The Good News of Image and Inscription

Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity
November 8^th, A+D 2026
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD

The audio of the sermon can be accessed HERE.

On my heart imprint Your image, Blessed Jesus, King of Grace,
That life’s riches, cares and pleasures, Never may your work erase.
Let the clear inscription be, Jesus crucified for me,
Is my life, my hope’s foundation, And my glory and salvation.

   Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.  On this Sunday after election day, how are you feeling about Jesus’ admonition?           

   We are still remarkably blessed to live in a democratic republic, but collectively we seem less and less capable of responsible citizenship or responsible statesmanship.  Still, the Church has lived under far worse governments, and in all cases, Christian citizens are to be the best citizens, honoring the authorities, obeying laws, paying taxes.  Christians historically have had to put up with a lot of bad governance without fomenting rebellion, because God in His Word teaches us that earthly rulers are put in place by Him, even the not so great ones. 

   Are we ever to resist, to refuse, to take a stand against governing authorities?  Oh yes, when necessary for the proclamation of the Gospel, or when we are ordered to do things clearly contrary to God’s Word.  And most especially if, by word or deed, we are pressured to deny Christ and His Good News.  But apart from such conditions, Christians are to obey their earthly rulers, and pay their taxes cheerfully. 

   Now, to be sure, applying these Biblical principles in day-to-day life can be difficult in a democracy, and especially today when our government has entwined itself into every corner of our lives, often in evil ways.  Reality is that our tax dollars are, in some measure, used to kill babies in the womb, and pay to support misguided souls in the hopeless attempt to use chemicals and surgery to change from a man to a woman or a woman to a man.  Some of the services we receive from government are funded by fellow citizens, through their addiction to gambling.  The same government who claims a right to license our marriages also says marriage can be discarded on a whim, for any reason, or no reason at all.  And I believe in general Christians in America were too willing to give up gathering together for worship when ordered or pressured to do so during Covid.  Things are really quite a mess. 

   Living out our faith in America today is not easy.  I hate many of the ways the government misuses my taxes or abuses its powers, and I hate that neither I nor the Church in general seems capable of changing much.  But are these reasons for me to resist government authority?  And if so, how?  I do not claim to know, except to say that we should not take the law into our own hands, and we should always be looking for opportunities to proclaim the Christian reasons we disagree with this or that government policy.  These are big questions, which I suspect will only get bigger in years to come.  Lord, have mercy upon us.  And He will!    

   Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.  Important stuff.  But not the main concern for Jesus this morning.  No, our Lord turns a clumsy political attack on its head, not primarily to give us guidance about good Christian citizenship, but rather to point us to His real goal, His Father’s goal, which is to see His image restored in us.  

   It is the first Holy Week.  Something is going to happen, soon.  The Jewish leaders are nervous.  Three years of opposition to Jesus reach the boiling point.  The plot hatched in our Gospel reading is pretty weak sauce, to be sure.  We have the Pharisees, something like a religious political party, and we have the Herodians, Jews who had drawn close to and become supporters of and beneficiaries from Herod, who ruled over part of Israel, on behalf of Rome, on behalf of Caesar.  They are hoping to get Jesus in trouble, maybe even arrested, by tricking Him into saying something revolutionary, against Roman rule. 

   They are trying to ensnare the Word made flesh, the very Wisdom of God, in His Words.  Stop and consider this foolish idea for a second.  There has never been a more lopsided contest of words.  Good luck tricking Jesus with your clever words.  

   Now, their ploy could work with many political figures, because nobody really enjoys paying taxes, first century Jews included.  And, they had to pay taxes to their occupier, the Roman government, led by Caesar, a far away but powerful dictator.  The Pharisees try to make the tax question into a religious and moral dilemma, pitting political subjugation against religious beliefs.  They ask Jesus: “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”  If Jesus is a revolutionary, He should say ‘no,’ and the Herodians can go tell Herod to arrest Him for fomenting rebellion.  On the other hand, if Jesus says the Jews should pay their Roman taxes, well, many of His followers were looking for a revolutionary leader.  He could lose popularity.  A win either way, they think.   

   Jesus is not impressed.  Hypocrites!  Bring me the coin for the tax.  And then notice how Jesus is very deliberate with His word choice.  He could have said, “Who is this guy, stamped on the coin?”  Or, “Who minted this money, where did it come from?  But no, Jesus asks “whose likeness, whose image… is this?  Caesar’s likeness, his image, hence, Caesar’s coin.  So, if Caesar demands his coin back from you, you give it. 

   Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.  What image are we to give back to God?  What image does God want from us?  This takes us back to the beginning, when God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” and so God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen. 1:26-27)  Made in God’s image.  God created us to resemble, to be like Him, in important ways.  We are far, far less than God, wonderfully dependent on Him; we are limited creatures.  But still, we are made in God’s image, after His likeness, with capacity to love and reason and care, and do good things.  This is something of the image that God wants from us.  Such good things are what He longs to see in us, His favorite creatures. 

   We shattered that image all too quickly.  Not completely.  In every human soul we can see traces of the original beauty and goodness God gave us at the beginning.  But these traces of His image are heartbreaking; they heighten the tragedy of mankind, because the traces are so broken, so ruined.  Sin broke humanity, sin broke you and me, beyond human ability to fully comprehend, certainly beyond our ability to repair. 

   Still, God wants to see His image restored in us.  And so, Jesus asks His question in the way He did: Whose image is this on the coin?  Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and render unto God the things that are Gods.

