What It Means to have a God

 Micah 7:18-20

Who is a God like Thee, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?  He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love.  He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot.  Yes, Thou wilt cast all their sins Into the depths of the sea.  Thou wilt give truth to Jacob and unchanging love to Abraham, which Thou didst swear to our forefathers from the days of old.

Sermon for Third Sunday after Trinity                                              6/25/23

What It Means to Have a God

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

The surveys in 2022 say that Eighty-one percent of Americans believe in God, down from 96% in the 1950's.  That single statistic underscores the problem in our world today.  Language, particularly religious language, has lost its meaning for most people.  When you look at our society, it is clear that no where near 81% of the people know God, let alone live in a relationship we might call "faith".  So, it seems obvious that whatever they are calling "believe" is significantly different from what the Church calls "believe", or what the Bible means when it uses the word.  Only 64% expressed a confidence that God really exists.  It also seems plain that we don't all mean the same thing by the word "God."  

Of course, we knew that.  Islam means "Allah."  Hindu's have a number of deities, prominent among them is Vishnu and Siva.  Buddhists don't believe in a deity of any sort, generally.  Jews worship a deity who is not the Trinity, although they use the Old Testament still.  Jehovah's Witnesses have their "Jehovah-God" who is also not of the Trinity, and Mormons have their gods who have bodies - each one - of their own.  The word "god", in fact, is generally used to refer to any one of a number of deities, and by some to refer to a metaphysically superior being of indeterminate nature and origin and power – meaning that they do not know who or what they refer to when they say "God", it is just a word that refers to "something".

In such a diverse context, we need to be careful to be clear about what we mean when we use this language.  We need to be clear about precisely who and what we mean by the word "God".  We need to be clear about what is true and what is not.  Theology is properly the task of making distinctions and definitions to help be clear, and communicate clearly.  Part of the question that needs to be answered in our culture today is addressed in our text.  That question is "What does it mean to ‘have a God'?".  Our theme this morning is the answer – what it means to have a God.

Now listen to the text again carefully.  "Who is a God like Thee, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?  He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love.  He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot.  Yes, Thou wilt cast all their sins Into the depths of the sea.  Thou wilt give truth to Jacob and unchanging love to Abraham, which Thou didst swear to our forefathers from the days of old."

What was Micah talking about?  What was the focus of his description of God? —  —  He talked about God's forgiveness and His "unchanging love."

What distinguishes our God from all the other so-called God's?  Forgiveness and love.  And how does that make our God unique?  He is a God whose attitude toward His children is love and compassion, and whose will is to bless.  The other gods are terrifying.  Men sacrifice children and virgins to them.  People are terrified of them.  All they want to do is satisfy them and avoid their gaze.  Look at Islam.  The women are strictly controlled, covered and fearful, with good reason.  Their religion gives the men the authority to kill them for any perceived infraction of the will of Allah.  Children, particularly those of infidels (unbelievers) are sometimes chained to dungeon walls and beaten and forced to memorize the Koran word for word under the threat of further brutality or death.  Even the men live in fear of being found to be "not quite zealous enough."  Islam is so rigorous and inhibiting that the people who worship Allah can easily strap bombs to their bodies and die rather than continue life in this world.  This behavior isn't an aberration in Islam like the war in Ireland was for Christians, where two political faction divided on the lines of religion make war, this is Islam wherever it is practiced.

Other religions are no better.  Hindus are terrified of Siva.  Siva is the god - or goddess - of destruction.  Hindus believe they are caught up in a cruel and nearly endless cycle of re-incarnation, always seeking Nirvana - the state of perfection which allows them to stop reincarnating, to merge into the great cosmic unity and lose their individuality and consciousness.  They long to cease to exist, and they live in terror and in the depressing certainty that life is empty, painful, and meaningless.  

Modern Jews feel like perpetual victims, and their religion no longer looks forward to a real Messiah.  God is awesome and angry, in their religion, and many of them believe He is no longer paying attention.  The book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," was written by a Rabbi, and says that God doesn't want bad things to happen, but He doesn't have the power to stop them.  Every other religion has a god that is angry and punishing, or distracted and unconcerned.  Salvation, to most of them, is just unconsciousness.  No more fear, and no more pain, and no more thinking!

Our God is good.  His will is tender and gentle and saving.  He wants to bless us and strengthen us and help us.  And this God I describe is not merely the God of modern America; of the rich and pampered and comfortable.  The rich and the comfortable usually reject Him and walk in their own futility.  This is the God of the Apostles and of Luther – of times in human history as difficult and dangerous as any place in the Muslim world today.  This is the God whose people rejoiced in His goodness and delighted in His blessings.  Because of their faith in Him, Christians established (by His blessing) what we call modern science and developed all the technology we find so convenient and pleasant today.

What does it mean to have a God?  Luther said that it meant to look to Him for every good and blessing and only for good and blessing.  That is why the prophet celebrates God's forgiveness.  When our sins are forgiven, nothing stands in the way of God pouring out His abundant blessings on His people.  Forgiveness means good things, good times, great blessings.  It means that God's favor and love are focused on us.  When we believe we are forgiven, we expect God to be good.  We expect God to be on our side, fighting every battle for us.  We expect life to be the best that life can be because God loves us.  He is not angry with us.  He does not wish to see us suffer or be hurt.  He has no ill will or evil thoughts toward us at all.  That's what it means to have a God.

Sadly, even some who call themselves "Christians" don't really have a god.  They have an academic appreciation of the contents of Scriptures.  They have a faith in the history, that it is true.  They have a timorous assent to propositions of low probability, but they do not have a god – at least not our God.  They fear tomorrow.  They expect failure.  They worry about having enough or getting by, as though they must tiptoe past misfortune for fear that it might awaken and wreak havoc on us.  They await the dropping of the other shoe – God is going to punish them, they say.  Wealth and health and happiness are unnatural conditions they have enjoyed far too long, and now they are uneasily certain that their run of good "luck" is about to end and the roof will cave in on them and God will deal with them just as they deserve.

I suspect that some of you may think that way.  But what it means to have a God is to trust Him and expect His love and goodness.  It means to look to Him for blessing and good.  It means that we expect life to be more a delight than a problem – although, for reason of sin, we know that life will have pains and troubles.  But our sins have been forgiven because of Jesus and the cross, and so we expect God to be good – and when we need something, some good or blessing, the first and only place we look for it is God.  That is what it means to have a God.

And we have good reason to expect these wonderful things!  Micah said,   He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot.  Well, our reason for such optimism is that He has had compassion on us and He has tread our iniquities under foot.  He did it in Jesus.

God sent His only Son into the flesh, and took on our human nature in every way, except sin.  He lived just as any one of us might, and He did it in one of the less advanced and comfortable times of human history.  He wrestled with the devil, both face to face in the wilderness and in daily life and temptation, and still kept the whole will and Law of God perfectly.  Then He claimed our sins and the judgment due to us for our sins and He died.  He took our sins on Himself, and allowed us to nail Him to the cross, and He died there as payment of the penalty we have earned for sin.

Then He rose from the grave.  He rose just as Scripture promised that He would.  His resurrection was God's public proclamation that Sin was settled, we have been redeemed and forgiven, and our iniquity has been "passed over".

The result is that we are forgiven.  He has compassion on us, and He has tread our iniquities under His feet.  Micah wrote, Who is a God like Thee, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?  He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love.   The answer, of course, is that there is no other God who pardons.  The anger of our God is trumped by His unchanging love.  He delights in loving us.  He calls us by name in Baptism and makes us His children.  He adopts us into His family!  You can search the literature of the world's religions and not find a God who makes His people His family, and claims them as His own children!

Then He nurtures us in the Word, and feeds us with heavenly food.  Here in this holy supper He fills us with Himself - the very body given for us, and the very blood shed for us.  He hides them beneath the form of bread and wine, to be sure, but they are there.  Faith takes God at His Word and knows what good things it receives in this Sacrament.  But make no mistake about this: whoever eats at this altar eats the body of the Lord and drinks His blood.  It does not require faith to do so at this altar – all it requires is participation.

Faith is required, however, to lay hold of the blessings of this holy meal.  Unbelief receives the precious gifts of Christ's body and blood, but it receives them blasphemously, receiving them without understanding, without appropriate thanksgiving, receiving them as though the gifts offered were merely cookies and Kool-Aid.  That is why we practice closed communion.  We do not wish to see anyone receive from our holy table the judgment of God in their ignorance where there should be blessing and health.  And God has promised that the one who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not discern the body present in the Sacrament.

