The True Work of God

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan on the occasion of the Community Thanksgiving Worship service at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church on November 27, 2025.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What must we do to perform the works of God?

This is a question that is asked by all kinds of people throughout the ages. One might argue that every religion that exists is asking that central question: what must we do to do the works of God or the divine or whatever? Because the question that naturally comes from the human heart in this fallen world immediately centers the action on ourselves.

What must we do to perform the works of God? We're asked to do something, and we had better do it. We had better thank him, praise him, do good and not evil, etc.

Jesus Challenges the Question

Jesus will not allow that question to go unchallenged. He takes the question and answers a different one. When we ask him our questions, he answers the question we should have asked instead. And oftentimes, will even ask us a question in return.

What must we do to perform the works of God? He answers:

This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

Notice the change in language. Now it is not about you. It doesn't start with "you must do this work of God." It simply starts with "This is the work of God." And notice he no longer says performing the works of God. Plural works, more than one. Simply, this is the work of God.

Instead of looking to what it is that you think that you must do in order to ascend the ladder to heaven, to climb up towards him who calls you to be good, what works you must do, instead, Christ focuses the attention on what work God is doing. This is the one work he does which makes everything make more sense.

This is God's work, that you believe in whom he has sent. This is the work that he does in you, causing you to believe in Christ and trust in his promises.

The Pharisees' Confusion and Signs

But of course, the Pharisees do not understand. They begin to ask for signs.

In the Gospel of John, "signs" is a common theme. He gives seven signs, and he gives seven "I am" statements. And these I am statements are significant because they are not necessary in Greek. It's sort of like Spanish. You don't have to say I for I am going. You can just say the word for going, but with the I am as part of the word. So when it is recorded that he does say that, our ears ought to prick up and we ought to pay attention.

And that's what happens here as he begins talking about ancestors eating manna in the wilderness. And he says:

Very truly, it was not Moses, the man who gave them the bread of God in the wilderness, but the Israelites were fed from the hand of God.

Once again, not about the action of a man who was holy and ascending to heaven in order to bring down for the Israelites that which they needed, but the work of God in descending vertically from top to bottom, from heaven to earth, the bread of heaven, the manna in the wilderness, which sustained the Israelites as they wandered for 40 years.

The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

But when they persist in their confusion, "sir, give us this bread always," Jesus makes it plain. He says, "I am the bread of life."

The name he gives them, I am, is the name that God speaks to Moses when he asks, "Who should I tell the Israelites is sending me?" And God says, "Tell them I am who I am."

And Jesus himself now here uses, "I am the bread of life," so that we see that he is coming from God, that he is the one sent from heaven to earth to do for us which we cannot. The work of holiness and righteousness which makes our souls pure and righteous in God's sight.

There then, he says,

Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Reflections on Lincoln's Proclamation

As I reflect on the proclamation of the day from President Lincoln, I'm struck by some things that are pretty interesting. If you were listening right at the beginning of our service, he says, "it is the duty of nations as well as citizens to owe their dependence on the overruling power of God." And he says that, "it's announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord."

We have been recipients of blessing. And he holds forth for half a paragraph explaining that God has blessed us in this nation in particular, the United States of America, blessed us with great increases in population, great increases in wealth and prosperity and success.

It's almost easy to forget that he wrote that proclamation in 1863 in the midst of the most destructive war this country has ever fought. One which eventually would immolate the lives of 600,000 Americans.

And yet, rather than using his proclamation of thanksgiving as a rallying cry for war, he asks that the people pray for peace. And not just peace as comes at the hand of a victor, but peace tempered with humility.

He knew firsthand and very up close the suffering that was happening in his country. And he says we have forgotten God.

It's easy for us to think of the good old days. And we all get to decide what the good old days were for us, but usually they're when we were in our teens and twenties. And back then things were better and things are hard now. I won't ask you for a show of hands, but you all know what I'm talking about.

