Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. (Psalm 119:160)
JANUARY - 2003 - FEBRUARY
| News and Notes |
| Only God's Word is Certain --- Luther |
| Sermon --- As Strangers and Pilgrims --- r.w.s. |
| Don't change a word of the WORD ---m.e.l. |
Grace Ev. Lutheran Church of New Lenox, IL
Mr. Harvey Raidy, a member of our congregation, a resident of Diamond Bar, Ca., went to be with the Lord. Let us keep his family in our prayers.
V From the desk of Pastor Wayne A. Popp:
I was privileged to be asked by the family of Mr. Harvey Raidy from Diamond Bar, California to come to California and to perform the Christian burial of Mr.Harvey William Raidy, buried baptized into Christ in his youth. Harvey remained in his baptismal grace by the power of the Holy Ghost through the grace of God which granted him true faith in Jesus Christ as his Savior. Harvey's life and his witness to the great salvation given to all men through Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, also sounded forth when his body was laid to rest awaiting the great resurrection of his body when his Savior calls him forth. Romans 8 was printed from the King James Version and distributed to those who attended the funeral. Pastor Popp emphasized to the living that Romans 8 would be one of his last messages to those who had ears to hear and a comfort to those who knew that the Word of God in Romans 8 expresses the faith which he held.
Harvey was married to Irene Katherine Nee Sang for 56 years thereby setting an example for those entering into the estate of Holy Matrimony. The command of God for Harvey to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, was honored in his life and heart. The marriage was blessed by the birth of Mark, Karen, Kathy, and Karla. The grandchildren are Stephanie Afonso, Jill Hoving, the late Gregory Hoving, Andrew and Matthew Raidy and great-grandchild Tyler Afonso.
The funeral was held at Rosehill Chapel, Los Angeles, California on December 18, the year of our Lord 2002. May the Lord grant that we all remain true to the great gift of God, given by His grace, namely, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, and the Savior of all men. Brethren, Blessed are they who die in the Lord from henceforth even forevermore. How then can we be saved if we neglect so great a salvation.
w.a.p.
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Other than God's Word, nothing is certain.
taken from: Luther: on God's Word, p.35
(Ó1983 The Lutheran Reformation Hour)
Luther: on God's Word (from Luther's Tabletalk)
is a collection of Luther's quotes
on the subject of "The Word of God"
(92 pages - available from The Lutheran Reformation Hour)
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"AS STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS"
(Reprinted from May-June 1996 ILC Journal)
Fellow Redeemed Sinners:
Last week a man was complaining to me about how the weather seems to be changing for the worse. It seems to be getting more violent, more severe and more uncomfortable, and I suppose all of us notice that to some degree or other. Days are cold, wet; the air is full of miseries and sickness and we wish it were warm. Then we are not sure when it is warm whether we really want it that way, because it seems when it gets warm around here, at least of late, that then we are in for constant danger from tornadoes. And this has not always been the case in these parts, we are told, at least not to such a degree as it is today. Some people have many reasons for that and for other things in nature. Some say it is man tossing these missiles up into the sky. Others say, it is those atomic explosions. But the real answer is not with man. It is with God, the God of heaven and the earth. God says,
And God is saying to our nation today,
Because many people today have fallen in love with this present world, have sunk their roots deep into this life and become glued to this world like an earthworm, as though they are going to live here forever -- That is why God is shaking things up a bit in our land from coast to coast; from New York city with their financial problems to Los Angeles and San Francisco with their earthquakes and tremors; from Haiti to the Far East God is sending His angels with warning to a nation that has grown spiritually ignorant, ignorant of its God.
Do we understand that? Will we understand it? And I mean us Christians. Oh ye Christians, the Bible says that we are strangers and pilgrims, and that means foreigners. We are strangers and foreigners in this world. That is what our text says, but are we convinced of it? Or are we, too, falling in love with the world, sinking our roots deep into the earth, and spreading ourselves "like a green bay tree,"(Psalm 37:35), falling in love with a world that is marked for destruction after all. I say this advisedly, because manifestations of this worldliness are visible in every church body and in every congregation, more and more. How is it that people will get a goodly turnout for every organization in the church where the Word of God is not even heard? People will come out for that and spend time and money for it. How is that? Things are done in the shadow of the church which have nothing to do with the church, and the Word of God. We will spend lots of time and energy on many things but when it comes to getting Sunday School teachers for classes, we have to beat the bushes. When it comes to getting people to yield their voices for choirs to sing praise to their God there is no one around. When it comes to the Lord's Supper a week or a month after Easter it seems as though Communion is forgotten. When it comes to Bible Class, very few attend. There are so many other things to do. My question is this: are we really convinced that we are strangers and foreigners here? Or are we becoming strangers and foreigners to our Father's house in heaven? May the Holy Ghost probe our consciences this morning by His Word and may he convince us in no uncertain terms and by His grace that a Christian is a stranger and a foreigner in this world. That is the natural condition in this world as a Christian.
