Sleep Well

Lutherans know what they believe. Many times, they know what other Christian confessions believe, too. And they believe that they are right where others are wrong. We don’t allow anyone to pastor our congregations who doesn’t confess that the Lutheran Confessions are a faithful and true exposition of Holy Scripture, and we don’t let anyone be a member of our congregations who doesn’t confess the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as taught in the Small Catechism, to be faithful and true. In short, we’re Lutherans because we believe Lutheran doctrine to be correct. Whoa. At face value, that seems a little bit offensive ridiculously and pompously arrogant.

Why do we care about doctrine? Why is right teaching—orthodoxy—so important to Missouri Synod Lutherans? In short, so you can sleep well.

We study Scripture, we learn from the Lutheran Confessions, we learn the Small Catechism by heart, we sing hymns with rather rigorous doctrinal content (and eschew the pithy and superficial), we have high expectations of young confirmands (and adult confirmands, too), and we confess that we will all be catechumens of the Word of God our whole lives long for one simple reason: so we can have rock-solid confidence in our salvation.

The goal of doctrine is not to be right for the sake of being right. The goal of doctrine is to give you full confidence in Jesus as your Savior. The beauty of Lutheran doctrine is not that it’s right as much as that it’s comforting. You are a sinner, sinful from birth and having sinned every day since. Your sins are not a small deal. They’re a huge deal. They’re heinously offensive to a holy God. You deserve to die forever because of them. And yet… (How beautiful is that word “yet”!) For the sake of Jesus, you do not get what you deserve. God gave your sin and your punishment to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He died for you. He rose for you. To this point most Christians agree.

But how do the benefits of Jesus death on the cross get delivered to you? In answering this question, Christians do not agree. A Roman Catholic would say that God gives us grace through His Sacraments in order that we might do good and thereby merit God’s mercy at the end of our lives. Most American Evangelicals would say that God completely does the work of salvation except He leaves it up to you to choose salvation (or ask Jesus into your heart, or pray the sinner’s prayer, or make Jesus the Lord of your life, etc.). Genuine Calvinists would say that God completely does the work of salvation, but He does not offer it to all people, only to His elect (that is, He creates some people whom He never intends to save), and you can never know with confidence that you’re among God’s elect until the end.

For both Roman Catholics and most Evangelicals, salvation is based on your works, either the works God enables you to do throughout your lifetime or that one work, that one exercise of your will, to choose Jesus. What if your works aren’t enough? What if you do some back-sliding? For Calvinists, the work of Jesus on the cross is limited only to those God eternally elects to salvation. None of that instills certain confidence in salvation. None of that makes for a good night’s sleep.

We do not believe only Lutherans are Christians. Absolutely not. Since we know and have confidence that we cannot save ourselves by any work, so also we know that a man cannot be saved by the precision of his confession. In the “life of the world to come,” there will be Christians of every stripe and every denomination.

But in nowhere but Confessional Lutheranism (the kind of Lutheranism that still believes in the Word of God and holds the Lutheran Confessions as true) is there this kind of confidence. You are saved solely and exclusively by the Word of God. He works through means (Word & Sacraments) to deliver saving faith to you, to preserve you in saving faith, to do absolutely everything you need for salvation. Nothing is required of you; God does it all. You can be (and should be) absolutely certain of your salvation because Lutheran doctrine calls you to look outside of yourself to God for confidence. Have this confidence. Sleep well.

Dependent Spirituality

“I’m just not able to do anything anymore. I feel like a burden to my congregation because I can’t help out the way I could before.”

Such was the lament of an aging member of a sister parish. The older she got, the less she could contribute. Most of the time we look forward to old age and the frailties it brings with anxiety. “I don’t ever want to be a burden on my family,” people wish. “I don’t ever want to be that dependent on others.”

More often than not, God leads us out of this life the same way he brought us into it: completely dependent on others. As infants, we relied on others to give us food, change our messy diapers, bathe us, clothe us, keep us safe from harm every minute of the day. We were completely dependent.

