Robert Smith – Page 43 – What Does This Mean?

God and the Good Works Christians do

Encore post: Crafters carefully select the materials for their works. They weigh their qualities, imagine what can be done with them, use their experience and training to prepare them for use. With great care and the confidence that comes from their skills honed by years of practice, they prepare, shape and fashion a quality product. The best are held up as works of art, masterpieces of their craft.

Even more so, God prepared us for salvation. By his grace and through the faith he gave us, he made it so. Our sins are forgiven, their power over us destroyed and we will rise from the grave on the last day — all for Christ’s sake. But there is more to God’s plan for us than these things. He has made us in Christ a new creation — people who want to do good works and do so as naturally as a good tree bears good fruit.

And God does even more for us. He prepares the good works for us do. He gave us his law, so we know what his will is for us. He places us in the right time and place, then urges us to do them. Because we love him, we follow through serving him and loving our neighbor. (Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 2:12-13) So it is that we are instruments in God’s hands, doing good, showing his mercy to others and bringing the Gospel to them.

Luke’s Musical

Encore Post: St. Luke wrote his Gospel and the Book of Acts in polished, carefully constructed Greek. The Introductions to both books are in well-balanced, formal language, like the best of ancient classical history. But when he begins the story of Jesus, he writes in the Greek of the Septuagint — the translation of the Old Testament read in the synagogues where Jesus and his disciples grew up. It would be like reading a novel that starts in New York, writing with a Brooklyn accent, and, when the scene changes to Dallas, it speaks with a Texas twang and vocabulary.

As Luke weaves the story, he recalls several canticles — New Testament psalms really — sung by various persons in it. The result is much like a modern musical. The Church picked up on this. We sing them in worship and have done so for more than 1600 years.

Called by the first few words of these songs in Latin, they are:

Mary’s song, the Magnificat. We sing it during Vespers.

Zechariah’s song, the Benedictus, sung in morning services.

The Christmas Angel’s song, the Gloria, sung in the Divine Service — When the Lord’s Supper is served.

And Simeon’s Song, the Nunc Dimmitis, also sung during Divine Service.

These songs of joy, celebrating the births of the Messiah and the prophet who announced him are now our songs, too, not just at Christmas, but the whole year.

How Did We Get the Bible?

Encore Post: When we think about the Bible today, we think about it as one book. And so it is. God is the author of all of Holy Scriptures. He spoke though his prophets, evangelists, apostles and — most importantly — his Son. (Hebrews 1:1-2) It has a single theme: how God saved the world by sending his Son to die for us.

Yet in most languages the word for Bible is plural — Biblia — books! In fact, when we call the Word of God the Holy Scriptures you can see that even in English. Scriptures is plural too! The Bible is a library of sixty-six books written over a period of about 1500 years. At first they were written literally in stone and clay tablets. Later they were recorded on papyrus (paper made from reeds that grow along the Nile River) and on animal skins, rolled into scrolls. Copies were made by hand, one by one, a scholar carefully copying it letter by letter. Later the whole thing would be memorized and passed from one teacher to his students.

At the time of Jesus’ ministry, a new form of the book took form. Rather than roll a book up on spindles, small segments were sewed together along one edge creating a codex — the form with which we are most familiar. It was easier to carry, to page through and to read. To make many copies, one person would read it from a desk called a lecturn — a reading stand — and multiple scribes would carefully write it down word for word.

At first the words of Jesus were memorized by his disciples and hearers. It was a part of the way rabbis taught. They would perhaps also take notes on Roman wax tablets from which they would later copy. After a period of time the Evangelists (literally translated gospelists) would bring these together with their own testimony and that of others to produce books from which the faith could be taught. The rest of the New Testament are letters written mostly by St. Paul, St. Peter and St. John, to pass instructions and encouragement to growing churches far away. The ones the church recognized as the very words of God were copied and collected into codices (plural of codex) and carried wherever the Gospel would be preached.

Eventually the Word of God would be translated into many languages and copied in numbers greater than any other book in history. When the printing press came into being, the first book printed was — you guessed it — the Bible. Now everyone could afford to buy one. In our age, the Bible continues to be the most translated and printed book. Yet it also now is in electronic form. It is easier than ever to read, learn and hear God’s own message to you.

The Word of God Changes Everything

Encore Post: A good book, a great movie, a stirring song or a work of great art — all of these have the power to take you away to another place, another time, worlds away from day-to-day life. You can escape into them and find an energy there to face life for a little while longer. Yet even the best of them, even the most inspiring, do not change your world at all. Everything is still where you left it and you have to go on.

