διαθηκη

Walk Through the Bible Seminar: To Go or Not?

2011-09-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

For those who don't want to take the time to read the full discussion:

Don't bother going to the seminar, open your Bible instead and read it regularly instead of going to seminars that refuse to tell you what is in them.

Their logo

For the rest:

I'm sorry I got to this so late. A few members asked me about a seminar that is being promoted for this weekend at an area church. The seminar is called Walk Through the Bible. And the promoters promise that it will open up your understanding like nothing else ever has.

Of course, the founder and author, Bruce Wilkinson, says this about everything he sells to popular Christian groups and individuals.

Some readers may remember his book The Prayer of Jabez (useful review) where he wrote

"I want to teach you how to pray a daring prayer that God always answers. It is brief—only one sentence with four parts—and tucked away in the Bible, but I believe it contains they key to a life of extraordinary favor with God. This petition has radically changed what I expect from God and what I experience every day by His power. In fact, thousands of believers who are applying its truths are seeing miracles happen on a regular basis."

Yes, it was all works righteousness. Wilkinson went to Africa and a widely self-promoted mission. That mission was specifically designed not to preach Christ (his own description) but to reform society. Wilkinson's mission failed, in spite of fervently praying The Prayer of Jabez the way Wilkinson taught.

Wilkinson's own website is a very slick and powerful self-promotion. The website for Walk Through the Bible seminars is also very slick, extremely low on teaching content, high on promises and accolades, and offers a large variety of products for sale on the basis of this minimal information.

They do offer a pdf sample of a Walk Through the Bible study Bible. It contains the opening chapters of Genesis and their notes for study. There are a lot of motivational notes, very little about sin and redemption. There are no notes on the sins in Sodom and Gomorrah. This is probably to avoid controversial topics. The main focus is how to do better by conforming one's self to God's plan, and that plan is kind of tricky to see, but they find slogans for the things they like.

Another Lutheran pastor suggested to me that the content was likely based in the false doctrines of Dispensationalism because of the local radio promotions. I didn't find Dispensationalism on the product's website. So that view may be due to the nature of the promoters in our area.

What I did find in the website, besides all kinds of slick products on which to spend money, was this:

The Walk Through the Bible product is aimed at people who feel they don't know the Bible like they should and are looking for a quick and easy way to feel like they have a good sound understanding.

My sense about it is that those who don't really know Scripture will be amazed about what they learn and disappointed that their own pastors have failed them so much in teaching them the "real" truth about God's plan for them in this world. I think that the program will focus on false doctrines that the health and prosperity of the Christian is a sign of God's blessing and promote the false doctrine of social justice as "acts of Christian brotherly love."

I also think that if you know your Bible well you will be sadly disappointed with the seminar, even if some of the teaching gimmicks are cool.

Wilkinson has a track record. We know him by his fruits already. He is a false prophet. Maybe he's good at packaging, just like Rick Warren's 40 Days materials. But in the past it's all been packaging without real sound Biblical content.

Don't waste your money or time. Just open up your own Bible and start reading.

Word of the Week for June 1, 2011

2011-02-17T12:54:00.000-08:00

Who is Lying about Christian Holidays? Halloween.

Image via Wikipedia There are three really big secular holidays in the US. The first is Black Thursday—when Christmas Shopping begins, the second is Christmas, the third is Halloween.

Mardi Gras and Carnival come close as big secular events in certain parts of the United States, especially when they coincide with Spring Break.

But there is a lot of new mythology about Halloween that has been invented to claim that Halloween is a pagan holiday. It is not, and it never was.

In the first three centuries after Christ's resurrection, the lives of the martyrs of the Church were commemorated on the day and in the place where they were killed.

There were so many who were killed because of their faith in Christ during those centuries. Throughout the Christian Church different days were set aside not only for each martyr, but a special day for all Saints.

The earliest reference to a day being dedicated to the commemoration of All the Martyrs and All Saints of the Christian Church comes from the 2nd century. The document is titled "The Martyrdom of Polycarp." Polycarp was a Christian killed because he would not deny Christ. The document says:

Accordingly, we afterwards took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels, and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together, as opportunity is allowed us, with joy and rejoicing, the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already finished their course, and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps. (Chapter 18) [Emphasis added]

Later, a Christian Bishop named Ephraim the Syrian mentions a common All Saints' Day in 373. In 397 St. Basil of Caesarea chose a day when the churches of his bishopric would honor the memories of all Saints known, and unknown, alive or in heaven. Later, John Chrysostom mentions a common day of memorial for the Saints in 407 AD.

In the year 609 or 610 Pope Boniface IV established a date for All Saints' Day on May 13^th. And later, in the early 700s AD, Pope Gregory III changed the date to November 1^st. Decrees like this took some time to propagate from Rome to the more remote areas where the Church was found. But the change in date had nothing to do with any pagan practices. Pope Gregory IV extended the celebration on this day to the entire Western Church in the early 800s. And again, the change took time as it spread from Rome.

The point is this, a common day for commemorating the Saints has been around throughout the Christian Church from very early times. And the fact that it falls on November 1^st today has nothing to do with paganism.

OK, so what does this have to do with Halloween? In the Bible the day begins at sundown or evening. This is why we have Christmas Eve. Halloween is All Hallows' Eve', that is All Saints' Evening. Halloween is the beginning of All Saints' Day starting at sundown on October 31^st.

These days we have “Trick or Treat,” costumes sometimes too gruesome to describe: witches, goblins, werewolves, vampires, zombies, Lady Gaga; Jack-O-Lanterns, skeletons, spooky sounds, grave stones, candy and a celebration of gore and all that is un-Holy.

Many of the Christian Churches in the Reformed traditions claim that Halloween is a pagan celebration. And there are many in the Neopagan and Wiccan communities who have tried hard to make it look like the truth.

Don't ever expect truth from Neopagans and Wiccans. They already live in a fantasy world created by their own fakelore.

The claim is that the old folklore demonstrates where we got Halloween. But folklore does not support the Neopagan or the Wiccan claims about Halloween. Instead they depend on fakelore: invented, and fake, pretend folklore, like Pecos Bill and the song “Follow the Drinking Gourd.”

The typical claims in current sources are that Halloween come from “ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions.” With respect to the origins of All Saints' Day these claim are false. With respect to the modern re-paganizing of Halloween, the Neopagan version of Halloween doesn't really come from ancient pagan sources. It comes from modern sources that pretend to be old.

Neopagans and Wiccans like to claim that the source of Halloween is the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-in). There are three basic problems with their claim.

1) The celebration of All Saints' Day didn't originate in Ireland or any other area populated by Celts or their descendants. 2) None of the days on which All Saints' Day was celebrated had anything to do with any Celtic holiday. 3) The celebration of All Saints' Day in Celtic regions is documented to be older than the documented celebration of Samhain.

So let us look at each of these three claims:

1) In order for the Neopagan and Wiccan claim that Samhain is the origin of Halloween to be true, then Halloween and All Saints' Day should have started in Celtic areas. But we've already seen that All Saints' Day was celebrated in Syria as early as 373 A.D, in Caesarea in 397 A.D., and in Constatntinople (under Chrysostome—modern Istanbul) by 407 A.D.

All Saints' Day, and Halloween didn't start in the Celtic countries. But it did take some time for the declarations of Rome to reach distant Celtic areas like Ireland.

2) In order for the Neopagan and Wiccan claim that Samhain is the origin of Halloween to be true the particular day chosen should have some significance to the Celts and Samhain. But here we run into some serious problems. According to the best sources, Samhain was a Lunar festival of harvest. That means that the day of Samhain can vary up to a month in difference from any Solar year day. Compare, for example, the wide variety of days upon which Easter can take place. When sources claim that Samhain was October 31 to November 1 osf the modern Solar Calendar they are being dishonest and disingenuious. They are intending to decieve the reader. Only once in about every 30 years would Samhain take place exactly on those dates.

When the reader adds into this the fact that the Western Calendar changed over from the Julian to the Gregorian at different times in different places, the reader can better understand how artificial the Neopagan and Wiccan claims are about Samhain. The Christian Church didn't get things from the pagans, the pagans are trying to claim that Christians stole from them. But the Neopagans and Wiccans cannot even get their calendars straight. And they are hoping that the reader doesn't notice how weak and embarassing their claim is.

3) In order for the Neopagan and Wiccan claim that Samhain is the origin of Halloween to be true Samhain they should be able to prove that Samhain is older than All Saints' Day.

But, in fact, the opposite is true.

We have a manuscript from 843 A.D. Where the Irish Christian Bishop Óengus of Tallaght wrote about the celebration of All Saints' Day. It was celebrated in the Spring of the year at that time and in that place. The Decree of Pope Gregory IV had still not reached Ireland so that All Saints' Day should be celebrated November 1^st.

But the earliest-ever-mention of Samhain in Irish folklore doesn't come until the 10^th Century (Ronald Hutton's 1996 book Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain). There is no mention of Samhain outside of Ireland until centuries later.

These, then, are the facts.

Samhain comes from the 10^th Century A.D. and is a newer invention. All Saints' day is older than Samhain. All Saints' Day came from the practice of honoring the Christian Martyrs in Israel, Turkey, and Syria as early as the 2^nd Century and later.

All Saints' Day and therefore Halloween originated outside the Celtic sphere of influence and had nothing to do with what the Neopagan and Wiccan claims are about its origin.

In fact, the newer holiday, called Samhain, was a Lunar holiday. This means that it could be celebrated on any of 30 or so days in Autumn of a given year depending on when the harvest moon was recognized in Ireland. And very, very rarely did this moon happen on October 31^st. This simple truth cannot be emphasized enough.

Any book or website or article that claims that the ancient Celts celebrated Samhain on October 31 is perpetrating a lie. Modern Neopagans and Wiccans invented their own calendar through the 1970s and 1980s and they chose Oct. 31 to be the day for Samhain. It was a move on their part to put forward the false claim that Halloween started in paganism.

All Saints' Eve (Halloween) and All Saints' Day have a special place in the commemoration of the Christian Church because of the Reformation. It was on October 31^st, Halloween, that Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg, Germany. It was on that date he chose to challenge the corruption in the official church about the notion that salvation in Christ could be bought with money or works. All Saints are saved by Grace, through Faith, revealed by God's Word in Christ.

Halloween, October 31^st is Reformation Day. On October 31, 1517 the Church of Christ began to return to the authority of Scripture alone over the traditions and will of man. It was the day that the Church began to return to salvation by Faith in Christ alone over the works of human will and deeds prescribed by humans. The day that the Church began to return to salvation by grace alone, rather than the effort of the individual or that individual's reliance upon the efforts of the saints who had gone before him. It was the day that the Church returned to reliance upon Christ alone and not upon self.

It should not be suprising that Satan and the World have gone to such extremes to defiile Halloween with anything that would distract Christians and the unbelivers from Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia and Solus Christus (Only Scripture, Only Faith, Only Grace, and Only Christ).

And in this world some traditions have beome the mainstay of Halloween. Though these traditions are not necessarily a problem by themselves, they have been claimed by the Neopagans and Wiccans as evidence that Christianity is a fraud and newcomer that has replaced the “Older” so-called “Truth”. But they lie.

Halloween Traditions:

The Haunted House started in the early 1970s. The first records of Haunted Houses were from Cincinati, Ohio where the Jaycees (Junior Chambers of Commerce) introduced the first Haunted Houses as a way to keep kids entertained on Halloween.

So which is older, All Saints Day starting in the 2^nd Century or Haunted Houses starting in the 1970s?

Jack o'Lanterns are an American invention from the mid 1800s. Ireland and Britain had older traditions of carving vegetables into lanterns. But those traditions are not ancient. Historian David J. Skal writes:

Although every modern chronicle of the holiday[ of Halloween] repeats the claim that vegetable lanterns were a time-honored component of Halloween celebrations in the British Isles, none gives any primary documentation. In fact, none of the major nineteenth-century chronicles of British holidays and folk customs make any mention whatsoever of carved lanterns in connection with Halloween. Neither do any of the standard works of the early twentieth century.

It was in 1837 that the term “Jack o' Lantern” first appeared as a term for a carved vegetable lantern. Previously the term referred to the man or boy a town hired to keep the street lamps lit through the night. The pumpkin was used with the cornocopia as a fruit that was displayed throughout fall harvest time in America as a sign of God's providential blessing.

There is a lot of folklore about the Jack O'Lantern, but it is fakelore invented to create a fictional scary history for the Jack O'Lantern. But which is older? All Saints' Day or the Jack O'Lantern?

Trick or Treating is very popular in America and several other countries. In the Middle Ages (1300s to 1500s or so) there was a practice where children or the poor would go from door to door to beg. In some places these beggars would sing or perform in order to get gifts of money or food from householders. While this happened every day of the year, because these beggars had to eat every day, they were particular active on holidays. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and All Saints' Day were special days when children and adults would go from home to home singing hymns and carols and begging. A good source for what these people would sing is the Oxford Book of Carols.

In Shakespears 1593 play The Two Gentlemen of Verona the character Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas." That's our All Saints' Day, November 1^st.

Wearing costumes on Halloween is first known in Scotland in 1895 and in the United States in 1911. The earliest use ot the words “trick or treat” is from 1927 in the United States. In the early 20^th Century there were thousands of postcards made with Halloween themes, but none of them showed “trick or treating” until the 1930s.

So what is older? All Saints' Day or Trick or Treating?

Halloween, Reformation Day, All Saints' Day is a very special day of the year for the Christian Church. We commemorate all saints past, present, and future with the confession that we cannot save ourselves with our own works, no price we could ever pay would be good enough. But Christ has paid for the whole world. And all belivers in Christ, and these are the Saints, will be raised on the last day to eternal life.

Word of the Week for January 2011 week 4

2011-01-23T01:06:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Fałat Julian
Ash Wednesday, watercolor, 78 x 113 cm (detail)

Who's lying about Christian Holidays? Ash Wednesday and Lent

There are two aspects of Ash Wednesday and Lent that need to be emphasized. First is the historical nature of the forty days of Lent; the second is the use of ash on Ash Wednesday.

To put it plainly: the claim that Ash Wednesday and Lent are based on pagan origins is a relatively new fiction that comes out of several different sources. First is the irresponsible work of Alexander Hilsop and those who followed him; both those who claim to be Christian and those who oppose Christianity. Second is the neo-pagan movement today that falsely imagines that paganism is the most ancient of religions and rejects the Bible totally. But, in fact, Lent and Ash Wednesday have no origins in paganism.

You will find all kinds of websites on the Internet that claim that Ash Wednesday and Lent are not Biblical because Christ never commanded them. In part this is true. And Satan likes to use truth to give credibility to his lies. Christ didn't command any such celebration. Christ did not command His followers to celebrate Ash Wednesday. Nor did he command that we worship on Sunday. Nor did He command that we sing “Rock of Ages.” Nor did he command that we use chairs or pews when we gather. The false logic is this: If Christ didn't specifically command us to do something, then it is a sin to do it. So, think about how little sense that logic makes. Take this example: Christ did not command that I have my children wash dishes. Is it therefor a sin to have them do so? No.