It is all part of what it means to have a God.  It means to look to Him for every blessing, and to expect from Him only blessing.  When we have a God, we have peace, and confidence, and hope.  It means to take Him at His Word, and to trust Him to do precisely what He says that He will do, and to give us all that He has promised to give.  To have a God means to listen to Him, and not try to put our words into His mouth.  It means to trust Him no matter what it looks like or feels like.  It means that even death is not the final answer, for we, too, shall rise with Jesus Christ into everlasting life in glory!  It means that we don't necessarily have to understand the moment, but we are to be confident that God does, and that He is in control for our blessing and with the ultimate aim that His will be accomplished.

And what is His will for us?  (Our Salvation).

And that is what it means to have a God.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

Correction, Instruction, and Understanding

Proverbs 9:1-10

Wisdom has built her house, She has hewn out her seven pillars; She has prepared her food, she has mixed her wine; She has also set her table; She has sent out her maidens, she calls From the tops of the heights of the city: "Whoever is naive, let him turn in here!"  To him who lacks understanding she says, "Come, eat of my food, And drink of the wine I have mixed.  Forsake your folly and live, And proceed in the way of understanding."

He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself, And he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself.  Do not reprove a scoffer, lest he hate you, Reprove a wise man, and he will love you.  Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser, Teach a righteous man, and he will increase his learning.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity                             6/18/23

Correction, Instruction, and Understanding

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Some texts are easier to preach than others, just as some sermons are easier to hear than others.  The lesson from Proverbs this morning would be great for a theological lecture.  It has so many interesting facets.  As a sermon text, however, it covers too much ground.  It would be easy to get off the track and turn it into a moral lecture.  It would be just as easy to ignore the words and preach a nice, happy little sermon.  The challenge of the text for me is to avoid either extreme, and preach the Word of God before us as a pastor.  The challenge before you is to listen, and to hear what it has to say.  Our theme, this morning, is Correction, Instruction, and Understanding.

At first glance, it looks like some sort of anthropomorphizing analogy about Wisdom, followed by a warning about the dangers inherent in teaching mockers.  I am tempted to ignore the first half of the text.  That is where the lecture material comes in.  If you read this chapter of Proverbs, however, you will find that at this end Wisdom is inviting the naive, and at the other end of the chapter, Folly makes her invitation.  One way is the way of life, the other way is the way of death.

Our reality offers us two "invitations".  We always confront the choices of right or wrong, of faith or doubt, of faithfulness or rebellion.  This is, in a sense, where we live.  We are generally not the target of the invitation in our text.  The invitation is extended to the "naive".  The Hebrew word there means "simple".  The invitation is to the young and simple, to the inexperienced and what Rush Limbaugh called "young skulls full of mush."  Most of us are no longer inexperienced and naive.  We still hear the siren call of Folly, however, always inviting us to sin, always asking us to act as though we have no compass and no understanding.

That would be out of character, though.  That is one of the realities that grown-up Christians need to learn to face.  Sin and "folly" are out of character for the child of God.  They are unnatural, since we have been redeemed and set free from sin into the freedom of the children of God.  We who might consider ourselves mature Christians are those who should have eaten at the table of Wisdom.  The new Christians and the young people among us are the ones to whom the invitation is spoken.

Wisdom has built her house.  It would tempting to say that you are sitting in it, but that is not precisely true.  We, who are Christians, are the house.  1 Peter 2:4-5: "And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."  We are the house of God, the house that Wisdom built.  The seven pillars are the Seven-fold Spirit, the one called the "Septiform Spirit", "the Spirit of the LORD, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD," named in Isaiah 11:2.  These pillars have been "hewn out" by being poured out on Jesus, the author of our faith, and the cornerstone of the Church.

Remember, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."  That "fear of the Lord" means "Faith".  True Wisdom is built on knowing God, and trusting Him, and seeing the world through the knowledge of God.  This is not a natural perspective.  It is not even automatic for mature Christians.  It is a perspective that we learn, and one which we must daily set before ourselves.  It means to be deliberately a Christian, to choose to walk in the light of forgiveness, and the consciousness of our own weakness and susceptibility to sin.  "Proceed in the way of understanding," the text says.

The way of understanding is the way of the Gospel, through the passageways of the Law.  That is why the invitation is directed to the naive.  Generally, by the time you have gotten to your forties or fifties, or beyond, you have heard the invitations of both Wisdom and Folly, and you have accepted one or the other.  That is why the text speaks about the dangers of teaching the "scoffer" and the "wicked man".

Correction is one of the things that God's Wisdom does.  We are sinful men and women, and so we are always wrong, by nature.  And correction is never fun.  Being told that you are sinful, that perfectly natural passions and reactions to things are sin and death is both frightening and irritating.  The child of God takes the correction to heart, repents and seeks forgiveness.  The scoffer and the wicked man just take offense and try to make it stop by creating as much havoc and pain in the lives of those they see as responsible for their pain as they can.  The scoffer attacks what he sees as restrictions on his or her freedom.  The wicked man (or woman) simply attacks anything holy because having holiness nearby makes the wicked conscious of the evil nature of their wickedness.  They don't want to be seen as wicked or treated as the wicked people that they are – so they strike, they attack, they seek to humiliate, enrage and destroy – to silence anyone they see as correcting them or reproving them, or to bring them down to their own level.

Scoffers are those who like to think they know better.  They are free-thinkers.  They can see that old-fashioned religion and doctrines of the past are out of date, too conservative, and no longer relevant.  They scoff at God.  They scoff at faith, They scoff at truth.  They know a better, brighter, and more acceptable way.  The wicked are those who do not believe, and do not care to be guided by truth.  They want to do what they want to do, and no one had better get in their way.  If you correct or reprove either of these you will find insults, scorn, derision, and hatred.

The wise man is the righteous man who takes correction to heart, who is instructed by the discipline of God, and who delights in learning because what he is learning is truth, and how to see himself and all of life through the perspective of the truth.  The wise man is the righteous man because, in this passage, wisdom is faith - "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

The "wise man" of our text is the Christian, whose hope is in the Lord, and whose greatest treasure is forgiveness, life and salvation.  Each of us would like to claim our place among those "wise" men, and yet I would guess that none of us feel that our forgiveness or salvation is always our greatest treasure.  We probably feel that way some of the time, and we know that it is true, but we don't feel it all of the time.

That is where reproof and correction come in.  That is why the text says Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser, Teach a righteous man, and he will increase his learning.  The Christian knows that he is not complete yet.  The more we know about God, the more we can believe.  And correction straightens us out and helps us stand firm and faithful, so we receive it gladly – even when it is painful and irritating.  The wise know that the problem is sin, not the correction, and not the one who is reproving us.

We are naturally sinners.  We are not generically and mildly sinners, but evil, sinful, wicked sinners who gossip and lust and grumble against God.  And those are the sins that brought about the cross and passion and death of our Lord.

Because Jesus died for you, and rose again, your sins, however terrible - and they are truly terrible, have been forgiven!  To understand that and place your hope for salvation in that is true wisdom.
Having the beginning of wisdom, we press on to know the Lord, as the prophet Hosea encourages us in Hosea 6:3.  We seek to grow in wisdom and maturity, as Hebrews 6:1 instructs us.  We seek to grow not just because we want to get to heaven, but because, as our text says, the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

What that means is that the better we know God, and understand His will and His ways, the more sense we can make of life.  We can find and enjoy a sense of peace in this life when we see the world, and our lives, from the perspective of the truth – God's truth.  Life makes more sense when we trust God.  It isn't as terrifying, and it isn't as frustrating.  We know that God is with us.  That answers the fears of our flesh.  We know that God is providing and protecting us because of His great love for us – so we are confident in every situation when we walk by faith.

We have, through our faith, sin and death stripped of their powers.  Christ has died our death, and we shall live His life.  The uncertainties of this life are settled in knowing the will of God and trusting His promises and His care and keeping.  And what is the will of God?  [our salvation]

See how wise you are?  And doesn't it make life better, and make you happy to know that God's will is focused on your salvation?  The more you know about God, the better you can understand your life, and the world around you.  The more you know about God and how He works among us and in us and through us, the deeper your faith – the more powerful it is in comforting you, in guiding you, in helping you live daily as the child of God in this dark and sinful world.

Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, and so, if we understand that, faith is what the Proverbs refer to as wisdom,  Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser.  And, if you Teach a righteous man (a Christian, man or woman, made righteous by the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus), he will increase his learning.

