Category Archives: Lutheran Christianity

Herr Pastor

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Just so you know, this is a pejorative remark. The Lutheran Church came about due to the writing, preaching and other activity of Dr Martin Luther in Germany in the 1500s. The basis of his teachings started the Reformation that separated the Christian into, as it were, reformed/Lutheran/however else it worked out, from the Roman Catholic Church. The “Herr Pastor”, (German) is meant to convey an idea of strictness, pompousness, even severity by the pastor.

Now I will grant that some pastors of past no doubt deserved the jibe. However in the interest of “people pleasing” versus being a minister of Christ, it has taken on the meaning of any pastor who is the least bit assertive or makes a serious stand and outreach for Jesus. It’s another example of why the church really isn’t taken very seriously, if a pastor makes a serious stand, he will usually find that even fellow pastors will tend to pooh-pooh, no less the general public.

My point, let’s support and encourage our pastors, especially when they stand up and teach genuine Christianity and maybe we ought to start holding accountable those pastors who really don’t take the ministry seriously. They need to know it is about teaching Christ and Him crucified and not falling all over themselves not to offend. Jesus said we would offend, we need to live up to what He said and not worry about the “everything is beautiful” types.

Dr Luther used to refer to pastors as “seelsorger”, it literally means “soul healer”. What the world needs more than anything is soul healing in terms of Jesus. Your pastor should want to be your soul healer, to be led by the Holy Spirit in order to heal you in the grace, salvation, the propitiatory act of Christ for you. Help him out and encourage him in that, instead of expecting him to pat you on the head and tell you everything’s just spiffy, when you, and he, both know it isn’t.

The Gates of hell shall not prevail against it

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This is a unique site, it’s not very well preserved and for a lot of people they could well just walk by it. But for Christians this is, at least according to tradition, a very important site.
This is a pagan temple it’s thought that it was built by Philip the Tetrarch who was the son of Herod the Great. This makes him, nominally, Jewish, but his political position, all of Herod’s children’s political position was pretty tenuous and making nice with the Romans was always a good idea. The temple is thought to have been dedicated to Zeus and/or Bacchus.
Yea I know, “snore, thanks for the history lesson yada, yada”. But wait, there’s more, and this is the cool part. It is getting towards the end of Jesus’ incarnational ministry (that is just before He is crucified). They decide to camp in front of this temple and this is where Jesus asks: “Who do men say that I am.” After a little discussion, Peter makes his great confession: ” “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (ESV) Peter is saying that you are the promised one, the anointed one, the one sent by God, you are God the Son. This is where Jesus replies that the Father has revealed this to Jesus and, according to tradition, pointing back to this big rock that the temple has been carved into, “on this rock I will build my church.” That is first, there is a church, it is Jesus’ church, He expects His disciples to come together and meet as a church (this is in response to the lame comment I get a lot “ahhh..I go sit on a mountain/at the beach and worship Jesus, I don’t need no church.” Yea well Jesus thinks you do need one and He established one, so quit with the lame excuses and go to a real Bible believing church. Anyway, Jesus goes on to say: “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” That is, against His church.
Essentially Jesus is saying that this temple is demonic, pagans say it is set up to worship “god(s)”, Jesus is saying “oh no, it is demonic and my church will be built upon this blasphemy. Further more this is a gate to hell and this will never prevail against My church.
So, the take away is this. Many Christians will make the case that any other “god” is a demon who has convinced people that he is “god”. One way you can make this case is by considering the one major difference between Christianity and every other religion and that is “grace”. You are saved totally through what God has done for you. We are saved because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, we have assurance of salvation, as believers, from that one fact. Jesus died to pay for our sins. By virtue of that we are saved and there is nothing else that can save us. This is grace because it is totally the gracious gift of Jesus to us. There is nothing at all that we can do to earn this, it is a gift that Jesus gives to all those whom He chooses to be saved. Every other religion is entirely about you, that is all about what you do. You jump through this hoop, you do this, you do that, yada, yada and maybe, maybe you will be saved. There are some locks, if you are a martyr in Islam by killing infidels, you get a straight passage. Otherwise, everyone is on a string and all they can do is hope that they did enough.
I don’t have that problem, I have the promises of Jesus, He died for me, He baptizes me to wash away sin and to give me new life, He gives me His Body and Blood for forgiveness, restoral, renewal and refreshment for my soul. My hope is entirely in Him and His promises, nothing else, NOTHING ELSE, will save me. The Gates of Hell that you see in this picture will never, ever prevail against His promises for me.
Ya, I’m making the case here that any other “god” is a demon, is someone who has simply lied and deceived in order to gain worship, which Satan is always looking for and to basically convince people that if you get on this treadmill and keep doing and doing, well maybe you might get saved. There’s no promise there, no hope, simply a way to destroy a human soul and condemn them forever. You can talk about any other belief you want, but they are all designed to grind you down, strip you of any hope and then leave you condemned and dead.

