What the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Kindle Locations 75-76)

It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are expected to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/ chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.

Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos:Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (p. 6)

Who is a God like you? That’s the question asked by the prophet in today’s Old Testament reading. It’s a common question, in and out of Scripture. And it usually is asked with accusation and anger, tears and rage.

Who is a God like You,

- Allowing war and bloodshed?

- Seeing Your creation sick and dying, doing nothing?

- Sitting idly, as children perish in their mother’s womb?

- A Creator of creatures whose minds are diseased & bodies broken?

- Why, O Lord, do You not act? Why do You not answer?

His answer, for now, is what is recorded in the Gospels. He says, “You, My child, are My lost coin. I have searched for you amid the dust and spiders; into every dark corner I have gone, casting the bright beams of My light. You were covered with filth, but I found you; you were slippery with urine and puss, but I grasped you and washed you, polished you and restored you to a place of honor. You, My child, are My lost sheep. Do you not see that all the darkness that has come upon your race began when your first father fled? And you, you too have run from Me. You listened to the voices of others, and the voice of your Shepherd you thought boring and prudish. But still I searched for you and called and called, although the night was pitch, like tar; and the storms were fierce, the wild beasts snarled; they bared their teeth and flashed their sharp claws, and death itself as a monster loomed. Yet I searched for you and found you.”

Some theologians say that Law and Gospel are two sides of the same coin, two doctrines of the same God, as though we could weigh them and find balance between the Law and the Gospel.

But this is not the Bible doctrine. This is not what God Himself teaches us in His Word.

But before we listen once more to His Word in Micah, look again at nature. What do we learn about God from nature, from our experience in this world? Perhaps we breathe fresh air and say, “Life is good”; we see a gorgeous sunset, a compelling vista or a verdant meadow and say, “God made this world beautiful.” We can drink a beer and say, “Here is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

But any sincere and truthful look at the world must acknowledge that everything ends in pain and sorrow. The hospitals and funeral homes reek with the stench of mortality, as florists and antiseptic-spraying cleaning staff battle each day to stifle the odors that would otherwise cause us to gasp and heave. Broken hearts, shattered souls, cancerous tumors filling the gut; minds crippled by fear, souls gripped with sorrow, and mouths that can only utter the name of God as a curse. Jobs lost, wars waged, girls abused, boys who only play games in unreal, electronic worlds. All around us are lost coins and lost sheep, who seem not to be rescued at all, but melted down or roasted in the fire, consumed, destroyed, returning in acid and excrement to the earth from which our first father was formed.

What do we experience in this world? Anger. Death. Loss. Where does it leave us? Clutching to memories, drying our eyes from the tears staining our cheeks, winding down another useless life amidst the billions and billions that have traversed this globe.

Visit the nursing home and you will see: Futility wins. Decay wins. Death wins. That is the one conclusion the evidence of this world presents to you.

Who is a God like You, allowing such a world of poisonous fury to continue?

Yet the prophet Micah gives us by revelation what we could never conclude from nature. “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression?” God is not Law and Gospel, Anger and Mercy, as two equal parts, two doctrines that form a single coin with two sides. No, “He does not retain His anger forever.” Anger, the Word of God tells us, is not intrinsic to God’s nature. It is not who He is. What did we hear from St. John a few weeks ago? “God is love.” So, “He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love.”

Psalm 111[:4] says, “He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered: the LORD is gracious and full of compassion.” On these beautiful words, Dr. Luther commented:

The Psalmist does not refer to God simply as God or Lord, but as gracious and merciful Lord. For the very names ‘God’ and ‘Lord’ are intrinsically rather terrifying because these names refer to His Majesty. However, the epithets ‘gracious’ and ‘merciful’ contain nothing but solace and joy. And I cannot think of a single line in Scripture where God is described more beautifully. Give Him no other name in your heart and remember Him as such in your conscience. Otherwise you will be unjust to Him and will most grievously insult Him and you will also bring the greatest harm on yourself (…) For His essential nature is to do good; anger is something alien and is not one of His works.

Note, then, how much of today’s OT reading is in the future. “He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham.” This is what will take place. Now, we wait. Here we sit in this storm-tossed boat, fearful at each crash of thunder and flash of lightening. Here we sit in the hospital, looking at a shell of a human being, crying and wondering, “Why?!” Here we sit with stomachs twisted in knots, writhing in pain, hiding in shame. Here we sit in the funeral home, choked with flowers staring at a corpse caked in cosmetic fakery. Here we stand at Arlington cemetery, beholding row after row after row after endless row of fallen soldiers. And none of it makes sense.

Arlington Cemetery

Then here we sit in the church, looking at a derelict, itinerant Jew hanging, His guts spilled, His life spent. But we sit here on a Sunday, the day of resurrection, and staring at the crucifix we remember that the Crucified One—for He is forever the Crucified One—kicked death in the teeth and said, “You lose.”

And that’s the only answer as we sit with Job on this world’s dunghills. For we know, amidst all the pain and loss and heartache, that He is coming again, coming again for us lost coins and lost sheep, us losers who have been mean to our spouses, disobedient to parents, greedy with our stuff, and wasted our lives, that He is coming again even to the pits in the ground that become our homes when breath is gone, and He will roar like a lion once more at death and say, “You lose.” And rising again, on His shoulder we are gently laid, as home rejoicing He brings us.