What Christ did command and give to His Church was that the Word of God be preached for the remission of sins; that is, that the Law and the Gospel be taught, so people would be brought to repentance; and that faith in Christ would be given to them. He commanded that sins be forgiven in His name through the absolution to penitent sinners and withheld from the impenitent as long as they do not repent. He commanded that all nations, young and old, regardless of race be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. He commanded that we celebrate the feast of His Holy Supper where He gives us His Body and Blood together with the bread and wine in the Sacrament for the forgiveness of our sins. He gave us the promise that the Father hears our prayers in Christ's name because He has made us His brothers and sisters through the forgiveness of sins—won for us on the cross and distributed to us through Word and Sacrament. The prayer and celebration of these gifts can be held any day.

The ancient Church recognized that it was free from legalistic obligations, both from the Old Testament Law, and from new invented laws of men. As St. Paul wrote in Colossians 2. They also knew from Scripture that they were not to use this liberty as an excuse for sin. (Romans 6) They knew that they were not to let their consciences be bound by new human regulations as if their salvation depended upon them. (Galatians 1-2) Whatever was beneficial for the teaching of God's word and for the practice of the Christian life-consisting of repentance and forgiveness in the Means of Grace-was encouraged.

And the ancient Church chose to keep a fast during the forty days before Easter to focus on repentance and the gift of the Resurrection at Easter. St. Athanasius, who led at the Council of Nicea to defeat Arianism—a denial of Christ being truly God and man in one person—was a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt. He wrote annual Festival letters to the Church as they prepared to celebrate Easter. In the year 331 he wrote in order to encourage his congregations in Egypt to keep the Lenten fast for 40 days. Athanasius directs the readers to many Scriptural examples and exhortations to moderation, self-control, and fasting for repentance, Athanasius gives several Bible examples of the 40 day fast, especially of Christ's 40 day fast, after which Athanasius wrote:

“The beginning of the fast of forty days is on the fifth of the month Phamenoth (we call Ash Wednesday); and when, as I have said, we have first been purified and prepared by those days, we begin the holy week of the great Easter on the tenth of the month Pharmuthi (Palm Sunday), in which, my beloved brethren, we should use more prolonged prayers, and fastings, and watchings, that we may be enabled to anoint our lintels with precious blood, and to escape the destroyer (Exod. xii. 7, 23.). Let us rest then, on the fifteenth of the month Pharmuthi (Easter Sunday Eve), for on the evening of that Saturday we hear the angels’ message, ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is risen (Luke xxiv. 5).’ Immediately afterwards that great Sunday receives us, I mean on the sixteenth of the same month Pharmuthi (Easter Sunday morning), on which our Lord having risen, gave us peace towards our neighbours.

We learn from this that even at the time the Nicene Creed was written, at the time Constantine the Great ruled, the Western and Eastern Churches practiced a voluntary fast for 40 days before Easter.

That this was practiced in Rome and elsewhere is seen in St. Athanasius' letter from the year 340 A.D. when he returns from a meeting of pastors/bishops from all around the world, and he encourages his own congregations to continue in the same practice of the 40 day Lenten fast as does “the rest of the whole world.”

In order to count the 40 days of Lent the Sundays of that season are not counted as part of the fast. Rather the Sundays are each a minor feast day. If you add the six feast Sundays to the 40 fast days you get 46 days. That means that the first day of the Fast of Lent is a Wednesday, just as Athanasius explained.

The 40 day fast does not come from the so-called “weeping of Tammuz” as claimed by the radical anti-Roman Catholic writer Alexander Hilsop in his book The Two Babylons. Hilsop made up myths and connections out of thin air because of his hatred for Roman Catholicism. Hilsop's views were adopted whole cloth by the Jehovah's Witnesses, who continued to republish Hilsop's book until 1987. Hilsop's book was cited in 22 different issues of the Jehova's Witnesses periodical The Watchtower from 1950 to 1978, and several times in the 1980s. From 1989 the Jehova's Witnesses stopped referring to Hilsop's book, but they have kept Hilsop's teaching and use other sources.

The month of Tammuz in Old Testament times is roughly equivalent to our July. To the best evidence, that was when the Babylonian pagans, and the fallen Israelites mentioned in Ezekiel 8:14 would “weep for Tammuz”. Also, this weeping took place on the second day of that month, right after the new moon. Not for forty days.

Two basic facts: 1) The weeping for Tammuz was not a 40 day thing. That is Hislop's fiction. 2) The month of Tammuz is 4 months after Easter. They aren't even in the same time of year.

Many websites claim that the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday comes from pagan sources.

The ironic thing is that these websites cannot get their own stories straight. Some people assert that the ashes and Lent come from Nordic Odin worship, others that they come from pagan Roman cults, others that they come from ancient Hindu religions—and some try to maintain irrational combinations of the above very different imagined sources.

But ashes for Ash Wednesday do not come from any of these sources. The practice of believers using ashes to represent sorrow and repentance is well testified in the Bible. In the ancient world it was the natural formal response of those who are sorry for their sins:

For example:

Tamar's repentance: 2 Samuel 13:19 Then Tamar put ashes on her head, and tore her robe of many colors that was on her, and laid her hand on her head and went away crying bitterly.

Mordecay's repentance and the repentance of the Jews in exile; Esther 4:1,3 When Mordecai learned all that had happened, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city. He cried out with a loud and bitter cry. And in every province where the king’s command and decree arrived, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

Job's repentance: Job 2:8 And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes.

See also Isaiah 58:5; Jeremiah 6:26; Daniel 9:3; Jonah 3:6; and Christ's harsh words to the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida in Luke 10:13.

But didn't Jesus tell us not to put on a show while fasting? Yes, that's in Matthew chapter 6:

“Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

He said the same of prayer and of giving charitable gifts. His point is that these things should not be done as a show of righteousness. He did not prohibit praying in public or as a group in worship. He did not prohibit giving something publicly or to a group. And he did not prohibit using outward symbols of repentance like ashes.

What Christ condemned in these passages is thinking that we can show others how good, how sincere, how devout, and what kind of a Christian we are with these outward symbols. The ash on the forehead is a confession that the person is worth only ashes, has no righteousness, is not better than another, and needs God's grace if there is to be any hope for him or her.

Can the symbol be abused? Yes, of course it can. But that does not make it a bad symbol. Every gift of God can be abused by sinful people. We should expect that because of sin. So we should recognize that the ways that Christians choose in their freedom to celebrate God's gifts can also be misused.

So we see, first of all, that neither forty day fast of Lent nor the ashes of Ash Wednesday have anything to do with pagan origins. The use of ashes in the Christian faith as a sign of repentance is as old as Job, and probably older. It certainly is the outward act chosen by believers through out thousands of years, from the earliest times as outward sign to confess unworthiness and sin.

No human can require a Christian to use the fast of Lent as a saving work. A congregation can recommend the practice as a serious self-examination of one's own sin and sinful appetites; of one's own weaknesses. No human can require Christians to use ash on Ash Wednesday or any other day as a way of proving their faith.

And neither can any human forbid the use of the Lenten fast or the use of ashes either. Both are legalism, a replacing of the Gospel for a new law. The whole point of Ash Wednesday and the Lenten Fast is to look on ourselves as worthless and utterly needy: to look only upon Christ, to celebrate His feast in the Lord's Supper, preach His passion and death upon the cross, and proclaim the Resurrection of Christ as the final seal upon our salvation.

We should reject any fictionalizing about pagan origins of Lent or Ash Wednesday with both the truth of Scripture and real history.

Pastor Joseph Abrahamson
St. Petri Lutheran Church-Grygla
Oak Park Lutheran Church-Oklee
Mt. Olive Lutheran Church-Trail
Nazareth Lutheran Church-Trail

Word of the Week for January 2011 week 3

2011-01-16T15:58:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Word of the Week January week 3

Who’s Lying about Christian Holidays?

So we can see there is an anti-God bias affected the way academics and popular writers from that time to today portray Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Ash Wednesday, and Hallow E’en (All Saint’s Eve) as having “evolved” somehow from pagan origins.

Christmas has become overwhelmed by non-Christian re-interpretations surrounding St. Nicholas, the tree, and especially family. It’s not hard yet to celebrate Christ’s birth. But Christmas is actually the last of the Christian Holy-Days to be widely celebrated through society. Easter is so close to confirmation and graduation with so many other things taking place in the spring that it is so hard to get the family together to celebrate Christ’s resurrection.Both Christmas and Easter have a lot of distractions. The World perverted the memory St. Nicholas to use against the Christ. The World perverted the Christian symbolism of the egg and the rabbit to use them against the Christ.

But where can you or I buy any Pentecost candy, gifts, or cards?

Pentecost was the first of the three main Christian Holy Days lost to the world. Pentecost, like Easter, are New Testament names for Old Testament festivals. Easter is the fulfilled Passover, commanded by God in Exodus 12-14. Pentecost is the festival of Weeks or Harvesting the Firstfruits recorded in Exodus 23, 34, Leviticus 23, Deuteronomy 16, and Numbers 28. The date was set as the day after seven weeks from Passover were completed. That is fifty days. During Christ’s ministry the Greek speaking Jews called it “Day Fifty” or Pentecost. The count of weeks began at the end of the Passover and Feast of Unleavened bread. From the end of that festival they were to count weeks.

Leviticus 23:15-16 says:
15 ‘And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. 16 Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the LORD.

There were two very famous historians who tried to claim that Pentecost was a development of the Christian church trying to replace the Roman festival of Ludi Florales. The first author was Joseph Martin McCabe (12 November 1867 – 10 January 1955) a man who fell from faith in Christ and spent most of his life writing against Christ, Christianity, and the Church. He was interested in discrediting Christianity so people would lose faith in God. In his 1903 book St. Augustine and His Age McCabe makes the following bold lies:

“As to the processions and manner of worship in general, the Church was very accommodating: The Saturnalia became Christmas and its succeeding festivals. The purification of Isis became the purification of Mary; the Floralia, Pentecost; and so on.Hymns to Cybele were hastily adapted to the mother of Christ; statues of Horus and Isis quickly became Jesus and Mary. Stately processions once more made their way to the temples, now converted into Christian churches. Lanciani says that many pagan alters were in use in Roman churches until a century ago.” (p. 100-101)

The problem? Well, Pentecost started about 1400 B.C. when God gave the command to celebrate this festival to Moses and Aaron. The Romans instituted Floralia in about the year 238 B.C. That means that Pentecost is about 1,150 years older than Floralia.

The second famous historian, Will Durant, in his landmark series The Story of Civilization had a volume published in 1950 titled The Age of Faith. wrote the following:

“Statues of Isis and Horus were renamed Mary and Jesus; the Roman Lupercalia and the feast of the purification of Isis became the Feast of the Nativity; the Saturnalia were replaced by Christmas celebrations, the Floralia by Pentecost, an ancient festival of the dead by All Souls' Day, the resurrection of Attis by the resurrection of Christ. Pagan altars were rededicated to Christian heroes; incense, lights, flowers, processions, vestments, hymns, which had pleased the people in older cults were domesticated and cleansed in the ritual of the Church; and the harsh slaughter of a living victim was sublimated in the spiritual sacrifice of the Mass.” (p. 75)

Notice how close Durant’s wording is to McCabe’s wording? This is interesting because Durant credits Sir. J. G. Frazer with the information. Frazer was another anti-Christian writer, an anthropologist, who sought to show how Christianity “evolved” from paganism and into scientific atheistic Rationalism. They all repeat the same words without any real demonstration from ancient documents. In fact, so few of the later writers actually checked the sources that the citation they give from St. Augustine’s City of God is often mistakenly written as if Augustine’s words were found in book eleven (11) instead of book 2 (Roman numeral II ). And Augustine does not say that celebration of Floralia was replaced with or developed into Pentecost. He merely describes Cicero’s account of the lewd sexual acts and perversions the Romans engaged in publicly to celebrate their false goddess. There was nothing in common between the rituals of Foralia and Pentecost.

But we come back to the basic problem with all of these so-called scholars: Pentecost was instituted by God in about the year 1400 BC. This is more than a millennium before this Roman pagan festival began. Notice how desperate those authors were to try to disprove every aspect of Christianity with some pagan celebration. They try to overwhelm the reader with too many pieces of information all at once, swamping and overwhelming the reader who probably doesn’t have the background to question their scholarly authority. But most of the pagan festivals they mention didn’t really exist in the way that they claim.

But the problem they faced was too big to overcome. Pentecost predated the pagan festival by over a thousand years. And they don’t happen on the same day. They were two different religions celebrating two very different festivals at approximately the same time of year.

What they can’t disprove by lie or slander, they ignore. The world ignores Pentecost and the way God used that Holy Day to give His Holy Spirit to the Apostles. It is hard to find a Pentecost card or gift in any store that is not affiliated with the Christian Church.

Every year the popular media drag up the fiction of pagan origins for Christmas and Easter. The mostly do not cover stories on Pentecost. But I expect that there will be more resurgence of claims that Pentecost was a pagan holiday.

There is another important question raised by these unbelieving authors. Did the Christian Church adopt pagan customs or rituals? The word used to describe the fusion of two different religious practices is syncretism. The Egyptians and the ancient Babylonians adopted each other’s mythologies for political and economical advantage. We have seen the Romans adopt many aspects and false gods of the ancient Greeks. The assumption of the authors I have referred to is that Christianity is a religion evolved out of syncretism of pagan beliefs and practices. They are wrong.

But did the Church adopt pagan customs or rituals? During the mission work of the Church in all ages, Old Testament and New Testament, there have been problems where members would fall away to the culture around them. They would abandon God’s Word and follow after false gods (like King Ahab and the prophets of Baal); follow cultural norms that are contrary to God’s Word (like Lot in the city of Sodom); and even try to bring false gods into the worship of the Church (like the followers of the false god Tammuz in the Temple during Ezekiel’s time). Sometimes they would become inventive and leave God’s Word by making new ways and places of worship that did not adhere to God’s command (like Jeroboam, Saul, Nadab and Abihu).

There were many groups throughout the ages who abandoned God’s Word and followed the teachings of the Gnostics, the Mithraists; some adopted practices like having women serve as priests from pagans; some sought to adopt the new and developing practices and laws of Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism. Wherever Christianity spread, there you will find Christians who have also departed from God’s Word and adopted customs and rituals contrary to His Word.

But there is another important consideration to make in reading this history. As just one example, when the Church brought missionaries to South America, the local groups often worshipped false gods with particular attributes, one might be the false god of wood working. The local missionary would choose one or more of the saints who had similar attributes, like St. Joseph the Worker, Jesus’ step-father. The missionary would then use the example of this saint who’s attributes they understood, to show them by the saint’s example that the right worship was of the One True God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Thus the example of the saint would be an instructional tool. The similarity of the saint’s life and work to that of their false god would lend to easier instruction by that Saint’s faith and obedience to God’s Word.

This method of instruction also has problems and dangers. No doubt, there would be some who secretly kept the worship of the false god under the guise of the saint, rather than worshipping Christ. But that does not mean that the Christian church in that location was a development from pagan teaching.