The Bible is different. It is not just any other book. It is like no other book. The Bible is God’s Word, breathed out by his Holy Spirit in the same way that God created the world. (1 Timothy 3:15-17) By God’s Word, the Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts. (Romans 10:14-17, John 20:30-31) This faith takes hold of the promises of Holy Scripture, trusts the Gospel it hears when the Bible is read and lives by it. (Romans 1:16-17)

This is the reason why Christians have read the Bible in every worship service since Christ founded it and why the Hebrew and Jewish believers before them have read and meditated upon it for 3500 years. Great literature and works of wisdom authored by human skill can be very helpful to us when we want to understand the world and God who made it. These writings can just as easily confuse us, faith to provide insight and often completely mislead us. They often miss the mark when they assume that by our wits, we can understand God. But we cannot.

Because Holy Scripture is God’s own message, it can be trusted to be true, where every other message can fail us. It teaches us when we do not know what to do. It is eternal and never-changing and so is a solid base on which to build our lives. It helps us see through the complications and confusion of life in a sin-filled world. The Word of God changes things, reviving our souls, giving us joy in times of depression and comfort in times of grief. (Psalm 19)

The very center of the message that the Scripture proclaims is the Cross. God saw us lost in our sins and loved us. Not willing to see us die forever, He came to seek us, find us, lay down his life to save us. In Jesus, he took all our sin and guilt upon us. As the Lamb of God bore it all away. On the cross, he paid the full debt due because of it. Rising from the grave, he broke the power of sin, death and the devil forever. That is why we gladly hear the Word of God, give thanks to him for it, and use its power to obey it and serve him gladly.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Pastor Emeritus
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Turned Inside Out by the Cross

When Martin Luther described our nature as sinful human beings, he concluded that we are in curvatus se — we are curved in on ourselves– like a turtle that hides in its shell. We seek to satisfy our own needs, our own comfort, our own desires before all things. We want things to make sense to us and so, in a way, make everything over in our own image — including God. (Ephesians 2:3, 2 Timothy 3:2-5, 4:3-4) Our attitude is like that of Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost: ” Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” (1:263)

Our culture plays to this built-in selfishness, parading all kinds of delights in commercials, music and literature. It plays to greed, jealousy, lust, pride and envy. We are easily hooked by such things which often become obsessions. The problem with such pursuits is it makes things and ultimately ourselves into gods. The irony is these things eventually make us into their slaves rather than liberating us. They set us in conflict with others and make more and more alone. They lead away from God, the source of life, to destuction.

God is very different. From the beginning, his focus was on us. He loved us before he made the world. He decided to make us his childen and rigged the history of the world to adopt us as his heirs. In Christ, he set aside his power and glory to become a man, live a perfect life for us, bear our selfishness and sin to the cross, suffered, died and rose again from the dead to break into our lives. In baptism, he kills this selfish nature and plants a new life in us — one that focuses outward on him and our neighbor.

In the strength he provides us through baptism and the Lord’s Supper and the power of the word that changes hearts, we take up his call to take up our cross daily and follow him. In doing so, we deny our sinful nature and are turned inside out. Instead of serving ourselves or seeking to be served, we serve God and others. As we do this, God meets our needs and those of others.

Sunday School #33: Noah and the Flood

After Cain killed Abel, the world continued its descent into evil. For awhile, the descendants of Seth, called by Moses the Sons of God, remained separate from the descendants of Cain. They remained faithful to God and his will. However, slowly but surely, they began to marry each other, The Sons of God soon became as evil as their neighbors. This should not surprise us. Because of sin their every thought was evil. So God resolved to destroy the world and all of the descendants of Adam and Eve — except for eight of them. God preserved humanity in the person of Noah and his family, who had continued to serve him. God kept them safe in the Ark he built and resettled the world through him.

The first time we read about the flood, we get the impression that Noah and his family were saved because they were saints in a world full of sinners. But this is not true. They were just as sinful at heart as their neighbors (compare Genesis 6:5-6, before the flood and 8:21 after the flood). The difference was that they “walked with God” (6:9) and were righteous by faith (Hebrews 11:7), trusting God to care for them and obeying His commands. In Martin Luther’s Flood Prayer, which we use in our baptismal services, we confess it this way: “Almighty and eternal God, according to Your strict judgment You condemned the unbelieving world through the flood, yet according to Your great mercy You preserved believing Noah and his family, eight souls in all. ”

The flood reminds Christians of baptism, in which our sins are drowned and we are safely carried to new life. We speak about the Church as God’s new ark, in which he keeps us safe from the evil world. The place in our church building where we sit for worship is named the Nave, which means ship in Latin. Baptism saves us by uniting us with Christ’s suffering and death. In it our sins are washed away, where Jesus received them at his baptism. In exchange, we receive his righteousness by faith. When we rise from the water of baptism, we are united with his resurrection. So, as Christ rose from the dead, we will rise from our graves on the last day.

