Sermon Title: Worldly Sacrifice for the Sake of Christ
Sermon Text: Mathew 16:21-28
Sermon Summary: Worldly sacrifices are not sacrifices at all. Giving up our sins is pure gain, and even good things we lay aside are exchanged for the gospel and the gift of eternal life.
Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson
Liturgical Date: Pentecost 14, Proper 17 A
Calendar Date: 2026-08-30
Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County

Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church serves Ephraim and other areas in Northeastern Wisconsin.

The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI:

TRANSCRIPT

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And on the basis of this, we’re going to be talking about the theme that worldly sacrifices aren’t sacrifices at all.

I have stared directly into the eyes of evil, evil incarnate. Black eyes, just as black as night. And around the eye it was a face full of hair, shaggy hair, and that shaggy hair went all down its body. The face of evil that I stared into stood about two and a half feet off the ground. His name was McGregor. He was a Portuguese water dog. He was the dog that Mary and I first owned when we first got married. And we had to get rid of him. He was a threat to our family. He developed these very strong opinions about a few things, and if you went against that opinion the teeth would start to flash, and the voice would start to snarl, and we just could not have this creature in our home. It was very scary and certainly when you had little kids in the house, just completely not something that we needed at all. So we ended up getting rid of him. But here’s the thing, it took us far longer than it probably should have to get rid of him. And it was maybe a little bit sad when we got rid of him. We certainly liked him in some ways, even though he was categorically evil.

And isn’t this just like our sins, brothers and sisters in Christ? Amen. Which while they do much harm to us, they do much harm to others, yet we cling so closely to them. But with these words, Jesus invites us to lay aside our sins, to, as the theologians say, crucify the mortal flesh or to mortify the flesh. And that’s part of what we’re going to be talking about today. We’re going to be talking about the fact that simply giving up the evil things of this world, it’s pure gain. Even the good things that Christ our Lord asks us to sacrifice, we sacrifice those good things for the sake of better things. And of all those better things that the Lord grants us, eternal life is chief among them.

Giving Up the Evil Things of This World Is Pure Gain

Let’s think on that first point. Simply giving up the evil things of this world is pure gain. Back to that dog McGregor, certainly there were some things that we enjoyed about him. He brought certain pleasures. I remember one of the things I really enjoyed when our kids were little and we’d walk the dog to the playground in the neighborhood, and the dog would come along, and the kids were there, and all the neighborhood kids were around there. I actually had this thing trained that he could climb up the eight-foot-tall slide and slide down that slide, and literally the entire playground of kids would—their jaws would be dropping to see this shaggy dog climbing up the slide and going down the slide. Gained a little bit of neighborhood notoriety through that. And certainly, it was fun to pet him when he was in a good mood. There were certainly some things that we enjoyed about him. Nonetheless, he was a threat to us and to our family, and isn’t this so much like our sins?

The sin of bearing a grudge. The sin of holding on to bitterness. This is a sin. Let’s have no mistake about it. We pray after all, “Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We ought to forgive even as we have been forgiven. We have freely received, so also ought we to freely give, and yet it feels so good sometimes to cling to that bitterness, to cling to that grudge. What does that grudge, that bitterness let you do? It lets you put someone lower than you. It lets you look down your nose. You say, “You have done this to me, therefore you are less than me, and I have this leverage over you now.” Don’t get me wrong here. If we are wronged, yes, there can be frustration, sorrow, anger. But the nursing of a bitterness or the nursing of a grudge is holding that against somebody. And that is indeed a thing of status. That can feel good in a way. It can feel good to hold yourself up and above somebody else. And yet it’s ultimately destructive. If we hold and nurse bitterness and grudges to those around us, it cuts us off from relationship with them. There can be no relationship with others without forgiveness. And so therefore, when we nurse that bitterness, when we nurse that grudge, we cut ourselves off from the love that the Lord desires of us to give that individual and the love that the Lord desires for us to receive back from that individual. It’s destructive. Harmful.

What about other sins? What about the sin of being given to drunkenness? There comes some certain worldly pleasures with that. The thrill of letting go, the freedom maybe from anxieties or cares or regrets or sorrows or whatever it is. I can give you some relief from that momentarily. But with drunkenness comes ill health. Drunkenness comes as well potentially a threat to others and to our own safety. Drunkenness maybe comes with activity that we later regret. And that too is its own kind of destruction and danger. What about the sin of lust or promiscuity? Same thing. In the moment, a thrill, but in the end, heartbreak, sorrow, destruction.

When Christ invites us to take up our cross and to follow him, it’s an incredibly pregnant phrase, and I don’t want to reduce it to any one thing. But at the very least, part of what Christ is inviting us to do is to repent of our sins. To lay aside these worthless things. And that’s pure gain. When we gave up that dog, what did we gain? We gained a sense of safety. We gained a sense of relief. We got a place in our house that we could get a much better dog that you see Sunday to Sunday sitting at our porch, that we love her so much. It was pure gain. And the invitation to repent of our sins, that too is pure gain. Yes, there may be some things from a worldly perspective that are lost, but truly those things are not losses. It’s all pure gain.

Laying Aside Good Things for the Sake of Better Things

Now, when Christ invites us to take up our cross and follow him, on the one hand there is an invitation to lay aside the worthless things of the sinful flesh. On the other hand, there is also an invitation to take up and to receive the means by which the work of the cross comes upon us in our lives. To lay aside the good things that the Lord does give us for the sake of better things. Now, sometimes the Lord invites us to lay aside good things for the sake of better things. We can see this right exactly in this passage by the way. And we think about the context in which Jesus is saying this passage. Jesus is answering Peter, right? This is in the midst of this dialogue and this back and forth with Peter where Jesus says, “Look, the time is coming and coming soon when I’m going to travel to Jerusalem, I’m going to be rejected, I’m going to be killed, and on the third day rise.” And Peter says, “This is never going to happen to you.” And Jesus rebukes Peter, and then on the basis of that, he then goes on and says, “If anyone would be my disciple, he must take up his cross, deny himself, and follow me.” And think about this in the context of Peter. Because that call to Peter was certainly a call to lay aside what I would call objectively good things.