Just as with Easter/Passover, the date of Pentecost was set by God through Moses in the Old Testament. The date of Christmas was understood based on these same Old Testament passages.

The question on each of these holidays/Holy Days is how will we as Christians use these days to the honor of God’s name and the advancement of the Gospel. Let us not allow this festival of Pentecost or any other Christian Holy Day fall into disuse or become overwhelmed by the world's twistings and reinterpretations of these days.

Word of the Week for January 2011 week 2

2011-01-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

Who’s Lying about Christian Holidays?

Since the time Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species, most branches of academic study began to abandon the idea that God was in control of the universe. The study of science and the study of religion--Christianity and Judaism in particular--were subjected to a world-view that excluded God and miracles from any so-called “scientific” discussion. The only data or information that was allowed to be admitted as a so-called “fact” was that which excluded the supernatural and God. The only judge for what was right and true was to be human reason, frail and sinful human reason. These were academic efforts that deliberately prohibited people from walking by faith in order to steer scholarship and society by the frail light of human wisdom apart from God.

This anti-God bias affected the way academics and popular writers from that time to today portray Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Ash Wednesday, and Hallow E’en (All Saint’s Eve) as having “evolved” somehow from pagan origins.

This week we look at Easter and some of the claims of pagan origins surrounding this celebration. We’ll look at the word “Easter” and how it has been misunderstood and its meaning re-invented by neo-pagans, the origin of Easter eggs, and the tradition of Easter bunnies.

The name of the day: “Easter”

One of the main claims against Christians is that the very name “Easter” is taken from a Germanic pagan goddess who was celebrated in the spring. The first person to conjecture that this might be so was the Christian historian and theologian St. Bede of Northumbria, England in the year 725. There was no mention of this “goddess” in any other surviving literature or traditional folk lore.

And there was no mention of this “goddess” from the time of Bede until Jacob Grimm (editor of Grimm’s Fairy Tales) referred to Bede’s conjecture in the late 1800s. Grimm tried to find evidence for some name in German tradition that might refer to this conjectured “goddess” who’s name was Easter or Eostre. But there was nothing.

Grimm’s research was not able to demonstrate that the Germans or the Anglo-Saxons ever knew of such a goddess by that name. But he conjectured that if she existed, the old Germans would probably have called her Ostara. A name which Jacob Grimm invented as a conjecture about the etymology of a word. The word Ostara does not occur in any ancient German literature or oral folk lore. (Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 1, p. 290)

However, neo-pagan and wiccan authors of the 20th century and later have gladly made-up all kinds of so-called “history” about this goddess that never existed. The literature from these wiccan and neo-pagan sources has been so influential that popular society assumes that this fiction is true. Most accounts of the history of Easter are based on these conjectures and the fictitious creations of the neo-pagans and wiccans.

Unfortunately, several Christian groups following the fake scholarship of Alexander Hislop in his 1858 book The Two Babylons: have bought into this modern fiction and condemned anyone who celebrates “Easter” for celebrating pagan religion. These Christian groups further compound their mistake by taking the same position as the neo-pagans and the wiccans when they assume that the word “Easter” means the same as “Ashtorah” in the Bible and the name of the ancient Babylonian goddess “Ishtar” simply because they sound the same.

The neo-pagans and wiccans have made up all kinds of claims that the Easter holiday had to do with fertility and reproduction. They claim that Ashtorah was a reproductive goddess. There is no evidence in the Bible that the asherah poles and other references to Ashera or Ashtorah had anything to do with fertility. And there is nothing that links the Ashtorah of the Bible with the old Babylonian goddess Ishtar.

Some modern archaeologists who try to show the evolution of religions in the middle-east have conjectured that ancient Ugaritic goddess named Athirat might be linked to the Bible’s Ashtorah even though many Ugaritic documents say otherwise. A few of these scholars also conjectured that this Ugaritic goddess might be the equivalent of Babylon’s Ishtar, but this is only conjecture.

So where are we with real history for “Easter”?

The word Easter comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to shine” and was used to describe the months of the year when the sun began to get brighter and higher during the day. In 1525 William Tyndale was the first to translate the Bible into English. He used the Middle-English word “ester” = “Easter” as a translation for Passover and the day of Christ’s Resurrection. The word had already been long used and understood as referring to the day of Christ’s Resurrection when Tyndale made his translation. Despite what modern pagans and wiccans wish the past might have been, there were no known pagan or wiccan celebrations of a pagan-easter in England or northern Europe in the period from the Middle Ages through the Reformation and up to the late 1800s.

So there are two modern myths that we have debunked: first, it is not true that the name of Easter came from the worship of a pagan spring goddess; second, it is not true that the Easter celebration was a celebration of fertility and reproduction.

Where did the Easter Egg come from?

There are several traditions which converge to bring us the Easter egg. And there is some modern nonsense that really has nothing to do with the use of eggs at Easter. First, there is a sculpture on the Perisopolis of ancient Iran of a line of people bearing gifts on the New Year day celebration on the Sping equinox. One of the many different gifts carried by the people in this sculpture appears to be an egg. This was carved by the old pagan Zoroastrians from ancient Persia (modern Iran). From this sculpture modern pagans have conjectured that Christians stole the idea of using eggs at easter from the ancient Zoroastrians. The problem is that none of the writers iin the ancient Christian church mention this tradition where they came into contact with Zoroastrians.

Still, the modern neo-pagans and wiccans assert that the egg is an ancient sign of fertility. That seems as bright a claim as saying that water is wet.

Of the traditions that actually do contribute to Christianity using eggs in the Easter celebration there are three to consider.

First: In the celebration of the Passover meal, which Christ celebrated the night before He was crucified, a roasted whole egg is placed as one of six food items on the Passover plate. The egg, called Beitzah symbolizes the Passover sacrifice that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. The egg was introduced to the Passover meal after the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. The egg was the first dish served at Jewish funerals in the time of Christ’s ministry on earth. The egg was also used as a symbol of mourning the loss of the Temple where the Passover Lamb was sacrificed. It is usually eaten dipped in salt water which symbolizes the bitter tears of the people.

Early Christians in the first and second century continued to celebrate the Passover along with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Primarily the Passover was celebrated because of Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper.

Second: the season preceding Easter is called Lent. The season of Lent is a fast. In both the eastern and western Church this meant fasting from meat and fowell--including eggs. Eggs were used to break the Lenten fast on Easter Morning. In preparation for this breaking of the fast the eggs were decorated to commemorate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the Paschal Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. The breaking of the shell became a symbol of Christ’s rending of the tomb.

Indeed, the use of decorated eggs to celebrate Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning is so widespread across the world and so closely tied with the spread of Christianity that one cannot call it anything but a Christian tradition. But that doesn’t keep the neo-pagans and modern commentators from trying to claim that Christian’s “stole” this so-called “pagan” tradition.

So we turn to the third tradition:

Where did Easter bunnies come from?

There is an interesting doubling up of the Easter bunny with the fictional goddess Ostara. The modern ‘histories” of Easter tend to claim 1) that Easter was originally a pagan fertility holiday 2) of devotion to the goddess Ostara (Eastre, however spelled), 3) she used eggs as a symbol of fertility, and 4) she always carried a pet bunny because it was so fertile. Now, all of these 4 claims are fiction.

So where did the bunny really come from?

According to Karl Joseph Simrok’s 1855 book called Handbuch Der Deutschen Mythologie Mit Einschluss Der Nordischen, “The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility.” (page 551) The old 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia cites this as proof that Christians cannot use the rabbit in celebration of Easter. But I cannot find this sentence in my copy of Simrok’s book. Perhaps mine is a different edition.

What is interesting about the rabbit or hare is that it has been used by all kinds of religions around the world as a symbol. Each religion fitting its own teaching on the symbol of the rabbit. But in most cases the symbol refers to new life. In the ancient eastern Church the rabbit was used on tombstones and as a symbol of Christ. One author points out that some early Christians viewed the rabbit’s hole as a symbol of the tomb of Christ.

Christian art has several examples from the early times through the renaissance of rabbits as a symbol of Christ. To name just a few The three hare window in Paderborn, Germany and also in the monastery Muottatal in Switzerland, where three rabbits are together in a triangle with only one ear each showing, symbolizing the Trinity, Martin Schongauer’s 1470 engraving The Temptation of Jesus has three by three rabbits at the feet of Jesus Christ. His student Albrecht Dürer's woodcut of 1497 The Holy Family with the Three Hares showing two hares next to each other and the other going down toward a hole with a stone rolled next to it; Hans Baldung Grien 1512-1516 painted the altar for the Freiburg Cathedral with the second panel representing Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth where he painted the rabbits about the feet of Mary and Elizabeth; and Titan’s Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit which was painted in 1530.

I picked these works of art because they are all pre-Reformation. They demonstrate that the rabbit or hare was used a symbol of Christ and the Resurrection before the time of the Reformation.

America owes the use of the Easter Bunny to the Pennsylvania Deutch settlers who came from Alsace, a German and French area on the border between the two countries. Back in 1678 Georg Franck von Frankenau in 1682 wrote against the excessive eating of Easter eggs which parents would leave in the name of the Easter Hare--the Resurrected Christ. The people from this region settled in Pennsylvania and brought with them their symbolism and traditions surrounding the hare representing Christ, the egg representing the tomb, and Christ’s resurrection with the giving and breaking of eggs when the fast of Lent was ended on Easter Sunday.

Yes, Easter, the eggs, the bunny, all of them are still being perverted into something else by our own society. The devil, the world, and our own flesh don’t want to hear about Christ’s resurrection and will attack any symbols used to teach the resurrection.

But now you know enough of the real history of Easter and the symbols used by the Christian Church to celebrate this holiday.

The True Woman Manifesto: Mixing up Law and Gospel

2011-01-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaThe True Woman Manifesto is a short document making the circuit in the pop-Christian media. The document comes out of the True Woman conferences and is sponsored by Revive Our Hearts ministries of Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

In order for Confessional Lutherans and others to understand the foundations of the True Woman Manifesto we need to know what these groups teach about the Means of Grace and what worship means to them.

All churches and groups that claim the name Christian also claim to follow the Bible. But what is it, exactly, that they confess?

Lutherans confess these truths in the Meaning of the Third Article:

the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian Church He forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers...

This is the heart and essence of Confessional Lutheran worship. God the Holy Spirit is the one who gathers us together around His Gifts of Word and Sacrament through which He says He gives us grace, forgiveness, teaches and sanctifies us.

If the teachers behind the True Woman Manifesto deny the power of God to save and forgive through the Means of Grace--the Word and the Sacraments He has given in His Word-- what do they put in their place?

The groups strongly deny the Scripture's teaching on the Sacraments. DeMoss, in a transcription of a radio program, said:

Baptism by water does not save you. It’s merely an outward, external symbol, an expression of an internal reality. It’s an expression of a transformation that has taken place in our hearts. (Emphasis Original)
...

Have you been baptized? It will not save you, but it’s an expression of obedience, an expression of identifying to the world, to anyone who watches, and a reminder to yourself, of what Christ has done in your heart. (Mark of the Covenant: Series: Lessons from the Life of Joshua (Part 8): Before We Conquer Tuesday, April 28 2009)

In another transcription DeMoss spoke of the Lord's Supper in this way:

As we see this meal unfolding, Jesus is the One who serves. He breaks the bread. And He speaks of how it pictures His body that is going to be given for the salvation of the world. And He distributes the bread to the disciples. He distributes the wine, the juice; and He says, "This is a picture of My blood which is going to be shed for you." And He distributes it to His disciples. (The Coming Wedding: Series: The Heart of Hospitality Tuesday, December 10 2002)

Another leader associated with this movement is James MacDonald pastor at Harvest Bible Chapel. His church's statement on Baptism and Communion says:

Baptism and communion are the two ordinances required in the church. We believe that Christian baptism by immersion in water is a public identification with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. Although baptism is not required for salvation, it is commanded of all believers and is for believers only (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 2:38, 41; Acts 18:8). Scripture shows that a person was baptized after personally receiving forgiveness of sin through accepting Jesus Christ. The waters of baptism are a symbol of our death, burial, and resurrection to newness of life that happens when we become new creations in Christ (Colossians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 6:1-4).

Communion is the commemoration by believers of Christ's death, and a reminder—through the bread and the juice—of the Savior's broken body and shed blood. Communion is to be a time of confession of our sin and should be preceded by careful self-examination according to Acts 4:13; Romans 6:3-6; 1 Corinthians 11:20-29.

For both DeMoss and MacDonald Baptism and the Lord's Supper are outward symbols, reminders. They are comfortable with changing the words spoken by Christ to fit their views. And they are comfortable in changing the elements of the Supper to fit their own views.

In essence the teachers behind the True Woman Manifesto replace the promises of God's Word in Baptism and the Lord's Supper with an emphasis on their own works. They are only outward symbols to be done by Christians to show God and the world that they are sincere. Grace is removed, the focus is on the works of man.

MacDonald's church says the following about worship:

The chief purpose of mankind is to glorify God by loving Him with the entire heart, soul, mind, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5; Isaiah 43:7; Matthew 22:37). All believing men, women, and children are to glorify God and thus fulfill the purpose of their existence. Worship glorifies God through adoration (Psalm 95:6), praise (Psalm 99:5), prayer (Daniel 6:10-11), thanksgiving (Nehemiah 12:46), and a complete yielding to Him (Romans 12:1). Worship declares His worth, pays Him homage, and celebrates Him in a life of devotion. We seek to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth (Exodus 15:1-21; 2 Samuel 6:14-16; Psalm 5:7; John 4:23-24; Revelation 4:11; 5:12).

Notice the focus? Who is serving whom? The Divine Service of the Church gathering around the Word and Sacrament to be fed and nourished by God is replaced by the loud, sincere, pretty works, words, and music made by people in an effort to please God.

While we might want to praise the supporters of the True Woman Manifesto for making an effort to increase godliness, in fact, all they are doing is placing more burdens of the Law upon people. And this they do while denying the Means of Grace through which the Holy Spirit enlightens and sanctifies the Church on earth.

Lutherans can not take part with or sign the True Woman Manifesto because of the false teaching of its promoters, and because the document itself claims to be a "personal and corporate declaration of belief" while it promotes legalism and other false doctrine.

The document contains a Title, a preamble, a statement of five main beliefs, a listing of thirteen affirmations, and a list of fifteen intentions for the signers to follow and promote. These parts are interspersed with end note numbers where they have gathered the Bible passages they believe support their confession.

In the third statement of belief is the only one of the five to speak of how the individual is redeemed. In that third statement the act of repentance is placed along side faith in Christ in an ambiguous way that allows work of repenting to be a cause of salvation.

The statement says:

We believe that sin has separated every human being from God and made us incapable of reflecting His image as we were created to do. Our only hope for restoration and salvation is found in repenting of our sin and trusting in Christ who lived a sinless life, died in our place, and was raised from the dead.

Yes, this could be understood correctly. That is: God calls us through His Law to repent and through His means of Grace He "calls, gathers, and enlightens us" giving us faith, forgiveness, and eternal life. But that is reading this text with Lutheran eyes.

