirit. This is why, for us Lutherans, Holy Baptism is so important – the “greatest comfort on earth,” according to Luther. And this is why Holy Communion is so essential to us – the body and blood of our Lord given for us. And this is also why coming to church and worshiping and hearing God’s word proclaimed is so important to us. These things, which we often summarize as word and sacrament, are how the Holy Spirit is given to us, and it is through the Holy Spirit that we are given faith, and it is through faith that we take hold of the promises of God, the promise that we are justified by God’s grace.

A God Who Sets Us Free

Okay. We have learned three important things about our God from our first three readings. We have a God who is eager to forgive; we have a God who offers us refuge and strength; and we have a God who makes things right, who justifies us by grace through faith. 

Now we come to the fourth and final thing we learn about God from today’s readings: We have a God who sets us free. “If the Son makes you free,” Jesus tells us, “you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). But free from what? And free for what? 

Well, think about it this way. Because we believe in a God who forgives, we are free to make mistakes. As my mother likes to say, “Do something even if it’s wrong.” Or as Martin Luther famously said to his good friend, Philip Melanchthon, “Sin boldly. But believe even more boldly in Christ, and rejoice.” Now, obviously Luther did not mean that we should intentionally sin. He meant that we should not be so worried about committing sin that we don’t take any risks for the sake of the gospel. So, love, and serve, and share your faith; try to make the world a better place, even if you might make it worse. Just do it, but trust that God will forgive you when you mess up, and that God will make it right in the end. The gospel sets us free to do this. The God we worship sets us free to do this. 

We are free indeed. And the freedom of the gospel sets us free to work toward freedom in this world, freedom from poverty, freedom from prejudice, from tyranny, freedom from all that would stop anyone from living freely and faithfully as a child of God. Our God is God of all, and wants freedom for all. 

Closing 

When you think about it, it is pretty amazing that we know so much about God. We worship a God who chooses to reveal himself to us. Who loves us, and who wants to get to know us, and who wants us to get to know him, too. We can learn about God in many ways – through this amazing universe, and through one another. But best of all, through God’s inspired Word, the Bible, which has so much to teach us about God. 

Martin Luther, to his dying day, insisted that it was not he who began the reformation. It was God’s Word. And God’s Word continues to form and reform the church, and to form and reform each and every one of us. And nothing forms us more than our relationship with God. A relationship which is built on love and forgiveness. A relationship which offers us refuge and strength in times of trial. A relationship which makes us right by grace through faith. And a relationship which sets us free. And if God makes us free, we will be free indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.