   Jesus has told us how things are to be.  Now what?  Well, while we may not like it, we know how to pay our taxes.  Is that how it works with God, we just need to do it, just need to give His image back to Him, that is, reflect back to Him the image He put in us?  But how exactly do we give back to God the image He gave us?  And how many imperfections in our rendering will the LORD be willing to accept? 

   As we heard in the Beatitudes last Sunday on All Saints Day, Jesus declares that the blessed people of God are known by their endurance under persecution, their spiritual poverty, their tireless pursuit of peace, their generous sharing of mercy.  Long-suffering, patience, spiritual humility, peacemaking, generosity, mercy.  All of these are part of God’s image, no?  Is this the way that Jesus is pointing us to this morning?  Be holy, as God is holy, and then He will rejoice in our reflection of His image? 

   Well, this is God’s end-goal, and He will achieve it.  But we will not.  We cannot achieve this standard.  If this were possible, the Bible, the story of salvation, would be a lot shorter.  “Sinners, hear God’s law and fix yourselves according to it!  The End.”  That is a simple theology, straightforward, and it would be entirely just.  But it offers no hope to us. 

   So, God’s salvation project is actually fairly long, from Abram to Jesus almost two millennia, from Jesus to us, another two.  Which is also to say that God’s salvation project is just the right length.  Like when God waited until just the right time to act, waiting for the New Adam, the New Man to be born, born of a woman, during the reign of Caesar Augustus, born under the law, to redeem those whom the law condemned. 

   For God’s Son to stand before the Pharisees and Herodians and ask His question about images and inscriptions, first He had to take on human flesh.  This makes all the difference.  Remember, while Adam and Eve were created in God’s image; the Son of God becoming a man is an entirely different category.  Because the Father’s only-begotten Son is not made in the Father’s image; He is the Father’s image: distinct, and yet so similar, so intimate, that He and the Father are One. 

   And so, the beginning of God achieving His goal of restoring you and me in His image was to first join His image to humanity.  We call this the Incarnation, the Son of God taking on human flesh from Mary, and being born a helpless baby, who also happened to be
God.  The decisive Incarnation difference is that now, ever since His miraculous conception in Mary’s womb, now and forever and ever after, the image of God is newly present in human flesh, a perfect Man, without blemish, without sin.  

On my heart imprint Your image, Blessed Jesus, King of Grace.

   God does want to see His image in you and me, and in every soul.  To make this possible again, after sin ruined us, God chose to take humanity into Himself, to restore it.  Now that humankind is restored in Jesus, all who are joined to Him are likewise restored, are once again pleasing reflections of God’s own image.  This is what God sees when He sees you, joined to Jesus, united with your Savior, in communion with the Christ.     

Let the clear inscription be, Jesus crucified for me,
Is my life, my hope’s foundation, And my glory and salvation.

   Whose inscription is this? Jesus asks.  Country folk, like the Jews in Palestine, 1,400 miles east of Rome, might not have recognized the likeness of Caesar on the denarius coin.  So, there were also epigraphs, inscriptions, on these tax coins, short phrases and titles, to remove all doubt.  One example from the time of the New Testament is “Caesar Augustus, the divine father of the country.”  

   We poor sinners likewise struggle to recognize that God’s good image was essentially present in Jesus of Nazareth.  We need such mysteries to be spelled out.  And so God did. 

   All of the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures are an extended inscription meant to help us recognize Jesus as God’s Messiah, the Christ, the Savior sent from above.  Many declarations are recorded in the New Testament testifying to Jesus’ true identity, Son of God, Son of Mary, the only Savior.  And there’s another inscription, written down right in the moment, just a few days after the events of our Gospel reading.  Pontius Pilate, the earthly authority who sent Jesus to the Cross, was inspired to have an inscription written and posted above Jesus’s head, literally an epigraph, a “writing above.”  We abbreviate it I.N.R.I.  Written out in English, that inscription is “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” 

   Follow the trail to which these four nouns lead, and you will end up with the whole story of salvation.  Jesus, whose name means the LORD Saves, is a real man, born and raised in places we can visit, Bethlehem and Nazareth.  Despite all appearances, as He hangs suffering on a Roman cross, He is the King, not just of one nation, but king of all, king of the universe.  His kingdom starts with the Jews, the Judahites, the only intact tribe of Israel.  Through Judah’s True King, Jesus of Nazareth, God promised to bring salvation, not just for Jews, not just for Israel, but for every nation.   

   Read the inscription above Jesus’ thorn-pierced head.  Weep, believe, and rejoice.  Rejoice, because hidden under the tragedy and the gore, your image is restored in God’s eyes.  Your image is restored, because Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, has paid for all your sin, washed away your guilt, and raised you to His right hand in heaven. 

   And how do you know?  Because God has said so, publicly, writing His Name on your heart in Holy Baptism.  I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, declares Jesus.  I announce to you today that your name is inscribed in the Book of Life, smiles the Father.  Believe and rejoice, murmurs the Spirit. 

   Being made in God’s image was a free gift to Adam and Eve.  Being re-made in God’s image is likewise a free gift to you, the free gift that changes everything.  Including our hearts.  When the eyes of our heart recognize the baptismal gift of restored image, we rightly become like little children, in love with their father and mother, and so wanting to please them.  And how do our little ones, at their best, try to please their earthly parents?  By imitating them.  Speaking, as they hear mom and dad speak.  Helping to wash the dishes, or sweep out the garage.  Holding and feeding a younger sibling. 

   So also, the better we grasp who Jesus is and what He has done for us, the more we want to conform ourselves to His image, in our words, deeds, and thoughts.  We hear Him speak, and seek to speak like Him.  We receive His love, and seek to love others.  Children mimicking their heavenly Father, godly and good. 