But this document will not be understood this way by most. For most of those denominations under the name Christian want to look at the quality of a person's repentance. They view this quality as just as important as faith--sometimes even more so. Salvation becomes contingent on how really sorry an individual is; how really sincere a person is; how really devoted a person is, and how much a person's love for God motivates his or her repentance. These qualities of repentance become the focus of the struggle for salvation rather than the grace of God in Christ. It is a focus on human works.

The groups sponsoring this movement to renewal deny the very means through which God grants His grace. They focus on a list of things individual Christian women are to do to make themselves conform to their view of what biblical womanhood should be. While denying the Means of Grace they direct women to become better by doing better under both the Law of God and their own traditions.

But a person cannot save himself/herself by God by the Law, nor can a person become a better Christian by simply observing the Law. Salvation is only through faith in Christ's work for us. And that salvation is given to us through the Word and Sacrament and nowhere else.

Word of the Week for January 2010 week 1

2010-12-30T22:27:00.000-08:00

Word of the Week January week 1

Image via WikipediaWho’s Lying about Christian Holidays?
I have heard “Winter Solstice” so many times this Christmas Season it makes me sick. We have artificial “Holiday” programs that avoid everything to do with Jesus Christ. How did it get this way? Why does it seem so many, even in our own local communities and schools, are so concerned about offending people who don’t live here? And why do they have to show their so-called “concern” by slamming and offending Christ and Christians?

The main Christian Holy-days that are run over today are Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Ash Wednesday, and Hallow E’en (All Saint’s Eve’). So in this series of articles for Word of the Week we are going to look into the actual history of these holidays or Holy Days. There are more Holy Days that could be listed: All Souls Day, The Annunciation, St. John’s Day, Holy Innocents, and so many, many more. But I think that we can start to understand what has happened by looking at these five holidays that have been significantly changed by the culture around us.

Let us start with “Winter Solstice” or Christmas. It is ironic that there is already enough information available to anyone who cares to discover the truth about Christmas. But the Politically Correct way we are told to understand Christmas is that the Romans celebrated the “rebirth of the sun” on December 25th. Then, Christianity (especially the Roman Catholic Church) wanted to eliminate the pagan elements and claimed that Christ was born on this same day to pervert the pagan holiday into a Christian Holy Day.

Just in this past December a scholar from Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia, named Andrew McGowan wrote an article for the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review on this very topic. The article is very helpful because the author went to the original writings. So we will do the same.

Three main questions: 1) When did the Romans celebrate the winter solstice? 2) When did the earliest Christians celebrate Christmas? 3) And when was Christmas associated with the pagan holiday of the winter solstice?

Question 1) So, when did the Romans celebrate the winter solstice? It was the shortest day of the year, in our calendar, December 21 or 22. The Romans didn’t use our modern calendar. And several of the Roman emperors added months and days to their official year to honor one emperor or another. The origins of our modern calendar date several centuries after the birth of Christ.

The main point of this calendar mess is that even with the calendar reforms of Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. the winter solstice hardly ever occurred on December 25. The months were for watching the Moon. The winter solstice would occur on a different day each year because it was based on the Sun.

It is important for us to notice that none of the early Christian writers pointed to the winter solstice as an important religious date. And it is just as important to notice that those early Christian writers wrote that Christ was conceived on what is March 25th in our modern calendar. Nine months later is December 25th.

The winter solstice was not an issue for the Christians of the first four centuries in our calendar. Christ’s conception and birth was. December 25th was celebrated in the early church because it was nine months after Christ’s conception.

2) So, we have begun to answer the question: When did the earliest Christians celebrate Christmas? Scholars in the late 1800s began to confuse this question, even though Christians all around them celebrated on the days had been handed down as tradition everywhere around them. The tradition to celebrate Christmas on those days was almost one thousand nineteen hundred years old when these scholars began questioning it.

It is possible for traditions to become confused and changed. It only takes one or two generations for this to happen in a small area, like Grygla. But this tradition was spread all across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. And the tradition was consistent. There was a difference between the Eastern Orthodox Christians and the Western Christians on which day should be emphasized. Should the Christian Church primarily celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25th, when His birth was announced to the people of Israel, or on January 6th when the Gentile Wise men, or Magoi, visited him. Both days are celebrated in the Eastern and the Western Church. And both days were based on the early Church figuring from Scripture that Jesus was conceived in the Spring of the year at the time of the full moon of Passover.

Around the year 200 A.D. the Church Father Hippolytus in his Commentary on Daniel 4.23.3 says:

“For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the kalends of January [December 25th], the 4th day of the week [Wednesday], while Augustus was in his forty-second year, [2 or 3BC]”

Clement of Alexandria, who wrote 193-215 AD, in his work entitled “Stromata” writes:

“From the birth of Christ, therefore, to the death of Commodus are, in all, 194 years, 1 month, 13 days. And there are those who have determined not only the year of our Savior’s genesis, but even the day, which they say took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus on the 25th of Pachon…”

Christ’s genesis, or conception on the 25th of Pachon was in what our calendar would equate with March 25th. The celebration of Christ’s birth would be nine months later: December 25th, in our calendar.

I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to pin down which day Christ was actually born, but to point out when the earliest Christians actually celebrated the birth of Christ. I am also showing that the choice of that date had nothing to do with any pagan celebration of the winter solstice in Rome.

It was not until much much later that scholars and others would begin to claim that Christians tried to mingle the celebration of Christ’s birth with the celebration of the winter solstice.

3) So we come to the question: When was Christmas associated with the pagan holiday of the winter solstice?

In the 18th and 19th centuries some scholars found a manuscript from the 12th century in a marginal note of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi conjectured that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan winter solstice.

We must remember what was happening in Bible scholarship at that time. During this period many unbelieving academics were trying to show how Christianity evolved out of pagan religions. They reasoned that Christianity--as they thought of it--was the highest evolved religion. They had no written evidence; they had no material evidence. But they seized upon this marginal note of Dionysius who noticed that the dates were close together and conjectured that the dates could be related.

Dionysius did not understand why January 6th was chosen nor did he understand why December 25th was chosen. He just wrote what he thought. From that conjecture a great number of unbelieving academics have woven a fictionalized “history” of Christmas and it’s relationship to the pagan winter solstice.

Neo-paganism reared its head in the late 1960s in Europe and the United States. And the myth of the winter solstice being the source of Christmas has been preached from college professor to four generations of students trying to comply so they could earn their degrees.

Now, even listening to the local radio stations and their little segments on the “history of the holidays” one hears this fictional tripe.

But in point of fact, December 25th was chosen by the Church to celebrate Christ’s birth long before any interest in pagan Roman festivals was ever reborn. December 25th as the Birth and January 6th as the Epiphany of our Lord have been celebrated by the Christian Church since the earliest times. While there were other dates that were proposed in the early Church, by the year 350 these dates were pretty much agreed upon as the celebration dates for these feasts.

Christmas is not a pagan holiday. December 25th is not a day stolen by the Christian Church from pagans. It is the day nine months after the early Christians understood when Christ was conceived according to Scripture.

Word of the Week for Dec 11th, 2010

2010-12-10T06:12:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaStill No Room...

And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths,
and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.(Luke 2:7)

It seems that each Christmas many of us grumble about the pressure to remove Christ from the “Holidays” with just saying “season’s greetings.”

Really, Christians should expect nothing else from the world. That doesn’t mean an individual, congregation, or community can’t go against the grain by proclaiming the birth of Christ publicly. It just means that the world hates Christ and will do whatever it can to get rid of Him or distort who He really is and what He really did.

John’s Gospel speaks of how the world received Christ:

“10 He was in the world,
and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God,
to those who believe in His name:
13 who were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man,
but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth. ” (John 1:10-14)

The world He created did not recognize Him when He came to earth. His own did not receive Him. But there are those who receive Him by faith, not by biology, not by decision, not by choice of will, but born of God through faith in Christ, “to those who believed in His name.”

The reception for the Christ was poor. No bed, no room, no house. There was no place to welcome the King of creation. Just a dirty stable with the stink of animals and a feeding trough for a cradle.

As soon as King Herod found out about the birth he tried to have Jesus killed. What a welcome. Christ became a fugitive from the powers of the world.

When He began His earthly ministry at age 30 people were still trying to destroy Him. Remember Christ raising Lazarus from the dead? What a wonderful and clear fulfillment of prophecy. There could be no doubt who this Jesus of Nazareth really is. True, many were following Him.

But what was the reaction of the authorities to this miracle? John records in chapter 11:

45 Then many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen the things Jesus did, believed in Him. 46 But some of them went away to the Pharisees and told them the things Jesus did. 47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, “What shall we do? For this Man works many signs. 48 If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.”

49 And one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, 50 nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” 51 Now this he did not say on his own authority; but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for that nation only, but also that He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad.

53 Then, from that day on, they plotted to put Him to death.

And the night He was betrayed Christ prayed the following in John 17:

“14 I have given them Your word;
and the world has hated them because they are not of the world,
just as I am not of the world.
15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world,
but that You should keep them from the evil one.
16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
17 Sanctify them by Your truth.
Your word is truth.
18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.
19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.”

The world hates Christ, it hates Christmas, it hates Christians. That hatred is obvious when someone desecrates a church or a Christian symbol--like the art recently displayed at the Smithsonian museum.
But that hatred of Christ and His saving word, the hatred of Christmas and the message of God’s love for the world in Christ comes in more subtle ways as well.

The most basic is the neglect of God’s Word. “Sanctify them by the truth, Your Word is truth,” Christ prayed. It’s not just church bodies which change from the clear Word of God in obvious ways, it is also those who just don’t want to be “offensive” in this world. Those of us who would rather avoid feeling strange and like we don’t fit in. We want to fit in and get along.

Christ doesn’t want us to fit in, He wants us to be set apart from the world by what the Bible teaches--not in a sanctimonious and self-righteous way. We are to be humble, admit our sin, and believe the forgiveness Christ has declared to us. We are to proclaim the message of the forgiveness of sins, relying on God’s promise through the Word and Sacraments and not on what the world would have us do.

Paul described Christ’s humility this way in his letter to the Philippians chapter 2:

“5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
7 but made Himself of no reputation,
taking the form of a bondservant,
and coming in the likeness of men.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death,
even the death of the cross.
9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him
and given Him the name which is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of those in heaven,
and of those on earth,
and of those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”

Christ came as a child to serve, to teach, and to give His life in our place. That’s who we worship when we look at the manger. The manger is special and glorious not because of being part of a pretty Christmas scene. The manger is a dirty and low place, a humiliating place to put a child. The manger is glorious because of who was placed in it. That baby is the Creator, the Judge, the King of Glory.

The stable in our nativity sets is not merely a pretty decoration, it is a reminder of the abject poverty of Christ and the world’s rejection of Him even at His birth. “There was no room for them at the inn.” They couldn’t buy out another person. The stable is glorious because of who it is that was born there that night two thousand years ago.

And in the eyes of the Heavenly Father, all those who believe in Christ are also glorious. This is not because believers are good people or better than anyone else. Quite the opposite, it is because Christ has given them His Holy Spirit and dwells in Christians. For it is not just the world and His own that rejected Him, our own flesh rejects Him as well. But He has conquered. He has served. He has clothed all believers in His righteousness through His Word and the water of Baptism. And it is through faith in Christ in His Word alone that any have salvation.

That’s why the world hates Christmas, Christ, and Christians. That’s why the world doesn’t want the truth of Christ to be talked about in any public forum. And that’s why our own cowardly flesh shrinks away from reading the Bible every day.

Do you want to put “Christ” back into Christmas? Read the Bible. Not just at Christmas, but every day. Confess your sins and believe in the forgiveness Christ declares to you in the Gospel. The Holy Spirit works through the Word of God to give faith in Christ. And giving forgiveness and faith, He also gives the resurrection. That is the real gift given to the world at Christmas. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Blessed Christmas to you all.

Trinity 15, Sept. 11/12, 2010 What if You are Above the Fire?

2010-09-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

Trinity 15, Sept. 11/12, 2010
Historic Series Gospel
Matthew 6:24-36

24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

We Pray:
Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank You for all Your benefits. that You have given us life and graciously sustained us to this day: We beseech You, do not take Your blessing from us; preserve us from covetousness, that we may serve You only, love and abide in You, and not defile ourselves by idolatrous love of wealth, but hope and trust only in Your grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.

Theme: What if You are Above the Fire?

There are certain events in our lives that change us, each of us. These events change the way we react to things, people, ideas, information. There’s the weight of responsibility with the love of becoming married and having children. There is the loss of closely love family and friends.

Nine years ago, just after I got to work, my wife called me and told me to check the news.

What I saw changed my life permanently. At that time I worked at the Helen C. White College Undergraduate Library at the University of Wisconsin. My coworkers, David and Bruce, and I were in charge of the UW-Madison’s largest computer and multi-media labs. As soon as we saw what was going on in New York we started streaming the news to any and all the computers the students wanted to use. We switched the two multi-media theater screens to constant streaming of the news. Several thousand students came into those labs to watch.

When we hooked up the large screens we saw people jumping from the building.

It was so terrible that everyone was glued to the 200+ screens and two large screens.

There was no joy, no happiness.

A man falling, falling. It took maybe 10 seconds. But it was seared into our eyes.

We watched.

What would you do? What would I do in that situation--driven by the intense heat and vile smoke of the fire to get to any clear and breathable air?

Christ said, “30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

That was a day of trouble.

One of the audio reports that day was of Mayor Giuliani saying that the police and fire departments would do their best. They thought they could get everyone out who was below the fire.

They could do nothing for those above the fire.

According to the reports I remember from later the fire department and police officers who gave their lives that day were able to save 98% of the people below the fire before the buildings came down.

“NIST(National Institute for Standards and Technology) estimated that about 17,400 civilians were in the World Trade Center complex at the time of the attacks, while turnstile counts from the Port Authority suggest that 14,154 people were typically in the Twin Towers by 8:45 a.m.[47][48] The vast majority of people below the impact zone safely evacuated the buildings, along with 18 people who were in the impact zone in the south tower and a number above the impact zone who evidently used the one intact stairwell in the south tower.[49] At least 1,366 people died who were at or above the floors of impact in the North Tower and at least 618 in the South Tower, where evacuation had begun before the second impact.[50] Thus over 90% of the workers and visitors who died in the Towers had been at or above impact.” Wikipediea.

But there were people above the fire. If that were you, me, one of our children, our spouse, parent, or friends, what would we think? What would we wish?

Christ’s promise is that God the Father knows all we need, loves us enough to send His Son into this world to die that we might have eternal life, and will do only what is best for us and our salvation.

What if we were above the fire? What would we think about?

How did we really react that day?

Only a few of us could honestly say that if we were above the fire our first thought would be a joyful, “I’m going home today to be with my heavenly Father.” Or, “My child is going to be with Christ.”

There are some Christians who are blessed to have that steady and joyful nature. But for most of us we react like the rest of the sinners in the world.

