What sort of a God and what sort of a faith do
you have?
If your God would never kill anyone, then you do not have
the Lord God.
If your faith would never take up the sword, then you have
a dead faith.
At the end of all things the Lord God will destroy all
of his enemies.
He will slaughter every man or woman who opposes him, and cast
them all into the fire that does not consume, and it will
be the cause of his elect to rejoice in this destruction.
If you would prefer not to see such an end, then I
would encourage you to ask yourself if you are wiser than God.
Certainly you may and should desire that all come to saving faith,
for God Himself desires this, and plainly states so in Scripture.
But you may not do so at the expense of God's infinite
and perfect justice.
The wicked will be destroyed, and this is good and godly.
All men will live to see this, as spectator or participant.
And yet do not make the crass error of the deists and
others, who deny that God intervenes in his world.
Such men are the fools who contend for a so called clockwork
universe. They contend that God designed the universe, wound it up, and
then walked away.
Such is not our God, for such is not the Lord God.
Ours is the God who walked with Adam in the garden.
Ours is the God who preserved righteous Noah and his two righteous
sons in the ark.
Ours is the God who struck down the first born of the
Egyptians, and parted the sea.
Ours is the God who made the sun to stand still in
the sky, and commanded and oversaw the slaughter of those who worship
demons. Ours is the God who walked the shores of Galilee, and
then, forty years later, brought down the might of the Roman military
upon the wicked Jews, destroying them along with his former temple.
And ours is the God who will come again with sword and
fire and blood.
We are not wrong to depict Christ Jesus as the caring shepherd,
who seeks his lost sheep, for he is indeed the good shepherd.
But that is not all that he is, for he is also
a dread warrior, a terror to his enemies, and master and creator
of all things.
Do not curtail, narrow, or corrupt your view of God.
He created, maintains, upholds, and intervenes in this his creation.
Many false teachers have arisen over the centuries, and a great many
of them found their errors upon a false and perverted understanding of
God's nature.
The Romanists overemphasize the Christ's role as judge And so they run
to Mary and the saints, to seek the comfort that can be
found and is promised in the Christ alone, for he is our
good shepherd.
The Eastern Orthodox overemphasize the love of God, or at least their
misconception of it, and so they attempt to allegorize away the Old
Testament, which speaks of a jealous God, who will surely destroy all
who oppose him, and the reformed overemphasize God's sovereignty, and so they
go so far as to deny the plain words of Scripture.
In this the Baptists surely join them, which plainly teach that God
desires that all should be saved.
We Lutherans have fallen off neither side of the horse.
But this is not cause for arrogance or sinful pride.
Yes, we are proud of our heritage and our forefathers in the
faith, but with humble recognition that our preservation and restoration were wrought
by the hand of a merciful God.
We did not fall off the left side of the horse, when
the East followed Palamas and his demons into apostasy, for God preserved
us. We did not fall off the right side of the horse,
when Rome wandered from the faith and chose a mere man over
the Christ, for God preserved us, and we did not jump off
the cliff, instead of getting back on the horse, when the radical
reformers in rejecting Rome rejected also God's word, for God preserved us.
Our Lutheran fathers were surely wise and learned men, and yet God
clearly preserved them from errors they surely would have made, sometimes did
make in their private lives, when they were drafting our confession, it
is my firm belief that the Lutheran Reformation was inspired, guided, preserved,
and protected by God's gracious hand.
Many of our Lutheran fathers believed in the so called perpetual virginity
of Mary Our confession is silent on the issue.
Some of our Lutheran fathers were proud of their mastery of Hebrew
so called.
Our confession, unlike many of those produced by the radical Reformation, was
Does not define the Old Testament as being Hebrew.
The list goes on.
It seems clear to me and for context, I have recorded nearly
the entire book of Concord every year for seven years now, that
our Lutheran forebears were guided by God, for they in their own
capacities, no matter how substantial, would surely have committed errors that they
did not when drafting the confessions.
It is my firm belief that the book of Concord
stands alongside the Creeds as a symbol of the Christian faith.
It is good, perhaps another gift from Providence, that Reformation Day coincides
with all hallowtide on the calendar.
During a period of the church year, when we recognize both the
faithful and the faithful departed, we recognize also our Lutheran forebears, who
pledgedge their lives in their honor, their lands and their families, their
wealth and their titles, and even their very souls both to advance
and to defend the restored gospel.
We generally lack good comparisons today, for the Pope has minimal temporal
power, and we have no emperor, and the president hardly cares what
you do or do not believe about God or scripture.
You are unlikely to be persecuted, at least by the state, regardless
of what you believe or teach about baptism, the real presence or
justification. There are, of course, truths for which you will be persecuted,
a topic for another time, but our society simply does not take
Christianity seriously anymore.
These days, open and obvious blasphemy is not only permitted, but even
encouraged and rewarded.
We live in godless times among godless men under a godless government.
Our fight is not identical to that of our forefathers, but it
is certainly similar, for the sides are the same as they have
always been.
During the Reformation, Satan attacked justification, Article II.
Today he attacks nature, Article I.
In many ways, Satan's attack on Article I is more subtle than
was his attack on Article two The denial of the Christ as
the sole mediator, and the substitution of our imperfect works, for the
Christ's perfect and complete work, was rather blunt, and yet many fell
for it for centuries.
It is no wonder that so many today fall for the relatively
subtle attack on Article I, particularly given how many pastors and teachers
fail to teach rightly on these issues.