The alternatives are Wisdom and Folly.  Since Wisdom is faith, Folly is unbelief.  Folly is sin.  Folly is the temptation to do what feels good, and reach for all the gusto you can get.  Folly says that it is my life and my body and I can do what I darn well please.  Folly is all those things we hear people say to look good or sound good, to justify themselves rather than confess and repent of their sins and be truly cleansed. The proverb says, There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

 Actually two proverbs say it, in the same words - Proverbs 14:12 and Proverbs 16:25.  The way of death is easy and natural.  The way of wisdom is difficult and sometimes painful, and sometimes humiliating because it involves correction - and repentance - and humility.  Jesus said, "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it.  For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it."  The narrow gate is the gate of Wisdom, the gate where we find Correction, Instruction and Understanding.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

How to be Righteous

 Genesis 15:1-6

After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great."  And Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what wilt Thou give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?"  And Abram said, "Since Thou hast given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir."  Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "This man will not be your heir; but one who shall come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir."  And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them."  And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be."  Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Sermon for The First Sunday After Trinity                             6/11/23

How To Be Righteous

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Abram had a problem.  He had no heir.  In the ancient world, that was a big problem.  Someone had to inherit.  Governments had not yet learned to be confiscatory.  It was the duty of the head of the house to select an heir and make his selection known before he died.  Abram had been promised an heir, but so far, no such luck.

God knew what was on his mind.  God came to visit with Abram, and greeted him in a vision with the promise and the word of their relationship.  Abram's response was something less than cordial.  He said, in effect, "Oh sure!  How am I going to get all of these blessings?  I have no heir, and I am getting old.  It looks like I am going to have to leave my stuff to my servant Eliezer of Damascus.  So how am I going to get all of this reward?"  Abram was looking for family, and offspring.  Having no sons was a considered a sign of the curse of God.  The last thing on the mind of Abram was how to be "righteous."  But that is our theme this morning.  I invite you to consider our Old Testament lesson, this morning, and see what it reveals to us about How To Be Righteous.

Abram was a man of faith.  Like any one of us, his faith was not always as firm as it might have been.  He had moments when the plan of God simply did not make sense to him.  He had left home and father and traveled to the promised land.  He was patiently waiting for the promise, but it had been ten or twelve years.  He was now in his late eighties.  Sarai was getting no younger either.  It was becoming less likely that God would do what He had promised, in the mind of Abram.  It was certainly seeming to be less possible.

God knew the weakness of Abram and saw that he needed to be encouraged, so God spoke to Abram in a vision, repeating the promise and inviting Abram to speak and ask and hear and believe.  Abram responded to hearing the familiar promise with his doubts and confusion over how things were progressing – over the timetable of the Lord.

And God corrected Abram.  He repeated the promise and told Abram that it would not merely be one born in his house, but one born of his seed – he would be the father of the one who would receive the promise.  He God took Abram outside, in the vision, and pointed his attention to the stars – all more clearly visible from that place and that time than they frequently are with all of our artificial lighting today.  Then God promised the childless man that not only would his own son inherit what God had promised, but that the line of Abraham would be too many to count, just like the stars!  And how fantastic and incredible the promise must have sounded to this old man who had never successfully fathered even one child, male or female!  But Abram believed the Lord, and God reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Now, we know from our place in history, that Abram did not understand fully the promise of God, yet.  He later thought that he could fulfill the promise with just any child he might father, which is where Hagar and Ishmael come into the story.  But Abram heard the Word of God, and he trusted God to accomplish what God promised – even though the wait was long, and nothing about his situation suggested to him that it was even possible.  And God reckoned it to Abram as righteousness, that is, God counted it or credited the trust as if Abram were a righteous man, which, on the basis of his own conduct, he was not.

Now, you have all known this story.  We have heard it over and over again.  But what does it mean for us?

It means that we can trust God to fulfill His promises to us, even when it doesn't seem very likely – or even when it doesn't seem possible.

People worry about their lives.  God knows what is happening, and worry is wasted.  It doesn't change reality.  Why worry when we can take it to the Lord, and simply trust God to be our God?

What does it mean to have a God?  It means to look to Him for good, all the good that we expect, and every good that we need, and look only to Him for good.  So, when we trust God – that is a name we use for Him – to be our God – as in "what does it mean to have a God?", we are to expect God to be good and do good and take care of us, just as He has promised over and over again.

Some people, for example, express the fear that our congregation will fail, that we will not have enough money to pay the bills and support the pastor and do the things congregations are supposed to do.  They are either afraid of the future or angry with the pastor, but either way, they don't trust that we will survive.  But we can trust God to fulfill every promise He has made to us.

Now, has God made any promise to us that Immanuel will be large and strong as a congregation?  Has He promised success and survival for the congregation?  No.  There is no such promise.  This text tells us nothing about the survival of our congregation.

It tells us how to be righteous.  The way to be righteous is to trust God.  Abram believed the Lord, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.  God has made many promises to us, but the promise that says life will be fun, or being a Christian will be easy, or that all of our endeavors will meet with success is simply not there.  He just promises us that if we trust in Him, He will bring us through whatever we will face, and finally take us to heaven with Him for everlasting life.

We see from the example of Abram that God keeps His promises.  We see in Jesus Christ, particularly on the cross, that God has taken sin out of the way.  Your sins are forgiven.  When you trust in God, you are righteous – but with a righteousness that comes to you from outside of yourself.  Your righteousness is Christ's righteousness, because He took your sins on Himself and nailed them to the cross in His body.  When He died, you died the death that you deserve to die for your sins – you just did your dying through Him.  Now, when you live, you live His life – He just does His living through you!

The principle here is salvation by grace through faith.  Your faith is the means God has appointed to receive forgiveness and, therefore, perfect righteousness.  So, if you want to be righteous, you need to trust God – trust His promises, made about Jesus and about forgiveness in connection with the cross and with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  

  You need to believe that Jesus was without sin, and that He was and is true God.  

  You need to understand and believe that He died for your sins, and paid the penalty, and that the resurrection of Jesus was God's declaration to the world that Jesus had satisfied the justice of God for all sin.  

  You need to trust the promise that because of these truths, He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.  

  And you need to trust that this applies to you, to your sins, and to your salvation.

And when it comes to question like "will this congregation endure?", the answer is, "If God wills."  Everything we can do is to care for one another, love each other, and live in faith, trusting God to do what we need and to be our God, giving us all the good we need, and working through us that which is pleasing to Him.  I suspect this congregation will survive because we have what everyone in the neighborhood needs, the Gospel.  But our concern is first faith, and then faithfulness – "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

And Abram believed the Lord, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.  It wasn't earned by faith – Abram wasn't even looking for righteousness.  He was looking for an heir, and asking God how He was going to fulfill the promises He had made to Abram.  When Abram took God at His Word, and trusted God to do what He promised, God counted that confidence as righteousness.

He will count your confidence in Him as righteousness, too.  When you take to heart the absolution you hear in the service, then God does for you what you trust in Him for – not because of your faith, but through it you receive forgiveness. When you believe, God reckons you righteous with the righteousness of Christ.  You don't possess that gift because you believe, but through your faith.  You have it because Jesus won it for you, and because God is pleased to pour out His grace on us, and because God has chosen to reckon faith to us as righteousness.

People come to church for a lot of reasons.  Some come for nostalgia; the music is familiar, the setting is like when they were young.  Some come to church for a quiet place.  Some come to church for the social fellowship.  Some people come out of habit, and others are searching for something.  They may not be sure what they are searching for, but they have come here in their search.  But, no matter why you have come, or how often, God reckons trust in Him and in His promises as righteousness.  He forgives every sin for Christ's sake.  He pours out grace and life and salvation upon you, and calls you His own child.

Abram was the pattern – the fancy word is "paradigm."  He believed and it was accounted to Him as righteousness.  God promises the same thing to us – John at the end of his Gospel writes, "Many other signs therefore Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name."  Faith in God and His promises and His love – that's how to be righteous.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

The One Important Detail

 Isaiah 6:1-7

In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory." And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.

Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven."

Sermon for Trinity Sunday 6/04/23

The One Important Detail

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

This is Trinity Sunday. Today we take time to consider God as He has revealed Himself. It is one of the Sundays of the year that we use the Athanasian Creed. It requires us to think and concentrate, and it is, for many, intimidating. It says that if you do not believe what it says, you are not a Christian, you are not saved. That is pretty intimidating.

