Study and Devotional Resources
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Luke 17:1-10 October 5, 2025
Last week we learned that mercy and forgiveness come as a fruit of faith, that without faith it is impossible to forgive the sins of another or help another in the way the Lord desires.
When we say such things as, “I will not forgive you for this,” or “It may take me time to forgive what he did,” or “I might forgive, but I will never forget,” these are not from faith but from sheer evil in our hearts.
The Lord, in the Gospel today, does not provide us an option to forgive or not to forgive. He doesn’t set a threshold whereas, if a person’s sins go beyond the line, then we need not forgive. He instead says, “forgive.”
A couple weeks ago, the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona hosted the Charlie Kirk “funeral,” and I put that in quotes because it was more a concert than a funeral, but that’s for another sermon, and Charlie’s wife forgave the accused assassin, Tyler Robinson. This was good and it certainly wasn’t a show. She meant it, and it was good for America to hear that.
But our president had to express himself as well by stating that he doesn’t so easily forgive, and that he “hates” his political opponents. We might say that his enemies have treated him horribly and that they deserve his hate, but forgiveness isn’t only good for the soul of the forgiver, but it is also a way to pile hot coals on the heads of the enemy. If Trump learned to forgive his enemies, the political battles in Washington would be over.
But that’s politics. Let’s keep things local. Forgiveness is at the center of this church, this holy community – it HAS to be, or it is no holy community.
But before we get to forgiveness, we should talk about what it is that is forgiven.
Jesus says that temptations are sure to come. He’s not suggesting potentiality, but an absolute. If you are a human being, you will be tempted. And how those temptations come, most often they come through other people. They come through your children; they come through your parents; they come through your coworkers; they come through your classmates; they come through people you don’t even know that you see on TV or talk to over the internet or read on social media; they come through the ads and billboards that flash across your screens and stand tall above the road; they may even come through your pastor. And because we are sinful people, we are prone to fall for those temptations.
So Jesus says woe to those who bring about temptation in our lives and encourage us to sin, who turn a blind-eye to sin, for it would be better that they be silenced and far out of the way, drowned in the deepest sea with a large millstone around their necks than they be tempting God’s children to sin.
Well, what is sin? In the Close of the Commandments in the Small Catechism, it says, “God threatens to punish all who break His commandments. Therefore, we should fear His wrath and not do anything against His commandments.” That’s sin. It’s when, in our thoughts, in our words, or in our actions, we break God’s commandments.
And the commandment we certainly should never break is the commandment we break most all the time, You shall have no other gods. Anything we prop up in our lives as more important than God, is our god and this breaks the first commandment.
In the Large Catechism, Luther writes concerning the first commandment, “Many a one thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions.” We could add to Luther’s list things like, a good job, popularity, fine clothing, loved by the team, lots of free time, a great house, etc. Luther then writes, “such a man also has a god, Mammon by name, that is, money and possessions,” and whatever else he puts as equal to or more important than God.
It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be a possession like a car or a house. It could be a person like a parent or spouse or a best friend or a boyfriend/girlfriend. It could be a job or career, it could be the pursuit of knowledge, it could be the pursuit of popularity and fitting in, and I could go on. Anything we place before God and we live and die for as if it is God, is idolatry.
And should we break one of the other nine commandments, we are necessarily breaking the first commandment. Let’s play this out. Say that you are not all that concerned about sound theology and right teaching, but you tend to be more tolerant of whatever people want to believe about God. Well, religious tolerance is a second commandment issue, and it also breaks the first commandment because you are putting tolerance ahead of God and what He says about false teaching.
Or perhaps you’re not all that committed to going to church on Sundays because there are other things out in the world more important than being at the Lord’s feet in Word and Sacrament. Well, this is a breaking of the third commandment, but also the first, because you are making idols of things in the world – whatever they may be – rather than resting in and worshipping the Lord.
Perhaps it’s a sexual, adulterous relationship. You’re breaking the sixth commandment and you’re breaking the first commandment. Perhaps it’s the love of gossiping and talking about others behind their backs. You’re breaking the eighth commandment and the first commandment. Perhaps it’s cheating on your taxes. You’re breaking the seventh commandment and the first commandment.
