St. Matthew Lutheran Church

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 18, 2022

“God Desires All People to Be Saved” (1 Timothy 2:1-15)

From time to time the Pew Research Center, an organization that tracks religious trends in America, comes out with a new study. This past week they issued their latest report, called “Modeling the Future of Religion in America: How the U.S Religious Landscape Could Change over the Next 50 Years.” Based on findings from recent decades, they are projecting how things could look in the future if current trends continue. The main question in this study is what percentage of Americans will identify as Christians in the future. Going back to the 1970s and even into the early 1990s, 90% of Americans identified as Christians in 1992. That number started to drop in the mid-’90s. By 2002, the percentage had dropped to 78%. Now, in 2022, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians is down to 63%. From 90% to 63% in just thirty years. Meanwhile, the percentage of “religiously unaffiliated,” the so-called “nones,” has risen to approximately 30%.

Now what if these trends continue? In this study, the Pew Research Center says the most likely scenario is that by the year 2050, Christians will lose their majority status in America and be down to only 47% of the population, barely outnumbering the 43% who will have no religious affiliation at all.

So how do we react and respond to these discouraging numbers? More important, what does God think about it? And the good news is that, in the words of our Epistle today, “God our Savior . . . desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And God has provided the way for that to happen. And so our theme this morning: “God Desires All People to Be Saved.”

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Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 11, 2022

“Sound Doctrine: Applying Law and Gospel” (1 Timothy 1:5-17)

Sound doctrine: When you hear that phrase, what comes to mind? Maybe you think of a proud, triumphalistic claim: “We in the Missouri Synod have the pure doctrine, not like those other churches!” Maybe you think of sound doctrine as having all your facts in order, in your head, in a sterile, intellectual way, unrelated to real life. Or you think of sound doctrine as unloving, not caring about people, only about guarding the truth. Well, I’m here to tell you that nothing, none of that, could be further from the truth.

This stereotype of a concern for sound doctrine as being cold and unloving, all head and no heart, impersonal, uncaring–this is a caricature that people use to excuse their lack of concern for right doctrine and practice. We are accused of being obsessed with “incessant internal purification,” at the cost of being “missional.” But that is not the case. In fact, in our Epistle today, from Paul’s letter to Timothy, we will see that concern for pure doctrine and caring for people–that these two go hand in hand. And so our theme this morning, “Sound Doctrine: Applying Law and Gospel.”

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Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 22, 2019

“One Mediator” (1 Timothy 2:1-15)

Our text this morning is a portion of the Epistle for this day, 1 Timothy 2, reading from verse 3 through verse 7, as follows: “God our Savior . . . desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. . . .”

This has to be one of the most hated passages in the Bible in our day. Think of it: It boldly proclaims that there is only one mediator between God and men, and that it is the man Christ Jesus. That is just unacceptable! It is way too narrow for most people today. “One Mediator”?

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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 15, 2013

“Sound Doctrine: Law and Gospel” (1 Timothy 1:5-17)

Today begins a series of weeks in which the Epistle comes from Paul’s two letters to Timothy. Paul we know, but who is this Timothy? Timothy was Paul’s younger assistant who often traveled with him and whom Paul would sometimes have oversee things in places while Paul was off elsewhere. This is the case when Paul writes this first letter to Timothy. Paul had gone off to Macedonia, and he had Timothy remain in the big city of Ephesus, in western Asia Minor. Ephesus was a very important city for the whole region. Paul had spent a lot of time there, building up the church and training leaders. And now he has left Timothy there to carry on the work.

So that’s what these pastoral epistles to Timothy are about: Paul’s instructions to his assistant as to what needs to happen there, the doctrine that is to be taught, the practices that should be followed, the corrections that need to be made, the encouragement that Timothy himself needs in carrying on his pastoral work. There is a lot here for both pastors and congregations to learn from. And so today we will learn, from the opening of Paul’s first letter to Timothy, the importance of “Sound Doctrine: Law and Gospel.”

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