In our sinful hearts our prayer is not for us to seek God and His righteousness. Our prayer is for ourselves, and ... our things, and ... for those who we love and want to be with around us.

When something life changing like this attack happens, disturbing our lives, the true nature of our sinful flesh comes out in our thoughts, and words, and sometimes in our actions. And we, as weak as we are, can only pour out our hearts with what corruption rests in them. Most of us thought the words or worse, and some of us said these or worse with the construction worker. It was not a prayer of thanksgiving for heaven, but the plight of a desperate human with the words, “Oh Shit...”

That’s what is really in our hearts. That is what our own nature and self can honestly confess. We are weak and enemies of God by nature. And by our sinful natures there is nothing good in us. Even what we consider righteousness in ourselves is as “filthy Rags” (Is. 64:4)

Now, probably some children and a few who weren’t really paying attention to what is being said here will only remember that the Pastor said this word from the pulpit. And that’s too bad. Parents, you will need to explain why the word is appropriate to describe our natural state. It is a vulgar word, but not sinful. And sometimes we are too self-righteous to bear the most appropriate words to describe our own vulgar natures.

What if we are above the fire? Or one of our kids?

Do we have that confidence that God the Father does love us so much that He did not withhold His only-begotten Son? Do we have the confidence that Christ came into this world under the Law to redeem us who were under the law by suffering the punishment of Hell in our place and giving us credit for His righteous life?

Maybe you or I don’t feel this confidence. But we have it. We have it because Christ has given us faith through His means of grace in Baptism, Word, and Sacrament. The Father has borne witness, testifying that He has saved us by His grace to us in Jesus Christ.

And that is why our Old Testament Lesson is so important, especially on this day we start our Sunday School year.

Deuteronomy 6:4-7 says: “ 4"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Out of the 2000 or so people above the fire, there were probably some Christians. People who are our brothers and sisters in Christ who faced that time of waiting above the fire with no hope of earthly rescue. With all the emotions and fears, and all the regrets for people they would never see again in this life, all the things they left undone; they realized that they would be in heaven in a short time. Because they were normal sinful humans they probably did not have as their first thought the joy that they would be going home to Christ in a short while.

But the teaching of God’s Word; the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the faith God gave them through Word and Sacrament kept them safe for the resurrection.

This is why we teach our children. This is why we talk about and read God’s Word. This is why we gather for worship. This is why we have Sunday School and Wednesday School. It is so that we do not mourn like those who have no hope. “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

What if you were above the fire?

Great tragedy will fall on most of us in this life. We may linger before we die, but know that we have just a little time where no one can do anything to save our earthly life. Do we fill those moments with guilt and regret over what we think we are loosing in this world?

Christ said: ““Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

He didn’t promise earthly riches, health, or peace. He promised the resurrection and eternal life and peace with God. He warned us that because of our faith in Christ, the world would hate us, persecute us, and try to destroy our faith through the deceptions of earthly comfort and physical and emotional terror.

When we first find out that we have only moments left the weakness of our flesh may cause us to think or utter the only confession our sinful flesh can make, the words of that construction worker or words like them. But Christ is greater than our flesh and has overcome our sin and doubt with His own suffering and death for them on our behalf.

God doesn’t base our salvation on what we left undone or what we hoped we could do. Salvation is by God’s grace through faith in Christ alone. And after our moment of doubt and regret the Holy Spirit builds in us the confidence of the Resurrection because Christ has implanted His Gospel in us.

We can actually say with joy, “I get to go home now!” And leave all else in this world in God’s hands.

But some will take this event to turn it inside out and use it against God by saying, “If God is so loving how could He let such a terrible thing happen?” It was not God that crashed those planes into those buildings. It was a small number sinful men who specifically hated Christianity and the prosperity that God has granted to the United States.

God did not cause Adam and Eve to sin. He did not cause these men to sin. And He certainly didn’t cause those people to die. Rather “God so loved the world that He gave His onlybegotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

God’s Word, His Law, and His Gospel are all about our sinful state and the resurrection He gives to us through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for us.

What if it was your child who was above the fire?

We teach these words diligently to our children.

We are blessed by the Father’s gracious providence to live in a country and time when we have antibiotics, surgery, medicines, and medical imaging. In our times most children outlive their parents. It wasn’t always so. Very often mothers would die young in childbirth. Many, many children would die of all kinds of disease. Plagues would cover cities and countries taking with them the young, the feeble, and be indiscriminate killers of the rest. This worldly comfort can lure us into the false idea that we are entitled to good times, good health, prosperity, and good long days.

The truth is that we deserve nothing but God’s wrath and punishment here--now, and also for eternity. It is by God’s gracious providence that in this life any of us have any creature comforts. We don’t deserve our home, our food, our family, our children...They all belong first to God.

So we teach these words of God diligently to our children.

We teach them, because sometimes they are caught above the fire, and there is nothing we can do in this world to rescue them. But we can have the confidence that they will be going home soon. And we can know that we will see them again in the resurrection.

One of my co-workers at the UW-Madison, a woman named Rachel, got a phone call from her daughter right after the first plane hit. Rachel’s daughter was in the World Trade Center and was being evacuated. Rachel and her daughter talked, but were cut off when the first tower went down.

Cellular phone systems were routed through the towers on the WTC. Ham radio operators had to take over until the towers were up again. When they came up Rachel’s daughter called her. Rachel said, “At that moment I almost believe there is a God.”

How hard does God have to slap us across the face to show us he is there? Her child was lost! And God returned her.

In her place, God gave His onlybegotten Son. Believe in Him. He is the righteousness of God. Christ said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

9-11 is not the only day of trouble. There will be more for each of us in the future. But that day showed us something profound about our own human nature, we are filthy sinners who wish to blame God for the evil that we humans do. That day showed us the selfless sacrifice of hundreds of firemen and police officers to rescue people they didn’t know.

Is it so difficult to understand, then, that the Son of God might want to give His life to save humans? Yes it is difficult. It is impossible without faith in Christ.

The truth is that we are above the fire. All of us always have been.

We have taken God's providential grace for granted.

Our days are numbered. Really, they are. Just because we might not know how many days we have left doesn’t mean that it is a very short time. What do we do? Live lives of regret? No! We cast our cares upon the one who gave His life for us and thank Him that we will soon be home.

We look forward to the Resurrection, the reunion of God and man bought by the God-Man Jesus Christ.

We are going home.

Amen.

Word of the Week for June 29

2010-06-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

What affects our Faith? Word and Sacrament

For the past few weeks I've been focusing on what affects our faith in Christ in a negative way. At the same time I have been driecting readers in those same articles to the Word of God and His Means of Grace.

The great enemies of the Christian faith are summarised by Dr. Martin Luther on the Sixth Petition of the Lord's Prayer in the Small Catechism:

“And lead us not into temptation.” “What does this mean?”

'God, indeed, tempts no one; but we pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us, nor seduce us into misbelief, despair, and other great shame and vice; and though we be assailed by them, that still we may finally overcome and gain the victory.'

A fuller description of these enemies is found in Luther's Large Catechism;

“Temptation ... is of three kinds, namely, of the flesh, of the world, and of the devil. In the flesh we dwell and carry the old Adam about our neck, who exerts himself and incites us daily to inchastity, laziness, gluttony and drunkenness, avarice and deception, to defraud our neighbor and to overcharge him, and, in short, to all manner of evil lusts which cleave to us by nature, and to which we are incited by the society, example and what we hear and see of other people, which often wound and inflame even an innocent heart.

“Next comes the world, which offends us in word and deed, and impels us to anger, and impatience. In short, there is nothing but hatred and envy, enmity, violence and wrong, unfaithfulness, vengeance, cursing, raillery, slander, pride and haughtiness, with superfluous finery, honor, fame, and power, where no one is willing to be the least, but every one desires to sit at the head and to be seen before all.

“Then comes the devil, inciting and provoking in all directions, but especially agitating matters that concern the conscience and spiritual affairs, namely, to induce us to despise and disregard both the Word and works of God, to tear us away from faith, hope, and love, and bring us into misbelief, false security, and obduracy, or, on the other hand, to despair, denial of God, blasphemy, and innumerable other shocking things. These are indeed snares and nets, yea, real fiery darts which are shot most venomously into the heart, not by flesh and blood, but by the devil.” (paragraphs 101-104)

But set in contrast are the three witnesses God has placed on the earth through which the Holy Spirit brings us forgiveness, comfort, endurance, and eternal life.

He has given us His Word, the Bible. It is to be read, preached (Mark 16:15), proclaimed in the Absolution (John 20:22-23) and relied upon. In His Word He teaches us His Law and His Gospel. The Law is that Word of God which tells us how we are to be, and what we are to do and not to do (Leviticus 19:2). The Gospel is that Word of God wich reveals the salvation Christ has won for all people (John 3:16). The shows us our sin and the wrath of God (Romans 3:20); the Gospel shows us our Savior and the grace of God in Christ (Romans 3:21-26). The Law must be preached to all people, but especially to impenitent sinners (I Timothy 1:9); the Gospel must be preached to sinners who are troubled because of thier sins (Matthew 11:28).

He has given us Baptism (Matthew 28:18-20) where He takes our sin and guilt from us and places it upon Himself on the Cross (Romans 6:1-14). Baptism is also where He clothes us with His righteousness (Galatians 3:26-29). Through Baptism Christ washes away our sins (Acts 22:16; I Peter 3:21), grants us faith and pours out into us the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38-39; John 3:5-6; Titus 3:5-8) and cleans our consciences of the guilt of sin so we may stand before the thone of God on Judgment Day (Ephesians 5:25-26; I Peter 3:21; Mark 16:16).

And He has given us the Lord's Supper where he nourishes us with the forgiveness of sins by the same Body and Blood that were given on the cross (Matthew 26:26-29; I Corinthians 11). In the Lord's supper the real and true body and blood of Christ are given to us sinners (I Corinthians 10:16). He gives His body and blood to us to forgive our sins and strengthen our faith; as He said “given for you for the forgiveness of sins.” He unites Christians together through His body and blood (I Corinthians 10:17). The Supper is for sinners who are sorry for their sins and desire Christ's forgiveness (I Corinthians 11:17-29).

These great gifts testify here on earth to the grace of God to us in Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit comes to us through the Word, the Water, and the Blood: as St. John wrote:

“And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.” (I John 5:8)

And these gifts are the answer and cure for the attacts that come upon us through the devil, the world, and our own flesh. This is were God feeds, heals, comforts, and secures us in His grace. Word and Sacrament are where God has said He comes down to us for our good.

“For He has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whome we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13-14)

Word of the Week for June 22, 2010

2010-06-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

What affects our Faith? Self-interest

It was difficult choosing the phrase “self-interest” because “selfishness, self-centered-ness, sinful nature, self-esteem, ego, the flesh” all are terms that overlap and describe various aspects of our own self-serving nature.

Of course popular society and those stongly affected by popular society don’t want to think of this as a problem. But on the night He was betrayed to be crucified, Christ said: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13) And He both suffered and died to demonstrate that love for you. But most of America and Europe would rather side with Whitney Houston when she sang “I found the greatest love of all Inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself: It is the greatest love of all ”.

So why is it that we should go to Church? Most go to Church for Whitney Houston’s reasons: self-interest, selfishness, a self-serving desire to feel that we are better than others for some reason or another, or at least, better than we were before. In being better, perhaps, somehow God will be more pleased with us.

But self-interest is exactly the wrong reason. We do not go to Church to get things from God based on our self-interest. Professor Daniel Deutschlander rightly says:

“We do not come to church to do our own thing, anymore than we go to the emergency room in the hospital to do our own thing. We go to both places wounded, in need of help that only comes from another. We go to both places for healing, where our opinion and preference is of no consequence; only that of the healer matters.” (p. 6)

Our own sinful natures crave self-satisfaction from any experience, especially religious experience. But Christ pomises the Cross.

“Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34–38)

What do we seek from worship? Is it genuine or merely counterfeit Christianity? Again, Prof. Deutshlander points out:

“We see on every hand a desire to make Christianity fun and happy-go-lucky. Some churches and their leaders go so far as to claim that God really wants Christians always to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Others turn worship services into hours of self-discovery; the goal is to give the Christian personal fulfillment and better character. If the individual can learn to get along better with himself, then he will get along better with everyone else too, and God should be happy about that. Still others are obsessed with the notion that the true church should be successful, big, and influential in the world and national politics. Within the church, no matter what denominational label the particular church may wear, many members want to be their own bible; they want the freedom to pick and choose what doctrines to believe and what behavior to praise or blame. Their choices change with their circumstances of the moment, and woe betide any preacher who tells them on the basis of Scriptures that they are wrong and their choices damnable in theeyes of God. All of that is a theology of glory, a theology which lets man be his own god and turns the God of the Bible into a creature subject to personal whims of the moment.” (p. vi)

But the Son of God and Son of Man, Jesus Christ, did not come to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45). The Son of God “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:7–8)

Christ did not go to the cross for His own self-interest. He went to the cross for the benefit of those who hate Him by their own natures. He went to the cross for sinners. And we are those sinners. He served us! God served us!

So Church should not be a place where we look for something relevant to our needs and desires. It should be a gathering around God’s Word where we confess our sin and utter inadequacy to satisfy His justice. Church should be a place where we depend upon His Word to forgive our sins in the ways He has established: through the Bible, through the Absolution, through Baptism, through the Lord’s Supper.

Many years ago a friend accused me of depending upon Christ and my religion as a Christian as a “crutch” to get me through life. I replied, “No, Christ is not a crutch. He’s the whole life support system of someone who cannot live without medical intervention. He is the operating table, the anesthesiologist, the doctor, the recovery: He is all that we need in this body and life. Because He has given us His own body and life for us, so that we will rise again at the last day to live forever with Him as He originally created us.

It is not our self-interest, but Christ’s love for us.

Prof. Deutschlander’s book is called “The Theology of the Cross” from Northwestern Publishing House, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2008.

Word of the Week for June 15, 2010

2010-06-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

What affects our Faith? Media.

The Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15: “33 Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” 34 Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”
The members of the Church at Corinth were greatly affected by society around them. Corinth was a multicultural city situated on a major trade route. People from everywhere came through the city. And they brought with them their goods, their money, their habits, and their beliefs.

The city of Corinth was as diverse and multi-cultural as any city today would want to be. They had schools, gymnasiums, sporting events, great shopping centers with goods from everywhere, theaters, temples with a wide variety of beliefs, and they had a night life that would equal modern Amsterdam or Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Entertainment meant a great deal. Entertainment, news, religions were all tied together in commerce. And through the media of their day, the Christians at Corinth had begun to fall prey to all kinds of sin and perversions.

They had begun to look at worship as an entertainment and merely a social gathering(1 Cor. 11:17–22). They would form groups around which ever pastor seemed to please them the most with his sermons (1 Cor. 2). They looked for the latest worldly wisdom and for dramatic miraculous signs (I Cor. 1:18–25; 3:18–23). They accepted homosexuality, divorce, polygamy, fornication, incest, prostitution, and even the use of children for sexual pleasure (1 Cor 5–7). They had allowed themselves to view religions just as a way to get along with others and to improve their cash flow (1 Cor. 5–6 and 8).

