Luke 23:27-28 “A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children.’”

What kind of people were there? Some of them were utterly rebellious. They were Jesus’ enemies. They had plotted his end and orchestrated his trial and execution. Among them were the priests and Pharisees we later hear mocking Christ while he is hanging on the cross. They hated Jesus. They were only too eager to get rid of him–to finally see him die.

Some following to the cross were little more than curiosity seekers. As horrible as a crucifixion is, as severe as the suffering may be, these people had a twisted, morbid interest in going to see someone die. They were not the only ones of their kind. When executions were performed in public in our own country years ago, they always drew crowds. People have a strange interest in seeing someone breath their last, the gorier the better. Isn’t that why violence still draws ratings on television? Isn’t that why slasher movies do well that the box office? It is part of the twisted and perverted nature of fallen humanity to find painful deaths entertaining.

Then there were these women of Jerusalem. It was not wrong to feel sorry for Jesus. But who was being served by their display? They were not leading anyone to confess faith in Jesus and stand up for him. They stopped short of objecting to the injustice he suffered. Feeling sorry for Christ doesn’t save anyone.

Do you see why Jesus says, “…do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children”? This collection of people following him was a collection of the most spiritually privileged people on earth. These people, of this nation, had been the closest people to God. They lived in the shadow of the temple in the holy city of Jerusalem. God chose them to be his own.

Still, what do we find among the most spiritually advantaged people in the world? Hatred of God. Open rebellion. Twisted and perverted minds. Weakness and sentimentality at best. They had a better reason to cry than the pitiful sight of Jesus in front of them. So do we. “Weep for yourselves,” Jesus says. Weep tears of repentance. Cry over the depth of your sin. Go and weep bitterly, like Peter did after he denied Jesus the night before.

Then remember why Jesus was there. The heaviest thing Jesus was carrying through the streets of Jerusalem was not his cross. His greatest pain was not his bleeding wounds. His burden and his pain were our sins–our hatred, our perversion, our weakness. He carried these as our substitute.

Don’t pity him, then. Believe in him! Be certain your sins have been forgiven. Your guilt has been removed! He carries his cross through the streets of Jerusalem to the place of his execution to free us from suffering as he did for our sins.

Then we are seeing this scene the way he wants. Then we are not looking at Jesus as an object of pity. He is our heroic Savior. He carries his cross for you.

Galatians 5:2-5 “Mark my words! I Paul tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.”

Do you know what happens when religion becomes Jesus plus something else? Little by little, Jesus ceases to be the star of the show. More and more the “something else” gets all the attention. That something else needs to be explained, defended, and promoted. How can faith survive when we don’t hear about Jesus anymore? How long would your marriage or friendships last if you never heard from or about the people we love?

Worse yet, Paul says that Christ is really of no value to us at all. Is that hard to understand? If you go to the doctor, but then reject the treatment plan and all the medicine he has proposed, what good is he to you? If you call the fire department to put out the fire in your house, but when they arrive you don’t let them spray water on the fire, how can they help? If you open a bank account, but then you keep all your money in your mattress, what’s the point? If you draft and organize an army, but you don’t arm them or let them fight against the enemy, and you try to face the enemy on the battlefield alone, what’s the value of having an army? I could keep multiplying the illustrations. You see where this is going. If God gives you a Savior, but you reject his way of saving you in favor of trying to save yourself, of what value is that Savior to you anymore? The answer is easy: He is of no value to you at all.

Lose Christ, and you lose God’s grace, too. “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” You know what grace is. Grace is God’s undeserved love. It is his gift-love. Like a gift, you don’t earn it. God just gives it away. He loves you because he chooses to love you. He loves you because Jesus took all our sins away.

If we say to God, “I don’t want you to love me because Jesus took all my sins away. I want to be justified–I want to be considered good, and right, and holy–because I have kept the law myself. I want you to love me because I deserve it…” then we are taking a pass on the gift. As Paul says, then we have fallen from grace, by definition. All that is left for us is the pressure of living perfectly without a single slip until the day we die. Don’t trade Christ and his grace for that kind of slavery. Defend your freedom, and hold on to Christ.

Then we will live in faith’s blessings. “But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.” When we reject the law’s slavery and hold on to Christ by faith, that changes everything. Then we have real freedom. It changes our inner condition. Faith makes us certain and confident.

When you were in school (or those of you who are in school), did you eagerly await tests at the end of a chapter, or at the end of a semester? Or did they give you a little sense of fear and dread, even if you knew the material pretty well? Why is that? Isn’t it because the outcome is always a little uncertain? Maybe the teacher will have questions about something I missed. Maybe I will choke when the time for the test comes. I wish we didn’t have to have tests!

But Paul says that we await the greatest examination of all–standing before God on the day of Judgment–eager and full of hope. Why is that? Because Jesus already took and aced the test for us; because Jesus erased all our mistakes along the way; because we already know the final grade: 100%, A+. By faith we know that even now God regards us as righteous and perfect for Jesus’ sake. By faith we are certain he will publicly declare us righteous in the presence of all humanity when the last day comes.

That confidence sets us free from fear. It keeps Christ and his grace at the center of our faith. Don’t settle for anything less.

Galatians 5:1-2 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to keep the whole law.”

“Defend your freedom! Reject slavery!” Paul says. In the context of this letter, the slavery here involves accepting circumcision as a requirement for salvation. People with Jewish background had come to these congregations somewhere in ancient Eastern Turkey and told them, “Jesus is good, yes. You should follow him. But faith in Jesus isn’t enough. If you really want to be saved, you need to be circumcised just like Abraham, and Moses, and the prophets all were.”