   See Jesus.  Hear what the Father has said about Him.  And He who began, He who commenced a good work in you, will continue it to completion in the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  And this continuance and completion work is very much like the commencement of your life in Christ.  God worked, for you and on you, restoring your image, inscribing His love on your heart in the splashing of the water with the words of His Holy Name.  And so also, He continues and completes this work with the same Word, daily renewing and restoring us, until the Day when we will see Him face to face. 

   You know, we might even picture this Christian life like swimming in our Baptism, day by day.  And that is a good image, for today, and forever and ever. Amen.      

Reformation for All the Saints

All Saints Day – November 1^st, A+D 2026
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
Reformation for All the Saints 
John 8:31-36 and Revelation 7:9-15 

Audio of the sermon available HERE.  

   Martin Luther is reported to have said that the Devil and Pope Leo X had forced him to become a good theologian. 

   On this All Saints Day, we are also looking a back one day to October 31^st, the day Luther sparked the Reformation that came to bear his name, by posting his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany.  On this combined festival day, I will humbly suggest another source for Luther’s growth in God’s Word and service.

   What Luther meant is that Pope Leo’s opposition to him, which in time Luther came to believe was inspired by the Devil, had forced him to dig deeper and deeper into God’s Word, so he could respond.  Leo excommunicated Luther, threw him out of the Church.  The Pope’s theologians defamed him, falsely accusing him of heinous things.  And, Luther was declared an outlaw, subject to arrest and execution, thanks to Leo’s ally, the Holy Roman Emperor.  Fortunately for the cause of the Gospel, German princes protected Luther, and Germans also proved most adept with publishing, using the new information technology of the printing press.  Luther’s ideas spread like wildfire, despite Rome’s attempts to discredit and destroy him. 

   Put yourself in Luther’s shoes for a minute.  Martin was a loyal son of the Church, a serious soul who wanted to be faithful.  As a monk and a priest, as well as a teacher of the Bible at the University of Wittenberg, Luther’s whole life was tied up in and depended on the Church.  Ironically, Luther’s crisis began when he was made a professor, and so had to dig deeply in the Scripture in order to teach the future clergy who passed through his lecture hall. 

   Now, being given time to study God’s Word is great.  Biblical study has been at the heart of my daily tasks for more than a quarter of a century, and I have just as much, if not more enthusiasm for digging into the Word today, as I did the first day I sat down in Summer Greek class. 

   Luther clearly loved studying God’s Word.  However, as his knowledge deepened, he discovered more and more clear contradictions between what the Church officially taught and what Scripture plainly said.  Which was a problem, because Luther had been taught since childhood that the Pope was God’s specially chosen representative on earth, whose authority was always to be respected, and obeyed.  On top of that, Leo was one of, if not the most powerful political figure in all of Europe.  Correct him at your peril.

   Luther’s conflict with Leo would come later.  In 1517, posting his 95 theses, he was not rejecting papal authority.  Rather, he was simply asking for a theological debate about a few questions that had arisen.  And it is the reason for Martin’s concern over these questions which shows us another cause for his growth as a theologian. 

   Pope Leo was a big spender.  The construction of St. Peter’s Basilica, Leo’s pet project, was bogged down, and required an infusion of cash.  By the way, we are talking about the same St. Peter’s Basilica that is the Pope’s home church in Rome today.  Leo sent out preachers to raise funds for his basilica, by selling indulgences.  Into the Wittenberg area came the Friar Johann Tetzel, staging special public gatherings at which he preached, the goal of his sermon being to motivate his hearers to purchase indulgences. 

   An indulgence was a piece of paper with a papal seal which promised full forgiveness, either to the purchaser, or to a designated deceased relative of the purchaser.  The sales ditty went like this: “When the coin into the money box rings, another soul from purgatory springs!” 

   What’s this all about?  Good question.  The official position of the Roman church was that the Pope controlled a treasury of merits, extra forgiveness earned by super-pious saints over the centuries, which the Pope could grant to whomever he wished.  Which he dispensed by selling these these indulgences.  Selling forgiveness, in order to finish his church building.  What a deal! 

   There was just one thorny problem with the plan.  Martin Luther was not only a monk and a university professor of the Bible; Martin was also a parish pastor, to two congregations, the Castle Church, and St. Mary’s in town.  And, as anyone who has carefully read the Bible can tell, indulgences are never mentioned.  In fact, Isaiah and the Gospels and St. Paul all state very clearly that forgiveness is a free gift. 

   But very few souls could read the Bible in 16^th century Europe, and so indulgences were old hat, and very lucrative.  And yet, Luther had never protested before.  What was different this time?  Johann Tetzel was in Luther’s backyard, selling a false bill of goods to Martin’s members. 

   Being pastor to all the saints in Wittenberg seems to have been the spark that set Luther off.  And I get it.  Many questionable things are said and done in the name of Christianity, both outside and within of our beloved Missouri Synod.  I do not have time or energy to respond to everything that seems contrary to God’s Holy Word.  But if an error, whether by someone inside our Church body or outside, begins to impact the lives and the faith of my family, or my church family, people whom I have been called to care for, then I will respond, with vigor.  It is the saints, the believers, that matter to Christ our Good Shepherd, and so also to an undershepherd, a faithful local pastor and preacher. 

   And it’s not that I’m so noble or virtuous.  There is simply something about a pastor and people together, sharing God’s true Word.  As Isaiah teaches us, God’s Word is living and active, it does things, it changes us.  Living from the Gospel, together within a congregation, creates a bond.  I suppose we could say all the saints at any given congregation matter because they are a microcosm of the glorious congregation of All the Saints in heaven, worshiping around the throne of God and of the Lamb.  That future is worth fighting for.   

