So you’ve decided to get (more) serious about studying the Bible. Maybe you’ve joined a Bible Study or picked up a book or two to help you learn more and get into God’s Word more. That’s very good! Faith comes — and grows stronger — by hearing and reading — the Word.
So, which Bible should you choose? Pastors are asked this question all the time. English readers are blessed with dozens of choices. You can read and compare most of them at the Bible Gateway for free. what do you do with them? Much depends on your purpose.
Some are good for reading. They smooth out the language, choosing words to explain what the translator thinks the Bible is saying. The problem is often that reflects the translator’s theology. That is acceptable when you are just reading large sections of the Bible, but can be a problem when you want to know what the Bible says in detail.
Other translations try to stay close to the original Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic text of the Scriptures. The translators try hard to keep close to the original words. Problems occur when they do this. One is it is impossible to convey all the meaning of one word in Greek into English. The translator has to choose one or another word.
Try this little experiment. If you cannot use the word “excellent,” what word would you choose in it’s place? If you say, “good,” doesn’t it mean the same thing? Almost, but not quite. This happens even more when translating from another language.
With some translations, you have to work at following sentences that sound awkward in English. That is why it is often best to choose two or three translations when you do a deep dive into God’s word. When you find that the different versions of a passage are about the same, you can be sure the original meaning is pretty straightforward. If they are substantially different — not so much. When this happens, ask your pastor. He had to learn Greek and Hebrew in seminary and see what’s going on in the original text and explain it to you.
So, when you pick translations as your study companion, look for a few. You can test them out in Bible Gateway or another app or online Bible site. You may want to check out the English Standard Version, which the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod uses for worship and study materials, the Evangelical Heritage Version, produced by conservative Lutheran translators, The New King James Version and The New American Standard Version. If you can find it, the original New International Version (from the 1980s) is OK. Do not use the one currently for sale in bookstores, however, which has in recent years allowed liberal translators to alter it. The same goes for the old, 1950s era Revised Standard Version. Your pastor may also have some suggestions.
In future posts, I’ll take up passages from Scriptures I use to test translations. I pray those will help you as you begin to acquire your Bibles for study.
When the forces of the Elector of Saxony whisked Martin Luther away to the Wartburg Castle for safe keeping, the public assumed Luther had been assassinated. Albrecht Dürer wrote in his diary: “O God, if Luther is dead, who now will teach us the holy Gospel so clearly? Dear God, what would he still have been able to write in ten or twenty years! O all you pious Christians, help me earnestly to mourn this divinely inspired man, and pray that God would send us another enlightened man.” (Martin Brecht, Martin Luther 2:473). As word got out that he was safe, Europe began to become unsettled even further.
Even though the Edict of Worms had made Luther and his friends outlaws, the allies of the papacy soon discovered it was not enforceable. Emperor Charles V and his Spanish forces were at war with France. He also faced several revolts which needed to be put down. Sweden and Denmark were also fighting over Swedish independence. Suleiman the Magnificent began to lead his Ottoman Turk forces against Christian Europe, capturing Belgrade. Unrest began to ripple throughout northern Europe as people who agreed with Luther began to protest conditions, sometimes violently.
In Wittenberg, Luther’s friends Philipp Melanchthon and Nikolaus Von Amsdorf were joined by Justus Jonas. Together they tried to steer the town and University through the tricky task of applying the teachings of the Reformation without crushing the faith of everyday people. Luther proposed to the Wittenberg Town Council that Melanchthon be licensed to preach in his place, even though he was a married layman. Everyone agreed but the All Saints’ Foundation, which scheduled the preachers, refused. Another professor at the University, Andreas Karlstadt, initially an ally of Luther, began to urge immediate reformation of practices in Wittenberg and soon came into conflict with Luther and his friends.
In the fall of 1521, public agitation against private masses, distributing the Lord’s Supper in one kind and other practices Luther had criticized began to grow. The Elector forbid such changes for the time being, but in some cases, he was ignored. Luther decided in the beginning of December he had to see for himself what was going on.
Without notifying the court, dressed as a knight accompanied by a servant, he traveled to Wittenberg, where he stayed with Philipp Melanchthon. He met with his friends, sent a letter to Spalatin and then returned to the Wartburg, determined to write a tract against the unrest.
Martin Luther was out of the public eye five hundred years ago. His prince had arranged to have him taken to the Castle Wartburg, his fortress overlooking Eisenach, the town where Luther went to school as a child. He had a suite designed to house noble hostages, where he was able to write letters and had been working on model sermons for Advent.