You see how this works? Temptations are absolutely sure to come because we, by nature, make gods and idols of things, people, and activities in our lives because we still believe, even as Christians, that lives can be better if we trust in the creation rather than the Creator. And not only do we make idols of creation, but we encourage others to do it as well.
Do we exhibit to our children a proper keeping of the first commandment? In other words, do we teach them to keep the commandment or to break it, because we ourselves make idols of the same things they do?
Ask yourself, what is your biggest idol? The first thing that pops in your head is likely what it is. What are the greatest idols in our church? What are the greatest idols in our country, and ask yourself how you contribute to the idolatry. Look at your bank account. How much money do you spend on your idols vs. how much you give to the Lord’s work? How much time do you spend on your idols vs. how much time you give serving the Lord and His people?
You see, temptations necessarily come, and woe to us by whom they come for others. It would be better that we each have large millstones tied around our necks and we be thrown into the deepest sea than we continue to bring temptation and sin into the lives of God’s children.
These are harsh words. Harsh, because even as God’s children, we deserve the millstone drowning. Us pastors deserve it and you the lay people deserve it. The millstone, the creation itself, becomes the idol of our demise. The thing we live for, that we make so important in lives, that we make so many excuses for, becomes the strangling rope which chokes our goodness and drags us to the deep.
This is why we must pay attention to ourselves. What does this mean? It means that we must daily look into the mirror of God’s holy and perfect law and acknowledge our millstone living, that we are idolaters, that we commit adultery against our Bridegroom, the Lord of Life, and we do it as if it’s no big deal.
This is repentance; this is the fear of God’s wrath being realized in the mirror of His law. It’s not all those others out there who are ‘bad people’ and we are all ‘good people’ in here, no. But what you see in that mirror is you; what I see is me. We are the ‘bad people’ because we sin much and we encourage others to sin much with us. We encourage our kids to sin. We hate to hear it, but it’s true. We want to say it’s not idolatry to put school and sports and “future” ahead of Christ and His church, Word and Sacrament, but it is quintessentially idolatry, and we are teaching our kids that it is okay and virtuous to say no and gamble with God and His Word for whatever out in the world. We are not only the sinners affected by those who live by the millstone, but we ourselves live by the millstone. You get it? This is why we must watch ourselves, we must see what we’re doing. We must daily repent.
Now Jesus turns His attention and offers an answer to millstone living. It’s forgiveness. What crushed the head of the serpent was more than just a man dying on a cross. It was the forgiveness of sins which poured down by His death.
In the Old Testament, the Lord noticed that it was not good for man to be alone, so He put Adam into a deep sleep, perhaps similar to the sleep of death, and from Adam’s side, the Lord removed a bone, a piece of Adam, and from it created woman, the wife of the bridegroom. Not only did the Lord establish marriage to be between one man and one woman, but He also foreshadowed another deep sleep or sleep of death that would come thousands of years later. Christ Jesus, when He died on the cross, and after He said the words that changed the universe forever, “It is finished,” His side was cut open by a spear and from Him blood and water flowed.
This is no coincidence, for are there ever coincidences in the Scripture? Where the bride of Adam was created by the Lord cutting open the flesh of man, the Bride of Christ was created by the Lord – through the means of a soldier – by a piercing of the side of the Man of God. The Word made flesh was pierced, and from Him, blood and water flowed.
This is sacramental language, isn’t it? Get this! The Bride of Christ, the Holy Christian church, is all about the Word who died and the Sacraments which flowed out from Him. This is why His Church, His bride, is one of Word and Sacrament, and this means we are also a bride, a church wrapped in, living by, and breathing the forgiveness of sins.
Do not not rebuke your brother. In other words, if your brother sins against you, don’t just turn a blind eye and pretend it’s no big deal; don’t tolerate his sin. Instead, rebuke him. What does it mean to rebuke? It means to call him out, reprimand, show him his sinful error. Don’t be shy, don’t be scared. Don’t contribute to your brother’s sinning by sinning yourself and creating an atmosphere of doubt. Rebuke him.