   Luther’s righteous anger at Tetzel misleading his members started an argument.  But on October 31^st, 1517, Luther was not yet very Lutheran, that is to say, his clarity and focus on the Gospel of free forgiveness was not strong.  His first thesis is great: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent!, He meant that the whole life of the Christian should be one of repentance.”  Turn from your sin and flee to Christ, every day: this is the paradoxical but wonderful life of the Christian on this earth.  As the father of the demon possessed boy cried out to Jesus in Mark chapter nine: “Lord I believe!  Help me with my unbelief!”  Christians need forgiveness every day, and Jesus is always ready to deliver it.     

   The first of 95 theses is great.  The other 94?  Not so much.  Not so clear.  Luther still assumed many errors in Church practice that contradict God’s Word.  For example, he did not in the 95 theses reject the non-Biblical idea that purgatory exists in the first place, that God has made this horrible halfway house for deceased Christians to suffer, until they work off their remaining sins.  Purgatory is a total fabrication.  Luther had a lot of growing to do. 

   And consider the events happening in Wittenberg on Oct. 31^st and Nov. 1^st, 1517.  November 1^st has long been All Saints Day, or in older language, (still echoed in first petition of the Lord’s Prayer), ‘All Hallows Day,’ the Day for all the Hallowed, or Holy Ones.  This by the way made October 31^st ‘All Hallows Eve,’ which we have shortened down to ‘Halloween.’ 

   Did the Wittenbergers dress up in ghoulish costumes and beg for candy?  No, but there was a festival, and it was a little gruesome.  On All Saints there was a festival to show off relics, supposed remnants of Biblical items, or bits and pieces of the physical remains of saints.  Supposed slivers of the true cross, (enough to build Noah’s Ark, probably), fingers of this or that Apostle, “uncorrupted” bodies of early church martyrs.  Gathering to venerate these relics was a big deal in the 16^th Century Church, and a big money maker.  The pilgrims who come to see the relics will need to eat, and a place to stay, and may want some mementos of their time.  Cha-ching, cha-ching.    

   Here’s another issue: in the 16^th Century, All Saints Day was not for celebrating all the believers that have been made holy in Christ, which is the Biblical meaning of ‘saint.’  Rather, All Saints was for celebrating only those “super-Christians” whom Rome had declared to be saints, famous figures, so important in the Medieval Church that Christians were taught to pray to them.  Rather than pray directly to the Father in the Spirit, through Jesus, as Scripture teaches, souls were taught to pray to other deceased souls, without any Biblical warrant for the practice.  There is no Biblical command or promise from God about praying to saints. 

   But Luther said nothing about relics or praying to the saints on October 31^st, 1517.  He only complained about the selling of indulgences, which tempted his members to put their hope in a piece of paper, instead of looking to Jesus, crucified and resurrected, the One who had claimed them in Baptism, the One who fed them the fruit of His Cross in His Supper.

 

  The Reformer, in due time, after the spark had grown into a raging fire, would recognize and reject these errors, and many others.  But Luther needed to grow as a theologian first.  Accidentally sparking a Reformation is what forced this.  And Luther lit that spark because he was a good pastor, concerned for the souls, for all the saints, that he was called to serve.   

 

   What might we take away from the Reformation for All the Saints?  First, defending and maintaining the truth of Scripture is good and right to do, just because it is God’s Word.  But defending God’s truth is never only for the sake of truth.  Good theologizing never occurs in a vacuum.  Maintaining God’s Truth is always also about God’s saints, His holy children, whose faith and salvation are threatened when God’s Truth is lost or denied.  Reformation, returning to the Truth of Scripture, is always for the good of all the saints.  

   God the Father has given us His Word, through Prophets, Apostles and most especially through the living voice of His only-begotten Son, made man, the Savior Jesus Christ.  He did not do this just to sound good, not just for Truth’s sake.  Rather, He gave us the Truth to save our souls.  Like when Jesus spoke the truth to the Jews in John chapter 8, in order to set them free from their slavery to sin.  The Truth of Christ, and only the Truth of Christ, will set you free, free indeed.   

   God grant us to share His focus on souls as we live as His people in our time and place.  It is good to have the correct understanding of the Scriptures, in truth, this is absolutely vital.  But never to puff ourselves up.  Such pride of self, pride of how right we are about theology, can quickly become a particularly harsh form of spiritual slavery.  No, we sinners are necessarily humble about ourselves.  We maintain the truth in order to stay free, and to help each other and our neighbors also become and remain free.  Freedom in Christ, from sin and eternal death, the blood bought gift of Jesus for sinners.  Good News indeed.  Amen.

 

Closing Paragraph, not used on 261101

  To close, what is the heart of God’s saving Truth?  It is the Gospel, the Good News that, despite what we deserve for our sinful rebellion against God, the Father has sent His Son to be born of a woman, and to live the perfect human life, fulfilling the requirements of the Law, in the place of us sinners.  Then, to set us free from the guilt and punishment our sins have earned, the Son suffered and died, on a Roman cross, and under God’s wrath, so that in Him, there is no punishment left for sin.  All is forgiven, in the resurrected Christ.  The Holy Spirit then, working through the Word proclaimed in the Church, delivers that Word of faith to sinners like you and me.  All who confess their sins and trust in this Promise are justified, declared righteous and holy before God, true saints, set free in the Son, free indeed, forever and ever, Amen. 