Preach the Word

Encore Post: The pastoral ministry is all about feeding Christ’s sheep. Jesus and his Church have given pastors the privilege of distributing the means of grace publicly. Pastors preach God’s Word and the administer his sacraments as God’s representatives and in the name of the church. (See Augsburg Confession 5) We can believe that, when a pastor does these things according to God’s Word, it is God himself speaking to us, baptizing us and giving us the body and blood of Jesus himself with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. Of all these acts, the one a pastor does most often is preaching.

The New Testament uses several words for preaching, almost all tied to what a herald does. The main word used is κηρύσσω (Kerusso) — to announce, make known, proclaim. (2 Timothy 4:2) Preaching is all about delivering a message from God. That message is mainly the good news of salvation won for us by Jesus on the cross. But it also extends to the whole counsel of God.

Pastors preach not only on Sunday morning during a worship service, but also anytime someone needs to hear from God’s word. It may be urging them to repentance, or may be assuring them that God forgives them for the sake of Jesus Christ. During a worship service, a sermon is much more formal than that. Most often a sermon takes the message in a passage read earlier, it explains those truths to God’s people, and urges them to believe these words. It is not about teaching, presenting all kinds of facts to be remembered. It is not entertainment, helping people to escape from their day-to-day lives just for a little while.

Preaching is all about changing the lives of those who hear the message. It does not do so because of the pastors skill, his inspiring insights, or how hilarious is jokes are. The point of a sermon is to bring the message that God put it in the scriptures to people. It’s all about changing lives, and strengthening the faith of those who hear. You may remember the words of a talented speaker for a long time. But a sermon is God’s gift to you. It contains the Gospel, which gives you his grace. It is the very words of eternal life.

Pastors are Called by God

Encore Post: At the beginning of the first century, disciples chose their Rabbis. To a certain extent, we choose our jobs today. The pastoral ministry is different. While a man may seek the office of the Holy Ministry, he is called by God to serve in this way. This is where the term vocation originally comes from. It is based on the Latin word for a calling.

In a sense, this is no different than the way God operated in the Scriptures. He chose every one of the prophets and apostles. The difference in those times is he did so directly. Today pastors are called by God through the congregation the pastor will serve or by a representative they choose. When a congregation calls a man and he becomes convinced after much prayer that the call is from God, he becomes their pastor.

Because it is God who calls (Acts 20:28, 1 Corinthians 12:28 ), a pastor is not an employee of his congregation, to be hired and fired at will. Only when a pastor is unfaithful to his call to teach according to God’s word or lives an immoral life may he be removed. At the same token, it is not for him to choose when or who to serve. Only when a congregation is no longer faithful to God’s word, he receives another call from God to summon him to a new place or health makes him unable to serve may he conclude his ministry.

His office is to be the face and hands of God to care for the sheep placed in his fold. He is also their face and hands, to bring the gifts God gives to them and to others. He preaches the good news, baptizes, celebrates the Lord’s Supper and forgives the sins of those who repent. In doing so, he lays down his life, as did Jesus, so that the lost sheep will be found and the whole flock in his care brought safely to eternal life.

Jesus Establishes the Holy Ministry

Encore Post: “As the father has sent me so I send you,” said Jesus. (John 20:20-23) The Father sent Jesus not to be served but to serve and to give his life for ransom for many.(Mark 10:43-45) He sent his son to seek and to save the lost. (Luke 19:10) Jesus then, in turn, sent his disciples to continue his ministry.

In every generation, Jesus calls men to seek out those who do not have faith in Christ, to offer the forgiveness of sins life and salvation, and to make them a part of God’s Kingdom. These men are his ambassadors, proclaiming the good news of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:19-21) Through this ministry, faith is created and sustained in the lives of God’s people.

The scriptures call these men pastors, preachers, elders, bishops, and many other things. We call this ministry the office of the holy ministry, the office of the public ministry, the pastoral ministry, and other similar things. Because many Christians use the word minister for anyone who serves in the church, Lutheran pastors prefer to be called “pastor,” which means “shepherd.” We also use adjectives with the word ministry to identify it as the office of word and sacrament

A Mustard Seed Size Faith

Encore Post: Mustard seeds were important to people where Jesus lived. Mustard seeds were the smallest crop that farmers planted, but grew into a tree as large as 10 feet tall. The seed of this kind of mustard plant was black. Farmers ground the seed to make a spice and to use the oil in them. Birds loved to eat these seeds and would often come to eat the seeds and build nests in their branches.

Jesus compared the mustard seed to the Kingdom of God. The kingdom starts small, but grows very big, so that many people can become part of it. The kingdom doesn’t seem to be important, but it will change everything for the good. When we share the Good News of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the forgiveness he won for us on the cross, the Holy Spirit uses it like a seed, to plant faith in hearts and cause it to grow there. Soon the kingdom of God blooms there and spreads.