'Luther' Tagged Posts
“PREACH THE GOSPEL!”
Over the chancel of our seminary chapel the words were inscribed in the Greek language of the New Testament – “Preach The Gospel” (κηρύξατε τὸ εὐαγγέλιον). These words from the 16th chapter of St. Mark were a reminder in every daily chapel service of what we were training to do. It is all too easy for those called to the work of preaching and teaching God’s Word to take an airborne flight into the everlasting “busyness” of “running” the church…
REFORMATION REVIEW
For Luther, the storm began in his own troubled heart in the monastery at Erfurt. He learned quickly enough that his best efforts and sincerest attempts at devotion were not enough to erase the stain of sin from his heart. For that he needed Christ. And Christ is whom he found when Dr. Staupitz sent him to study the Bible, to teach theology at the new university in Wittenberg, and to serve as pastor and preacher at the Town Church…
“PRESS ON!”
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul soars to the very heart of God. He says: “Whatever things were a profit for me, these things I have come to consider a loss because of Christ. But even more than that, I consider everything to be a loss because of what is worth far more: knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have lost all things and consider them rubbish, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him,…
BACK TO THE BIBLE
The 17th chapter of Acts says: “Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians. They received the word very eagerly and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11 EHV). The Bereans were different, “more noble-minded,” not by nature, but as believers in the coming Savior, God the Holy Spirit has given them a hunger and thirst for the Scriptures. It is true that the preacher must bring his very best effort…
REFORMATION 501 – THE HEIDELBERG DISPUTATION
Last year we marked the 500th anniversary of what most folks consider the starting pistol of the Lutheran Reformation – Luther’s hammering of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Oct. 31. 1517. With these theses or statements in Latin, Luther proposed a debate among the theologians on the sale of indulgences to purchase time off purgatory. The debate he asked for didn’t happen that year. But the 95 Theses were translated, printed and…
SIN, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
We hear it in church often enough…and the children in our school hear it plenty – this business about “sin, death and the devil.” The “sin” is easy enough to spot – in our homes, in our hearts, on the playground. And “death” forces us to admit its power as we carry loved ones to the cemetery. But when we teach the children to pray Luther’s morning and evening prayers – asking “that the wicked foe may have no power…
READY OR NOT?
There are two kinds of people in this world – those who are ready, and those who are not. For some folks, being ready is an obsession. Some have their Christmas shopping done in July, their Christmas cookies in the freezer by Thanksgiving, their supper menu planned out two weeks in advance. On the other end of the scale are those who do their Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, pick up some cookies from the bakery on the way…
WHERE IS THIS WRITTEN?
In the second chapter of his second letter, Peter releases a blistering attack on false teachers. We know that false doctrine is poisonous. We know that true doctrine is the only antidote. In the Small Catechism Luther was accustomed to ask: “Where is this written?” He then set down the Bible passages where a given doctrine or teaching was found. By way of review and for your personal Bible study at home, here are some of the main teachings of…
BACK TO THE BIBLE!
The preacher today will do something he does every Sunday. He will walk up the pulpit steps, open the Bible, read from it and preach on it as the very word of God. But you must not assume that this is the case in every church or even in the majority of churches across our land. Let us not be naïve about this. A massive number of mainline denominations deny everything from the virgin birth to the resurrection of Christ…
NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS!
Never Talk To Strangers! By the 1980’s it increasingly became a refrain chanted into the ears of children. Parents and teachers often read a book by that title to the younger kids. Nobody wants kids to grow up afraid of everyone around them, but they need to know that it’s not always easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Even a bad guy can smile, speak kindly, offer them candy, or ask them to help him find…
OUR DUAL CITIZENSHIP
“Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the king as the supreme authority, or to governors as those who have been sent by him,” says Peter in his first epistle. Only a few verses earlier, Peter addressed the scattered children of God as “aliens and temporary residents in the world.” The fact is, we Christians are dual citizens. By birth we are all citizens of some earthly nation. And by faith in Christ we are…
“TAUGHT BY GOD”
In a world that had largely lost the Bible, the goal of Luther and others was that all of God’s people might be Theodidacti – “Taught by God.” To that end, Luther wrote The Small Catechism as a short summary of the very basics that every Christian ought to know about God – His law in the Commandments, His gospel in the three articles of the Creed, how to pray with the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, how to apply…