They allowed themselves to be so affected by the media of their day that they had defiled the Lord’s Supper, and taught that those things which God condemns were really not so bad. After all, some of those things God condemned were fun. They could figure out how to improve their bottom line and their social standing by letting some of these commandments of God go by the wayside.

Proverbs 1:10 My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.

I suppose that some readers might think that they are smarter or wiser than the Corinthians of that day. But we are not. Just as they were, every day we also are flooded with shows, articles, movies, internet, TV, radio, and conversation that entice us to put God’s commandments aside. And all for the same reasons that the Corinthians did: personal pleasure, personal gain, and avoiding looking like a fool in front of the neighbors.

God doesn’t change. His commandments do not change. It is we who change and leave His Word to do our own thing. God does not make exceptions for us because we think that we know better in our time. If we really knew better, why do we engross ourselves with the same old sins that they did?

Looking foolish to the world is not bad, just uncomfortable for our sinful natures.

Paul wrote in I Cor. 2

1 And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. 2 For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3 I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4 And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Instead of immersing ourselves in the media, let us immerse ourselves in the Wisdom and Knowledge of God. Proverbs 9: 10 says “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Let us abide in His Word, the Bible. And through His Word gain a heart of wisdom and salvation. Let us never underestimate the affect of the media and popular culture have upon us. But let us turn always back to the reading and teaching of His Word of Salvation as our Way, Truth, and Life.

God’s Word is our great heritage
And shall be ours forever;
To spread its light from age to age
Shall be our chief endeavor.
Through life it guides our way,
In death it is our stay.
Lord, grant while words endure,
We keep its teachings pure
Throughout all generations.

Word of the Week for June 8, 2010

2010-06-06T04:32:00.001-07:00

What affects our Faith? Pluralism.

As I wrote last week: None of us grows up in a vacuum. We are affected by all the social, political, philosophical, educational, and media influences that surround us as we grow up in this world. But we don’t always know what these influences are, where they come from, or how they might contradict the truth of God’s Word.

Let me start with a question. Would you want your doctor or your banker to be a liar?

This week we focus on Pluralism. Religious Pluralism is the idea that all religions are really different paths that lead to the same place. The term “Pluralism” is used for several different religious views. What I want to focus on in this article is the religious parallel to cultural pluralism in the politically correct “diversity” movement. In order for Pluralists to make their claims they need to lie. Pluralists need to lie about what each religion considers to be its central truths. And, in order to fit them into their own false views about the nature of God and the world, the Pluralists also need to distort what every other religion teaches.

Religious Pluralism makes these three main claims:

First Religious Pluralism claims that Christians and other religious observers are intolerant (and possibly ethnocentric) to claim that their religion is true to the exclusion of others. This kind of thinking, the pluralists argue, has lead to religious wars and bloodshed.

Second, when the Pluralists compares and contrasts the teachings of various religion, they claim that none of them have the whole truth, like the blind men with the elephant.

Third, Pluralists hold that all religions have the same basic teaching on ethics: the Golden Rule. Furthermore, they claim that each religion is just as effective as the next at causing positive change in a person’s life.

Each of these three claims distorts the truth, and deliberately misrepresents every other religion. The first claim is simply hypocritical. Pluralists claim that their view of religion is the only right view. And they are intolerant of any other view. So they lie.

They lie about how each different religion views the ultimate truth of God. Let’s take the blind men and the elephant story as the example. A king wants to stop religious quarreling so he gathers blind men to demonstrate what religion is like.

The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

A wise man explains to them: “All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned.”

But the problem is that none of them is right at all. You, the reader have to know what an elephant really is before the story makes any sense. The story wouldn’t make any sense to most readers if, instead of an elephant, the story used the word cthulhu. The king knew what the elephant really is, so did his wise man. And they deliberately withheld this truth from the blind men. That is, even in the old Buddhist, Hindu, Jainist versions of this story, the people who promote this notion of pluralism base everything on lies and deception.

Pluralists deliberately steer people away from knowing 1) who God really is, 2) what happens when we die, and 3) that sin against God is the real cause of all our unhappiness and problems in this world.

Unfortunately, religious Pluralism permeates our society at every level. The proponents of “diversity” promote this web of lies to dumb down people and make them conform to their own way.

The way for Christians to deal with Pluralism is to know the Bible. Read it. Know that every word of the Scripture is given by God’s inspiration (2 Tim. 3:16). Besides, there is a better example to show what reality is like. In Luke 16:19–31 Jesus tells us about The Rich Man and Lazarus. The rich man, through lack of faith, ends up in hell. Lazarus, though poor, trusted that God would deliver him. Through faith, Lazarus is in heaven. The rich man wants Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to teach his brothers: so they won’t have to go to hell.

Does Abraham say “there are many ways”? No. He says: ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ That is: They have God’s Written Word. That written Word will save them from Hell.

But the rich man argues: ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’

Abraham emphasizes again the power of Salvation is only through the Scriptures: ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’

There are not many ways. On the night He was betrayed Christ told us: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

Word of the Week for June 1, 2010

2010-06-06T04:31:00.000-07:00

What affects our Faith? Materialism.

This week we celebrate the festival of Holy Trinity. During the first half of the Church Year we focused on three main festivals. The first was Christmas. This included everything from the First Sunday in Advent until the end of the Epiphany Season with the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ.

The lessons during the Christmas Season teach us about the gift that God the Father gave to us by sending His Son into our world, born of the virgin Mary.

The second main festival was Easter. The Easter season includes everything from Ash Wednesday, through Lent, Holy Week, and all the 40 days following Easter until we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus Christ to the Right Hand of God the Father. The lessons during this season teach us about the gift that God the Son gave to us with His life for us, His death in our place, and His resurrection from the dead. All of the lessons focus us on Christ as our redeemer from Satan, sin, and death itself. We have the resurrection from the dead because of Christ’s work for us.

The third main festival was Pentecost. The Pentecost festival celebrates the gift that the Holy Spirit gives to us of faith, the forgiveness of sins, and eternal life through the Word of God and the Sacraments established by Christ. These Sacraments are given to us to refresh us in the forgiveness of sins, to build our faith, and to keep us as we walk through this valley of the shadow of death (Ps. 23)

The Sunday after Pentecost we celebrate the Festival of the Holy Trinity as a summary of the previous festivals and looking forward to the application of the Word of God on our lives as sinners in this world who look forward to the resurrection on the day when Christ will return.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 2: 4–10

Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

None of us grows up in a vacuum. We are affected by all the social, political, philosophical, educational, and media influences that surround us as we grow up in this world. But we don’t always know what these influences are, where they come from, or how they might contradict the truth of God’s Word.

Let us focus on just one of the world views that strongly influence us: Materialism. Materialism teaches that only those things which we can know by our own senses, reason, and tools are of any value. Materialism rejects the spiritual. It rejects miracles, angels, demons, the devil, and God. Materialism places its hope and trust in the ability of humans through their senses and intelligence to be able to figure out anything and everything that might be of any value. Materialism is utilitarian. That means that the main argument of Materialism is that “the ends justify the means.”

Materialism is the foundational philosophy behind Communism, Socialism, eugenics, evolution, modern astrophysics, sub-atomic physics, and all so-called “scientific” branches that deal with the origin or end of the universe.

But Materialism is a blind faith in human reason as the power that can solve all problems: physical, emotional, societal or otherwise. It is an empty deceit of human pride. It is used to justify all kinds of atrocities against living people in the name of “the greater good.” Which means that someone in higher human authority tells you that you must go without and suffer so that many others can be served by the authority.

Throughout the 20th century the German death camps, the Soviet gulags under Lenin and Stalin, the Chinese prisons under Mao and his successors, the workings of Pol Pot, Che Guevera, Castro, and many other Materialist governments have killed hundreds of millions of people. All of these deaths were justified by “the greater good.”

Of course, this “greater good” was only what they could try to make out with their reason.
Think about the number of people killed. That number dwarfs the total of all those who died fighting the wars of the 20th century added together with those who died of crime. The only cause of death that comes close to this record during the 20th century is the number of babies killed by abortion. And abortion is fully justified by Materialism.

For the Christian, Materialism is a very strong influence. While we have been taught that our home is heaven; and while we live here in this world under the temptation and isolation that confronts every Christian of every age—we tend to doubt God’s presence in our lives. We doubt His Love because our senses do not tell us He is there. We want to feel His presence and Love, but we simpley do not at times of trouble.

But where did God say He would come to us? In His Word and Sacraments. His Word is not spoken lightly. The Son of God gave his life and suffered great torment to build the “many mansions” for us. Do you want to know how much God loves you and stands by you? Look to the pain of Christ in His great suffering from the time of His betrayal on Maundy Thursday until the time He gave up His spirit on Good Friday.

Our senses cannot confirm this truth. But it is true. God died for us that we have forgiveness and eternal life. Materialism is a way that leads to death. But faith in Christ gives us eternal life. Only through His Word and Sacraments does God confront us with His gift of love in Christ. We cannot find Christ in nature or by our reason. Only the Word of God gives us Christ.

As we celebrate the Festival of Holy Trinity we remember the great gifts of each person of the One True God who has secured our eternal salvation. This gift is beyond our reason and our senses.

For we know that if our body is destroyed, God will resurrect us, a body not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this sinful flesh we groan, earnestly desiring to be resurrected at home in heaven, if indeed, having been having been brought to faith in Christ we shall not be found faithless. Because we who have been given faith in Christ groan, being burdened, not because we want to die and leave this world, but because we want to live with God forever, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now the One who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.

Tenebrae, A Service of Readings

2010-04-02T14:35:00.001-07:00

Good Friday

Tenebrae

The Service of Tenebrae

The Offering is collected at the entrance to the sanctuary this evening.

The congregation and pastor enter in silence.

Opening Versicles

P O Lord, open my lips,

C and my mouth shall show forth your praise.

P Make haste, O God, to deliver me;

C make haste to help me, O Lord.

P Dearly beloved! We have come together in the presence of God our heavenly Father, to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at His hand, to set forth His most worthy praise, to hear His holy Word, and to ask for ourselves and on behalf of others, those things that are necessary for our life and salvation. O Come, let us worship Him! Let us kneel and bow down before Him. Let us confess our sins with penitent hearts, and obtain forgiveness by His infinite grace and mercy in Jesus Christ.

C: Almighty and most merciful Father, we have strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed the devices and desires of our hearts. We have offended against Your holy law. We are by nature sinful and unclean children of Adam. We have done those things which we should not have done, and we have not done those things which we should have done. Have mercy upon us, O Lord! Spare us and restore us, according to the promises You have declared to us in Jesus Christ, our Lord. For the sake of His sufferings, death, and resurrection grant that we may live godly, righteous, and sober lives, to the glory of Your holy name.

P Upon this, your confession, I, by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God to all of you, and in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hymn: 292:1-3 Oh, Dearest Jesus

The Readings

The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

P The Passion of our Lord according to the 19^th chapter of St. John's Gospel and the 27^th chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel:
¹ So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. (John 19)

C: But He was wounded for our transgressions;
He was bruised for our iniquities;
the chastisement of our peace was on Him;
and by His stripes we are healed. (Is. 53:5)

P ²And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and they put a purple robe on Him. ³Then they said, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they struck Him with their hands. (John 19)

C: But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. (Ps. 22:6)

P ⁴Pilate then went out again, and said to them, "Behold, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him."
⁵ Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, "Behold the Man!"(John 19)

C. So His visage was marred more than any man,
And His form more than the sons of men; (Is. 52:14)

P ⁶Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, "Crucify Him, crucify Him!"
Pilate said to them, "You take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him."
⁷The Jews answered him, "We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God." (John 19)

C: ¹¹ Be not far from me; for trouble is near, for there is none to help. ¹²Many bulls have circled around me; strong bulls of Bashan have surrounded me. ¹³They opened wide their mouths on me, like a ripping and a roaring lion.(Ps. 22)

P ⁸Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, ⁹and went again into the Praetorium, and said to Jesus, "Where are You from?" But Jesus gave him no answer. (John 19)

C: He was oppressed, and He was afflicted; yet He opened not His mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. (Is. 53:7)

Hymn: 292:4-6

P ¹⁰Then Pilate said to Him, "Are You not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have power to crucify You, and power to release You?"
¹¹Jesus answered, "You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin."
¹²From then on Pilate sought to release Him.(John 19)

C: ⁸ He was taken from prison and from judgment; and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. (Is. 53)

P ¹²But the Jews cried out, saying, "If you let this Man go, you are not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar."
¹³When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. ¹⁴Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, "Behold your King!"
¹⁵But they cried out, "Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!"
Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?"
The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar!"(John 19)

C: Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him. (Is. 53:1-2)

P ¹⁶Then he delivered Him to them to be crucified. Then they took Jesus and led Him away.(John 19)

C: For dogs have surrounded Me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me, They pierced My hands and My feet. (Ps. 22:16)

P ¹⁷ And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, ¹⁸where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.(John 19)

C: and He was numbered with the transgressors (Is. 53:12)

P ¹⁹Now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was:
JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.
²⁰Then many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
²¹Therefore the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Do not write, "The King of the Jews,' but, "He said, "I am the King of the Jews.""'
²²Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written." (John 19)

C: So shall He sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths at Him;
For what had not been told them they shall see,
And what they had not heard they shall consider. (Is. 52:15)

Hymn: 292:7-10

P ²³Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. ²⁴They said therefore among themselves, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be," that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says: (John 19)

C: "They divided My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots." (Ps 22:18)

P ²⁴Therefore the soldiers did these things.
²⁵ Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. ²⁶When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold your son!" ²⁷Then He said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!" And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. (John 19)

C: And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of My people He was stricken. (Is. 53:8)

P ³⁹ And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads,⁴⁰ and saying, “You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!” ⁴¹ Likewise the chief priests also mocking with the scribes and elders, said, ⁴² “He saved others, Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. ⁴³ He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him. For He said, 'I am the Son of God.'” ⁴⁴ Even the robbers who were crucified with Him reviled Him, saying the same thing. (Matthew 27)

C: ⁷ All those who see Me ridicule Me; they shoot out the lip; they shake the head, saying , ⁸ He trusted in the LORD; let Him rescue Him; Let Him deliver him, since He delights in Him! (Ps. 22)

P ⁴⁵ Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. ⁴⁶ And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" That is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" ⁴⁷ Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, "This Man is calling for Elijah!" (Matthew 27)

C: “You have brought Me to the dust of death.”(Ps 22:15)
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.(Is. 53:10)

P ²⁸ After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, "I thirst!" (John 19)

C: My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws. (Ps. 22:15)

P ²⁹Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. ³⁰So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. (John 19)

C: Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors. (Is. 53:12)

P ⁵⁰ And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
⁵¹ Then, behold! The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, ⁵² and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; ⁵³and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matt. 27)

C: By His knowledge My righteous Servant justify many; For He shall bear their iniquities. (Is. 52:11)

Hymn: 292:11-13

P ⁵⁴ So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, "Truly this One was the Son of God."
⁵⁵ And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, ⁵⁶ among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's sons. (Matt. 27)

C: ¹⁴ Just as many were astonished at You, So His visage was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men; ¹⁵So shall He sprinkle many nations; (Is. 52)

P ³¹ Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. ³²Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. ³³But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. ³⁴But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. ³⁵And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. (John 19)

C:³⁶For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "Not one of His bones shall be broken."(Psalms 34:20)
³⁷And again another Scripture says, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced."(Zechariah 12:10)

P ³⁸ After this, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took the body of Jesus. ³⁹And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. ⁴⁰Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. ⁴¹Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. ⁴²So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews' Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby.(John 19)

C: And they made His grave with the wicked--But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. (Is. 53:9)

Sermon

Hymn: 292:14-15

The Apostles' Creed

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; The third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From there He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.