It is true, however. And the Creed is one of the Lutheran Confessions. It isn't ours alone. We call it one of the "ecumenical" creeds because every Christian church either uses it, or believes and confesses what it says. If they do not confess it, and do not believe what the Athanasian Creed says, that church is not a Christian church, no matter how much "Jesus-Talk" they use, and no matter what they say.

Our text is the Old Testament Lesson appointed for Trinity Sunday. In it, Isaiah details a vision of God. Our theme is The One Important Detail.

One important detail? Which one? Isaiah gives us a lot of details. We know when he had the vision. We have this picture of the throne, and the train of the robe of God filling the temple. One might wonder if it ran the length of the temple, or if it was folded over and over again to literally fill the temple. We hear the description of the Seraphim and hear their cry. Isaiah tells us of the volume and power of their praise to God, and he tells us of the reaction he had to the entire vision. Which details are significant?

All of them are significant. Most of them are symbols. The train filling the temple speaks of the glory of God in the temple and of God's intended purpose for the temple. The appearance of the angels tells us about the nature of the angels and the glory of God. Most of the details are symbols since they deal with invisible creatures, and with God who is only visible when He chooses to be visible. What Isaiah saw and heard was theology in the form of object lessons.

For example, the cry of "Holy! Holy! Holy!' of the angels. It is called the "Ter Sanctus", the "three holies" literally. Some people imagine that it is just the way religious talk works, that the angels repeat themselves like that. But it is more than that. It is the angelic reflection of the Trinitarian nature of God. What the New Testament makes so clear, is also reflected in the Old Testament. The Triune God can be identified in His three persons at the creation in Genesis 1. His Trinity is reflected in the Aaronic Benediction, with the three-fold "May the Lord . . .". He is here in this song of praise, and His three-in-oneness is suggested in the account of Abraham before the destruction of Sodom. We can trace the revelation of God's nature throughout the Old Testament.

But it is true that we see the Trinity most clearly in the New Testament, at the Baptism of Jesus, for example. The word, "Trinity" or "Triune", is a Christian invention, of course. It doesn't appear in the Bible. It was made up to put a label on the truths which the Bible tells us about God. First the Bible tells us that there is only one God. "There is no God but one", Paul shouts in 1 Corinthians. The fundamental confession of Israel is Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!" That is the "one" part of three in one.

The three part comes from the places where the Bible calls the Father God, and others where they call the Son, God. And still, others speak of the Holy Spirit as God. Jesus says, "I and the Father are one." Then there is the Baptism scene, where the Father opens the heavens and speaks, the Son is standing on the shore of the Jordan, and the Holy Spirit is descending visibly to land on and rest on Jesus in the form of a dove. That is the "three" part.

We put them together in the light of the Scriptures and we end up with the Trinity. The rest of the details you have confessed this morning, as you spoke the words of the Athanasian Creed, have been hammered out the hard way, by theological debate, by correcting false teachers, and by demonstrating over centuries that if you say the wrong thing here about God, the Gospel falls apart, or, if you explain God's nature without certain difficult truths, the God you end up describing isn't the One in the Bible, and He fails the test of being able to save us as the Bible says He has.

That's the whole thing. The Trinity is fundamental to the Gospel. You can talk about forgiveness and resurrection and stuff without accepting the Trinity, but it is rather like those museum displays that look so realistic from a distance, but if you get up close, all the little imperfections make them look so terribly phony. If you don't have the Trinity, you lose something essential – several things essential to the Gospel and how the divine economy works. The entire issue is really about the Gospel.

And that brings us back to the one important detail. What is the one important detail in the Old Testament Lesson? It is part of the forgiveness pictured for us. Isaiah cries out, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." He confronts the holiness of God and is utterly dismayed by his own sinfulness! If we were to face God, we would be humbled and crushed by our sins as well. No man can see God and live, or so God says to the Moses when He says that he wants to see God's glory. His glory is consuming, and yet we live. And Isaiah was being consumed by His guilt by merely seeing the vision, and not God as He is.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven." And this is the detail. The angel flew to the altar in heaven – the real thing of which all earthly altars are but pale copies, and with tongs the angel took a burning coal. He flew with the coal and touched the lips of Isaiah and cleansed Him. He pronounced absolution, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven. Why he was worried about just his lips, I don't know. It reminds me, however, of where Jesus says that it is not what a man puts into himself but what comes out of Him that defiles him.

The one important detail, however, is the coal on the altar. When is there a burning coal on the altar? It is after the sacrifice! Only after the sacrifice has been made in heaven will we find the burning coals on the altar – evidence of the sacrifice. The burning coal tells us that before God the Father, the sacrifice of His Son, the Lamb of God, was already made. From eternity, God's plan was accomplished, even while mankind awaited its coming on earth.

And this one picture depicts for us the Trinity. We have the altar of the Father, the sacrifice of the Son, and the angel - literally the "messenger" who conveys the forgiveness from the altar to us. That would be the Holy Ghost, the one who sanctifies us, or makes us holy. He brings us the same good news each week. You hear it in the absolution. You hear it in the proclamation of the Gospel. And you receive it by mouth, just as Isaiah did, only you receive it in the blessed Sacrament. Here in the holy meal, you receive the evidence and the fruit of the sacrifice of the very Son of God for you. You receive it as the gift is pressed to your mouth, and your sins are forgiven, and your guilt is cleansed away, and you are enabled to stand before the living God without terror or danger.

The entire account is true, and vitally important, but the fact of the forgiveness of sins and that it comes from the sacrifice already complete and effective on the altar of God, that is the most important detail. It isn't just a detail, actually, it is the whole story! Without the forgiveness of sins, the rest is just information that cannot use.

But now your sins are forgiven! And Jesus has left us the sign and gift in the Holy Supper, that we may eat, and receive, and be refreshed, and forgiven and comforted. Your sins are forgiven! And it is possible because your God is the Triune God, who is capable of being more and doing more than you or I can imagine.

The vision of Isaiah is inspiring! It inspired Martin Luther to write the hymn, "Isaiah, Mighty Seer, in Days of Old." It makes vivid pictures in the mind, and brings to our minds a sense of the majesty of God and the wonder of heaven. But the one important detail is the one that speaks of our forgiveness!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

When You Add It All Up

 Ezekiel 36:22-28

"Therefore, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.  And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst.  Then the nations will know that I am the LORD," declares the Lord GOD, "when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.  For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.  Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.  Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.  And you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God."

Sermon for Exaudi Sunday – The Sunday after the Ascension               5/21/23

When You Add It All Up

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Some people believe that the Old Testament is Law and the New Testament is Gospel.  That is so probably because the Old Testament contains the most concise and explicit summary of the Law, the Ten Commandments, and the New Testament reveals with such clarity and simplicity the Gospel.  But the Gospel is woven throughout the Old Testament, and the Law is clearly stated throughout the New Testament.  The first Gospel promise is in Genesis 3:15, and the Law is nowhere clearer or more demanding than in the Sermon on the Mount.  So, when you add it all up, the entire Scripture reveals both Law and Gospel.

Our text is merely seven verses long.  Nevertheless, there is clear and brutally frank Law in it, and the sweetest Gospel promises.  God speaks a harsh truth about the people of ancient Israel, and, I suspect, more than just a little truth about us.  Then He makes sweet promises to them, and to us.  He speaks about Baptism, and about conversion, and about Pentecost, and about saving us.  So, when you add it all up, God is speaking to us, through Ezekiel.  Our theme, then, is, "When You Add It All Up."
Ezekiel is clearly a profound preaching of the Law.  God says, in the entire book of Ezekiel, that He had to destroy Israel and drive His people into exile.  It was part of the covenant, a covenant which they broke egregiously.  God says, in effect, that if He had permitted them to continue without striking and punishing them, He would have become an accomplice – He would share in their sin.

Ezekiel even describes the sins in the chapters surrounding our text.  He says that the priests were bringing Idols into the house of God and sacrificing to them at the altar of God.  He accuses the shepherds of the people of fleecing the flock, eating the sheep and growing fat at their expense, without ever feeding them or caring for them or protecting them from the wolves.  These are unfaithful and uncaring religious leaders and teachers who used their positions for making a living, and took advantage of the people without serving them with the truth or protecting them from all that is false in the world's religions that surrounded them.  He said it like this, "Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves!  Should not the shepherds feed the flock?  You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock.  Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and with severity you have dominated them.  And they were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered."

God wasn't talking about real sheep, but people.  He wasn't talking about real food, but the Word.  He wasn't talking about real wool, but the offerings of the people.  He wasn't talking about real beasts of the field as predators on His people, but false teachers, and the false religions around them.