First of all, that means he has an eternal home elsewhere; secondly, a Christian is to know how to conduct himself during his years of temporary residence. The Apostle begins this text: "Dearly beloved." Wonderful words -- he says you are beloved people. In this congregation you have been beloved by the Lord for many years. Dearly beloved, the Son of God has come and has redeemed you by His blood and called you into His own kingdom by His grace. Dearly beloved, I beseech you, I plead with you, I beg of you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. There are two conditions of a human being in this world; either the one or the other, his natural condition or his condition by grace. Now a person's natural condition in regard to home is that he is a stranger and a foreigner to heaven and he is in love with this world, glued to this world and he will perish with this world. Or else, in the case of Christians, by God's grace, we have been called out of this world by the grace of God, washed in the blood of Jesus Christ, received the forgiveness of sins, brought into His kingdom and therefore, that relationship is turned around. We are now citizens of no small city. We are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, the city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. There is where our citizenship is, and consequently, in this world in which we are living, we are what Peter says we are: strangers and foreigners.
At one time you had no citizenship among the children of God. You were foreigners to the House of God, but now are ye citizens and members of the household of God, and therefore, Christian, you have a home in heaven. The Lord Jesus never says, I stay here and prepare a place for you. Let the millenialists have this world if they want their 1000 years of good times. We do not want it and our Lord never said it. He said I go and prepare a place for you. And where does He go? He goes to His Father's house to prepare mansions for us which He has built by the means of His blood. I think these words ring especially joyful, or at least they should, in the ears of elderly Christians.
O thou gray-haired man or woman, Christian of no small experience, the days of your pilgrimage have been long, but do not be dismayed at the corruption you see around you. Yes, the days may be on you when you are saying I have no delight in them when you complain along with Jacob as he stood before Pharaoh and said, Few and evil have the days of my years been. [Genesis 47:9] But your Lord bids you look up a little higher, look to your Father's house, your real home, and then you will be cheered up. I like to illustrate that with when you first come out to see the Rockies as you travel through Colorado from the east. You go over a barren plain, and although it may be raining where you are traveling and be very dark, about 60 miles away you can begin to see glistening in the sunlight the snow-crowned peaks of the Rockies and that truly delights your heart. It is high above this earth, as it seems, almost floating as a mirage, but they are real, solid, granite, covered with snow. And so is it with your home, elderly Christian; cheer up, the days of your pilgrimage are almost over. That is no bad thing, that is a good thing. And though you must go through the valley of the shadow of death when you leave the plains of life, yet you will notice if you ever come to a mountain, you go off the plains and you have to go into a valley before you can go up the sides and the slopes, but your God will take you up to those slopes. He will bear you up as on eagle's wings. He will not forsake you. Your Savior has loved you and has died for you and He will come and call for you soon. And there you shall be home, together with all believers. O thou elderly person, you will come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly of the church of the first born, to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. Aye, there is a real home for you, after your sad pilgrimage in this sinful world. Just think, you are going to be fellow citizens, members of the household of God, in residence for ever and ever. You are fellow citizens of God's household now but you are not in residence. Now by faith, then by sight in heaven. That ought to comfort the saddest heart, especially of old people who are so often upset by worries and troubles. Look at that home that your Lord has prepared for you.
And that brings up another thought in my text. Strangers and pilgrims are usually travelers, people who are on a journey going somewhere. Thus it is with us Christians we are on a journey. As human experience teaches us when we are far away from home and we plan a trip home, our heart yearns to be there. We think of our parents and the home in which we grew up. We know everything in that home. We want to be there, and though we may be a hundred or a thousand miles away with our bodies, our heart is there. So it is with the Christian.