That might not sound like such a bad deal at first. All that is standing between you and heaven is a little surgery. It won’t take but a minute. Look at all giants of faith, the heroes of God’s people, who did this before you. Never in your life have you been offered so much for doing so little.

Have you ever signed up for a great deal without reading all the fine print? You thought you were getting the bargain of the century. “Sign up for our cell phone plan and we will give you the smart phone for free.” But there’s an asterisk next to the word “free.” You will walk out of the store without paying for the phone today. But over the next few years you are going to lay down $500 or even $1000 for your “free” phone.

Salvation for circumcision works a lot like that. Paul warned these people, “…do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Again? What did that mean? These Christians in Galatia were Gentiles. They had never been circumcised before.

He explains a verse later: “Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to keep the whole law.” There’s the fine print. Today you submit to circumcision. Tomorrow you will be eating only kosher foods, putting yourself through a hundred and one cleansing ceremonies, and offering all kinds of animal sacrifices for special holidays. In fact, the “law” doesn’t stop there. While you are “doing something” to save yourselves, you can throw in the ten commandments. And don’t you dare make any mistakes. Don’t think this contract for heaven is any good if you disobey your parents, use God’s name as a cuss word, get frisky with someone you aren’t married to, or develop a little envy and covet something that belongs to your neighbor, not even once. Now you are obligated to keep the whole law. It’s a package deal.

This is the kind of slavery with which the Galatian Christians were all too familiar. The details were different in their old religion, but the principles were the same: Make God happy by the quality of your personal performance. Base your relationship with God on how well you behave. Do and do, and do and do, and when you are tired of that, do some more. It never stops, and it is never enough. It is a slavery that covers every waking and sleeping moment of your life. It is not the way of Jesus. Defend your freedom, Paul says. Reject the Law’s slavery.

That fight isn’t over. Christians in our time still try to make salvation Jesus plus something else. It is Jesus plus abstaining from having a drink. It is Jesus plus worshiping on Saturday as the true Sabbath. It is Jesus plus using enough water at your baptism or blabbering on in some language you never heard before.

Don’t think we Lutherans are immune to the temptation. Five hundred years after the Reformation we have developed plenty of fine traditions. Make any of those traditions a binding rule, an unchangeable requirement laid on the consciences of God’s people, and we cease to be the church of grace alone, faith alone, and Scripture alone.

Defend your freedom, Paul urges us today. Reject the Law’s slavery. You can never legislate your way to freedom. More laws only increase our bondage.

This call to freedom isn’t an encouragement to embrace immorality. It’s a reminder of our limitations, an admission of our incompetence, and a defense of Christ’s honor. We cannot save ourselves, or even contribute. Only Jesus saves, and he has. All that’s left for us is a life lived in the freedom he already won.

2 Timothy 3:14-15 “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you have learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Sometimes people new to celebrating the Reformation have gotten the impression it is “We’re-better-than-everybody-else” Sunday. This is not a day for patting ourselves on the back just because we are Lutherans. Members of our church will be saved by grace alone, just like everybody else.

No, the Reformation grew out of a much more important concern. We celebrate this day to help ensure that we never give it up. Do you believe Jesus loves you? Are you sure Jesus loves you? It was just these questions that Martin Luther grew up unable to answer from what he had learned in his church. It was just these questions that he learned to answer with a resounding “yes” from the words of God’s Holy Scriptures. We, too, will answer “yes” all our lives if we follow Paul’s encouragement and continue in the teachings we have learned from them.

Paul points out that Timothy did not merely learn the Scriptures. This book and what it teaches were more than answers he had learned for a test. It was more than information about people from a faraway time and place.

Timothy had also become convinced of these things. He had confidence. He had certainty. There is such a thing as objective truth, that truth can be known, and it was known to Timothy himself.

To be certain did not mean that Timothy was arrogant. There are those who believe that all certainty must be proud presumption. With all the competing ideas about what is true, the thought goes, no one can be sure of anything. And because we don’t want to be thought of as proud or arrogant, perhaps we are tempted to believe that it would somehow be better if we were not too sure of what we believe, either.

But what comfort can a person find in something that has no certainty? What peace can be had from what is unclear or unknown? Isn’t it true that we often are filled with more fear, and more anxiety, by the things which are unknown? Isn’t it true, at least very often, that people would even rather know that they have a disease rather than live in uncertainty about what is wrong with them?

How much more necessary it is that we can be certain when it comes to our salvation and eternal life! Faith, the author of Hebrews tells us, is being sure of what we hope for. Doubt and uncertainty are the opposite of faith. If, like Timothy, we are going to continue in the Scriptures we have learned, we need to be convinced that they are true.

Those Scriptures do the convincing themselves through the saving promises they make. They “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” They teach me that Jesus can be trusted. They tell me not only that someone has to die to pay for my sins. They assure me that, in Jesus, God died to pay for my sins. They reveal not only my inability to save myself with all my good works, sincere intentions, and tear-filled prayers. They show me how Jesus lived the sincere life of good works which does.

These Scriptures promise that God connects me with Jesus life and death in Baptism. They explain to me that he still shares and distributes the benefits of his saving work in his Holy Supper. These are not just doctrines I am told I must fight to defend. They are beautiful truths, life-giving truths, comforting truths, empowering truths I want to believe.

On the basis of the Scriptures I know that, yes, Jesus loves me, and so they have filled me with saving faith. This wisdom is a certainty, not a possibility. Continue to learn its truths and be convinced by its power.