Pastor Borghardt made available on his website audio from his sermon on Ash Wednesday. When I asked him to make the text available, he instead emailed it to me. I think he just didn’t want to edit the text to make it suitable for posting. Multiple subjunctive phrases in a sentence and sentence fragments can be confusing in the written word. :)

If you’re in a location where audio is convenient, go ahead and listen to the presentation. My only gripe is that the volume is sometimes too loud and sometimes too soft, like he backs away from the microphone. :)

By the way, if you’re in the mood for a good chuckle, check out his post on technological means of grace.

Some sermons tell us what we should be doing. We call this Law. Law shows us we’re sinful, no matter how good our behavior. It shows us we need Christ. It shows us how we behave when we are thankful for what Christ has done for us.

Some sermons tell us the Gospel. Christ died that we may live forever. He fulfilled the Law in our place. We share in his righteousness, and he takes away our sin. He gives us His Word, that we may believe.

Sermons can do both, and most of the time both are necessary. Some people get into a bit of a legalistic streak. We try to worm our way around the Law or bend the Law so as to say we fulfill it. A clear preaching of the Law wipes away any value of our piety in our salvation. Other people look at themselves and doubt their salvation. They fully recognize that they aren’t perfect in the sight of a God who demands perfection. They may think action is required on their part to obtain salvation. These people need the assurance of the Gospel that Christ is not limited in his forgiveness. Finally, some people are a little bit of both, pious and doubtful. A pastor cannot know the specific needs of each person in his congregation at a specific time on Sunday morning, so he composes his message to supply the needs of all his members.

The following sermon does both, perhaps more so than most sermons you’ve seen on NR. Even so, it does some things that are not typical to most Law and Gospel sermons or others of Pastor Borghardt’s that I’ve read. Thanks for letting me post this, Pastor Borghardt. :)

The sermon was preached on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21. This is the copy of his text, with minor changes for readability.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

The Good News to us today is that God will NOT despise our hearts! That is, if we send them through the shredder, tear our hearts to pieces, run from our proud hearts so full of ourselves, pull out our insides, and toss them into the dumpster. That’s all we need to do.

Actually, it is a miracle that a single sinner is saved. That is the wonder of the Passion of our dear Lord, Jesus Christ, whose sinless Life was offered up on the cross to cover our bad hearts, who comes to us now in His Word and Holy Supper, and to redeem the baptized once again—to save us from our hearts.

His good life so certainly covers us, His wretched punishment so thoroughly takes the place of the beating we deserve, and His rescue is so surely given to us in the preached Word of the Law and the Gospel—that Jesus tells us to call God our Father, our Dad, Abba. Bad hearts and all—still you call God what every tiny tot knows to call his old man: Abba, dada, Father.

He is in the heavens, your Father, but His deepest care is for you on this earth. His Son came to this earth, thus says the Holy Gospel. And now, since we are His children, He disciplines us, He trains us, and He brings us up in the One True Faith. What a great Father He is!

He is no absent father, AWOL father, part-time lousy father. He’s got nothing else to do than to bring up His children in His faith and love, hands on. That is one of the other reasons He sent us His Son: to teach us to live as children of God.

So, God, our Father in the sky, comes to us in the words of His Son today. He calls us to repentance, as we enter the Spring of our Lord 2006—Lent. Heed the warnings of your Father in heaven. He speaks to you today on this earth. Jesus, our Lord, has life for you, instead of death. But we have to do the last thing we want to do. We need to rip our big hearts to shreds, and think nothing of ourselves and our conduct. We have to forget about ourselves completely!

But I am my favorite subject! That’s the problem. Here is how to repent and live:

When you pray to God, pray only to God, and for God. He is your Father. He hears you. No one else needs to.

When you give to the poor, don’t even let yourself know what you are doing. Keep no record of the good you do for others, the sacrifices you make. Instead, when you see the poor in need, give knowing that only One sees you giving. You don’t need the approval of men.

When you fast, enter Lent; don’t make a big show of it. Jesus commands us to wash our faces clean, smile, and be of good cheer, while all the while we fast, pray, and pummel our sick bodies so that we don’t run off, not even one more time, to gossip, to hurt, and to follow wicked paths. Don’t disfigure your face, our Lord commands. No pained, sad looks; don’t draw attention to you. That is the opposite of repentance and faith.