 

 

Staying Safe in the Open Ocean

Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity
October 25^th, Year of Our + Lord 2026
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Staying Safe on the Open Ocean

You can find the audio of this sermon HERE.

Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea!

   I am not a sailor.  But I am in peril on the sea!  And so are you.  The Church of Christ has talked about herself as an ocean-going ship for almost two-thousand years.  Ship stories and metaphors are not as common in the Bible as courtroom scenes teaching about the justification of sinners, or shepherd and sheep metaphors, or God as husband to His Bride, which is collectively all His people.  Still, there are some important ship stories, like when the entire body of believers of the whole world was on one boat, namely Noah and his family, eight in all, escaping through the waters of the flood in the Ark.  As we focus on our Old Testament reading this morning, the very beginning of the Bible, there is a lot of water, and the Spirit of God hovering over the water, and God forming the waters on the earth into the oceans, allowing dry land to appear.  So we will take advantage of the image of the Church as a ship sailing through the ocean to help us dig into the Creation account, and its importance for our faith today. 

   Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea!  Which is all of us.  So we need to learn how we can sail confidently in our little boat through the deep and threatening sea.  While not greater than the victory and love of Christ, dangers do surround the Church on every side, and we cannot take them lightly.  But to take them seriously, we need to know what the dangers are. 

   Ken Hamm and friends at Answers in Genesis (AiG) have done an important service to the Church with their publications and video resources, and with the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in Kentucky.  Their whole focus is on the need for the Church to reclaim and proclaim the truths of Genesis, most especially the Creation account, and the Flood. 

   AiG believes that a Christian faith not built on the foundation of Genesis is weak, and likely to falter.  They are right.  Tragically, starting in the 1700s, voices within the Church argued that we need to set aside Genesis as a true account of our origins.  After all, science was proving the Bible wrong, they claimed.  Most of the early Genesis skeptics in the Church professed to still believe in Jesus Christ as God and Savior, they just wanted to untether His Good News from the embarrassing (to them) claims of Moses about how things came to be.   

   I assume that many of these teachers were sincere, but the reality is they were tools of Satan.  If we set aside Moses’s Creation account, the whole Bible starts to fall apart.  Jesus in the Gospels assumes the truth of Genesis, and drew directly upon it in many of His sermons.  We can try to have Christian faith without Genesis, but this makes Jesus to be a fool, ignorant or untruthful.  And sooner or later the same skeptical approach used on the books of Moses will lead us to discard much of the rest of Scripture, most importantly the Gospel part, about real forgiveness won for us by a real Man, who died but rose again, and was revealed to also be God Himself.  This loss of God’s Word and the Gospel is the sad history we have seen come to its natural terminus in so many American churches. 

   So I thank God for AiG and the many other faithful voices, many from our own Synod, who robustly defend the accuracy of Moses, and show how his books connects to reality, and especially to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Now, there are some problematic things about AiG’s teaching, especially in regard to the Ark.  We’ll come back to that. 

   Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea!   Do you ever feel like the ship of your faith is sinking, or at least taking on a lot of water, when you hear the media and scientists confidently assert that the universe is 3.5 billion years old, or maybe or 5 billion, or 13 billion, the number always seem to grow.  They say we know life came through random evolution, no Creator required.  They declare that the Bible is simply wrong.  As we sail through our hostile scientific world, Christians may feel particularly threatened by the flood of voices of the Academy, which ridicule our faith, and seem so powerful.  How can a Christian keep his head above water? 

   If you feel this way, I have good news for you today.  Satan prowls around and roars like a lion, seeking souls to devour.  But the truth is, he a toothless cat, defanged by Christ.  Stay close to Jesus, and the Devil cannot lay a finger on you.  In a similar way, the voices of Atheistic Scientific Materialism, which seem so dominant, actually face some fundamental problems, which more and more are being discussed publicly.  There are many examples to choose from, but this sermon is not so much about debunking evolution and scientific materialism.  But I’ll touch on one of the best examples: the fact that every living cell carries in it a tremendously complicated encoding machine, made of protein, called DNA.  

   There is no life without this code, and DNA is a remarkably complex language, sophisticated far beyond computer code.  So, where did the first DNA come from, if life is a product of random chance?  Every other bit of code or language in the world tells us one indisputable thing: there is a always a mind behind language and code.  So, who is behind DNA, without which there can be no life? 

   We of course know it is God.  Indeed, our Gospel hints at it, when John calls the Son of God the “Word.”  Logos is the Greek word John used, which does mean Word, and also a lot more than just Word.  Logos also means reason, intelligence, the truth that lies behind everything.  The fact that hidden in every living cell is a living language code fits very well with the Son of God being the Word, the Logos, because all things were created through Him, all life comes from Him. 

   So, we don’t have to be afraid of anti-Creation scientists.  Their talk gets louder and louder, precisely because the ground of truth is shifting under their feet and threatening to knock them over.  Do not fear them, they cannot defeat the Word of God. 

   Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea!  Genesis 1 and 2 do a lot more than describe the Creation.  Already in the first words of the Bible, God is revealing His character, that He is the Father to whom we can cry out with confidence.  God created the universe, and us, because He is love.  His will is to create, to make more, to make creatures that reflect His nature and character, so that He can love those creatures.  And, Genesis 1 and 2 teach us that God’s favorite creature is us.  He created the heavens and the earth for us, and put the chaotic beginning into the perfect order, for us.  He did this so that we could be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and take care of it. 