Satan conquered the seminaries years ago, in some cases decades ago, and
these false teachers who deny or pervert Article I will quite happily
murder you for the sake of their false God.
They are no less murderous than the Medici Pope, who excommunicated Luther
and sought his head.
Even Herod was more righteous than such men, for at least he
did not truly desire to murder John the Baptist.
And yet our God is still on his throne, and his promises
never have and never will fail.
When the church went astray in the past, God sent prophets and
teachers, and he still sends her teachers when she goes astray to
day When his people go astray, he sends teachers and leaders.
Some hear God's truth when it is spoken by the men he
sends, and then they rightly repent, and turn from their former wickedness.
But some men hear the word of God and reject it, doubling
down on their evils and being thereby doubly damned.
We face today the same sort of choice presented by both Moses
and Joshua.
On the one hand, the path of faithfulness, life and blessing, and
on the other hand, the path of wickedness, death and curses.
Our Lutheran forefathers chose faithfulness.
Our more recent forefathers largely chose wickedness, and it has brought death
down upon us.
We must reject the ways of the wicked generations that came before
us, and preserve instead the things and the truth of God, in
clearly the truth about creation, and his good design of it.
There are no optional truths, for all truth is one, to accept
the truth about Christ, but reject the truth about creation is not
in the end analysis even possible.
Sure, an individual may pursue such a foolish and wicked worldview and
be saved by felicitous inconsistency, but he will only be damning his
children and grandchildren, for they will surely become apostates, if they follow
in the foolish footsteps of their father.
Rome did not start off worshipping Mary, and relying upon human works
to save, but that is where they are to day.
Our grandparents and great grandparents did not deny the reality of biological
sex, but many of them did stop believing in the truth about
race. And now most among the younger generations believe in virtually nothing.
Deny or reject any truth, and you or your line will eventually
deny and reject all truth.
For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads
to destruction, but the gate is narrow and the way is hard
that leads to life.
What does it matter if popes, princes, or even indeed the whole
world loves you?
If it comes at the cost of your eternal soul, in the
words of Christ, and do not fear those who kill the body
but cannot kill the soul.
Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
And so we come to the second topic that we must surely
address on this Sunday: death.
All men are mortal, and so all men who are born of
the mater of this fallen world must some day die.
Even the Christ, born of the fallen substance of his mother here
in time, had to die.
This entire universe, separated, severed from God by the fall, is winding
down, is dying, all that exists is slated to be destroyed by
fire, and only that which or those who are in the Christ
will be resurrected in the new world.
For the demon and the unbeliever alike, death is eternal.
There is no end to the torment, the flames do not burn
out, they have no hope.
For those of us who have been washed clean by the waters
of holy baptism, a very different sort of eternity awaits.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight
of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things
that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the
things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen
are eternal.
Our modern culture has, and certain of the reformed theologians have, led
many astray on this subject.
No ye will not spend eternity as a celestial eunuch, praising God
in heaven.
You will in fact not be in heaven at all, for that
is the domain of angels and not of men.
Rather we will spend eternity in the new creation, in a universe
restored to what God always intended it to be.
You are not, as I have said so many times before, and
will undoubtedly say many more times in the future, a soul piloting
a body.
You are a gestalt of body, mind, and soul.
In the absence of any of those, you would not be whole,
and God will surely not leave you incomplete for eternity.
The very suggestion is ridiculous.
Instead, God will restore you to the perfect version of yourself yourself
that you would have become in the absence of the fall.
Paradise, your actual eternal home, is different in kind, due only to
the extremity of the difference in degree.
You will still be flesh and blood, and you will still eat
and drink, but you will neither grow old nor fall ill, for
the Christ has already conquered death.
What then of our first reading, which speaks of our being day
and night in his temple.
Well, what is the temple?
It is the place where God's glory dwells.
And who is the glory of God?
He is the Christ.
And where will God the Son dwell for eternity?
He will dwell with us, in paradise.
It is the new creation itself that is the true temple of
God, for that is where He will dwell forever with his elect.
There is, of course, more to this, but that will have to
wait for another day.
This Tritum, all hallowtide, commands some of my favourite hymns, among them
for all the saints, even though many of us will be singing
that hymn this Sunday, I will still recite the fourth verse here.
O Blessed Communion, Fellowship Divine, We feebly struggle, they in glory shine,
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, allelujah.
Many of us lost loved ones over this past year.
I will not tell you not to mourn them, especially not on
this Sunday, but Even Jesus wept.
Instead I will commend you to the very same promise upon which
each and every one of us depends, and in which each and
every one of us has placed his or her trust and hope.
Christus propecitoribus crucifixus.
The Christ, crucified for sinners.
The faithful departed are absent according to the flesh, but they are
present according to the Spirit.
This is why we so jealously guard our tradition, our liturgy, our
hymns. We know that those already in glory join with us in
worshiping the one true God, in unity and in trinity.
No longer are the faithful departed troubled by the cares and the
burdens of this life.
Although this does not relieve us of the sorrow and the pain
here in time, it should certainly steal us to stay the course,
firm in the belief that we will surely see our loved ones
again. Where the Christ went first, a great host is now followed.
Death cannot hold them because it could not hold him.
O death where is your victory?
O death where is your sting?
This life is a fleeting thing, and we shall all be reunited,
sooner than we suppose
Amen.