What is man? That’s the question the psalmist asks tonight. That’s one of the questions a classical education should teach you to ask.

The broader culture, in an astonishing fraud that is neither scientific or logical, would have you believe that man is, that you are the product of a random mutation. That the incredible design of the world and the cosmos, the complex digital code embedded in your DNA, is all an accident. Without design. Without plan. And thus you are without purpose. Without hope.

What is man? What masquerades as science says that man is soulless, your thoughts and emotions pure chemical reactions. And what is your life? Meaningless. The weak we kill, and the dead return to nothing. The end.

Well that’s not very pleasant to think about. So ignoring the so-called science of macro-evolution, man consoles himself with another science: economics. In other words, how am I going to buy all the stuff I want in order to make the most of this life, to make me happy and comfortable? I want a new lacrosse stick, an iPad, video games and vacations.

I want, I want, I want.

I am Homo economicus, a producer, a consumer, and my identity is defined by my stuff.

Success. Pleasure. What is the end of that? You may simply have to learn this the hard way, but I pray instead that you will listen to St. Paul in his letter to Timothy which we heard tonight: “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” 

This life may not lead you immediately to ruin and destruction. The pursuit of prosperity, the pursuit of happiness, may cause you to move on to many more important graduations and achievements, to fabulous wealth and glorious successes. And that may be the greatest temptation of all – to have everything you can want in this life, and to put your feet up and say with the Rich Man in Jesus’ parable, “[I] have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” What does God say of that man? “You fool! Tonight your life comes to an end.” We do not know when our last hour will be.

Psalm 8, which we sang near the beginning of Vespers, directs the question where questions should be directed: to God. “O Lord … What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” The psalmist acknowledges that God made everything: the heavens, the earth, the moon and the stars. Of all these beautiful and powerful, terrible and majestic things, why does God care for puny, insignificant man?

And the answer is love. God loves man. God made man out of love, bestowed all the riches of creation on the man out of love, and despite our rebellion, continues to love us.

What is man? Of himself, man is nothing. But man is not of himself. Man is made by the Maker. Man is loved by the One who is love. Man is redeemed by the One who became Man for us.

That is how you learn to answer the question, “Who am I?” I am not of myself, by myself, for myself. I am made by the Maker. I am loved by the One who is love. I am redeemed by the One who became Man for me.

So what ultimately matters is not how many schools I can graduate from, how much money I can get, what kind of name I make for myself, how many years I can live. What matters is that I am made by the Maker, I am redeemed by the Redeemer, I am sanctified by the Sanctifier, I will, though I suffer every trial and then death, be raised again from the dead and live with Christ in His kingdom.

So if there’s one thing I want you graduates to take away from Immanuel Lutheran School, it is this, that you can say and confess: I believe God has made me and all creatures; I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord; the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, and will at the last day raise up me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certain true!

Why do Christians accept this “new” interpretation [that the earth orbits the sun], and not still insist on a “literal” understanding of the “pillars of the earth”? Why are we not still split up into fixed-earthers and moving-earthers? Is it really because we have all compromised, and made Scripture subservient to science?

Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science (p. 19)

I haven’t read beyond this point yet, but I believe Lennox is going to argue in this book that we can reexamine the “seven days” of Genesis 1-2 without making Scripture subservient to science.

To deny ourselves is to deny self-rule. Dying to self is the primary battle of life. The flesh scrambles for the throne and struggles to be God. Jesus doesn’t enter into that battle; He’s already won it. He occupies the throne and graciously offers to share it with us. But for some deceptive reason, we want to be king and rule our own lives. Until we deny ourselves that which was never meant to be ours—the role of being God in our lives—we will never be at peace with ourselves or with God, and we will never be free.

The Bondage Breaker (p. 39)

Once it had taken hold within me, my secret had the power to shape and influence my reasoning, my perspective, my conscience. Years later, I would discover that the box in my soul wasn’t sealed as well as I’d thought. It was releasing undetectable yet poisonous fumes that wafted through my soul in silence and contaminated my heart. Over time, this secret did to me the same thing I did in my relationship with the parents who’d given birth to me and nurtured, supported, and loved me with their whole hearts. It hid itself, just as I was now hiding my true self from my parents. The insidious power that my secret wielded in my soul was kept secret from me.

Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader’s Eye-Opening Journey across the Life Line (Kindle Locations 510-514)

The great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called “modernism” or “liberalism.”

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Kindle Locations 15-18)

Oh, how we love to vilify our opponents—from both sides. How easy to assume that those on “our” side are right and wise and good; how those on “their” side are treacherous and foolish and deceptive. I have found right and good and wisdom on both sides. I have found foolishness and treachery and deception on both sides as well. I have experienced how good intentions can be warped into poor choices no matter what the side.

Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader’s Eye-Opening Journey across the Life Line 

Russell Morre on pride:

[Pride] is the primal sin because no other sin is possible without believing that some good gift of God is mine and mine alone to use for my purposes, for my own kingdom and glory.

Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ (p. 143)