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500 years since Luther, have we forgotten…
Devotional/Discussion Thought of the Day:
12 There has been enough time for you to be teachers—yet you still need someone to teach you the first lessons of God’s message. Instead of eating solid food, you still have to drink milk. 13 Anyone who has to drink milk is still a child, without any experience in the matter of right and wrong. 14 Solid food, on the other hand, is for adults, who through practice are able to distinguish between good and evil.
Hebrews 5:12-14 (TEV)
11 It was he who “gave gifts to people”; he appointed some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists, others to be pastors and teachers. 12 He did this to prepare all God’s people for the work of Christian service, in order to build up the body of Christ. 13 And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ’s full stature. 14 Then we shall no longer be children, carried by the waves and blown about by every shifting wind of the teaching of deceitful people, who lead others into error by the tricks they invent. 15 Instead, by speaking the truth in a spirit of love, we must grow up in every way to Christ, who is the head. 16 Under his control all the different parts of the body fit together, and the whole body is held together by every joint with which it is provided. So when each separate part works as it should, the whole body grows and builds itself up through love.
Ephesians 4:11-16 (TEV)
3 Although the people are supposed to be Christian, are baptized, and receive the holy sacrament, they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten commandments, 3 they live as if they were pigs and irrational beasts, and now that the Gospel has been restored they have mastered the fine art of abusing liberty.
4 How will you bishops answer for it before Christ that you have so shamefully neglected the people and paid no attention at all to the duties of your office? May you escape punishment for this!
5 You withhold the cup in the Lord’s Supper and insist on the observance of human laws, yet you do not take the slightest interest in teaching the people the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, or a single part of the Word of God. Woe to you forever!
Next year is the 500th anniversary of the start fo the reformation, or at least one of the events that gave it some traction, the posting of an invitation to a discussion about practical theology.
What the host had thought to be a discourse that would make grace real, that would help people grow in faith; that would help them live in the peace which God had promised them. What he hoped would unify the church, shattered it.
Luther’s words in blue, from the introduction f the small catechism, a book for dad’s to teach their family about God, show the damage to the church then. Damage we see in the church at large now.
For our people are more focused on things of human invention than in the peace that comes from understanding the way of God, a way detailed in the Ten “Commandments” (the way we are described when we live in fellowship with the God who saved us) , the Creed, (the way God revealed Himself to us, that we may trust and depend upon Him) and the Lord’s prayer (the way we communicate and what we desire to know God is doing, that He promised).
Some of our people may know these from repetition, but how many know them. How many rejoice in this, and it drives them to know more? How many know these things so well that they are internalized, and affect their very lives?
We see the damage in the ways that people are blown about by every change of doctrine; we see it in the fact that they cannot teach why they trust in God to a neighbor over coffee. This problem isn’t new – the apostles dealt with it, (obviously) and so did Luther. They saw the imbalance between what was verbalized and what was confessed. What people said out of habit (or listened to) and what they knew.
In this day where the church, whether contemporary or traditional, missional or confession (terms used to distinguish the extremes in my movement) or however else the church can be divided is battered and broken, we need to return to the joy of our first love, to plunge into exploring the dimensions of God’s love, of how He reveals it, of how we live in it. For that changes everything, including how we look at one another. Including how we find ourselves reconciling rather than being divisive forces.
So let us pause, and think about how great this salvation is, how great it is that Jesus delivers us into the presence of the Father, who fills us with the spirit, and makes us His own. And let us rejoice in how he does that, even as it confronts us in our sin, brings us to faith, and to know He is with us.
AMEN!
Tappert, T. G. (Ed.). (1959). The Book of Concord the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (p. 338). Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press.
Remember – We Speak for Christ
We Speak for Christ
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
† In His Name †
As we speak for God, may we speak through the knowledge of the grace, the mercy and love which reconciled us to God, as we bring others the message of reconciliation!
We Speak for Christ, but what are we saying?
The sermon title you see before you, “we speak for Christ” is one which is an incredible burden, but it is something we need to keep in our mind, not just during the sermon, and the worship service, but every moment of the day.
You see if we claim to others that we speak for God as we talk about His will, as we talk about grace, as we invite them to church, then we need to realize that often, they will judge God by what they hear from our voices at other times as well.
I was talking to a lady this week, she was talking about why she and her husband were considering leaving the big church they were going to, and thinking about looking for a smaller church. In the process, she told me about the church that they went to before the mega-church. I asked her about why they decided to check out the big church in the first place, and she told me of the event that soured her husband on their original church some ten to fifteen years ago.