Then, as we grow into adults, we treasure our burgeoning independence. We can dress ourselves, bathe ourselves, feed ourselves. The more independent we get, we can cook for ourselves or even grow and gather our own food. We can transport ourselves wherever we need to go. A significant part of the American Dream is independence. So, naturally, growing older and more dependent upon others is looked on with shame by the world.

But not the church.

In fact, that God brings us down from our illusions of independence to reveal how truly dependent on others we are is a healthy lesson in humility. To learn to be dependent it to learn to be a Christian. When people were bringing infants to Jesus—yes, infants, the helpless, completely dependent, constantly-needing-to-be-fed-and-changed kind of people—He extolled them as model Christians: “To such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” (Luke 18:15-17)

So whether at the beginning of your life, at the end, or numerous times in the middle, God is teaching you through dependence on others to be a Christian, a child of God, to inherit the kingdom of God. You did not make yourself a Christian; God made you one. You did not produce faith; God gave it to you. You do nothing to earn God’s favor; He gives it to you completely as gift. You are completely dependent on Him for every spiritual need.

So as your faculties decrease, as your strength wanes, as your ability to contribute to your congregation diminishes, rejoice. God is teaching you away from independence to complete dependence on Him.

When speaking of God, the old adage is false: it is not better to give than to receive. Faith receives what God gives. It is always better to be receiving from God than to be giving to Him. That’s what happens in the Divine Service: God comes to lavish His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation on us. We respond, giving Him our thanks and praise, of course. But the most important thing is that we receive what God gives.

In this season where giving is so highly exalted, don’t neglect the most important things: to be receiving from God. It’s a season chocked full of services, times when God and His Church interrupt your regular routine to bless you with more of His gifts. Don’t get so caught up in all the giving that you neglect the receiving.

Growth

“To neglect your church, your prayer, your Bible study, your devotions, is to tell God that you have no desire to grow, to become more and more His child, that you are satisfied with being a weak and shaky Christian, and that you have had as much as you want from Him. How perilously such a person is slipping away from God. Everything that is not in accord with God's will is given over to death and the power of darkness. But, my friends, if we cling to Christ and His Word, growing daily in the will of God, striving to bring our lives into harmony with that will, what strength is ours, what then can harm us? When we are given over to the will of God, nothing can destroy, no more than God and His will can be destroyed. The unshakeable strength of the will of God is in us, though the world turn upside down.” (Dr. Norman Nagel,Selected Sermons, p. 245.)

Plain and simple, Christians grow.

So, are you growing? Or are you, as Pr. Nagel warns against, neglecting your church-going, your prayer life, your Bible study, your devotions?

How do Christians grow? Jesus describes it: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:1-6).

If a branch grows, it’s not because the branch is particularly healthy but because the whole plant is healthy. Jesus is the vine. Every branch grafted into Him, every branch that remains in Him, grow and bears fruit.

We grow by abiding in Jesus and in His Word.

So I want to challenge you to set a goal for growing in Jesus, for growing as His disciple. The only way you will grow is with more Jesus, with more of His Word. The end result of the goal is not more of you, but more of Jesus.

Here are some sample goals. Pick or modify one or more to suit you and help you grow in Jesus.
• I currently attend church less frequently than I should. My goal is to attend every Sunday that I’m healthy.
• I do not currently attend Bible class (or Sunday school). My goal is to grow in the Word by studying it at Bible class.
• I do not currently have family devotions every day. My goal is to begin using the Congregation at Prayer to have family prayer and devotions every day.
• I currently do not attend the catechetical Service of Prayer and Preaching on Wednesdays. My goal is to make this a regular part of my weekly hearing and studying the Word of God.
• I currently do not begin and end each day with prayer. My goal is to use Luther’s orders of morning and evening prayer as a basis for beginning and ending each day.