Instead, only do your acts of righteousness to be seen by your Father in heaven. He sees you; He will indeed reward you. Tear your heart to shreds, and He will have mercy on you and lift you up to new life. Turn from your heart and all its great doings, and God your Father will bless you in this world with eternal life in the world to come.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ: The prophet Joel called on Israel to rend their hearts, not their garments. This is the same teaching as that of Jesus. Don’t make a big show, but do the work of repentance.

Most of all, do your repenting, trusting that God has answered for your sins in the Holy Life and Tortured Death of His only beloved Son. Trust that since you are baptized, Jesus covers bad, evil, nasty you. Trust that when you attend the Lord’s Supper, even someone as wrong as you is set right. Believe your poor soon-to-be 33-year-old younger pastor: your sins have been answered for, and now you are free.

With such faith, with such assurance, repent during this season of Lent. Pinpoint your sins, run from them, mourn them, if you would be saved.

Is your home awash in the Word of God? Morning hymns to God? Daily reading of His Gospel? Prayers with the children, for others and for your enemies? Did you recite the commandments today? If not, you are totally unequipped to repent or live a Christian life. Have your recited the Creed today? If not, how can you possibly know who God is? Your black heart will only lead you astray.

Now, don’t you get all sad faced and gloomy. Smile, put oil on your face, and repent of the poverty of God’s Word in your life and the life of your family. Turn from this wretched sin. Let no one else see it but your Father, who is in the sky, and then get ready for His great rewards.

What about the Second Table of the Law? What do you have to repent of in there?

Do you make it clear to everyone how painful it is for you to live with such poor specimens of humanity? In opposition to the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount? With pained faces, with rolling of the eyes, with heavy sighs, can you barely stand your spouse, your kids, your boss, your fellow workers, your neighbors, or perhaps people in this very building?

Oh, how you suffer! Oh, the cross you have to bear, a cross etched with the faces of everyone you’ve ever met! Oh, how great you are!

Fall on your face sometime today and thank God that you got to church. So that you can hear this:

Other people have a hard time bearing with you. YOU are the burden in this world— you and your selfishness. YOU bring others down. YOU scare other poor sinners, by all your acting so righteous. YOU darken bright days; YOU distract people from good works and happy prayers to their Father up there, by all your complaints.

You need to repent of you rather than moan over the sins of others, and I know that each one of you does this sin. I do it myself, daily and much. We are so wretched, we can’t even live out what Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel—not even in chapter 6—much less in all the other chapters.

This is the reason for joy, faith and hope in Lent. For the Father, our Father in heaven, sent His Only Son to rescue just such people, full of themselves and so sinful. He sent Jesus to bear with all men and to scare us away from the worldwide religion of the law.

The Father sent Jesus to take our place in praying, fasting, and giving to the poor. All His good life now counts in place of whatever that thing is you’ve been practicing for years now. Yikes! Thank God for the good Man who takes our place!

Jesus truly did suffer the suffering we’re just asking for every day. The Father has won salvation for sinners. He calls bad creatures His beloved children. The Father up above even has mercy for people like you and me. That is the wonder of Lent. So, if you would be saved from eternal doom, hear the Word of the Lord, repent, believe, and so be saved.

We have separated ourselves so far from God that no amount of improvement of our conduct is going to help us. The chasm is too great between us. The distance is too far. God is in heaven, and we are in the mud, doomed to be worm food. For mud you are, and to mud you shall return.

There is hope of being lifted out of the mud. In fact, even our mud has been redeemed, our bodies, everything about us. Redeemed by the Son of God in our flesh.

So live in your Baptism, every day, all day. Turn from sin, do better, keep seeking God’s forgiveness. Live from the Lord’s Supper, where He absolves you again. That is true repentance. That is certain salvation. Trust the word of absolution you hear from fellow Christians, from your pastors. God has given His Church the authority to forgive penitent sinners. Trust that Word of pardon over you.

To do all of this, you first need to cut your proud heart to pieces and despair of ever improving your life. The only way to be a Christian is to leave all of salvation outside of you, in the hands and heart of God, your Father in heaven. A broken and contrite heart, God will not despise.

This is our only hope. But it is certain hope. In the name of Jesus, Amen.