It's easy for us to imagine that things used to be good and now that they're bad and that things back then were much, much better, weren't they?

But here, Lincoln gives us this really interesting dichotomy. On one hand, he's saying that we have been blessed enormously by God. And he can thank God for his provision and blessing even in the midst of a destructive war. And on the other hand, he says we have forgotten God.

What a bold statement and a difficult one to hear! Because if back in those good old days when everybody had their heads up and their heads screwed on straight and was doing the right thing, he could easily say we have forgotten God!

We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us. We have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Preacher Lincoln points out in us the same kind of sin that Jesus is pointing out. In his confrontation with the Pharisees, that we imagine that the things that we have, we got by our own sweat and toil, that we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, that everything that we have has become from our own virtuous living and the good things that we have done instead of recognizing that these things come to us only by the grace of God.

Lessons from History and Scripture

The antidote for the Jews of the first century to whom Jesus is speaking, is to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, the man standing before them, is in fact God and King. And to humble themselves before this man who can confidently and honestly say, "I am the bread of life."

The solution for those of Abraham Lincoln's time is to set aside time to solemnly and reverently and greatly acknowledge the American people, to give thanks and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

And in the same way, the solution for our day is to remember whose work has been done in us, where the gifts that we experience as things that we can count as blessings come from, from whom we receive what Luther expounded upon and what Jesus taught as daily bread.

Pastor Martin Rinkart

I kind of had to revise my comments this morning because I was struck by something in my morning devotions. I was reading something that I didn't expect. Every day there's a little passage that is not from the Bible. And today, this morning, the passage was really interesting because it's something I didn't know already.

It was a passage about the man who wrote the hymn that we're going to sing after this message. His name was Martin Rinkart. He was a Lutheran pastor and he wrote it during the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. And unless you were awake in high school history class, I'm guessing you don't know much about that war. It was a war between basically Catholics and Protestants for 30 years, believe it or not.

And he originally wrote the prayer that the hymn is based on for his children as a table grace. That's why it has hymn verses of praise and gratitude. It's easy to imagine that this is just a man who has experienced good things and wants to give thanks and praise to God.

What I didn't know about Pastor Rinkart was that in 1636, in the midst, not just of the Thirty Years' War, but also of a terrible plague that came through his city of Eilenburg, where he was the only surviving pastor. And therefore, it was his responsibility to conduct as many as 50 funerals a day!

He wrote the first two verses as a prayer for his children and the last as a benediction. And as the plague raged on, people poured into the city seeking help and comfort and succor. Famine was rife and Rinkart conducted countless funerals, including that of his wife.

When the besieging Swedish army approached the city, he himself courageously negotiated with them to accept a ransom from the city to lift the siege and to save the population from starvation and death.

When that war ended, just a couple of years later, in 1648, they sang at the Peace of Westphalia this song that was written by Pastor Rinkart.

This man who had seen such famine and disease and death, who had presided over, I kid you not, something like 4,500 funerals. He had seen more death, sometimes in one day, than many of us will ever experience face-to-face in a lifetime.

And yet, he could still bid his children to give thanks and praise to God. Because he knew that life is more than just the material things we have in front of us. And that ultimately, the best blessing that we have from God is the gift of eternal life and salvation, and in Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

And so, as we celebrate this day of Thanksgiving, let us celebrate it as a day of hope, of excitement and blessing. Let's eat a whole bunch of turkey. Let's have some really good desserts. Let's tell the people around us how much they mean to us.

Let's give thanks that in this day, in this place, we have not had to experience the kind of suffering and death that Pastor Rinkart or President Lincoln have had to experience.

And may we remember that the true source of all the blessings that we have is not our own work, nor our own virtue, but that which comes from the hand of God and comes down to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So that imitating Christ, we might love and serve one another as he has served us through his cross and resurrection.

May you trust the giver of these gifts. And may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord, to life everlasting. Amen.