God also charges the people themselves.  He speaks of the fat sheep and the lean.  Listen to a few verses from Ezekiel 34: "And as for you, My flock, thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Behold, I will judge between one sheep and another, between the rams and the male goats.  Is it too slight a thing for you that you should feed in the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pastures?  Or that you should drink of the clear waters, that you must foul the rest with your feet?  And as for My flock, they must eat what you tread down with your feet, and they must drink what you foul with your feet!'"  Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them, "Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.  Because you push with side and with shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, until you have scattered them abroad,  therefore, I will deliver My flock, and they will no longer be a prey; and I will judge between one sheep and another."

What God is referring to is the domination of one child of God by another – the rich against the poor, the strong personalities over against the weak, the aggressive or powerful over against the timid or the mild.  They were taking advantage of one another.  They were manipulating one another.  They were getting what they wanted out of their religion, and closing the doors to others without regard for their needs.  They were taking advantage as though their religion was theirs alone, and they had no responsibility toward each other - or God.

Ezekiel tells them that because of them, the name of God is blasphemed among the heathen.  People mocked their religion and mocked their God because of the behavior of the Israelites.  "And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD," declares the Lord GOD, "when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.".

When you add it all up, the children of Israel were acting like the heathen around them, and worse than the heathen.  Because of their behavior, their lack of religiousness, their lack of faithfulness, the name of God was profaned.  It was made into something common and dirty – like a curse word – rather than something holy and precious and to be treated with respect.  It was because of these things, basically because of the unfaithfulness and lack of sincere religion, that God destroyed Israel and drove them into exile under Nebuchadnezzar.  

I shudder to draw comparisons.  Christians are mocked and their God is ridiculed because of what Christians do and say, what they permit and what they deny.  Lutherans are the butt of jokes and Lutheranism is shamefully mocked and our faith is caricatured grotesquely because of Lutherans.  Lutherans often seem neither to trust God nor appreciate their own faith.  They too often do not live as the children of a holy God, or as those who must stand before the righteous Judge of all mankind.  They treat morality as temporary and changeable.  They often treat worship as disposable.   Far too often, they treat the treasures of the Sacraments as optional and meaningless and merely human acts with no real power or significance.  They treat each other like dirt. Lutheranism is profaned among the unbelievers because of Lutherans.

And what about Immanuel?  How are we seen in the community?  Are we viewed as the home of sound doctrine and holy people?  Is this congregation seen as the place to go – or the place to flee from?  I am not talking about how you look at Immanuel, but what you communicate to your friends and neighbors.  How does the community see us?  Are we the home of God's holy people who live in Christian love with one another, or is the name of God profaned because of us?  What they see is what you show them and tell them – not what you see.  When you add it all up, our faith and our faithfulness is what people see and hear.  How they evaluate Immanuel, and Lutherans, and sometimes Christians as a whole depends entirely on what you show them and tell them.

In our text, God says that He will prove Himself holy by how He will deal with His people.  Ezekiel writes, "For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.  Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.  Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.  And you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God."

What He is talking about there is the Gospel.  He gathers His people, cleanses them with water, creates a new heart within them, pours out His Spirit upon them, and gives them a land to live in.  That is the Gospel.  The gathering of His people is the Church.  The sprinkling with clean water is Baptism.  The cleansing from all our filthiness is the forgiveness of sins purchased on the cross at the price of the pains and suffering and death of the very Son of God.  It is our sins that are our idols – the idols mentioned by Ezekiel above – or we make idols of ourselves.  When God calls us by the Gospel and enlightens us with His gifts and makes us His people, that is when He gives us the new heart, taking our stony and sinful hearts and giving us the hearts of tender flesh, hearts that can love, and forgive, one another.  He pours out His Spirit through Word and Sacrament, and teaches us to love Him and do His Will by forgiveness and grace.

When you add it all up, what God would have us known for is not our quarrels, or our friendliness, but for His grace and love in Jesus Christ.  God made His name holy among the nations by the rescue and salvation of His people Israel.  What God would have us known for is Jesus Christ, that He died on the cross for us, and that we have been redeemed and made holy by His blood and by His love.  God would make His name holy among us and the people we live in the midst of by Baptism, and by our cheerful and willing witness to His goodness grace and love in Jesus Christ.  He would have us be known for living out the forgiveness He has won for us, and His name made holy through us -- His holiness demonstrated through our faith, our love for one another, and our faithfulness to Him.  When you add it all up, God would have us known less for what we do, and more for what He has done for us in love.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

Hung with a New Rope

 Numbers 21:4-9

Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey.  And the people spoke against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food."

And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.  So the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us."  And Moses interceded for the people.  Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live."  And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

Sermon for Rogate Sunday                                              5/14/23

Hung with a New Rope

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

There is an expression used to describe a person who is never satisfied.  They say that "he would complain if he were hung with a new rope."  The person or persons characterized by this half-humorous expression would be the sort that is always complaining, usually loudly proclaiming their dissatisfaction to everyone within earshot. That is, they would be the sort of people described in our text.  The Children of Israel were the sort of people who could complain under any circumstances.  They might well be described as the sort who would complain if they were hung with a new rope.  This morning, we are going to take a closer look at the account of the fiery serpents in our Old Testament lesson with the theme, Hung with a New Rope.

If there were an Olympic event in grumbling, the Children of Israel would have won gold every time.  Here they were, a people who had been pressed into slavery and cruelly treated for generations, and God had brought them out with tremendous miracles and signs and wonders!  God led them out, wealthy with the spoil of Egypt.  He opened the Red Sea before them, and drowned their enemies behind them.  He personally guided them with the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.  They never had to sleep in the darkness – they always had a night light, even out in the wilderness.  God fed them each day with the miracle of Manna, and made water fountain our of rocks in the desert to give them something to drink.  God made sure nothing ever wore out, so they had no needs like those of the nations around them.

They should have been content.  They should have been downright giddy with happiness; freedom, riches, food without labor, security.  But here they are, in our text, complaining bitterly.  Their complaints don't even make sense.  They complain they have no food, and yet they also gripe about having to eat Manna.  "We loathe this miserable food."  Manna was a pleasant tasting, slightly sweet food, one that could apparently be made into bread or just eaten the way it was.  But, familiarity breeds contempt, and, after all, these were people who would complain if they were hung with a new rope.

Not like us.  You would never catch any one of us complaining!  No sir!  We live in the richest nation on earth.  We are the people who consume the majority of the resources consumed each year, even though we are a small fraction of the world's population.  We have abundant food, and it is clean and safe.  We have a health system that is the envy of the entire world.  People flock to our country to get our health care – if they can afford it.  And if you cannot afford it, our hospitals are required by law to serve you anyhow.  We have the safest nation.  The only thing we have to fear is one another – our enemies cannot generally hurt us, and when they do, like September 11th , we pound the daylights out of them.

We never complain, right??  No one gripes about gas prices.  No one complains about their doctor.  No one grumbles about how the vast selections in our local grocery stores aren't quite as fresh or pretty or broad as they were "back in the day." No one ever hears any of us complaining, right?  We often don't realize just how good we have it, particularly when we complain.  We must seem to others to be the sort that would complain even if we were hung with a new rope!

How did God respond to the Children of Israel and their grumbling?  In this case, He sent what the Bible describes as "fiery serpents."  They may have been reddish or orange, or perhaps it burned when they bit.  We don't know why they called them "fiery", but we do know that the bite was fatal – swiftly fatal, although not instantly fatal.  It was almost as if God had said, "If you want something to complain about, I'll give you something."  Our text says that many people of Israel died.

Then God did something unique.  When Moses interceded for the people, bringing their confession of sin to God in prayer (which was how God wanted them to do it back then), God told Moses to "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live."  So Moses made a serpent of bronze that looked like the ones troubling Israel, and He put it on a tall pole – that is what the word "standard" means in the text, "and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived."

What is so wonderful about this is that it is salvation by faith, pictured for us by the Children of Israel.  You have to expect that there were those among them who said, or at least thought, that it was stupid to expect that just looking at the serpent on the pole would heal them.  They were probably sure that nothing so simple would end the pain and stop the poison.  Those who thought that way were what we would now call "casualties".  They died.

But anyone who took God at His Word and looked at the serpent lived.  All it took was trusting the Word of God enough to do what God had commanded.  I image that there may have even been those who didn't actually trust God, but did what was commanded "just in case", and they lived, too, and learned to trust the promises of God even when they don't make good, rational sense.
Even more, think about this: there was a serpent on a pole – like the serpent of old from the garden of Eden, nailed to the cross.

