September 2019 – Page 2 – What Does This Mean?

Creator of Heaven and Earth

“In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” are the first words in the Bible. “I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth …” we confess in our creeds. At the heart and center of all we believe is the fact that God made the universe — including us. This teaching is the foundation of everything else that we believe. The whole structure of Christian faith depends upon it, from the authority of God’s word to the doctrine of salvation by grace. Because God is the Creator and he loves us, we can live at peace. Nothing can harm us eternally because He protects us. If he is not the Creator, than we are on our own in the face of evil.

Like much of the Christian Faith, the conviction that God is the Creator of all things is a axiom — an idea that is assumed to be true. Strictly speaking, we do not try to prove that the God of Holy Scripture is the Creator. We take God’s word for it. We might argue from the evidence of the orderliness of the universe that a Creator exists, but we cannot use the evidence in the material world to identify his as the God we trust.

Some non-Christians will argue that this faith is a weakness. It is not based upon observation of the physical world and logical explanations of the data found there. (In other words, we do not use science to prove it) Yet everyone who tries to explain how the world came to be also use axioms. For example, those who trust scientific theories assume: that the world is an orderly place, that experiments repeated in precisely the same way over and over again will respond with more or less the same results. It assumes that nothing that cannot be seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard is real.

Everyone, then, relies on beliefs that they conclude explain the world. While we may disagree with each other, discussion requires a certain amount of respect for those with very different faiths,

Friedrich Wyneken’s Indiana Ministry

Settling down to serve St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Fort Wayne and Zion Lutheran Church of Decatur (Nicknamed “Friedheim”) in Northeast Indiana did not stop Friedrich Wyneken, full of zeal, from preaching, teaching and organizing congregations whenever he had the time. He visit other settlements on weekdays and preached in them. The circuit rider felt he could not organize these stations into congregations because mostly they lacked either the sufficient knowledge of the faith or piety (at the time, Friedrich was a pietist — but that’s another story!) and because he simply could not properly care for them.

It broke his heart to have to ignore the many pleas to come and prepare children for confirmation and to meet many desperate needs. In September of 1839, one hundred and eighty years ago, the very frustrated circuit rider reported to Friedrich Schmidt of Pittsburgh that at least five preaching stations lay within forty miles of Fort Wayne. These he visited more or less regularly. In addition, he planned to make at least two larger trips a year to do what he could throughout the region. He could see whole villages sinking back into paganism. He could only promise to return from time to time and tell them of his many letters to Germany, begging for help. On his longer trips, sometimes four to six weeks from home, Wyneken had to depart settlement after settlement, sick with the knowledge that not even a survey missionary would minister in these places for the next few years.

In January of 1840, the circuit rider reported to the American Home Missionary Society that he served two stations beyond his parishes on a regular basis, one nineteen miles and the other thirty miles distant. Sometime during 1840, Wyneken set out for Chicago to help Lutherans who had asked for his help. Weather prevented him from traveling further than Elkhart, where he ministered for a time before returning to Fort Wayne. In 1841, Wyneken reported to his friend Friedrich Schmidt that he so wanted to bring the joy of the Easter season to settlements to his west that he traveled so often that he couldn’t even correspond until he returned to his little Fort Wayne “Elijah’s Room.”

In addition to the congregations and places documented above, the oral traditions in the Northeast corner of Indiana credit Wyneken with ministering at preaching stations that would one day become congregations throughout Allen and Adams Counties, Avilla, Bremen, Corunna, Elkhart, Huntington, Kendallville, Mishawaka and South Whitley in Indiana and Wilshire (“Schumm”) and Wapakoneta, Ohio.

Doctor Luther Publishes his Galatians Lectures

As a professor of theology at Wittenberg University, Luther lectured on the Letter of St. Paul to the Galatians from October of 1516 to March of 1517. With the help of his young friend Philip Melanchthon, working from student notes of the lectures, Luther began to convert the lectures into a proper commentary in March of 1519. Five Hundred years ago this month, Luther’s first commentary on Galatians was published.

The work was very popular. Unlike other commentaries of the time, Luther did not make much use of the four-fold method of understanding Scripture. He tried to determine the meaning intended by St. Paul in each passage. Rather than be content with working from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate generally used by the church, he returned to the original Greek. Like a sermon, he applied the text to the church of the day, not being especially kind to his theological opponents. Yet immediately Luther expressed his dissatisfaction with the work. Over the next decade, Luther would revise the commentary several times. When he lectured on Galatians in 1531, he started from scratch. The result was one of his best works, the Galatians Commentary of 1535.

Luther’s greatest insight in both commentaries have to do with reading the words of the letter with Christ as focus of its message. All of Scripture is about Christ, his work to redeem us by his sufferings and death on the cross. By our own works we cannot save ourselves because we are sinners and deserve damnation. But by God’s grace for the sake of Christ, we are forgiven our sins and granted salvation. With this commentary, Luther came closer to fully understanding the Gospel. Within a few short months, he would write three works in which he fully explains Lutheran theology for the first time.

Sermon on Genesis 2:18-24

Marriage of
Jenna Lynn Witte and Wesley Robert Smith
31 August 2019
Cornerstone Lutheran Church
Carmel, Indiana

Text:^“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” … Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” … Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Intro: Wes, Jenna, friends and family, grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and from the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ, our Lord. This is great day. That one missing piece of the puzzle of your life is found and the picture is now complete. You both have done quite well. You have built successful careers, set up homes, served God and others and achieved what many people strive for. And yet something was missing. And so it was for Adam. God had made him and gave him a perfect life. But it was “not good” God said. So God gave him lots of animals. And that did not do it. Even a dog didn’t do it. That is why He made Eve and why He brings you together today.

Now that you are together, you are never really alone.
1. As you take hold of each other today, you become one.
2. This marriage of yours is the closest you get to understanding the Trinity – two people, yet one, as He is three persons, yet one.
3. Now, even when you are apart from each other, you will be together.

Yet the World, the Devil and your sinful self will try to pull you apart.
1. Sin separated us from God, from our world and each other.
2. Our Old Adam and Old Eve curves us in on ourselves, pulling us apart from God and from others.
3. When we serve ourselves, rather than God, we end up all alone.

To free us from our sin, the Father sent His Son to save us.

“From Heaven Jesus came and sought you …”
1. With his own blood he bought you …”
2. When you were baptized, he washed you clean of sin “by water and the word.”
3. He now brings you, and us, together with God.
4. So even when you are alone, you are never really alone.

Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, set watch over your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus, to life everlasting. Amen.