One of the major projects that Luther and his allies had on their agenda was to translate the Bible into German so that everyday people could read and understand it themselves. There were some rather wooden, inaccurate versions of the Bible available in German, none of which were very popular and were translated from the Vulgate Latin version To complicate matters, German was spoken in many hundreds of dialects, some of which could not be understood outside of a small area. Two dialects were understood in all the courts in Germany — one spoken by the court of the Holy Roman Emperor and the other by the court of Luther’s prince, the Elector of Saxony.
Luther had made some quiet visits outside the castle from time to time, disguised as Junker Jörg. During one trip to Wittenberg, he arranged with Georg Spalatin and his friend Philipp Melanchthon to gather materials to translate the New Testament. In mid-December of 1521, he began his work. In eleven weeks, he finished the first draft.
Luther translated the New Testament from Erasmus’ Greek New Testament of 1519. Erasmus also prepared a new Latin translation he published alongside the Greek. Luther used the court language of Saxony to for his German version. He would frequently ask everyday people how they would say things to bring the New Testament into everyday language. For the book of Revelation, he even had his friends at court show him the jewels mentioned and asked them to describe the jewels. The result was a conversational, easy to understand version of the Bible.
When the reformer returned to Wittenberg in March of 1522, he and Melanchthon improved the translation. The first edition appeared in September 1522. It sold out quickly and was reprinted in December of 1522. Luther then turned to translating the Old Testament with a group of his friends that he called his Sanhedrin. The first publication of the full Bible came in 1534. Luther and his friends would continue to revise the translation until the day of Luther’s death.
The Luther Bible was very popular. The printing press made a copy of the Bible affordable to every middle class household in Germany. Even Luther’s opponents praised the work. So many people now read the Bible that it unified the literary language of Germany as High German. William Tyndale was inspired by its success to translate the Bible into English. Tyndale’s work would be modified by the compilers of the King James version eighty years later. To this day, the principles Luther developed for the work of translation is used to bring the Bible to many languages around the world.
Encore Post: In ancient times, major events were marked with feasts. Births, marriages, victories large and small, all were marked with feasts. The most important of these would involve spreads of lots of food and drinks. Greeks and Romans turned these into a fine art and would throw these feasts much more frequently. They would hold symposia — literally to drink together — and were more like our parties than the feasts of middle eastern and Jewish culture.
One of the images Scripture uses for the joys of eternal life is the great feast of the end of time — the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. Isaiah speaks of this banquet as a feast provided by the Lord of Armies (Lord of Hosts) [Isaiah 25:6-9] On Mount Moriah, Mount Zion, where the Angel of the Lord promised Abraham and Isaac “the Lord will provide,” God will provide the finest meat and drink for his people. He will swallow up death forever. He will wipe every tear from their eyes and take away their shame forever. To this banquet are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the patriarchs and prophets. Believers from all corners of the earth are invited. (Matthew 8:11) The Lord’s Supper is the first course of this supper, helping us focus on the feast to come in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 26:29)
The Book of Revelation calls this Wedding Feast the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. Jesus is the Lamb of God, who took away the sins of the world. By His death he destroyed death and by his rising opened the kingdom to all believers. He is the bridegroom who takes as his bride the church. He washes her clean in the waters of Holy Baptism, making her holy and clean for her wedding. (Ephesians 5:25-27) He then married her and brings her to the wedding feast, where we are both guest and bride. The joy of this feast goes on and on, lasting forever. To this banquet, the Spirit and the Bride says, “come!.”
Sermon preached at Kramer Chapel of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 28 September 2012 (from a transcript)
Grace, Mercy and peace be to you from God our father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
Deep forests, vast prairies, breathtaking mountains, mighty rivers, America called to people yearning for a utopia – a good place — to show the world what society purged of evil could be like. The Puritans came across the sea just over 400 years ago and planted its city on a hill — The Plymouth Bay colony. Quaker William Penn acquired a colony, — Penn’s Woods — where anyone of any religious view could come to find a home — even Lutherans!
To America came more utopias — Shakers and Harmonists. Mormons and Amish, eventually Saxon Lutherans and Löhe’s colonies of witness in the Saginaw Valley — all trying to erect ideal societies to some extent.
In civil terms, they succeeded, but in spiritual terms they were disappointed. It seems even devout Christians are still sinners. Who would have imagined it?
God has hardwired law into all our hearts and our creation, and so from the very beginning of civilized society, people wondered: what would it be like to have a perfect society?