But Jesus was nailed to the cross, you say.  That is true.  Jesus "became sin for us, He who knew no sin of His own, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."  Jesus became sin!  He was all that evil through all our generations – not personally, but He took it on Himself and carried it to the cross and nailed it there in His own body for us.  It was on the cross that Jesus crushed the head of that Ancient Serpent.  So, it was every bit as though the Serpent hung on the cross, just as the fiery serpents were hung on the pole, the standard, which Moses raised.  And just as those who took God at His Word and trusted His promise – and so looked at the serpent – received the salvation they desired and lived, even so, he that believes and is baptized shall be saved.

When anyone looks at the cross of Jesus, trusting in what God has spoken, and all that God has promised on account of Jesus and His death and His Resurrection, that person is healed from the poison of sin, forgiven and restored, and given the power to live a holy life both here in time and there in eternity.  Those who cannot or will not believe, are poisoned and die that death we call "hell."  It doesn't matter if they don't trust God, or can't believe it is something so simple, or don't want to have it given to them, but want to do something so they can hang their confidence on what they have done.  If they do not believe, they die eternally.  The other half of the verse above is, "and he that does not believe, shall be damned."

The problem of the Children of Israel was sin.  Their wicked hearts led them to grumble, even in the face of the wonderful deeds and gifts of God.  Death is the wages of sin.  When they realized their sin, they confessed it, and they repented, and they asked for forgiveness.  The pole of the serpent was their absolution.  They heard, they looked, and they lived.

The problem when we grumble is the same problem – wicked hearts and sin.  The wages of sin is death, still today.  The solution is the same for us as it was for them.  We need to see our sin – all of our grumbling against the goodness of God and what He has chosen for us as our path as his children.  Our sin is bigger and deeper than grumbling, of course, but let's just focus on that.  Our grumbling comes out of our flesh – the part of us that does not know God, the part that was not put to death and raised to new life in our Baptism.

We need to confess our sin – be honest enough to admit it, and that it is sin, to ourselves, and then confess it to God.  Then we need to repent, turn away from the sin, and turn to God for forgiveness.  And then we need to hear our absolution: your sins are forgiven.  Jesus paid the price already and clothes you with His own righteousness.  We look to the cross, and the empty tomb of Easter, and we see and hear our forgiveness.

And we are healed.  Because your sins have been forgiven, your death has been turned into the door of life everlasting!  You will not die, even though your body will, and your body shall one day rise from the grave to everlasting life, body and soul reunited, with all the holy people who have trusted God and believed His promises.  The poison of the serpent cannot destroy us as long as we look to the cross.

Then, we can live out our salvation right here and now.  We can do that by resisting the temptation to grumble, but give thanks to God instead.  We should give thanks as openly and often as we have been tempted to grumble and complain against God and His gifts.  We should give thanks because God is good, and we owe Him great thanksgivings.  We should give thanks because we are always under His loving care.  We should give thanks because we have so much to give thanks for – and because we do not want to look like people who would complain if they were hung with a new rope.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

This Day Is That Day

 Isaiah 12:1-6

Then you will say on that day, "I will give thanks to Thee, O LORD; for although Thou wast angry with me, Thine anger is turned away, and Thou dost comfort me.

"Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation."

Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.  And in that day you will say, "Give thanks to the LORD, call on His name.  Make known His deeds among the peoples; make them remember that His name is exalted."

Praise the LORD in song, for He has done excellent things; let this be known throughout the earth.  Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Sermon for Cantate Sunday                                              5/07/23

This Day Is That Day

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

"One of these days . . ." Ralph Cramden always said, "One of these days, Bang!  Zoom!"  His wife, Alice, would always ask, "Yeah.  What day is that, Ralph?"  He was speaking about a day that he never intended to be real.  Many people think the Bible speaks just like that.  But the Bible is the Word of God, and God is announcing plans, not making idle threats.  The day our text speaks of is no threat, in fact, but a wonderful promise.  In our text, Isaiah speaks of a day that was to come, a day of singing and praise and thanksgiving.  This morning we want to briefly look at that day and our theme and message is, "This Day Is That Day."

The first thing we notice is "that day" is a day of forgiveness.  Isaiah says it like this, "I will give thanks to Thee, 0 LORD; For although Thou wast angry with me, Thine anger is turned away1 And Thou dost comfort me."  To understand that day and the forgiveness of that day, we must come face to face with sin.

God is justly angry toward us over our sins.  We do not want to face the truth, most of the time, but we sin.  And sin is not a minor thing, it is the rebellion against God that earns us His wrath and our own death.  We turn away from He who is Life for a few moments of pleasure, or power, or, like Judas, some sell Jesus for a few pieces of silver.  Your hatreds, your bitterness, your gossip, your grumbling – are not small peccadilloes, they are sins.  They deny God, they accuse Him of being unfair and unfaithful.  In our sins, we choose death and self over God and life.

We deserve death, but we are given life and salvation, because Jesus paid the penalty for our sins.  We merited the wrath of God, so it was poured out on Him.  We earned death and hell, so Jesus went to the cross and faced both as He hung alone, forsaken by God and mocked by man.  We chose death in sin, so He chose to die in righteousness, that we might live in Him.

Today, God is comforting us with the news of forgiveness.  His anger is turned away, toward the cross, and He comforts us with the sweet proclamation of forgiveness and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Jesus rose because God has accepted His death for ours, and now God reckons us holy with the righteousness of Christ, by which He earned life eternal, and so we also have life everlasting.

That day is a day of salvation.  Isaiah said it this way, ""Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; For the LORD GOD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation."  Therefore you will joyously draw water From the springs of salvation."

That day is a day of forgiveness, and so it is also a day of salvation, for the forgiveness of sins means, as Luther says in the Catechism, life and salvation.  Sin is what stands between God and man, and Jesus has taken it out of the way.  If He had been a mere man or some angel who had won our salvation, it would be uncertain, but it is God Himself who has purchased and won us from all sin, from death9 and from the power of the devil.  There can be no doubt, no uncertainty - for God Himself is our Savior.  To deny us, He would have to deny Himself, and He cannot deny Himself.

Believing in that forgiveness opens the door to trusting God.  How can we doubt God when He gave all that He gave for us?  How can we question His will for us - or His love for us - when we see how great a price He paid for us?  The cause of our anger toward God and His toward us has been taken out of the way.  We no longer have any reason to be frightened of Him.  We know that He loves us, and so we know that we can trust Him.

Therefore, forgiveness, received by faith, ends fear.  It ends fear of God -- at least it ends the terror of the notion that He desires to cause us pain and trouble.  It also has the power to end the  fear of trouble in this life, because we know that we have the love of God.  Isaiah said it like this, I will trust, and not be afraid.  God is on our side, so to speak.  He desires only our good.  His love is demonstrated in Jesus – and it is seen in the abundance of blessings which He pours out on us day by day.

As you may have realized, this day is that day.  The day of our forgiveness and the day of the love of God is today.  Today is the day that we can joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.  The waters of salvation are the waters of Baptism.  In our Baptism, God claimed us by name to be His own.  In our Baptism, He joined us to Christ, to resurrection from the grave, and to eternal life.  He regularly refreshes us in that salvation through the marvelous gift of the Sacrament of the Altar, by giving us His very body to eat in, with and under the bread of the Sacrament, and by giving us to drink of His blood, once shed for us on the cross, in, with and under the wine.

Today we owe God thanks, and offer thanks to God, as Isaiah prophesied, I will give thanks to Thee, 0 Lord, and, Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name.  But these are thanks we can give only if we see clearly the danger from which He has rescued us.  We give these thanks here, in our worship service, and day to day in our prayers and in lives lived deliberately as His holy people.

This day is the day we are to "cry aloud and shout for joy."  That is what we do in our hymns and liturgy.  That is also what we do in our prayers to a lesser extent.  Here, in worship, we formally cry aloud and shout for joy.  Day by day, you also cry aloud and shout for joy as you remember His blessings and speak aloud about His goodness to you.  Heaven knows that we grumble and complain aloud when we are not pleased with the circumstances of our life.  Shouldn't we also be vocal and earnest also about the good things – the sunshine and the rain, the health we have and the blessings we receive, and the on-going grace of the Lord?

This day is also the day that we are to make them remember His name.  The whole world once knew His name.  They all once knew that He was God and the Giver of all things good.  But the world has forgotten, deliberately.  Our lives and our thanksgivings and our public worship are to make them remember.  If we who believe do not speak His praises and give Him the glory for our blessings and our lives, how will they hear?  How will they remember?