Ah, my friends, is not that the truth? A Christian's natural habitat is not in this world. You are a Christian. Thank God for it. I am a Christian and I thank God for it. But I know this because I am a Christian by His grace and my natural habitat and dwelling place is not in this world. I am just passing through, and if you want to feel the warmth and the joy of people who truly believe that, you cannot go to adults. You must go to little children, and the smaller the better. When you listen to them prattle and talk about the Kingdom of God and that Jesus loves them, this they know -- they know it. They are very close to Home and Home is very close to them. Yes, a Christian's natural habitat -- from the infant that is baptized to the gray-haired person -- is heaven, and this because his heart yearns to be there with his God. This instructs him on how to look on his life in this world every day of his sojourn. A Christian looks on this life as a traveler looks on a motel.
When you are on a trip and you are going back home from thousands of miles away, your heart is full of thoughts of home, but you are on a trip and you have to keep going. Night time comes and you put into a city, you use the conveniences of a motel, you go into town to have dinner, relax, stroll about, but you never intend to stay there. You are a stranger in that city. You are filled with thoughts of home, and early next morning you are up and on your way. That, Christian is our life in this world.
That is the way it is with regard to a Christian and his heavenly Father's home. If you want to see just how that is, look at the Bibles of Christ's more mature people and see how well used they are. They are like that stranger in a motel who consults his maps. The Bible is the Christian's map and chart to heaven, to his Father's house. Therefore you are going to see that Bible well used, well paged through. That is where he is at home. Is not that the truth? Why, there are things in that Bible that I know far better than things in my own life that happen to me every day. Every Christian knows well the cross of Calvary and spending time at that cross seeking forgiveness of sins in the Lamb's blood, we know that place as well as we know our back yard. We know every inch of Golgotha. That is no strange place to us even though we should not see it at all in this life.
I can show you a room that you know better than any room in your own house, and that is the room in which our Lord broke bread with His disciples the night He was betrayed. You can see the men around the table, you can hear them speak -- now after 2000 years. You know every inch of that room, better than you know any room in your own house.
Is not that the truth? I do not think it should be hard for a person to understand that a Christian who sees Jesus Christ by faith in His Word naturally wants to meet his Lord face to face and be with His Master in glory. I envy Moses and Elijah when I see them standing on the Holy Mount conversing with the Lord. My heart is impatient to be there because that is where my heart is. That is where my best interests lie. That is where your best interests lie, because you are just a sojourner in this world and that is HOME. I attended a man who had suffered a heart attack -- he was in a coma for two weeks, and never got out of that coma. He did not know anyone, not his beloved wife, his children, or his grandchildren. They spoke to him, they pleaded with him; he did not know the voice of the nurse or the doctor; he did not know the voice of his pastor when I read the Scripture to him. Then I espied in the hospital room a German Bible, and I saw that It was well used, paged through time and again, and there were certain things that this man had underlined: -- "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want" etc. So I took that Bible and read those passages -- I cannot speak German too well -- but I read those passages in German as well as I could into his ears and at once he responded. It was an amazing thing. He recited those passages along verbatim. He recited the Lord's Prayer without a mistake. You see that is where a stranger is. Even the voice of his wife with whom he had lived for 50-60 years was strange to him, but there was a voice he did know, the voice of his Lord. He was a traveler going through this world and now he is with his Lord in glory.
But there is also a sad minor chord we must strike here. When we look about ourselves today we see how sad it is so many people, professing Christians, fly upon the things of this world and the way they talk you are almost sure they are planning to live here forever. We shake our heads when we find that our own children 13-14 years old do not know Simeon or what he did or was. They do not know whether the book of Isaiah is in the Old Testament or the New Testament. O ye parents, where is your heart? Water does not rise above its own level, and children are generally carbon copies of their parents. Are we perhaps, by our example of neglect of the Scripture, teaching our children to become strangers and foreigners to their eternal Father's home? Watch out therefore.