    Now, of course, we know that we blew our side of that arrangement, very early on.  But our failure, human sin, did not change God’s character nor His desire for a holy people to live with Him forever.  God wants to create and bless and enjoy humanity, and that will never change.  This is also why He wants to rescue and save His favorite creatures.  Genesis 1 reveals this Good News about the Lord, and the rest of the Bible reveals how God achieved His goal. 

   Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea!  It is good and necessary to know the creating and loving character of God, that He is our loving Father.  Because there is a sea of doubt out there about who God truly is.  Which is another ploy of Satan, because he understands that to truly know God is to be united with Him; to truly know God is to be saved.  So we want to know all that we can, all that the Bible reveals, about Who God is. 

   Eternal Father.  Genesis 1 and 2 do not refer to God as Father, nor do they specifically declare that God is unchanging.  But they do describe the unchangeable Eternal Father as they describe our Creator God.  The rest of the Bible, starting in Deuteronomy, does specifically refer to God as Father, and also makes it very clear that He never changes.  Jesus of course, is the One who truly reveals God the Father to us. 

   With this in mind, here is a little question: When does one become a father?  When is it legitimate for me, a man, to say, “I am a father?”  When I have a son or daughter, of course.  Without a child, I may want to be a father.  I might have a fatherly character.  But without making a baby with my wife, I am not a father. 

   Second question:  How long has our unchanging God been a Father?  Well, He is the unchanging, eternal Father, right?  What does this imply about the Son?  Also eternal.  If there was a point in eternity when God was not Father, then there would have had to be a change in God.  Which the Bible denies.  There has never been a when, when the Father and Son were not together, and the same is true for the Holy Spirit. 

   Do we see this in Genesis 1 and 2?  Not in so many words, but there are a lot of clues.  First of all, God creates, and the Spirit of God hovers over the face of the waters.  And when God declared His intention to make man, what does He say?  Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.  Who is God talking to?  Interesting, huh?  The rest of the Bible reveals that this sentence is a conversation within the Godhead, words between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

   Genesis 1 is not where we go in Scripture to prove that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One true God, who is also three distinct persons, the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  But we can see some of the outline already.  Which makes sense, because God is unchanging.    

   Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea!  God hears His peoples’ cries.  The prophet Jonah, thrown overboard from a boat and swallowed by a great fish, prayed to God, and was delivered.  The Disciples, theiry boat caught in a storm, were sinking on the Sea of Galilee.  They woke Jesus with their cries: Lord, save us!  And, even before we knew to cry out, even before He created us, the Eternal Father had decided to send His only-begotten Son to rescue the rebellious sinners who would ruin His good creation.  (These rebellious sinners are us, and every other descendant of Adam.) 

    John in the prologue to his Gospel makes the crucial connection for us between Creation and Redemption.  Echoing the language of Genesis 1, “In the beginning,” John declares that the only begotten Son, the Word, is God, and was at the Creation, His Father’s master workman.  This is God’s character, His desire, His great work, to create and bless, and also to save.  We finally understand the God of Creation by seeing what He did on the Cross. 

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

   God did it all in the Creation, the man did nothing except name some animals, and be blessed.  God does it all in Salvation, too.  God makes us children, His children, reborn, through faith.  Which is especially the gift of Holy Baptism, which the Apostle Peter compares to Noah and His family being saved through water in the Ark.   Baptism, Peter declares, corresponds to Noah’s story:  Baptism now saves you, like Noah and family were saved in the Ark, only better.  For Baptism delivers eternal rescue.  This passage from Peter is the major source of the Church’s habit of referring to herself as a boat or ship.  This is why the room you are sitting in is traditionally called the “nave,” as in navy, or naval, like a ship.    

   And so we come to my biggest concern with our friends at AiG.  We toured the Ark Encounter a few years ago on a Higher Things trip.  It was great; you should go.  But there was one big omission.  I crawled all over the replica of Noah’s Ark that they built, and looked at hundreds of displays.  Lots of great stuff.  But no mention whatsoever of what Peter says about the Ark and Baptism.  Which is really too bad.  Because Baptism is God’s means of delivering Christ’s forgiveness to sinners today.  By Baptism God brings sinners onboard the Ark which is His Church. 

   We need to maintain the historicity of Genesis, and keep God as our miraculous, all-powerful Creator.  But believing in the Creation does not save us.  Only faith in the blood-bought forgiveness of Jesus can save us.  And God chooses to deliver that forgiveness to sinners today through the washing of water with the Word. 

   Our Creating and Saving God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, continues to come to save today.  This is Who He is, this is His Nature, this is His great joy.  Rest in His joy, which is also your peace, the peace which passes all understanding, and keeps your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, unto eternal life, Amen.       

The Joy of Christian Worship

Sermon for the 20^th Sunday after Trinity
October 18^th, A+D 2026
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota

Audio of the Sermon can be found HERE. 

 

When in our music God is glorified, And adoration leaves no room for pride, It is as though the whole creation cried: Alleluia!  

How often, making music, we have found, A new dimension in the world of sound, As worship moved us to a more profound Alleluia!  

So has the Church, in liturgy and song, In faith and love, through centuries of wrong, Borne witness to the truth in ev'ry tongue, Alleluia! 

   Nothing on this earth is quite like faithful, joyful Christian congregational worship, singing and making melody in our hearts to the LORD, our Savior.  For Shelee and me and all the youth we have ever taken to Higher Things conferences, the highlight is always the worship.  To be in a crowd of souls who share the same faith, and so freely and robustly worship the same LORD, is wonderful.  Maybe you think of an LWML convention, or a Circuit Reformation festival.  Or maybe simply a Sunday when the Lord blesses us with a congregation that fills our little space, and our voices blend into beautiful praise of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the One True God.  I have also been privileged many times to experience wonderful worship in tiny little sanctuaries: a hospital room, a living room, a hotel meeting room. 