Now, this is different from Matthew, right? Matthew was this tax collector, and we think of tax collectors today, and we think of some disinterested bureaucrat in a faraway office who makes a paltry little salary from the government and who has all kinds of laws and regulations and procedures all around what he does. This was not the case with a tax collector in the time of the Roman Empire. Roman tax collectors were businessmen. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a businessman at all, if the business is legitimate and isn’t exploitative. But that’s the thing about the way the tax business was structured. You were required as a tax collector to have a certain amount of taxes to collect and to hand over to the Romans, and one of the ways that you made money was adding a little bit for yourself on the top. And right away you can see the ability to be exploitative. And so there’s this tinge to Matthew’s background, right?

Peter, it’s hard to find anything like that, right? Think about the way that Peter made his daily bread. It’s hard to think of anything more wholesome, right? He’s a fisherman, and he goes out and he toils, sometimes late into night, forgoing sleep. He toils when the sun comes up under the harsh Mediterranean sun. He’s literally earning his bread by the sweat of his brow. He’s risking his life for the sake of this. And his business is just giving food to people. It’s hard to think of anything more wholesome than that. And then on top of that, he seems to be fairly successful at what he does to some degree. He seems to own this property, which is big enough that he can play host to his mother-in-law, and he’s an established member of Capernaum there and seems to be known in the synagogue. Peter is a model of an upstanding man embedded in his community, good to his family, and who earns his way through honest, wholesome work, right? That’s not to say he wasn’t a sinner, but it is to say that his life, in my eyes, that looks like a good life.

In Jesus, when he called Peter to follow him, right? To become a fisher of man, this was laying aside what I would call objectively good things for the sake of the better thing which is to be an apostle of the Savior of the world. And praise be to God for this because through the work of Peter, the message of the gospel has gone out to the four corners of the world, even here to Forestville, Wisconsin, so that we might ourselves believe and have eternal life.

Now, the Lord does not call all of us or most of us to make those kinds of sacrifices, the kinds of sacrifices that Peter was commissioned to do. And yet the Lord still continues to want to give us good things that requires laying aside of other good things. The Lord desires to give you the forgiveness of sins. The work of the cross which Christ so lovingly did for you in His righteous life that He lived unto your righteousness, in His atoning death that He died unto your forgiveness. Christ wants you to receive that. And we receive this through the means that the Lord has: through the word, through the sacraments. And to receive those gifts means that we have to lay aside other good things, right?

Third Commandment, honor the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. What does this mean? With these words, the Lord encourages us to gladly hear God’s word, right? And what does this require? You hear me week by week. I say it fairly often. I encourage you to have a devotional habit within your home. Now in order to open the scriptures and to return the word of God back to Him in prayer, what does that mean that you have to do? That means that you have to lay aside things which are objectively good, right? You have to lay aside your chores. You have to lay aside your hobbies. You have to lay aside your work, and you have to be still to hear the word of the Lord and to receive that gift. You have to stop working and doing so the Lord can work and do for you.

Here at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, the Lord gives us the life-saving gospel and the forgiveness of sins through the means of grace. He gives it to us as it is proclaimed in the holy absolution, proclaimed from the pulpit, as we receive it in holy baptism, and through the Lord’s supper. By these means, the Lord grants us the forgiveness of sins, and this means that we have to lay aside things which might be objectively good, right? We have to lay aside the time that we might use for a hobby. We have to lay aside our work. We have to lay aside that time so that the Lord might give us his gifts. And yes, that might mean sacrificing things that are objectively good for the sake of something better: the word of God and the forgiveness of sins.

And what great blessings the Lord gives us through these means. By means of the gospel of Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit and through the guidance of the holy scriptures, the Lord empowers us. And yes, it’s imperfect this side of heaven, but the Lord empowers us so that we might, in fact, lay aside those sins which are so harmful to us and to others. Maybe instead of holding ourselves over others in the bearing of a grudge and bitterness, instead as we receive that forgiveness of God and as we receive the guidance of the holy scriptures and as we pray to the Lord, “Lord, not my will but thy will be done,” then the Lord’s will in fact be done with us and among us and in us as we are empowered to forgive. And it might seem impossible for us. With our God, all things are possible. We can go down the list of all the other things we named and didn’t name with regards to sins, but by this means the Lord frees us from their consequences and frees us from their grip.

Eternal Life Is Chief Among Them

The greatest gift that the Lord gives us are not the gifts of this world, even as we receive those gifts and we’re glad for those gifts, but rather the gift of the world to come. Christ Jesus, he invites us to take up our cross and follow him. And by these words, He invites us to crucify our sin in true repentance, and He invites us to receive the merits of His cross by means of the Holy Gospel. And what does this do for us? This opens the door of eternal life for us. Jesus invites us to follow Him. And Christ our Lord has gone down into the valley of the shadow of death. But yet he has emerged upon the other side as our good shepherd leading his sheep. He has emerged on the other side to the green pastures and the still waters of eternal life. And this is where Christ our Lord desires to lead us. And he leads us there through the repentance of our sins and the reception of His holy and most precious gospel. So my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us indeed gladly take up our cross and follow where He leads. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.