God’s Promises

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For the audio version of this sermon click on the above link or copy and paste into your browser

God’s promises rely on them don’t run from them
First Saint Johns May 4, 2014
God so loved the world, John tells us that. Is there any doubt in your mind? How has God shown His love? Here are two disciples, Cleopas and another man. The topic of conversation, the things that have happened in Jerusalem in the last few days. We know this because Cleopas got a little snippy with their fellow traveler when He asked what they were talking about. “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” Sort of where have you been all your life, don’t you know what’s going on around you? Seems to me Cleopas and the other disciple are the ones who aren’t completely paying attention. Where are they going? … Emmaus. Where did Jesus tell the women to have His disciples meet Him? Galilee. They probably understood that to mean Capernaum where Jesus spent 60% of His incarnate ministry. The sea of Galilee, is over 60 miles straight north of Jerusalem. The feast of the Passover has just been held in Jerusalem, everyone has been there. These two disciples have chosen to leave and they are going to Emmaus, about 15 miles west of Jerusalem. While they are stunned that someone is so out of touch in Jerusalem, the One talking to them … Jesus, is probably stunned too and probably irritated. Why? Can’t you imagine Jesus thinking, “wow, didn’t I just tell all of you what would happen? Did you forget so soon? Maybe you got outta Dodge a little early, the rest of the disciples waited for further direction. More likely they are still in stunned disbelief from the events of Friday, and they might have run away from the events of the cross, but they regrouped.” Matthew 16:21 just before the Transfiguration, the sequence of events that lead to the cross: “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Maybe the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, didn’t get that in their notes. Or maybe they’re so upset they didn’t remember or, worse, didn’t trust what Jesus told them and hadn’t stayed in Jerusalem to await the directions that the angel has given to those who remained.
So Jesus takes His two disciples to task: “he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” He could have said, what I told the whole group just before the events that led to My crucifixion, the promise that I made “…on the third day be raised.”? As far as they know a complete stranger has called them out. “Why didn’t you stay? Why have you wandered off? You heard the promise and yet here you are, you’re not in Jerusalem, you’re heading west instead of north to Capernaum as the angel told the women to do. To the place where we shared great times, you heard great teaching and saw stupendous miracles. Why have you picked up and deserted your call? Cleopas refers to Jesus as a “prophet”, the Concordia Self Study Bible notes: “They had respect for Jesus as a man of God, but after his death they apparently were reluctant to call him the Messiah.”1 Jesus goes on to remind them of what Moses and the Prophets, that is everything that was written about Him in the Old Testament, “…seems like you boys need a refresher course, maybe you didn’t hear what I said, but this is what Torah has been saying about me for the last 1,500 years beginning with Moses.” Then Jesus acts as if He’s going to keep going when they want to stop, sort of a way to show His disappointment?
Jesus made a lot of promises to the disciples during His incarnation, He continued to make these promises through His apostles, listen to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians: “Listen, I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed.” This is the promise that Jesus is all about, that He demonstrated on Easter Sunday. “You see how Jesus was resurrected, that will be us at the last trumpet. We will be imperishable, our bodies will be made to be perfect, no defect, no death, made to exist forever in the New Jerusalem, the new world that God had intended the world to be, a perfect world where we will see the fulfillment of another of Jesus’ promises “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (Jn 10:10). We tend to take the word “promise” a little too glibly. We make promises a lot, often our fingers crossed behind our back. The Greek word evpaggeli,a means “assent or pledge, especially a divine assurance of good.”2 God has made a lot of promises, through the prophets in the Old Testament, through Jesus and His apostles in the New Testament. Have any of these promises not been kept? And what is it that drives our faith, the promises that we know that will be kept. The resurrection! We haven’t seen the end times yet, but when we do what is our promise? Eternal, abundant life!