We have very little difficulty complaining.  We can complain about our aches and pains, often without remembering that the days when everything  doesn't hurt are a gift from God.  We can complain about the cost of things, without recalling how God has given us so much that we can afford luxuries that were unimaginable a generation ago.  We can find the wind to complain about our congregation, or our pastor, or our church, without remembering to rejoice and give thanks that we have the Word of God and the riches of the Gospel.

We have the clear and constant preaching of our forgiveness, of Law and Gospel, for we know that we must also remember our sins to know the value of our forgiveness.  We have the Lord's Supper to refresh us and strengthen us for life as the child of God in this world.  If we cannot speak of these blessings, if we do not remind others that God is our Source and our Savior, how will they remember that His name is Exalted?  How will we remember, unless we make each other remember?

This day is that day.  Today is the day we are to "let this good news be known throughout the earth."  That is why God leaves us here, alive, to hold out the precious hope to others.  If we keep it just for ourselves, our congregation withers.  We die, not just by natural attrition, but because if we do not share the Word of our hope in Christ, we must not be thinking about it for ourselves.  It must not be in us very clearly, if it is not overflowing from us.

How could we keep this great good news to ourselves?  We have the cure for death here!  We have resurrection from the grave here!  We have eternal life here!  It is not for sale.  There is no awful price yet to be paid.  You don't have to do something great and difficult to earn it.  It is the gift of God!  Now think with me on this: If we found hamburger for 29¢ per pound, we would be telling all of our friends – after we got ours, of course.  If we found shoes – good shoes – for $5.00 a pair, we would call our neighbors, after we bought the styles we wanted, of course.  If we had access to interest free loans for cars or homes, we would tell everyone, as soon as we got ours.

Well, we have the answer to death.  We have the assurance of the love of God in life.  We have all the help and power we need.  We have the certainty of rising from our graves in better condition than we entered them.  We have the clear and utterly reliable promise of everlasting life beyond all the pains and sorrows and sicknesses of this life.  We have all of that in Jesus – and strength for the day, and help in time of need, and peace in times of turmoil, and more – if we trust God.  If we believe the Gospel.  We have all that because, as Isaiah put it, "Great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel."

This Day is That Day.  Today is the day Isaiah prophesied.  On that day,  He said.  Well, this day is that day.  We have been rescued, and God is our salvation.  He was angry, but now His anger is turned away.  Now is the time to sing, and give thanks, and tell others about God s goodness and love.  If we don t, who will?  This day is "that day"  of the prophecy of Isaiah.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

He Will Have Compassion

 Lamentations 3:22-33

The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness.  "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "Therefore I have hope in Him."  The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.  It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the LORD.  It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth.  Let him sit alone and be silent since He has laid it on him.  Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there is hope.  Let him give his cheek to the smiter; let him be filled with reproach.  For the Lord will not reject forever, for if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness.  For He does not afflict willingly, or grieve the sons of men.

Sermon for Jubilate Sunday                                              4/30/23

He Will Have Compassion

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Life is never exactly what we want.  Have you ever noticed that?  No matter how hard we try, something always goes wrong.  Something is always missing.  You can make a lot of money, but there is never enough.  Our needs, or our desires, always outrun our income.  You struggle for the perfect home, but there is always one more project.  Something that wasn't even conceivable before, now it seems almost imperative.  We struggle to build the perfect congregation, but just when it seems that we are almost at the verge of success, something changes, and that perfection eludes us.

The problem is sin.  The consequences of sin are much more readily apparent to us than the underlying cause.  We are never quite satisfied.  Others don't respond to us – or our circumstances – the way that seems only reasonable to us.  We give it our best and it is never quite good enough, or when we achieve what we set out to do, it is no longer satisfying, and we stretch toward the next goal in search of that elusive thing called satisfaction, or success, or happiness, or whatever we may call it.  Sometimes it is minor and we can ignore it for a while, but trouble or dissatisfaction  always comes home to roost.  Sometimes it is striking, and painful, and un-ignorable.  In every case it is the consequence of the imperfect nature of man, and the imperfection that our failings bring to the world around us.

The pain is called "the cross" for Christians.  Like the cross of Jesus, it comes on account of sin – not necessarily specific sins, but on account of our shortcomings and our failure to be perfect and holy.  Now and then, it even comes to us because of the sinfulness of those around us.  We are tempted, at times, to give up, or to feel crushed and defeated by the difficulties of life.  If we have the big problems under control, the little ones drive us nuts.  It tempts many people to think that God is punishing us, that our troubles are God's response to our sins.  That is one of the reasons it is so painful when a sermon speaks the Law of God too clearly, and we feel personally attacked, and personally offended.  Well, God speaks to us in our sermon text this morning, to address this very frustration.  God says, through the prophet, that in the midst of this gloom and temptation to despair we can be comforted by the promise that He will have compassion.  And that is our theme this morning.

The Prophet's words for this morning begin with the goodness of the Lord.  The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; Great is Thy faithfulness.  That is the point at which we must begin.  Christians must begin and only Christians really can begin with the knowledge and the certainty that the Lord is good.  His lovingkindnesses never cease!  How great is our God!  How good He is to us!

Every morning, when you get up, there is air to be breathed, and it is filled with Oxygen and in just the right proportions.  The peculiar properties of water still work to your health and advantage.  Food is still digestible, and it nourishes your body.  The properties of electricity, which God prepared, still work, and the trace elements in your body are still so constituted that they allow nerves to sense and muscles to flex.  It may seem absurd to think this way, but philosophers have thought long and hard on this issue, and they can find no logical reason for everything to remain consistent and favorable for our existence.  Our answer to the philosopher's enigma is the goodness of God.  His lovingkindnesses never cease!

On rare occasions, the human body loses those abilities we take so for granted day-by day.  We call it "disease," or "paralysis," or "Muscular Dystrophy," or "Parkenson's," or "Osteoporosis," or "cancer."  Things like that don't always seem rare to us because everyone gets sick and everyone dies eventually – but consider the wonder of your body!

Your body functions flawlessly for decades.  It works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  You go to bed, your body keeps working.  Your heart pumps millions of gallons of blood every year – for sixty, seventy, eighty years!  Your brain keeps calculating for close to a century, doing more work every hour, even while you sleep, than our greatest supercomputers manage to do with all their giga-hertz computational speeds in a week.  You store memories in sound and color pictures or video in a space the size of a grapefruit that would require a roomful of Compact Disks to store, and you keep them indexed by subject and person and season and emotion and scents in the air on that day, available for instant retrieval.  You smell that smell, or hear that sound, and you experience deja-vu – you may not even know that you are remembering.  Or you smell something cooking and immediately your mind is back in Grandma's kitchen sixty years ago.  We get frustrated on those days when our retrieval system fails us in one or two memory request out of the thousands each hour we just take for granted.  When the whole system finally fails, we call it "dementia" .

I could go on for hours just about the wonders of the body – and then there is the world around you, and then the universe.  God tells us that it is all created for us and for our blessings.  His lovingkindnesses indeed never cease!  He feeds us and clothes us. He has made us wealthy.  I remember speaking to Rev.  Fehrmann a couple of years ago about missions in the third world.  He travels extensively in the third world in his work.  He told me that only about 10 percent of the third world population has even irregular and undependable electricity.  They rarely have televisions.  They only now and then have a radio.  They have very few cars outside of the big cities.  The big question for them is not "What shall we do tonight?", or "What shall we watch tonight?', but, "What shall we eat tonight?" or, "Shall we eat tonight?"  Even upon those in poverty, His lovingkindnesses never cease.  How much more is it clearly true for us?

His compassions never cease, they are new every morning!  Every day is filled with His goodness to us.   That is why the Prophet cries out, "Great is Thy faithfulness!"  And chief among His goodness to us is Jesus Christ!  He gave His only-begotten Son into death for our sins.  He hung Him on a cross to bleed and die in agony, that we might be forgiven.  And He raised Him from the grave on Easter to show us irrefutably that our sin have been forgiven, paid for completely, punished to the last drop of the wrath of God against sin.
 
He is Risen!  Your sins have been paid for.  

You are forgiven.  You have been redeemed by the blood of the very Son of God!  

It is finished!  He loves you with a love that transcends any full comprehension!