Plato, had his Republic, Augustine the City of God. Monastics had their monasteries and convents. As we go down through time, Thomas Moore, made fun of it. He coined the term Ευτοπία — meaning good place — but also Ουτοπία — meaning no place because there is no such place. After all, even though Luther didn’t say it, the old Adam is a good swimmer.
Yes, we can live a good life in service to neighbor. But that only goes so far. At best living according to nature, we can praise the good and condemn the evil together we can live in well-ordered societies and civil law can keep and succeed at it. Yet it cannot extinguish sin.
There is always some way that we will rebel against the rules that are made up for us for our own good.
God’s law does work as a curb and so, in good times, our societies can keep sin well under control, even though those good times really don’t last. Even though there is a measure of peace — Even in the best society, yet, sin is still there. To keep the law is extremely difficult, even if only externally.
We are tempted to think that’s all we have to do. You can run your checklist of the 10 Commandments, we think.
Look I go to church on Sunday. Check. I don’t have any gods other than the Holy Trinity. Check. I don’t ever swear. Check. That gets the first table all down. I love my parents. Check. I haven’t murdered anybody recently. Check. I have honored my wife. Check. I don’t covet — at least publicly. Check. And so you think that you have it all covered.
The new Moses, however, informs us that exterior righteousness really doesn’t work.
In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord goes through and points out that it’s not good enough not to murder. You can’t even swear at them when you cut them off in traffic or show them the universal sign of displeasure.
It is not enough not to commit adultery, but to even look at a swimsuit model if you’re male, or the Bachelor on The Bachelor if you’re female, and think thoughts — slightly inappropriate thoughts. Even that is adultery in God’s book.
You see, Jesus pointed out it is not those things that come from the outside that corrupt a person. It is that which is in inside of us,. that we constantly think evil thoughts all the time — that is what corrupts a person. And if you can’t deal with that problem within you, there is no chance that you are going to stop sinning.
Education will not cure it. Redistribution of wealth will not solve it. Blaming the other guy just doesn’t hack it. Piety will not quench it, striving to overcome it will not work, no matter how high the standards you set, no matter how hard you work, sooner or later that old Adam and that old Eve is going to get you. That is why the works of the really good guys in the time of Jesus, the Pharisees, really just weren’t enough. They may be able to get the exterior right, but inside they are still filled with lust, sin, envy and all that goes with it.
And so if you want to enter God’s Kingdom. Your righteousness has to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Good luck with that. You’re going to need it.
What we need is a completely different kind of righteousness, not one that comes from inside of us, that we can gin up, that we can achieve if we work as hard as we can.
What we need is a righteousness that comes from Jesus Christ himself.
Jesus is the blessed one, who lived the perfect life for us and fulfilled every letter of the law, every iota, accent, yod, dagesh and dash. He kept every aspect of that law for us, so that when he took our evil to the cross, he was able to break its power once and for all. Dying for our guilt and bearing our sin, he paid its punishment once and for all. When he rose again from the dead he brought to us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.
In baptism, we receive from him this righteousness, a righteousness which exceeds not only that of the Pharisees, but describes what fulfills God’s perfect purpose. Exactly that righteousness is now ours, so that when we come before God’s throne, what he sees is his son, and not us.
Yes, we still do sin, because the world, the devil and our flesh still haunt us. But even when we find it difficult to keep more than just the exterior law. we have someone who lives in us. Saint Paul reminds us it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us.
And so, when we have trouble keeping the law, we can turn to Christ who is within us, who has kept the law already for us and from his strength we can live good lives in this world. And as we live, we serve each other and serve our neighbors, Christian or not. We will become a light in this world where people will look to us and see Christ and wonder how is it that you can live that way. And when we tell them we can’t on our own, but with Christ alone can, they will be drawn to him.
He is, after all, the source of all light and so we will reflect his light, until the day Christ comes to bring an end to sin and death and the power of the devil. Then the true city of God will descend from heaven itself, The church, perfected in God’s glory to live in the good new place, the true utopia, forever and ever, Amen.
And now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, set watch over our hearts and minds in faith in Christ Jesus to life everlasting, Amen.
On September 3rd, 1846, the Bark Caroline arrived from Bremen, Germany at the port of New York after fifty-six days at sea. Aboard were eleven second career men and a candidate for the ministry. They were bound for Fort Wayne, Indiana. The were the first formal class of students to attend what is now Concordia Theological Seminary.