We have Peter on the day of Pentecost in our Acts reading. In the Gospel reading the disciples are holed up in an upper room, windows closed, doors locked, Jesus in His resurrected body appears to them to give them assurance in their fear and then what happens, they aren’t running off to Emmaus, they aren’t hiding behind locked doors, the Holy Spirit has descended on them, and now they roar out of those doors like the Penn State football team and their leader, Petros, the rock, is standing in broad daylight, before thousands of men in Jerusalem proclaiming the promises of Jesus. He holds them accountable, Peter tells them they have committed deicide, they have assisted in the death of the Messiah that God has been promising for centuries. They feel convicted, they know this has happened, they have been cut to the heart. What can they do? Peter tells them: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Another of Jesus’ promises, the promises that started from the very beginning with John the Baptizer. Repent, Strongs defines repent as to change one’s mind for better, heartily to amend with abhorrence of one’s past sins”. We know that we have failed in our past life, so now we change our mind, we look at our past life with abhorrence, hating our past life and our past sins and we make amends, we will change our life according to what Jesus wants. But how do you do that? Only by repenting? By being baptized? And what does that do? What is Jesus’ promise that He made to Nicodemus? John 3:5, being reborn into the Spirit, putting on Christ, His payment of our sins. By doing this, we are reborn, Jesus has done it all for us and His promise is that we will be saved to eternal life in Him. What the Easter season is all about.
The Easter season is about promise, it’s about renewal, it is about resurrection as we see the death of winter recede to new life. But for us the Christian, for the promises we have in Christ, it’s much, much, much more then birds and bugs and forsythia and leaves on trees. It is sort of like another promise that God made when He put a rainbow up in the sky to assure Noah that from him, God would save man, not just in man’s physical life from floods, but to eternal life in the promised Messiah.
We have so many promises from God that do, as Jesus promised, give us life more abundant, this book is all the promises in the Bible that God has made to us. It lists out 307 pages of God’s promises. The promise that they would have the Holy Spirit is coming to the disciples. Most waited faithfully in Jerusalem, albeit hiding behind locked doors, two decide to go west, feeling that the promise wouldn’t be fulfilled. But it was when the disciples would shortly, receive the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit whose temple we become in baptism.
Trust in God’s promises to us that are documented right here, the new covenant, the new contract that Jesus made. We rely on His payment of our sins and His promises to us that we will be saved to eternal life. Do some Bible reading, check out Paul’s epistles where the promises come fast and furious. What promises do you see and how do they affect your life in Christ, write about them in your journal and pray over them in Thanksgiving to our Father who loves us so much to put His promises, assurances and comforts to us in writing for us to read and take refuge in over and over.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Shalom and Amin.

Be baptized and be saved

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Rev Dr J Vernon McGee is an institution, I really do like hearing his broadcasts, he has a common sense Christianity that is down to earth, assuring, you know you are listening to someone who really has a grasp of genuine doctrine and Christian living.

