Archive for September, 2008

Will living together before marriage help?

Posted on September 29th, 2008

Myth #3:  “Living Together Before Marriage Increases Your Chances of Having a Happy Marriage Later.” You “test drive a car” before you buy it, so why not do the same with your lifelong relationships? Another one that is heard often is “you try on a pair of shoes to see if they fit before you buy them, why not your spouse.” Someone has said, when you test drive a car you don’t pack your personal luggage in the trunk or when you try on a pair of new shoes you don’t want everyone else’s foot odor and fungus already in them. You can throw away shoes without hurting anyone, but you can’t throw away a person without hurting them and possibly others. The great…

Categories: Theology

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Purity of doctrine and the future of Synod

Posted on September 27th, 2008

Whether our Synod gains friends or makes enemies, wins honor or invites disgrace, grows or declines in numbers, brings peace or incites enmity, all this must be unimportant to us-just so our Synod may keep the jewel of purity of doctrine and knowledge. However, should our Synod ever grow indifferent toward purity of doctrine, through ingratitude forget this prize, or betray or barter it away to the false church, then let our church body perish and the name Missourian decay in disgrace. -C.F.W. Walther, First Sermon Delivered at the Opening of Synod, 1 Corinthians 1:4-5

Categories: Theology

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The Law of Sin Is the Violence of Habit

Posted on September 26th, 2008

The thoughts with which I meditated about You [O Lord] were like the efforts of those who would like to get up but are overcome by deep sleep and sink back again…. Often a man defers shaking off sleep when his limbs are heavy with slumber.  Although displeased with himself he is glad to take a bit longer, even when the time to get up has arrived.  In this kind of way I was sure it was better for me to render myself up to You love than to surrender to my own cupidity.  But while the former course was pleasant to think about and had my notional assent, the latter was more pleasant and overcame me….  Though at every point You showed that…

Categories: Theology

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Worship: The Meeting of God and Man in Christ

Posted on September 25th, 2008

The orthodox fathers [of seventeenth-century Lutheranism] managed to connect the whole of Christian doctrine and life to worship.  The orthodox doctrine of worship was comprehensive; for these Lutherans, worship was not one section of dogmatics but was the whole subject of dogmatics and ethics.  ‘Worship’ was shorthand for the relation of God and man; it is the meeting of God and man in Christ.  As such it stands at the center of all ecclesiastical action.  When God deals with us it necessarily involves worship.  A deep desire for true doctrine in the orthodox fathers led them not away from worship as mere adiaphoron or to a dead formalism, but precisely to the realization that worship pervades all Christian experience and thought.  Lutheranism in the…

Categories: Liturgy

Meditation on Psalm 13

Posted on September 24th, 2008

Continuing our series on the Psalms at Wednesday Evening Prayer. Please note: As with many of these meditations on the Psalms, ideas and phrases have been freely borrowed from Luther (various sources), and Patrick Henry Reardon’s Christ in the Psalms. Tonight’s Psalm, 13, is especially appointed for bedtime. As we go to sleep, we ponder the time that our eyes will close on this life for good, and pray: “Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.” For, the sleep of death is not merely the last breath of our mortal body, but the endless death of the soul, the outer darkness of judgment, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It…

Categories: Sermons

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Charming Christianity

Posted on September 24th, 2008

I believe it to be a great mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it… We cannot blink at the fact that gentle Jesus meek and mild was so stiff in His opinions and so inflammatory in His language that he was thrown out of church, stoned, hunted from place to place, and finally gibbeted as a firebrand and a public danger.  Whatever His peace was, it was not the peace of amiable indifference. -Dorothy Sayers, A Careless Rage for Life

Categories: Theology

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Walther on the benefits of a uniform liturgy

Posted on September 24th, 2008

We know and firmly hold that the character, the soul of Lutheranism, is not found in outward observances but in the pure doctrine. If a congregation had the most beautiful ceremonies in the very best order, but did not have the pure doctrine, it would be anything but Lutheran. We have from the beginning spoken earnestly of good ceremonies, not as though the important thing were outward forms, but rather to make use of our liberty in these things. For true Lutherans know that although one does not have to have these things (because there is no divine command to have them), one may nevertheless have them because good ceremonies are lovely and beautiful and are not forbidden in the Word of God. Therefore…

Categories: Liturgy

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The people have spoken

Posted on September 22nd, 2008

The results are in from SCRIPTURE STUDY ’08: YOU DECIDE. After we finish studying the Formula of Concord, we will embark on a two-year (kidding!) study of Job. Here’s how the voting went down: Job – 61 Colossians – 58 Hosea – 38 Malachi – 37 1 & 2 Peter – 35 Luke – 18 Parables – 16 Mark – 9 Disqualified Votes:  Revelations [sic], Acts, Ephesians

Categories: Theology