Like most German immigrants, the soon-to-be student body would be very glad to stand on the bustling docks. They would be far from alone. By 1846, thousands of Germans arrived in New York each day, bound for the lands in the Midwest, which were legendary for their fertility. They would soon have hard work ahead of them, literally carving farmland out of the endless old growth forests in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and territories to the west.
Wilhelm Löhe called these future pastors Sendlinge (“Sent ones”) and Nothelfer (“Emergency Helpers”) They were second career men who were given a crash course in an array of subjects, designed to produce pastors for the hundreds of thousands of Germans scattered on the frontier. Löhe and several of his friends spent about a year preparing the men to go to North America. Dr. Wilhelm Sihler and several instructors that would serve alongside of him would finish their training in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The Sendlinge likely booked passage to Fort Wayne via a steamboat to Albany, New York. There they would travel on a packet boat along the Erie and Wabash Canals. In good weather, the trip would have been quite pleasant, towed most of the way by mules, traveling through nearly virgin forest across New York State to Buffalo, along the southern shore of the great lakes, into the Wabash Canal through the Black Swamp to Fort Wayne. They would take their meals on board, but would stay overnight in inns and taverns that had risen along the route to care for passengers. The trip would take about a week.
The frontier town of about five thousand residents had begun to prosper. Fort Wayne was the portage between the Maumee River and the Little Wabash River — ten miles that separated the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River systems. The canal bridged that gap, so goods, settlers and travelers soon flowed through town on the way back and forth across the frontier. Many German settlers selected this area as their home and a growing number of Lutheran congregations were scattered across that wilderness. Dr. Sihler and his predecessor, missionary F. C. D. Wyneken had been caring for them from this crossroads.
The Jews hated the Romans because they believed that God wanted them to rule themselves. In addition, the Romans were pagans, who worshipped idols, and lived in ways often directly against God’s Law. The saw Zacchaeus and Matthew as traitors who kept the Romans in power. The Pharisees mentioned them in the same breath as sinners — people who lived as they liked and ignored God’s laws completely. The feeling was often mutual. So tax collectors would often live like Romans do, cheat the people and live at their expense. Zacchaeus was like that. He was a tax farmer — a collector who employed other tax collectors. He would add a hefty surcharge to all he collected and think nothing of putting his thumb on the scales.
Zacchaeus was curious. He likely had heard all about this Rabbi, a descendant of David, who taught in a very direct way, healed the sick and loved people the Pharisees shunned. Being a short man, he climbed a sycamore tree to get a good look. The Rabbi surprised him. Jesus called him out by name, told him to come down because he had to stay in his house.
The tax collector was moved because Jesus did the unthinkable. He spoke to the tax collector. Even more, he stayed in his home and received his fellowship. This was unthinkable for a Rabbi. It would be like a pastor staying in a prostitute’s home to us today. Yet Jesus loved Zacchaeus. This love moved the tax collector to change his life and become His disciple. The tax collector was amazed. He had left God, but God had not left him.
Jesus explained why he was doing this to the crowd. In Jesus, God himself had come to this lost Son of Abraham. This was because God had sent his Son to seek and save the lost.
One day when Jesus was at home in Capernaum, the friends of a paralyzed man brought him to to Jesus to be healed. The word about Jesus’ teaching and ability to heal was spreading throughout the area. His reputation had reached the scribes, biblical scholars of the time, and they were present to hear what the new rabbi had to say. The crowds were so big that the friends could not bring the paralytic to him through the front door. So they climbed up on the roof.
In the time of Jesus, towns like his built flat roofs made of branches, dried plant material and mud. The friends of the disabled man had a brilliant idea — they dug a hole in the roof over where Jesus was sitting and lowered him down to the teacher. Jesus recognized their love for the man and their faith in God. So, he forgave the man his sins.
While that sounds like an odd thing to do for us, it didn’t to Jesus’ audience. The Pharisees and other people believed that God punished especially bad sins with sickness and disaster. They thought that the blind, the paralyzed, lepers and others like them must have done something very wrong. Sins are ultimately all committed against God. So, if a person’s sins are forgiven, there is no longer a reason for the illness.
The people also believed that only God could forgive these sins and make the person well. By forgiving the man his sin, Jesus showed that He had the authority to forgive sins and to heal. Both are impossible for man, but not so for God. To say, “your sins are forgiven” or to say “get up a walk” are just as easy to say since both should be impossible — unless you’re God. And Jesus is God in the flesh. The people missed the point. They thought it meant that people also could forgive sins.