I give him credit, most Reformed commentators don’t like to get into this question, they operate under the supposition that everyone can “make a decision” for Christ, and that’s the way it should be. The narrator for Dr McGee’s radio program reads a letter from a mother whose son is mentally retarded: “How can he make a decision for God?” she writes. Well Dr McGee does kind of a two-step, “well it’s about reaching the age of accountability, otherwise God will take the baby, because he wasn’t old enough to “choose” God. Well he never really answers in respect to someone who is over the age of “accountability” and is just not competent.

The Reformed position really tends to undermine the entire concept of Christianity. We are all born into sin, therefore how can we be anything but sinners when we are born. Reformed teachers always have a problem with this and I really don’t understand why it’s necessary to even get into it. Let’s remember Martin Luther is the one who started all of this. All of Protestant, as it were, Christianity traces its roots back to Luther. Luther’s original beef with the Roman Catholic Church was the Roman’s idea that “well ya, Jesus died for all of our sins, but we have to do something to augment that. For the Roman Church the over the top error was indulgences. Throw some money in the kettle and you or your relatives get a few thousand years off from purgatory. The Roman church says “ya, while we can die in a state of grace in Jesus, that’s not quite enough, we need to spend a little time in purgatory getting the rough edges burned off, or of course, a little sumpin/sumpin, and maybe we can spring you a little quicker.” Yea, I know a little cynical, but it all comes down to; we have to add to what Jesus did. Well either Jesus is perfect, totally Holy, almighty God and died for the complete redemption and remission of our sins, or He didn’t. It’s either all about Him or it isn’t.

That goes for all the other acts of contrition. Contrition isn’t an issue, if you feel you should do something that shows contrition, give to the poor, give to your church (my person favorite, First St Johns), help the handicapped, the elderly, great! Do it, but not thinking that somehow that is some kind of efficacious atonement, you are saved entirely by what Christ did, nothing you can do can add to that.

It doesn’t matter, if your son is intellectually handicapped, or your mother has Alzheimers, substance abuse, what matters is what Christ has done, what the Holy Spirit does through you. We are saved solely in Christ’s power. You hear, what if that person’s evil? Well that question is so obvious it doesn’t really even justify an answer, we are all evil, case closed. What if they aren’t sincere, really how high is exactly sufficiently sincere to justify being righteous enough to be saved that Christ hasn’t surpassed by infinity? If Christ has made the decision to save me, I’m saved, and there’s nothing I can add to that. In fact it would be incredibly arrogant to think that I could add one hundredth of one percent to what Jesus has done for me. He has saved me entirely and there isn’t one miniscule thing that I can add to that.

The Lutheran says that is why you take the baby to be baptized, we have the assurance in baptism that we are saved, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3:27) Only in His righteousness, are we saved, only through the baptism that He gives us are we saved. Only through His Body and Blood, through His Word are we saved. What is in there that you did? Yea, nothing. It’s not a question of our decision, it’s a question of what the Holy Spirit does, He moved our parents to take, well some of us, to be baptized, to be saved.
The woman who asked Dr McGee the question doesn’t have, she shouldn’t have to, agonize over the question, she has the assurance of her Son’s salvation entirely through the Acts of the Holy Spirit. It’s not a question of accountability, or sincerity, or works, indulgences, our works, works that can be tainted, do not save us. Nothing we can do will be sufficient, it will all be tainted by our sin. The only assurance is in what God does for us and He saves us in baptism. That does raise one more issue, if for some reason someone who is on the edge of death and hasn’t been baptized. As an ordained, duly called, authorized minister of the Lutheran Church, I authorize you to baptize that person, regardless of age or condition. Address the person by name and say “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” That person is baptized and we trust in the mercy and grace of God that person will be in the presence of the Lord. There are too many people who cannot make a “reasoned” choice for Jesus and even if they could, inevitably doubt arises and they question whether they did it right, right time, right place, were they really sincere, etc, etc. Were you baptized? You are saved. It’s the Holy Spirit bringing you to Jesus through baptism, it’s not about what you do, it’s about what God does to you. He saves you, not your decision to be saved.