She related how they had gone there one morning, in her husband’s older truck. As they parked the truck in the parking lot in front of the church, a man came out, and asked them to move the truck and park it somewhere else. The man was concerned with what kind of image would be given, if beat up cars were in plain view in the parking lot.
The man moved the truck, to a different church and its parking lot where he and his wife have been going to that church ever since. She did promise that upon their return from vacation, they might return to the church here. You see, this church was where their children were baptized and confirmed.
It is a challenge for us to do what we are told in Colossians 4:6, 6 Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. Colossians 4:6 (NKJV)
It is even harder sometimes, for our words to be Christ’s as we respond to those who’ve sinned against us. It is hard for us to forgive those whose words may not have been as gracious to us, for in that same way we are tempted not to be gracious.
How we see them, determines how we speak to them
I’ve joked once or twice about not putting Christian bumper stickers on my car, because I don’t want my driving patterns to reflect badly on God. There is some truth in that, and the same thing when not thinking about representing God, we step on our tongues and insert our foot in our mouths. There is one thought – maybe we just never claim to talk for God? Then people wouldn’t blame God for our failings – right?
But then, we are ignoring the multitude of scriptures that talk about the people of God, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, being God’s voice to call people out of darkness and sin, to share in His peace. We need a better solution than just being quiet about our faith, our of fear of misrepresenting God.
It is found in the first verse of our epistle reading, St. Paul writes,
“16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!
Most of our problem, controlling our tongue is because we look at people as un-redeemed, or not worth our time, or for that matter, God’s time. Maybe we are snobs, and think others are below us, or that they are just different, or maybe, even as we look around this room, we think – “thank God I’m not like that sinner…”
How we interact with people is based often in how we “see” them, how we perceive their value to us, to society. It isn’t just the generations represented in this room – it’s been a problem even back to the time of Christ…
For some, including Paul who wrote this letter, saw Jesus as illegitimate, as an outcast, as an wandering religious kook – who, because of a lack of education, couldn’t possibly understand the deepest part of the Jewish faith… to the extent Paul really persecuted the people whose trust was in Christ. Paul would realize Jesus was more than homeless religious fanatic… that he was the Son of God, and what it mean – that Jesus would die on the cross.
The difference comes into play when we stop looking at them based on human standards of value, but understand how Christ sees every man, woman and child that has ever existed, and when we consider their value to Him.
How does Christ see them?
In verse 17, we are told that anyone who belongs to Christ isn’t just waiting to become something else – they have become something new already. It’s passages like this – and the discussion between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus that we get the concept of being born again, the washing of rebirth that we commonly call baptism.
Which Is how we are to see each other – as people whose value is not measured according to value on earth, but rather value to God. Who thought enough of us, who valued us enough, that He reconciled the world to himself – He brought us back – He reconciled us, He cleanse us, the ways scripture describes this incredible work we given “church words” like justified and sanctified, ransomed and redeemed, and the one in this passage – reconciled.
As in reconciling a checkbook, or a set of accounts, where not only is everything accurate, but it is the way it should be – every negative entry accounted for and every error corrected. Where there is nothing left to devalue what is, by God’s account – priceless and precious. Where after everything is accounted for – and everything is checked – it all balances….
And this miracle – the way that every sin has been paid for – Paul describes in verse 21:
21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
That is Christianity simply put – God loved the people He created, to the extent He has taken care of our sin. He values us, our company, our presence, He values us enough to let Jesus bear all of our debt on the cross. All of it.
That is how, then we are to relate to each other, with the same value as God has for us…. We are to each other as people God cared enough that Jesus would die for them.
The offer on the table…which we take to them
That then leads us back to the original concept – that people base their perception of God on how we treat them, of the things we say, and don’t say…
That we are His ambassadors, given the task of reconciling all people to God. That we have the responsibility to plead with those who don’t know Jesus, who don’t know the love of the father, to come back, just like the prodigal does, when he remembers how his father treated all of his people.
To see it through – we need to look at others, as those God would die for, for indeed He did. We need, for our own deeper understanding of God’s love for us, to realize it extends to all – that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all would be reconciled – that’s why Christ came to reconcile us all – so that all children of God could always come home.
That Is the glorious message we have been tasked with, the message we, as Christ’s ambassadors are tasked to deliver… and no other message then this… that all would come back to God…
That they would all know His love…
His mercy…
His peace.
The peace of God that is beyond all understanding, the peace in which we are kept, for we dwell, reconciled in and by Christ Jesus. AMEN!