Because Jesus took all our sins to the cross and die to pay the price for them, he has the authority forgive them all. Which he does. He also tells pastors to forgive the sins of those who repent of them.
So, Jesus wants his people to do both today. He wants us to forgive sins and to have compassion on the sick and disabled. He wants us to pray for them and to do whatever we can to care for them. In the end, it is Jesus himself who does the forgiving — right here, right now and forever.
Encore Post: Three thousand years ago, ten tribes of Israel broke away from King Solomon’s son and formed a new kingdom north of Jerusalem. The kings of the northern tribes built a capital, called Samaria about forty miles north of Jerusalem. When the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom, they deported many of the Israelites and resettled people from far away places. The Samaritan people were born when Israelites married their captors. The Jewish people considered them as traitors and hated them. The Samaritans hated them in return, especially when Jewish armies destroyed their temple and their city. At the time of Jesus, Jews wanted nothing to do with them. They would avoid even traveling through Samaria, even to go to Jerusalem. The worst thing one Jew could call another was a Samaritan.
One day, an expert in God’s law asked Jesus a traditional question posed to Rabbis: which is the greatest of all commandments? Jesus turned the question around to him. The expert replied with the commandments to love God and to love neighbor as yourself. Jesus agreed and told him to do these and he would inherit eternal life. So, the expert asked Jesus who is our neighbor. Jesus’ answer was the story we call the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25-37)
In this story, the two kinds of people you would expect would help you were priests and Levites. They led worship in the temple, where God showed His love for His people by forgiving their sins. They did not want to become unclean by touching a dead person. So they did not help the injured man. But the Samaritan felt very sorry for him, cared for him and paid a lot of money to see that he was cared for until the day he recovered.
Jesus asked the expert which of these three was a neighbor to the injured man. He answered, “The one who showed mercy.” Jesus told him to do the same. As sinners, we will fail to do this perfectly. Yet as Christians, the church responds to the love of God in Christ, has reached out in mercy to those who suffer with countless needs over two thousand years. We remember that Jesus responded to our greatest need by suffering and dying that we might be saved and inherit eternal life. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we reach out to care for those who need us the most to show them the mercy God showed us.
Our world is an evil place. Full of selfishness, violence, envy and hatred, people kill and torture each other, steal from each other destroy neighborhoods and businesses and ruin the lives of their neighbors. Christians are attacked for their faith and for trying to live life according to God’s word. Don’t you wish that all good, Lutheran Christians could move to a new place, live according to the will of God and love for each other?
We’re not the first Christians to think this way. Some Christians moved to desert areas where they lived more or less by themselves or in communities dedicated to live a pure Christian life. Called Monks (from the latin word for being alone) and Nuns, it worked to a certain degree. But as a project to live sinless lives, it failed every time. It turns out that even the most pious Christian has a sinful nature living in them. No place and be the good place, because there is no one in this world who lives a sinless life.
American history is filled with communities which thought the could achieve an ideal society by inviting only Christians committed to the vision of its founder to settle in it. Sir Thomas More wrote a satire in 1516 he called Utopia (a pun on two Greek words that mean good place and no place) making fun of life in his time. He set it on an imaginary island in America. The Puritans tried such a community in Massachusetts, followed by the Quakers, the Moravians, the Amana Colonies, non-Christian movements such as the Shakers, the Mormons, the Harmonists and others — and even Lutherans in Perry County, Missouri and the Saginaw Valley in Michigan.
The problem was that no place in this life is the good place. The Old Adam and Old Eve live in the hearts of every Christian. Sin will emerge sooner or later. We can’t expect perfection here. Such communities often produce much good but when people put their trust in them and not God, they are bound to be disappointed.
The solution to the evil world is in Christ. He took the sins of the world on himself, bore them to the cross where he died to pay the price for the damage they caused, breaking the power of sin and death forever. On the last day, he will bring an end to evil once and for all, raise us all from the dead, transform our bodies for everlasting life. We will live together with him without sin, death, disease and evil. That is the good place.
So, if pulling out of the world is not a good solution for Christians, how do we cope? As most Christians have done for two thousand years, we continue to live in the world, but live according to the Word of God. We gather with other Christians, receive the gifts God desires to give us: the forgiveness of our sins, the hearing of his word of life, which has the power to change our hearts and the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus, which is food for the journey. We live for the next life, to witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus and to strengthen each other for the journey. Then, before we know it, we will be in that Good Place which lasts not for a lifetime, but forever.