You will have the opportunity to make one of these or a similar discipleship growth goal during the month of September. Every Christian grows. We grow by being in Jesus and in His Word. “If we cling to Christ and His Word, growing daily in the will of God, striving to bring our lives into harmony with that will, what strength is ours, what then can harm us? When we are given over to the will of God, nothing can destroy, no more than God and His will can be destroyed.”

More Jesus; Less You

The Christian life is a constant struggle. You are constantly fighting against your old, sinful flesh. The devil and the world are allies of your old self, and together they form an unholy trinity, the real axis of evil, to conspire against you, to lure you away from Jesus. When we pray in the 6th Petition of the Lord’s Prayer “Lead us not into temptation,” we are praying “that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world and our sinful flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.”

Do you see your life that way, as a constant struggle, a fighting against your own sinful flesh? St. Paul did. “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:15, 18, 19, 24, 25)

On June 24, we celebrated the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, or, the birthday of John the Baptist. The Church is not in the birthday business. She celebrates two days in the lives of her saints, her children: their baptismal birthdays (their re-birthdays) and their death days (their heavenly birthdays). But there on June 24 every year is the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Why? Because John is the Forerunner of Jesus, the one who prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, the one whose entire life points to Jesus.

John preached about Jesus “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” He also preached against himself relative to Jesus, “He must increase, and I must decrease.”

That’s the solution to the constant struggle against our sinful flesh: He must increase, and we must decrease. More Jesus, less you.

The more Jesus fills you with Himself, as He does in the Lord’s Supper, the less room there is for you. The more He covers you with His righteousness, as He did in Holy Baptism, the less you can cover yourself with sin. The more Jesus drives away sin and temptation in Holy Absolution, the less room there is for you to embrace sin and temptation. The more Jesus fills your ears with His Word, the less room there is for you to fill them with self-worship and the filth of the world. Jesus Word and Sacraments, His means of delivering His grace to you, are the victory over sin and temptation. Through these means, God holds the head of the Old Adam, your old sinful flesh under the waters of Holy Baptism.

And God gives you means, not through which to merit grace or earn forgiveness, but through which you can fight against your sinful flesh. These means have traditionally been called spiritual disciplines. Through disciplines of prayer, study, meditation, fasting, tithing, almsgiving, works of mercy, among others. None of these things earns any of God’s favor. Some of them are aimed at your sinful flesh, putting him to death and following after Jesus. Some are aimed at your neighbor, showing him mercy at the expense of yourself.

Most important in the struggle against your sinful flesh is hearing the Word of Christ. He sees beyond the veil of today to see things as they really are. He sees your sinful flesh really dead and done with. He sees you wearing perfectly and completely His righteousness. And the word He speaks about you is truer than anything you can see. Following Jesus is learning to believe your ears over your eyes. Jesus says you are forgiven, set free from your bondage to sin, completely sin-free, a perfect saint. Because He whose very words create and change reality says it, it’s true. He must increase, and I must decrease.

More Jesus, less you.

No More Excuses

To paraphrase the expression, “Excuses are like armpits; everyone has them, and they stink.”

Having thus set the tone for this article, there’s no need to skirt the issue or approach it delicately. You need to be in Bible Class.

Here come the excuses. I can smell them from here.

Seriously. Bible class is the place where we grow in God’s Word, where we wrestle with God’s Word, where we learn the content of Holy Scripture, where we learn more about our God who has created and redeemed us. God’s Word is a gift. The opportunity to study it is a privilege.

And yet old habits are hard to break. If you’ve been away from Bible class for a long time, it will be difficult to get into a new routine. If you’ve never been to Bible class, it will be even more difficult. But it’s worth it.

Your old sinful flesh will recoil at giving up an extra hour a week. The Old Adam or Old Eve will have no shortage of excuses. You will try to convince yourself that you don’t need to study the Word of God. In fact, however, studying God’s word is a part of being a disciple of Jesus, who promised, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples” (John 8:31). The Word of God is Jesus, our very source of life. To abide in the Word is to abide in Jesus.