And if your brother repents, in other words, if he who sinned against you acknowledges that what he did was wrong, FORGIVE! This is what pastors of the holy Christian church do every Sunday in the Absolution. They hear you acknowledge you are sinful, and they absolve you. Now, I can’t see into your hearts; I don’t know what’s going on in there unless you tell me. And by the way, this is why we still have private confession and absolution in the Lutheran church. No one uses it anymore because people are too disillusioned by protestant notions of, “Only God can forgive sins, not pastors,” and they’re too proud, and pastors have become too tolerant of sin and too distracted with needless busywork, but we still have it, and should you need private confession, I’m here.
But I can’t see into your heart, so when I speak the absolution, I do it making the assumption that you’re sincere in your confession. But it doesn’t matter what I think, what matters is if you are receiving the absolution by faith. Believe the words Christ speaks, that your sins are forgiven!
This is why it is always by faith and not the work you do, the words you say, the piety you exhibit, the attitude you have, none of it. God cares so little about how you hold yourself on the outside; God cares about the heart and where your faith is founded. Your faith is founded on Christ Jesus and His death on the cross, so may it be done for you as you believe, that your sins are forgiven.
Because forgiveness is what it’s all about. Faith receives and follows the narrow path of forgiveness. The flesh, our sinful nature, doesn’t care about forgiveness. He, the old Adam who lives in each of us, wants to be like God and so he seeks wisdom and fulfillment in the creation while rejecting the Creator. But the gift of faith receives its Creator, and it holds to what its Creator says to hold – the place where the Word and Sacrament are flowing from the cross and freely given.
When we cry out, “Lord, increase our faith,” such as the disciples cried, this is the cry of the believer to feed from the source of faith, the living and always fruitful Tree of Life, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
See, you simply cannot work your way to God’s blessed presence. Your good works are your Christian duty, done in response to Christ who, by faith, gave His life for you and forgives you of your sins, but they are not done for payment; the Lord owes you nothing.
Instead, it is by faith that we approach the Lord and kneel at His altar, and listen to His words, because faith longs for the true and lasting food of heaven, the Bread of Life, the Word of God in human form. And He has adorned His name upon our foreheads and upon our hearts. This faith seeks the mercy of God and is why we are not thrown into the deep with a millstone around our necks. Jesus bore the millstone and was buried deep in the grave on our behalf.
And this faith speaks and says, “In spite of what my senses tell me, in spite of what the world tells me, my life is in Christ and Him alone, and not in the pleasures or concerns of the world or my sinful flesh. Yes, I may have a reward now if I devote my time to the world, but it’s a fleeting reward because it does not pass with me to the afterlife and it also requires me to break God’s commands to achieve it. But the heavenly reward that awaits me is greater, though I do not see it now. Therefore, I will trust in the words, ‘I forgive you all your sins,’ and I will trust in Jesus’ promise that His body and blood are in the bread and wine for my forgiveness, and I will serve my neighbor so that he may repent and believe with me.”
We are not millstone people because Christ has died and He is risen, because He has shown us our sins and we’ve felt the terror and misery that comes from making idols of the Lord’s creation and putting the world before the Him, and He has come to help us, and He has been our help and will never stop being our help.
Yes, we make idols of the world and its gods, we do. There is no excuse for such foolish living. We deserve the judgment and wrath once held over us; we do. But Christ Jesus paid that price; Jesus faced the wrath; Jesus was judged the sinner, the transgressor, the idolater, the adulterer, the liar, the gossip, the slanderer, the thief, the murderer, the Sabbath breaker, and whatever other sins you commit, Jesus was judged, and He died. And now we live by faith in Him.
And faith in Jesus means, yes, we will change, we must change. For to go back to living by the world and its rules has no value for us anymore – never really did. Yes, God created the world, and His creation was good and so there is still good in the world, but not at the expense of what is TRULY, perfectly good – the pierced Word of God where blood and water flow, the holy Christian church where the Word and Sacrament are given.
Here, in this place, is where true life, true joy, true, contentment with godliness is poured down from the throne without limit. So come and dine with the Lord of life who forgives every sin. Amen.