P O Lord, have mercy on us.

C Thanks be to God.

Responsory

P We have an advocate with the Father;

C He was wounded for our transgressions.

P Jesus is the propitiation for our sins.

C He was bruised for our iniquities.

P Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is put away.

C The chastisement for our peace was upon Him.

P But now a righteousness of God has been revealed apart from Law, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets; even the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ, toward all and upon all those who believe.

C And by His stripes we are healed.

P Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;

C Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.

P But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;

C The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.

P All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;

C And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

P He was oppressed and He was afflicted,

C Yet He opened not His mouth;

P He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

C So He opened not His mouth.

P He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?

C For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

P And they made His grave with the wicked--

C But with the rich at His death,

P Because He had done no violence,

C Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

P Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;

C He has put Him to grief.

P When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,

C And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

P He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.

C By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.

P Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,

C And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,

P And He was numbered with the transgressors,

C And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

Prayers

P Lord, have mercy.

C Lord, have mercy.

P Christ, have mercy.

C Christ, have mercy.

P Lord, have mercy.

C Lord, have mercy.

The Lord's Prayer

P The Lord be with you.

C And also with you.

P Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.

C Amen.

The "Strepitus"

(pronounced STREP-ee-toose) means "loud noise" and is signified by the slamming of a book or door toward the conclusion of the Good Friday Tenebrae Service ("Service of Darkness"). The "loud noise" symbolizes the earth shaking and rocks splitting (Matt. 27:51) at Jesus' death, and foreshadows the "violent earthquake" (Matt. 28:2) at the opening of Jesus' tomb on Easter morning.

The Lights are dimmed.

The congregation leaves in silence with minimal light.

Maundy Thursday Service of Readings

2010-04-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

The Passover and the New Testament

A Communion Service of Readings

^מג ויאמר יהוה אל משה ואהרן זאת חקת הפסח כל בן נכר לא יאכל בו ^מד וכל עבד איש מקנת כסף--ומלתה אתו אז יאכל בו ^מה תושב ושכיר לא יאכל בו ^מו בבית אחד יאכל לא תוציא מן הבית מן הבשר חוצה ועצם לא תשברו בו ^מז כל עדת ישראל יעשו אתו ^מח וכי יגור אתך גר ועשה פסח ליהוה--המול לו כל זכר ואז יקרב לעשתו והיה כאזרח הארץ וכל ערל לא יאכל בו

מט תורה אחת יהיה לאזרח ולגר הגר בתוככם נ ויעשו כל בני ישראל כאשר צוה יהוה את משה ואת אהרן כן עשו {ס}

⁴³ And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: No foreigner shall eat it. ⁴⁴ But every man’s servant who is bought for money, when you have circumcised him, then he may eat it. ⁴⁵ A sojourner and a hired servant shall not eat it. ⁴⁶ In one house it shall be eaten; you shall not carry any of the flesh outside the house, nor shall you break one of its bones. ⁴⁷ All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. ⁴⁸ And when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as a native of the land. For no uncircumcised person shall eat it. ⁴⁹ One law shall be for the native-born and for the stranger who dwells among you.”
⁵⁰ Thus all the children of Israel did; as the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. ⁵¹ And it came to pass, on that very same day, that the LORD brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt according to their armies.

Introduction

Opening Prayer

We do not presume to come to Your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in Your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy to gather up the crumbs under Your table. But you are the Lord who desires always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the Body of Your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His blood, that we may evermore dwell in Him and He in us. Amen (ELH p. 40)

313:1-2 (Tune 205) I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table

I come, O Savior, to Thy table,
For weak and weary is my soul;
Thou, Bread of Life, alone art able
To satisfy and make me whole:

Refrain

Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood
Be for my soul the highest good!

Oh, grant that I in manner worthy
May now approach Thy heav’nly board
And, as I lowly bow before Thee,
Look only unto Thee, O Lord!

Refrain

The Institution of the Passover (Exodus 12):

¹ Now the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, ² “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. ³ Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. ⁴ And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. ⁶ Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. ⁷ And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. ⁸ Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. ⁹ Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire—its head with its legs and its entrails. ¹⁰ You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. ¹¹ And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover.
¹² ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. ¹³ Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

313:3-4 (Tune 205) I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table

Unworthy though I am, O Savior,
Because I have a sinful heart,
Yet Thou Thy lamb wilt banish never,
For Thou my faithful Shepherd art:

Refrain

Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood
Be for my soul the highest good!

Oh, let me loathe all sin forever
As death and poison to my soul
That I through willful sinning never
May see Thy judgment take its toll!

Refrain

The Feast of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12)

¹⁴ ‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance. ¹⁵ Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them; but that which everyone must eat—that only may be prepared by you. ¹⁷ So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. ¹⁸ In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. ¹⁹ For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. ²⁰ You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.’”

Confession

The Killing of the Passover Lamb (Exodus 12)

²¹ Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Pick out and take lambs for yourselves according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb. ²² And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. ²³ For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you. ²⁴ And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever. ²⁵ It will come to pass when you come to the land which the LORD will give you, just as He promised, that you shall keep this service. ²⁶ And it shall be, when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ ²⁷ that you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice of the LORD, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.’” So the people bowed their heads and worshiped. ²⁸ Then the children of Israel went away and did so; just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

Absolution

The Exodus (Exodus 12)

³¹ Then he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. And go, serve the LORD as you have said. ³² Also take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also.”

³³ And the Egyptians urged the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste. For they said, “We shall all be dead.” ³⁴ So the people took their dough before it was leavened, having their kneading bowls bound up in their clothes on their shoulders. ³⁵ Now the children of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, and they had asked from the Egyptians articles of silver, articles of gold, and clothing. ³⁶ And the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they granted them what they requested. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

³⁷ Then the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. ³⁸ A mixed multitude went up with them also, and flocks and herds—a great deal of livestock. ³⁹ And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they had brought out of Egypt; for it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared provisions for themselves.

313:5-6 (Tune 111) I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table

Thy heart is filled with fervent yearning
That sinners may salvation see
Who, Lord, to Thee in faith are turning;
So I, a sinner, come to Thee.

Refrain

Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood
Be for my soul the highest good!

Weary am I and heavy laden,
With sin my soul is sore opprest;
Receive me graciously and gladden
My heart, for I am now Thy guest.

Refrain

Consecration of the Firstborn (Exodus 13)

¹¹ “And it shall be, when the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as He swore to you and your fathers, and gives it to you, ¹² that you shall set apart to the LORD all that open the womb, that is, every firstborn that comes from an animal which you have; the males shall be the LORD’s. ¹³ But every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb; and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. And all the firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. ¹⁴ So it shall be, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What is this?’ that you shall say to him, ‘By strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ¹⁵ And it came to pass, when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go, that the LORD killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast. Therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all males that open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’

313:7-8 (Tune 111) I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table

Thou here wilt find a heart most lowly
That humbly falls before Thy feet,
That duly weeps o’er sin, yet solely
Thy merit pleads, as it is meet.

Refrain

Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood
Be for my soul the highest good!

By faith I call Thy holy table
The testament of Thy deep love;
For, lo, thereby I now am able
To see how love Thy heart doth move.

Refrain

Christ Foretells His Death at Passover (Matthew 26)

¹ Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, that He said to His disciples, ² “You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”
³ Then the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people assembled at the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, ⁴ and plotted to take Jesus by trickery and kill Him. ⁵ But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”

313:9-10 (Tune 443) I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table

What higher gift can we inherit?
It is faith’s bond and solid base;
It is the strength of heart and spirit,
The covenant of hope and grace.

Refrain

Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood
Be for my soul the highest good!

This feast is manna, wealth abounding
Unto the poor, to weak ones power,
To angels joy, to hell confounding,
And life for me in death’s dark hour.

Refrain

Jesus Celebrates the Passover (Matthew 26 Luke 22)

¹⁷ Now on the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?” ¹⁸ And He said, “Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, “My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at your house with My disciples.”’”
¹⁹ So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them; and they prepared the Passover.

¹⁴ When the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. ¹⁵ Then He said to them, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; ¹⁶ for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
¹⁷ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; ¹⁸ for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

²¹ Now as they were eating, He said, “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.” ²² And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to Him, “Lord, is it I?” ²³ He answered and said, “He who dipped his hand with Me in the dish will betray Me. ²⁴ The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.” ²⁵ Then Judas, who was betraying Him, answered and said, “Rabbi, is it I?” He said to him, “You have said it.”

313:11-12 (Tune 443) I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table

Thy body, giv’n for me, O Savior,
Thy blood which Thou for me didst shed,
These are my life and strength forever,
By them my hungry soul is fed.

Refrain

Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood
Be for my soul the highest good!

With Thee, Lord, I am now united;
I live in Thee and Thou in me.
No sorrow fills my soul, delighted
It finds its only joy in Thee.

Refrain

Christ Institutes The New Covenant (Matthew 26)

²⁶ And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
²⁷ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. ²⁸ For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. ²⁹ But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”
³⁰ And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

313:13-15 (Tune 226) I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table

Who can condemn me now? For surely
The Lord is nigh, who justifies.
No hell I fear, and thus securely
With Jesus I to Heaven rise.

Refrain

Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood
Be for my soul the highest good!

Though death may threaten with disaster,
It cannot rob me of my cheer;
For He Who is of death the Master,
With aid and comfort e’er is near.

Refrain

My heart has now become Thy dwelling,
O blessèd, holy Trinity.
With angels I, Thy praises telling,
Shall live in joy eternally.

Refrain

Paul Teaches About Worthy Partaking

²³ For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; ²⁴ and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” ²⁵ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
²⁷ Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.

The Nicene Creed (p. 47)

319 Just As I Am

Homily

Offering

The Preface

The Sanctus

The Exhortation

The Lord's Prayer

The Words Of Institution

The Agnus Dei

Hymn of Thanksgiving: 593 On My Heart Imprint Thine Image

On my heart imprint Thine image,
Blessèd Jesus, King of Grace,
That life’s riches, cares and pleasures
Have no power Thee to efface.
This the superscription be:
Jesus, crucified for me,
Is my Life, my hope’s Foundation,
And my Glory and Salvation.

Prayer of Thanks

Benediction

Closing Hymn: 327 O Lord We Praise Thee

O Lord, we praise Thee, bless Thee, and adore Thee,
In thanksgiving bow before Thee.
Thou with Thy body and Thy blood didst nourish
Our weak souls that they may flourish.
O Lord, have mercy!
May Thy body, Lord, born of Mary
That our sins and sorrow did carry,
And Thy blood for us plead in all trial, fear and need:
O Lord, have mercy!

Thy holy body into death was given,
Life to win for us in heaven.
No greater love than this to Thee could bind us;
May this feast thereof remind us!
O Lord, have mercy!
Lord, Thy kindness did so constrain Thee
That Thy blood should bless and sustain me.
All our debt Thou hast paid; peace with God once more is made:
O Lord, have mercy!

May God bestow on us His grace and favor
To please Him with our behavior
And live as brethren here in love and union
Nor repent this blessed Communion!
O Lord, have mercy!
Let not Thy good Spirit forsake us;
Grant that heavenly minded He make us;
Give Thy church, Lord, to see days of peace and unity;
O Lord, have mercy!

Closing Prayer

Testing the Internet Archive

2010-03-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a test of the Internet Archive for delivery of audio files that I find useful in my parish work. Others may find them useful as well. This test site will disappear in less than a month from this posting. So if you come back to this post after that time, this particular audio set won't be at the same address.

This test is with some audio files of the 10 Commandments in Luther's Small Catechism. I'd like my members to let me know if they come through alright on DSL and faster connections.

VBR M3U

MP3 Stream

Internet Archive Page

Word of the Week for January 24, 2010

2010-01-24T13:01:00.000-08:00

Marriage and God’s Image

Image by ideacreamanuelaPps via Flickr

The first institution God made for His people was the institution of marriage. We are told in Genesis 1:27 that the image of God resides in the marriage of a man and a woman as God created them, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

From the time Adam and Eve fell into sin their marriage was under assault. God’s image in them was perverted. Before they fell into sin, God’s Word in Genesis 2:23–24 says: “This is now 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 mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

As soon as Adam and Eve fell into sin they were separated from God, and there was now a wall of shame, not only between Adam and Eve, but also between them and God. Genesis 3:6–8 says, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”

From the time Adam and Eve fell into sin, marriage and the family were beset with countless troubles. Satan, people, the world itself is set against the very idea of God’s design, that the marriage of a man and woman reflects the image of God. Indeed, Satan and the world hate the image of God and will do anything to hide it, mar it, or pervert it—to change marriage into something it was not made to be.

Think of all the harm that comes upon humanity simply because people wish to have the physical pleasure God gave to husband and wife without committing themselves to anything.

What are the consequences?

Millions of fatherless or motherless children need foster homes, orphaned not by disease or death, but out of selfishness.

Millions of infants are murdered before they see the light of the sun because their parents want the pleasures God gave to marriage; but these parents despise the people conceived through this union.

Fornication is widespread. Sex has become casual in the media and in the community; and with this casual sex come diseases and abandoned children. Fornication is encouraged even among minors and euphemistically called “innocent” love, while teen pregnancy rates increase, abortions by teens increase, and the parents of these teen-agers raise their grand-children.

Incest between parents and children and between siblings is on the increase.

Pornography is available every minute of the day through every media available in the home; children are exposed to it over and over again every day. Adults and children both dress in clothing that, twenty years ago, would have been considered appropriate attire only for prostitutes.

Rape has become nearly commonplace, even the rape of children; pedophile organizations like “The North American Man/Boy Love Association” or NAMBLA are placing political pressure to legalize the sodomy of children by adults. Just as their predecessors worked to legalize sodomy. “The men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.” (Romans 1:27) The same holds for women who have abandoned heterosexual marriage.

Adultery and divorce are commonplace today where they were rare and scandalous just 40 years ago. Children are torn from parents by the selfishness of those parents. They blame themselves. The National Institute of Mental Health has done surveys over the years which show that children of divorced parents and children of promiscuous single parents have a suicide rate that is 400% higher than children in homes where the mother and father are married.

As the acceptability of promiscuity has increased even the elderly have very little trouble shacking up together as long as the pastor doesn’t find out. Then they blame their friends and the pastor for interfering. As if it is not they themselves who should be ashamed!