So, why do things keep going wrong?  Why do we get sick?  Why is life painful and difficult and frustrating at times?  Our text says that it is for our good.  It doesn't say exactly why or how, but it says it is good for us.  Through our troubles, God strengthens us and purifies us.  He disciplines us – and He tells us that every child loved by his Father is disciplined by Him.  God also demonstrates for us in the New Testament how our patient and faithful endurance in times of persecution and pain confesses Christ so clearly and effectively to those who see our patience and observe our faith and faithfulness while we are in the midst of troubles and suffering.

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him.  It is good that he waits silently For the salvation of the LORD.  It is good for a man that he should bear The yoke in his youth.  Let him sit alone and be silent Since He has laid it on him.  Let him put his mouth in the dust [a reference to humble prayer], Perhaps there is hope.  Let him give his cheek to the smiter; Let him be filled with reproach.

I cannot tell you how every event in your life is good.  I cannot even imagine how every event in MY life is good.  But God can, and He tells us that it is good.  I cannot bring myself to call God a liar, so I must accept that even the things I do not like are for good, and that God is with me.  That is the present, day-to-day value of faith in Jesus Christ!

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "Therefore I have hope in Him."  That is the true answer!  I trust in God.  My hope is in Him.  The writer of Lamentations, unnamed, but believed by most to be Jeremiah, writes, For the Lord will not reject forever, For if He causes grief, Then He will have compassion According to His abundant lovingkindness.  For He does not afflict willingly, Or grieve the sons of men.

God does not willingly afflict means that God has no desire for us to suffer or have troubles just so that we suffer or have troubles – everything He does has a place in His plan and purposes.  Every bit of it is for our good and the good of our neighbor.  He blesses with every event, whether we find it happy or sorrowful.  His plan is always for our welfare and blessing, so even when it is necessary to permit us to suffer pain or sorrow or temptation, He will have compassion!  He will rescue us from our troubles and bring us out of sorrow, and bless us. When He causes grief, as Jeremiah says, Then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness.

Another way to say it is to ask the question I always ask you to answer:  What is the will of God for us? [Our salvation].  

If you believe in God, then you want to keep that truth uppermost in your mind.  If you believe in God – that is, if you trust in Him, then you will know that no matter what it feels like at the moment, the Lord will have compassion.  The Lord is my Portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in Him.

And that is the message this morning.  He will have compassion.  Last Sunday we talked about the Good Shepherd, and His care, and His culling of the flock.  Today we talk about the other reality of life – that it hurts, that we will suffer pains, and we will have to endure frustrations and sorrows.  In the face of that reality, the Church rejoices – that is what Jubilate Sunday means – and we rejoice because, in the depths of woe and sorrow and pain we hear the promise of God that He will have compassion!  And, ultimately, that is very good for us!

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I will say, Rejoice!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)

The Holy Spirit

 The May Newsletter Article

The Holy Spirit

May is the month of flowers and warming weather, of struggling with lawn mowers and recovering from the damage the winter has done to your home and yard, and of Ascension and Pentecost.  Since Pentecost is the festival of the Holy Spirit, and the celebration of the day that God kick-started the church, it seems right to focus a little on the silent member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Okay.  I admit it.  The Holy Spirit is not silent.  We just don't hear much that is true about Him in the church today.  We talk about Him at Pentecost, and sometimes at the Reformation – and some pastors like to talk about Him at confirmation time.  We hear a lot about the Spirit from the enthusiasts, whether they are like Lutheran Charismatics or belong to some traditionally Pentecostal group.  We hear a lot from them, but most of it is not Scriptural, and what they draw from Scripture is often used contrary to sound exegesis (that means that they don't understand what they are reading).

Think of how many Sundays you see red paraments on the altar.  Those are the days of the Holy Spirit, and He is usually not the primary focus on those days, either.  We usually focus on something else, something He does.  The Holy Spirit is not silent.  In fact, He is the voice of Scriptures: "men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."  Jesus even teaches us that the Spirit was the author of Scripture when He says, "David himself said in the Holy Spirit, ‘THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, "SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT THINE ENEMIES BENEATH THY FEET."'" The Holy Spirit and not human creativity caused David to speak.

But it is appropriate that the Holy Spirit receives so little attention from us.  He should get the attention we give to Him, but not a significant amount more, because the purpose of the Spirit, and of all His work, is to bring all glory to God the Father through Jesus Christ.  He isn't the One who draws the attention.  He is the One who focuses it.  He creates faith through the Word proclaimed.  He teaches us through the Word.  He guides us and shows us what to do by the urgings in us drawn from the Word.  And He causes us to speak, giving us the very words we should say, when we should say them.  "And when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand about what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but it is the Holy Spirit."

Of course, He doesn't necessarily wait for extreme circumstance to give us the words to say.  He plants the words in us by memory-work and learning, and then calls them forth when we need them.  He doesn't need our help.  He could make it all happen without any learning or preparation, as He did sometimes with the Apostles (if you ignore that three year course of preparation with Jesus).  He generally doesn't do it that way, though.  He plants what He needs through our learning (which He drives us to do), and then when it is needed, He prompts it from our memories and to our lips.  That is why your Pastor made you memorize all those passages when your were young.

As I said, the Holy Spirit doesn't need our help, but I suspect that if we were unwilling to read the Bible and learn things, He would count us as not His people, and not be busy working in us and through us.  Once it is in there, though, He can summon it out into the front of your mind, even if you don't remember learning it.  He works on us in the Sunday service, teaching us through the liturgy and the hymns, and He is particularly direct when the Pastor preaches a Biblically faithful sermon.

We don't celebrate the Holy Spirit much, as an individual, because He shows us the love of the Father in sending us the Son, and teaches us to believe the Word and marvel at the Son doing all that He had to do to redeem us.  The fact that we believe is the testimony to the work of the Spirit.  He doesn't seem to be working to any other purpose than that.

Some get excited and claim that the Spirit is giving them powers or "gifts".   He certainly is able to.  The question is, is it real?  From the outside, it is difficult to deny what anyone is says that they are feeling or experiencing.  But far too often, the actions and words of those who proclaim their own gifted-ness suggest that their "gift" is more wishful thinking than actual gift.  Healers claim they have a gift to heal, but they cannot use it unless you believe in them strongly enough.  That never seemed to be a condition required in the Bible.  When they had the power of the Spirit, the Apostles could even raise the dead.  Modern healers (so-called) do not possess the power to repair broken and withered limbs, let alone raise the dead – and trust me, many have gone to their disgrace trying.

The most common gift claimed is the gift of tongues.  Again, from outside, I cannot speak to whether they have a gift of tongues or not.  I can say that Scriptures do not promise all of us that gift.  Paul actually appears to speak against it.

That's 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul says that tongues are a sign to unbelievers, while clear preaching (Paul calls it "prophecy") is a sign to believers.  He says that he would rather speak 5 words with his mind, that he may teach others than ten thousand with a tongue.  Then he quotes a passage from Isaiah, addressed to scoffers and the unbelieving in ancient Israel in verse 21.  Here is the Old testament passage:  "For He says, 'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.'"  Indeed, He will speak to this people Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue, He who said to them, "Here is rest, give rest to the weary," And, "Here is repose," but they would not listen.  So the word of the LORD to them will be, "Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there," That they may go and stumble backward, be broken, snared, and taken captive."

This is a passage of condemnation and judgment, in which God says, "Since you wouldn't listen to my Word clear and plain and comforting, here it is in a foreign tongue, and not comforting at all."  Paul's use of it is saying, quite plainly, that to hear the Word of God spoken to you, and not understand it, is a sign of the condemnation of God on you.  Therefore, tongues are a sign to unbelievers, and not to believers.

    In my experience, those who claim a tongue have nothing new to say – nor would I trust it if they did.  Scriptures is my authority, and my security blanket.  If I stick with Scriptures, I will not go too far wrong.  I do know that many who claim the gift of tongues use it in a way that Scripture discourages.  They use it to draw attention to themselves, and then they teach things contrary to Scripture.  Those who have a real tongue should use it as Scripture provides - privately, for prayer and personal edification.

No, I am content to praise the Holy Spirit for the real miracle He works, dragging a sinner like me - by nature spiritually blind, dead, and an enemy of God - to the foot of the cross and teaching me to believe, and then holding me in faith against my nature and the allure of the devil, the world, and my own sinful flesh.  Sure, I would like to see something really snappy, like tongues of fire on my head, just like He did at Pentecost with the Apostles, but I will be content with the knowledge of my salvation, and the forgiveness of my sins, and certain hope of everlasting life, which He has worked in me through the Word.   How about you?

Yours in the Lord,
Pastor Fish