Consider the psalmist who penned these words in Psalm 119.

“My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word! (v. 25)

My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word! (28)

Let your steadfast love come to me, O LORD, your salvation according to your promise; then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word. (41-42)

My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your word. (81)

Forever, O LORD, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast. By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life. (89-93)

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules. I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word! (105-107)

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word. Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God. Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope! (114-116)

I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil.” (162)

We rotate through several different types of Bible studies. Sometimes we study a book of the Bible verse-by-verse. Sometimes we study Holy Scripture as expounded in the Lutheran Confessions. Sometimes we study Scripture thematically. Our current Sunday morning Bible class is looking at the Lutheran Divine Service. How is that a “Bible” class? Simple. The liturgy is made up of Scripture. All the songs we sing, the words we speak, the words we hear: nearly everything comes directly from sacred Scripture. Even the actions, the non-verbal parts of worship, come straight from the Word of God.

Bottom line: excuses are lame. Bible class is for all members of Hope. If you’re not in Bible class, you are missing out on learning the Word of God, which gives life. The Word gives Jesus, our only source of life. Don’t let your excuses keep you from the full, free life in Jesus. Join us.

The Office of Parent

Early May brings Mother’s Day; likewise June delivers Father’s Day. So it’s appropriate to reflect on parenting.

The office of parent is a holy vocation, as holy as the office of husband or wife. The work parents do is holier than that of nearly any other vocation, with the exception of spouses. The work of raising children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord is one of the holiest works to be done. So it is good to honor these estates of motherhood and fatherhood, not merely on one day a year but on every day. And it is good to model our parenting after Holy Scripture and the Catechism.

From the Table of Duties of the Small Catechism: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

There are two styles of parenting: sacrificial parenting and selfish parenting. The world greatly prefers selfish parenting. Worse, our sinful flesh is inclined not toward godly, sacrificial parenting but toward self-interested, selfish parenting. Christian parents must constantly struggle against this sinful tendency.

In a culture where children are a choice and little more than fashion accessories, selfish parenting comes naturally. The trend to be a hip parent is far more popular than any inclination to give up our desires, needs, dreams for the sake of raising our children in the training and instruction of the Lord. There is a distinct tension between wanting to remain the centers of our worlds and needing to heed the call from God to be fathers as He is our Father.

And yet these vocations, these stations in life, these holy offices of mother and father are God-given. And as He has given them, only He can enable the work done through them. So fathers, live in repentance and faith. Learn from God the Father how to be a faithful father to your children. Learn from the St. Joseph, whom God chose to be the guardian and earthly father to the Son of God. Learn from him who taught the Scriptures to the Incarmate Word of God how to raise godly sons and daughters. Learn from him who taught Jesus how to pray to His Father to teach your children to pray to their Heavenly Father. And mothers, live in repentance and faith. Learn from the Church who raises and nurtures you as the sons and daughters of God how to raise your sons and daughters to belong to God. Learn from St. Mary whom the Lord called to be the mother to the Son of God. Learn from her who set aside her own ambitions and goals to embrace this higher, holier calling how to treasure the holy calling of motherhood when the world is quick to denigrate it. Learn from her whose few recorded words are “let it be to me according to your Word” and “Do whatever He tells you” the content of faith.

So, happy Mother’s Day. Happy Father’s Day. God has given you these holy callings, and He enables you, by the forgiveness and mercy He lavishes upon you, to live in these offices and do His work.

Absent Fathers

When did church become something only for women and children? Why are there families in pews without husbands and fathers? Why are there so many absent fathers?

The countdown to the time of my own fatherhood is on. Weeks, days, hours remain before my testing by fire. It’s a daunting task that lies before me, to be sure. And how a pastor is a father to his family matters so much that St. Paul told St. Timothy that if a man cannot manage his household, as husband and father, he is unfit to be a pastor (1 Tim. 3:4-5).