   Faithful, joyful Christian worship is fantastic.  Which makes it all the more bitter and strange that so often worship becomes a source of division and strife in the Church.  Why is this?  How should we understand and deal with the differences that arise in our midst? 

   Well, we can start by remembering that strife over worship has been a constant companion of humanity, ever since Adam and Eve failed to fear, love and trust in God above all things.  The first murder flowed from disappointing worship.  When Adam and Eve’s first two sons gathered to offer sacrifices to the LORD, God praised Abel’s sacrifice, who gladly brought his best.  But the LORD was not pleased with Cain’s offering, some of his harvest, given grudgingly.  Cain was crestfallen, but had no power to lash out at God.  So, he poured out his anger on Abel, and killed his brother. 

   Today we mortals continue to lack the power to do anything to God, but we still know how to lash out at each other.  Thanks be to God, rarely, if ever, do differences over worship within our beloved Missouri Synod lead to violence.  But we, and every other Christian communion suffer sharp disagreements over what we say and do and sing when we gather in the Name of Jesus. 

   The pattern is consistent.  The newly born nation of Israel was waiting at the bottom of Mt. Sinai for Moses, in tragic irony, to come back with God’s instruction for right worship.  But, they grew impatient.  They demanded that Moses’ brother Aaron make them an idol to worship, in the way they wanted.  Aaron complied with the Golden Calf, and called the gathering they made around it a “feast to Yahweh, that is, a worship service to the LORD God.”  But no, it most certainly was not.  God rather directly and severely corrected that error, and He would have to do this many more times. 

   Once they arrived in the Promised Land, Israel was instructed only to bring sacrifices to the place where the LORD instructed them to set up His tabernacle, or tent temple.  Later that one place for sacrifice became the stone Temple built by Solomon in Jerusalem.  But, all through their history, Israelites ignored God and sacrificed all over the place.  Worse, much worse, they also made sacrifices and worshiped the false gods, the idols, of their neighbors.  Sometimes the Israelites tried to do both, worshiping the true God and the idols.  Sometimes they mixed the worship.  Sometimes they abandoned Yahweh altogether, and only served Baal, or Asherah, or Molech.  This was the sin that led to their frequent defeats, their deportations and exiles, their near disappearance. 

   The Prophet Isaiah gives the most wonderful invitation to God’s people Israel: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.”  But long before Isaiah preached, and ever after, worshiping rightly has been a struggle for God’s people.  What should be pure joy, the highlight of every week, sometimes become the biggest problem in the lives of the faithful.  The sources of conflict are manifold, and yet the underlying factors driving the strife always come from a pretty short list. 

   First of all, Satan, that great angel of God, who refused to continue worshiping Him, has, ever since he fell, really hated true and faithful worship.  The Evil One does all he can to corrupt it.  Remember, one of his three temptations of Christ Jesus was about right worship.  He offered to give Jesus all earthly power, if only, for one time, Jesus would bow down and worship him. 

   Along with Satan’s opposition comes the world’s.  Unbelievers are offended by faithful Christian worship.  An atheist, who pretends there is no God, finds our worship insane, and pitiable.  Run-of-the-mill sinners know neither the depth of their sin and need, nor the infinite glory and love of Christ and His forgiveness.  So Christian worship’s insistence on keeping human sin front and center is very off-putting.  Everybody wants to think they are a pretty good person, but Jesus says otherwise.  That’s not polite, not nice, not well received.  And of course, souls who believe in and worship a full-on idol, Muslims, Hindus, Secular Humanists, etc., do not take well to the exclusive claims of Christ, who says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father, except through me.”  How rude.  Who does He think He is, God?

   These are all pressures from the outside, and they can threaten to corrupt our gatherings.  But, sadly, most of our trouble rises from within, and each one of us is a threat.  For each Christian in this life remains a sinner, and the true worship that Jesus has laid out for us is offensive to our sinful nature, our fleshly hearts, minds and wills, still opposed to God, that continue to plague us all. 

   This all can be very depressing.  Some Christians, hating strife, are tempted to give up on the Church altogether.  Others try to sweep everything under the rug, pretend that differences over worship are never worth addressing.  Can’t we just agree to disagree and choose to get along? 

   Well, no.  Certainly Christians should be patient with each other, and humble.  Each Christian should be willing to examine their own motives and seek to love their brothers and sisters in Christ, even as we face disagreements.  Above all, we must all submit to the Truth of God’s Word.  And pastors, myself included, must recognize, especially in the age of instant internet theologizing, that we often fail at this standard.  But please know that ‘giving up’ or saying ‘differences do not matter’ are both goals of the Devil. 

   It is the Lord God Almighty, the only Source of Life and Joy, who is the One who is truly picky about how we worship Him.  To misunderstand this is to miss out on the true joy God wants for each of us.  It is to risk missing out on God and His joy, forever and ever.  So, we need to seek another way forward.  And thanks be to God, the Holy Spirit has not left us without clear guidance.    

   In this vein, I must thank Roberta for suggesting our opening hymn, which I quoted to begin this message, because right away in the first three stanzas we are pointed to the balance that is required for the Church to engage in faithful, joyful Christian worship. 

   Stanza one begins and ends with “When in our music God is glorified…, It is as though the whole creation cried: Alleluia!”  This is our goal; this is what we love.  And the line in between is crucial:  “And adoration leaves no room for pride.”  In true Christian worship on this earth, we are always sinners, deserving of God’s wrath, daring in faith to gather around the real presence of the Holy, Holy, Holy LORD.  Human pride has no place in God’s House. 