This pattern of rejecting the divine institution of marriage has happened many times throughout history. Whether in ancient times, or as it is taking place now in our own country and churches, the Apostle Paul, in Romans chapter 1, describes how societies that reject God’s image direct themselves to another kind of hope and another kind of change, “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.” (vs 22–25).

In just 50 years, one generation, we have gone from a society that holds marriage as the center of our future and honors it as God’s institution, to a society that publicly attacks heterosexual marriage at every level.

Marriage is between a man a woman, and God, AND the rest of society. It is a public vow. That is why weddings are done publicly. At the wedding ceremony the community gathered there is agreeing that the man and woman being united in wedlock will be honored and protected by the community. The marriage license is the state’s promise to honor and protect this union between a man and a woman.

The holy estate of marriage is even being attacked by many of the mainstream churches today. The largest Protestant denominations in our country teach that it is perfectly acceptable for the pastor or priest to be actively engaged in fornication or adultery. They teach that as long as a male pastor or teacher is committing fornication or adultery with another male, or a female pastor or teacher is committing fornication or adultery with another female—that somehow this makes the adultery and fornication acceptable to God.

Some readers can remember back to the ‘50s and ‘60s when some denominations began ignoring God’s Word about Closed Communion. Any who held on to that ancient and Biblical practice were called “unloving” and “intolerant.” But it is right there in the practice of Open Communion that the intimate relationship between Christ and His Church is violated, as we shall see below.

One by one more doctrines from God’s Word were put aside. Creation became a poetic myth as the mainstream churches accepted evolution. It became popular to deny the miracle of Christ’s virgin birth. Through the sexual revolution many of the large denominations gave up on condemning fornication and adultery, instead they allowed these people to eat and drink God’s judgement against themselves (I Cor. 11:27–29). Again, “Love” was the so-called reason. These denominations wanted to give people a false “love” and not to tell them what God’s Word says.

That’s like a physician being afraid to tell the patient a diagnosis of cancer. It might hurt his patient’s feelings, the patient might get mad and be scared. The churches reasoned in their own dark way that it is somehow more loving to not tell people about their sin, that way they won’t feel as bad or get mad at the pastors. And so through the decades the churches became sicker and sicker because they refuse to acknowledge or hear the diagnosis of sin. The diagnosis is the same as in the days of Jeremiah the prophet, “ Hear this now, O foolish people, Without understanding, Who have eyes and see not, And who have ears and hear not: Do you not fear Me?’ says the LORD.” (Jeremiah 5:21–22)

Throughout many passages in Scripture God’s Word specifically limits the pastoral ministry to males because the pastors represent Christ as Bridegroom to His bride, the congregation. In the past 30 years mainstream Christian churches have set aside these passages. They claim that these passages were culturally conditioned, and that it is unloving and intolerant of people to follow God’s Word on this matter.

Many small congregations protested, but they were assigned women pastors anyway.

If those congregations had been told at that time that within another 20 years that the same arguments would be used to promote homosexual and lesbian adulterers as pastors those congregations would have never believed the prophecy.

The reason they would not have believed it is that they had already been gradually abandoning God’s Word as the standard of truth; and they no longer thought of themselves as sinners, vulnerable to every sin described in Scripture. As Paul described above, professing to be wise, they became fools, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature, rather than the Creator.

So now many congregations in our area are disturbed by this further departure from God’s Word. Even in our area there are some pastors who have said that labeling as sin homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism, and transgenderism is unloving and intolerant.

But the purpose for which God established marriage between one man and one woman is to demonstrate how He loves his people, the Church. Before the fall into sin this relationship was immediate and apparent. Adam and Eve enjoyed the presence and love of God directly every day. But they violated that relationship with God. They thought that God’s explicit Word was not as important as their desire and intentions to be more like Him.

In their desire to become something better, more like God, they went against God’s Word and distorted His image in them.

Throughout the Scriptures, God uses marriage as the demonstration of His relationship to a fallen church. He says that leaving His Word and following other ways is the same as adultery. See especially Ezekiel, chapters 16 and 23. These are too long to quote here. But we see God saying the same thing in the first chapter of Hosea, the second verse, “Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, For the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the LORD.”

Throughout the Gospels the Son of God, Jesus Christ, refers to Himself as the Bridegroom. He refers to the Church as His bride. Read the Gospels. Look at the number of parables in which He uses the wedding as an example. He teaches over and over that He is the Bridegroom of all who believe the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins in His name.

Those who do not acknowledge their sin cannot be believers. For Christ came to forgive sinners. He said very plainly in Luke 5:31–32, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

In Christ’s preaching the wedding feast is always described as the end of the world, when He shall return and call His people home. He is the Groom because He gave His life to the church and took the sin, guilt, shame, and punishment that the world deserves. He made us His own.

He shares with us the intimacy of His own body and blood in the Lord’s Supper to forgive our sins, unite us together as one body, and to unite us with Himself. The Lord’s Supper is the center of our marital relationship with Christ while we live here in this sinful world. Open Communion violates the Supper, the congregation, and our relationship with Christ just like adultery violates a marriage—whether that adultery is heterosexual or homosexual.

Men who want to become husbands have heard the following exhortation from Scripture since the first century, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. (Ephesians 5:25–28)

Husbands are to love their wives in such a way as to be willing to give their own lives to prevent their wives from falling into sin! And we all fail. Not only do we fail at that, but we lie, we leer, we lust, and we put our own desires ahead of our wives’ salvation.

That is where the relationship Christ has with us as our Bridegroom is so important. Where we fail, He succeeded. Where we as husband and wife are not able on our own to endure the hardships that afflict our marriages, Christ did endure.

We don’t pray to a distant God who can’t understand our situation. The Son of God came into this world to become one of us; to live with us; to fulfill the Law of God we could not. The Son of God came as one of us to suffer the abuse, mockery and punishment that we as sinners would dish out upon Him. He came to put up with us at our worst and most adulterous natures. Most of all, He came to bear every single sin, the guilt for each sin, the shame, and the wrath of God the Father upon our sin.

Oh yes, we have a God and Savior who knows us. He knows us intimately. He is our Bridegroom. He knows every thing that we go through and every sinful thought, word, and deed we have. He knows us better than a husband can know his bride. And he cares for us intimately and deeply. We bear this special relationship to Him. The Church is His bride, won by His blood. A intimate relationship consummated with His bride in the Lord’s Supper.

This is what God’s original institution of marriage between a man and a woman was designed to teach us, to show us—the eternity for which it prepares us.

No doubt there may be some readers who will view this article as “unloving” and “intolerant;” even as “sexist” and “homophobic.” May God lead all such to repentance and eternal salvation. Those who reject these teachings of God’s Word are by that very fact rejecting Christ’s salvation from those sins. Any who stand firm in such rejection of God’s Word will face a Christless eternity.

May God lead us all to repent of our sins, to acknowledge and uphold His Word in every teaching, to learn true true love means acknowledging our sin, leading others to acknowledge sin, to honor marriage as God has instituted it, and to find forgiveness in the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.

Transfiguration from Laache, 1902

2010-01-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

The Transfiguration of Our Lord

Bishop Laache

Book of Family Prayer
Trans. Peer O. Stromme
Decorah, Iowa

Lutheran Publishing House
1902

pages 606-608

Teach us, O Lord, that without the cross there can be no crown.

Matthew 17:1-9
1 Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; 2 and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. 3 And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. 4 Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
5 While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” 6And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. 7 But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” 8 When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
9 Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”

The Savior is given an hour of rest as preparation for his great passion; and the disciples are permitted to see his glory before witnessing his struggle in Gethsemane. On the mountain his divinity shines out through the servant form which he had assumed, and reveals that he who suffers is in the bosom of the Father; in the garden it is hid by tears and the sweat of blood, and reveals itself only in his perfect obedience.

All the disciples of Jesus follow him; but some follow him more closely than do the others, and hence are lifted up to greater heights, and thrust down to greater depths of joy and suffering. His life here below was labor and pain; but there were some bright hours in between. Last Sunday's gospel lesson, for instance, speaks of one such occasion of special joy; and he found rest daily in praying to the Father; and his soul rejoiced whenever hearts opened to receive the word of life.

In like manner his Christians also must take up the cross, and experience many sorrows; but they likewise have their hours of happiness, giving them a foretaste of the life eternal. However, as not all are able to go farther into Gethsemane, so neither are all permitted to be with the Savior on Tabor. Some may at times be so distinctly conscious of the Lord's presence and of the powers of the world to come, that if it should continue, they would no more be in the world; they are so happy that they forget all suffering; they may speak with God by the hour, and it seems to them but a moment; in their soul is a rapture beyond utterance, a union o holy fear and the delight of love, which surpasses all understanding. But this experience is not common to all believers; and therefore you must not make it the test of your own state of grace and that of others. Neither shall you ask God to give you a greater measure of such happiness than so much as he sees that you are able to bear.

Nevertheless, every Christian shall experience that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, that the love of God is precious, and that his word is sweet. Every Christian is permitted to come to God in prayer, and learn that a day in the courts of the Lord is better than a thousand; and every Christian will have special seasons of joy more refreshing than the daily tenor of his life. For we at times need such a lifting up, in order that the mind may not faint under its burden, but be refreshed after struggle, and be strengthened to undergo new trials; for which reason God has also granted us our ever recurring Sunday and our festival seasons. --Peter wished to build tabernacles on Tabor; and who would not? But the Lord did not bring your up into the mountain, dear friend, to let you now make your home there with him, but to enable you to go with him through the valley of of the shadow of death without losing your faith. There is greater danger in joy than in sorrow. Yet we must taste the cup of joy, in order that our sufferings may be a benefit to us; for without an occasional sojourn on Tabor, without such seasons of joy, after the measure which each may be able to bear, we would succumb in time to trouble. Follow Jesus more closely every hour; and your joys and sorrows will become more intense, and you will be transfigured after his likeness from glory to glory.

Lord, when shall I see Thee in Thy glory, and praise The as I ought, Thou light of all the heavens and fullness of all beauty? How long shall I walk in this wilderness, ere I reach the city of Thy habitation, and see Thee as Thou art? Give me a clear spiritual eye to see Thee; and give me now and then a foretaste of Thy salvation; that I may not become weary, but may serve Thee faithfully, and patiently bear whatever of suffering Thou dost impose on me, and rejoice in the blessed hope of seeing Thee face to face. Yet, O Lord, it is not mine to say what Thou shalt do. Lead me, faithful God, according to Thine own counsel; grant that I may never desire to rid myself of Thy cross, but may ever more gladly carry it after Thee; and receive me at last into Thy glory. Amen

Lord, guide me in Thy secret way;

With such a guide I shall not stray;

Bring me into a heavenly frame,

Unite my heart to fear Thy name.

O King of nations, Lord of all,

Before Thee shall all nations fall;

And every language shall confess

Thy glorious everlastingness!

Howard Flateland Funeral Sermon

2010-01-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Howard Flateland

Funeral Sermon

January 4, 2010

Dearly beloved in Christ, the text that we have before us today at this service in memory of Howard, but also looking forward to his resurrection comes to us from the book of Job in the Old Testament. In chapter 19 we read verses 23 to 27.

Job had several friends trying to come to him and to console him. The problem was Job became sick, and he had lost most of his family. And his friends thought that Job had committed a particular sin to bring down God's wrath upon him.

But listen to Job's confession:

23 “Oh, that my words were written!
Oh, that they were inscribed in a book!

24 That they were engraved on a rock
With an iron pen and lead, forever!

25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
And He shall stand at last on the earth;

26 And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,
That in my flesh I shall see God,

27 Whom I shall see for myself,
And my eyes shall behold, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!

We just sang the hymn, only a few verses of the hymn, “I know that my Redeemer Lives!” It's an Easter hymn. And here we are in the season of Christmas, and we've just celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ into this world. Now, for many people Christmas is nothing more than a time for getting families together.

Well, all of you who know Howard and Sylvia's family know that this has been a very intense time of gathering together. Gathering together not knowing whether this day or the next day would be the last for Howard: Having hope! Seeing how well Howard was taking what was going on. His wonderful attitude through all of this tragedy. His willingness to just put his hands around his children and grandchildren, and his loving wife. To let them know that he was comforting them.

He knew that this kind of thing could happen. It's in the family's history: a massive stroke, a little while of lingering and then death.

But he faced it without fear. And it's not because it's not a scary thing. It is a scary thing. It's a scary thing for any of us to be incapacitated, to have somebody else change our pants. It's humiliating. It's embarrassing. And some of us may have too much pride. And never suffer such an indignity, and forget that God will use even these hard times.

He doesn't cause these bad things to happen. But He will use these hard times to show us where we have idols, and where we worship falsely—so that we can learn to love God and each other rightly; to drive away all the different things that clutter our lives; that we used to think are important; to learn to focus on what is important.

Because the end result of the fact that we are sinners is right here [point to the coffin holding Howard's dead body]. Our physical death.

And Howard wasn't selected out for physical punishment any more than Job was selected out for special punishment. We deserve far worse because we day-by-day rejectGod's Word and His Command. That we tread upon His grace every day.

Even as we come through this celebration of Christmas; singing those Christmas carols; acknowledging Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior of all—hurting and harming our families—thinking of only ourselves.

But Howard is now celebrating his first Christmas with our Savior. The celebration, as I mentioned last night at the visitation, the celebration is not complete right now. None of those who have gone before us, their celebration is not complete, because they wait for one thing that we all wait for. And that is Christ's coming again at the end of the world. Where He will take this body [point to Howard]. And He will make it perfect. He will raise it from the grave. And He will bring Howard before the throne of God Himself. And He will say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”

And Howard will confess that he never saw Jesus hungry, he never helped Him, he never fed Him. Because, in truth, none of us has ever done what we should for God, and Howard knows that. And He knew that.

But he was also washed in the Blood of Christ; liberated from the actual guilt of his sin. Because his Savior loved him enough to come into this world to give His life for Howard, for you; for Sylvia; for you kids. For all of us.

That's why we tie together Easter and Christmas here at this service. Because Christmas is all about the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This little child didn't come to be a cute thing to be put upon a fireplace mantle at every Christmas.

He came to die a bloody, brutal death. So that we would not have to suffer. So that we would have the resurrection.

I know that my Redeemer lives. And one day, even though worms shall eat this flesh; I will stand, I and not another, will see my Lord when He comes again. We confess with Job.

Saint Paul wrote in his first letter to the Thessalonians, in chapter four:

13 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

Says Saint Paul.

We will miss him, because he has been such a big part of our lives. And there is nothing that is going to fill that gap. Because Howard himself will fill that gap when he is raised from the dead.

We don't have to try to stuff ourselves with activities. We don't have to try to hide the grief, to try to get rid of the grief. Because Howard himself will come back at that last day; and fill the hole that's there now.

We can remember him; both the good and the bad. We can know and we can learn from what was wrong and what was right.

And we can build on this confidence: That just as Christ has forgiven him, He also forgives us. And He enables us to forgive each other—from all of the things that have affected us through our lives: especially when we have hurt each other and sinned against each other.

So that we too, will rise again in that day; cleanse by the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. And we will live forever.

Amen.