Why does Jesus call men to be disciples? And why does the Lord call men to be pastors? Not because women are inferior (they’re not). Not because women lack the skills necessary (they don’t). Simply because only men can be husbands and fathers.

Just as pastors are fathers to the congregation entrusted to their care (as Luther says in the Large Catechism), fathers are pastors to their families. That’s a huge responsibility. And it’s one for which men will be called to account. Raising God-fearing children will not happen if fathers are not presiding at the family altar: with daily prayer, Scripture reading, and devotions.

For the Feast of St. Michael, Luther preached, “The Lord is very angry, and it grieves him deeply when young people are not carefully trained. ‘Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones,’ he says, whoever teaches young people to curse, swear, lie, slander, to be unchaste, and so on, it would be better if he were dead. By this he indicates that such sin will be punished not merely with temporal death, but with eternal damnation. The world regards this punishment as wrong, and that is why all kinds of offenses flourish. It is the accursed devil’s doing that the world’s young people are now so depraved, wild, and undisciplined. They become the devil’s children and are capable of nothing but cursing and swearing, slandering and lying; they live immorally, are disobedient, and guilty of all manner of malevolence. Woe to those who foster this in them. For the sentence has already been pronounced upon such people, as Christ says, ‘It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.’”

That’s a serious warning. Luther took seriously the task of fathers to instruct their children in the faith, to raise them as pious Christians, so much that he wrote a manual for fathers to use in instructing their children: the Small Catechism. Nearly every section of the Catechism begins, “As the head of the family should teach it in a simple way to his household.”

Men, stop abdicating your responsibility to teach your children the faith and to model the faith to them. Be a faithful father. Be a man.

What are we selling?

Rick Sullivan is a homebuilder by trade. But the former chairman of McBride & Son developers was appointed by Missouri governor Matt Blunt to serve as the CEO of St. Louis public schools. The appointment of a businessman to oversee a not-for-profit institution like a public school system has some people concerned. Why? Because, they argue, a school is not a business.

What’s less of a business than a school? The Church. Unless, of course, you ask church marketing gurus.

There's a growing trend in Christendom to treat the Church as a business and the Gospel as a sellable commodity. There are marketing firms that cater exclusively to churches, offering advertising campaigns, promotional kits, and church growth guarantees. If you believe all they’re selling, all you need to fill the pews and win more people for Jesus is a catchy tag line, a fancy logo, and an interactive website.

Even businesspeople are realizing the business prowess of church marketers. Rich Karlgaard, writing for Forbes.com names the most successful book on business: Pastor Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Church.

But the whole notion of using a business model to grow the church is contrary to the Gospel. The Gospel of Christ crucified for sinners, St. Paul says, is a “stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:21-25). How in the world can you sell “foolishness?” You can’t. Well, not without making it seem less foolish.

If you want people to buy your church marketing approach, you’ll have to avoid Jesus’ statements about taking up one’s cross and following Him (St. Luke 9:23-25). And forget even talking about the Christian life being one plagued by suffering, like St Paul says (Romans 5:1-5).

If, on the other hand, we believe that “we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him” (Small Catechism, Apostles’ Creed), if we believe that the message of Christ crucified for sinners is foolishness, if we believe that growth in the church comes only from God (1 Corinthians 3:6-7), then it’s not up to us to worry about “growing” the church. And it’s not up to us to make the outlandish message of a God who loved us so much that He was born with human flesh, lived a human life, and died a criminal’s death more palatable or less foolish.

What is up to the Church is that she remains faithful. The Church exists as the place where God grows Christians. She exists as the place where He distributes the means of Grace. And she exists as a “mouth house” to proclaim the message that causes sign seekers to stumble and wisdom hunters to discover only folly, the message of Christ crucified for you. That’s the Gospel.

When the Church is faithful to be a station where the Gospel is preached and the Sacraments are administered, any growth that happens is entirely God’s gift.