   God is in the business of rescuing sinners so they can live with Him in glory, forever.  The Lord’s quest to win forgiveness for sinners runs from Genesis 3 to Matthew 28, and His mission to deliver Christ’s forgiving victory started at the Resurrection and continues everyday until the Last Day.  Whenever we lose sight of this reality, we begin to corrupt our worship.  But when we confess and embrace this reality, true joys are found.  Or, better said, true joy finds us, as our lives are renewed by Christ.

   And so stanza three describes the life of the Church: So has the Church, in liturgy and song, In faith and love, through centuries of wrong, Borne witness to the truth in ev'ry tongue, Alleluia!  Until the last day, true and faithful Christian worship will be confronting and correcting wrongs, most especially the wrongs that you and I by our sinful nature bring into God’s house.  This necessary dealing with problems is not to be lamented but rather celebrated.  The Truth of God has become a Man and carried all our sin to His Cross.  In Him we have forgiveness, life and salvation.  Yes, we must confront sin, even when it is exceptionally unpopular to do so.  We do this, in Christian love, knowing that the Son of Man came to seek and to save sinners, to seek and to save us, and all who hear and believe His Good News.    

   Is true and faithful Christian worship about using particular instruments, or singing in a particular style?  No, it is about faithfully and effectively declaring God’s Truth in speech and prayer and song, which will take many different forms.  But all the forms need to be judged as to whether they are the best choice for God’s people in a given time and place.  And particularly in music, this calls for wisdom.  First of all, everything we sing should be faithful, and teach Christ’s truth.  Sadly, many songs written for the Church contain errors, or fail to say much at all. 

   In terms of style, we know there is a lot of music in the world: secular popular music, non-Christian religious music, music that is tied to certain activities and cultures.  If in a particular time and place, the associations that come with a particular form or style of music carry a message of their own, the Church is wise to be cautious. 

   My favorite example to use, for its clarity, is the Polka Mass that a Midwest LCMS congregation not far from Fort Wayne, IN used to celebrate every summer.  I, for one, do not mind a good polka at Oktoberfest.  Brats, schnitzel, beer and dancing can all be fine things, if not taken to excess.  But can we separate the ‘oom pah pah’  music from that context in our hearts and minds?  Can we do the Divine Service with polka music, and not end up clouding the message?

   Christian worship is necessarily different than the world.  We need to be intelligible to worldly people, to be sure, but what God is doing in the midst of His Church is truly unique: Prophesying the future.  Convicting sinners, in order to forgive them.  Giving new life.  Feeding His family with the true Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.  No matter what form we use, no matter what music we use, if we are truly proclaiming and distributing these mysteries, our gatherings will be different.  It will take some time for those coming from outside the Church to adjust; we can be patient and help them along.  But if we become just like the world, if we never point out the problems that every person brings with them, if we lose our focus on our sin and God’s grace, and instead just try to be a pleasant place, with no sharp edges, then we will lose the things we need.  We will lose the things God uses to give forgiveness and new life, to newcomers, and to all of us.

   Of course, the least popular thing in the Church today is to rightly administer the Lord’s Supper.  That is, to practice closed communion, to only give the Supper to souls who have publicly confessed the same Biblical understanding of the faith that we confess. 

   The Supper is for baptized believers who confess their sins and their faith in Christ alone for salvation.  We want everyone to receive this miraculous gift, in with and under the bread and wine, because this is God’s desire.  But fellowship in the Supper flows from agreement in the teaching of Jesus.  Only the Truth can set sinners free. 

   Indeed, Paul teaches us that communion is a danger to those without a right understanding of the faith, and also that our communing together is a joint proclamation of Christ crucified, a proclamation which should be made with a unified voice and understanding. 

   And so, we are careful.  We study first, we ask and answer questions, before we join together in the Supper.  We do this with our children who are in church with us every Sunday, and with guests, whom we truly desire to bless, in the way Jesus has instructed.

    Think about it this way:  We practice closed communion to avoid the frightening scenario that played out at the end of our Gospel reading.  The parable speaks of the heavenly Wedding Banquet for the Son of God.  The Father, the King, graciously supplies proper wedding garments for all His guests, the good and the bad that He has invited.  That wedding garment represents the free gift of Christ’s righteousness, His blood-bought gift of saving forgiveness, won on the Cross.  The guest who took a seat at the feast without the proper wedding garment is a sinner who denies that he needs his sins to be covered by the Son.  This proud, false faith is unacceptable to the Father, and the guest is cast out, forever. 

   The Lord’s Supper is a foretaste of the heavenly Wedding Feast to come.  We carefully administer Communion today, in an effort to make sure everyone is truly prepared for eternity.  That’s a sharp edge, to be sure.  It is also the way we love our neighbors best, for when sinners like you and me truly understand our need, and then truly grasp the gift that God gives us here, then we are caught up in God’s true joy.      

    The last two stanzas of our hymn do a tremendous job of reminding us of the truth about worship, what Jesus did to make it possible for us, and the reward we receive, when we let God’s way reign among us. 

   “And did not Jesus sing a psalm that night, When utmost evil strove against the Light?  Then let us sing, for whom He won the fight, Alleluia!”  Jesus sang Psalms to make it through His great suffering, so that we can sing in thankfulness and joy, today, and forever and ever.  So, Let ev'ry instrument be tuned for praise! Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise!  And may God give us faith to sing always, Alleluia!   Amen.