When the world wants us to sing a happy tune with it, to join in its sinful mirth and pleasures, its false doctrines, its mockery of God's Word, are we quick to do it? I certainly hope not. That is an invitation that is sour and bitter to the hearts of people who truly yearn for their Father's home. When we are asked to join Christless groups and societies where Christ is not known and we are asked to pray with them at the openings of supermarkets and football games, our heart fairly cries out with the psalmist of old when he said, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" [Psalm 137:4] You know as well as I do what happens when a foreigner tries to sing a happy tune in a strange and foreign country. The people mock him and they turn on him, do they not? He is trying to sing their tune with his foreign lingo and his foreign way of looking at things, and when a professed Christian, who professes the Lord Jesus Christ with one side of his mouth and enjoys what this world offers with the other side of his mouth and tries to sing their song according to a Christian key, that man will be devoured by sin faster than the heathen around him.
II
There is another part to our text. Since we are strangers and pilgrims here in this world, how are we to conduct our lives as we live out our days in this world? The Apostle Peter gives good instruction here; have your conversation honest among the Gentiles -- Do not be a crook -- that whereas they speak against you as evildoers -- as haters of society -- yet they may by your good works which they shall behold glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king -- or president -- as supreme or to governors as unto them that are sent by Him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God that with well doing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men -- let them talk about you, about your strange ways, but be good to them, help them, as free -- a Christian is the only truly free person in the whole world -- do not use your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.
In other words, go back to the picture of a pilgrim and a stranger. He is on his way home but on the way home he stops at an inn, and there he is a guest of the management or the guest of the people with whom he is staying, and that is the way it is with us. Our hearts are not attached to this world any more than a stranger's heart is attached to the motel in which he is staying overnight when he is making his journey home. But as long as he is there, he is a guest of those people and those citizens and therefore he should behave himself as such. That is the thrust of Peter's words here. Peter says that advisedly lest Christians become fanatical in their opinions and become disgusted with their ordinary way of life and run away into the desert -- that is what a lot of people used to do. Not at all. Your Lord never said, My kingdom is not in this world. It is in this world. He says: It is not of this world. We must live out our allotted days in this depot -- in this hotel of the world, but not according to the world, not the way the world looks at things as though they are going to be here forever, but we are to use the things of this world, being careful not to abuse them. Paul puts it this way:
A lot of people misunderstand that passage. He does not say: If you have a wife, abandon her, or if you have property, sell it and give it up. He says, if you are married, or own a home, or you cry, or you rejoice, your attitude toward all these things should be this: You rejoice in them as gifts of God that He gives you for this life, but you should be ready at any second to let them go, at once if necessary, for certainly you have to let them all go some time in your life. Our heart is anchored elsewhere with our God. But God never says: Do not get married; do not eat this or that; do not build or buy a house. He knows we live here.
Remember when the Jews went into exile, God had determined that they were going to be there 70 years in Babylon; and no sooner had they gotten into exile than some false prophets from the city of Jerusalem sent some letters to Babylon saying they would be there only two years. This incited the Jews then to rebel against the Babylonian government and gave them false hope that they would be back home very soon. God straightened them out, sending them word through the prophet Jeremiah, to those Jews living in a heathen country where the people worshipped heathen gods,
These people were strangers in a foreign land, but God said they should not rebel and grumble and complain, but lead as normal lives as you can because you are to be there 70 years. He knew they yearned to be home, but that will come when the time comes.
And thus it is with you and me, Christian. We are in this world and God knows we are here, and we are not to rebel against the management of the house or the government but honor and respect it, helping people wherever we can especially that they might learn of Christ who has redeemed them from sin, death, and hell by His blood, so that by God's grace they might believe it and join us on our pilgrimage home. That is why God has left us here. When that work is over, as far as we are concerned, He will come and take us home.
We have seen two things then. Inwardly a Christian's heart is not attached to this world, he is yearning to be in his real home. Outwardly, he conducts his life in this world in such a way that his God is honored so that men might join him in that pilgrimage and also come to that eternal kingdom by the grace of God. That is the meaning of the words of our text. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as "strangers and pilgrims." Amen.
r.w.s
(Reprinted from the May, June, and July, 1994 issues of the LRH Newsletter)
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I pray Thee, dear Lord Jesus, My heart to keep and train
That I Thy holy temple From youth to age remain.
Turn Thou my tho'ts forever From worldly wisdom's lore;
If I but learn to know Thee, I shall not want for more.
(The Lutheran Hymnal #655)
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Don't change a Word of the WORD!
Much damage can be done when someone changes the Words of the living God. For example, consider what happened in the case of our first parents – Adam and Eve – when the devil changed God's Word and they listened: Satan's changing of God's Word was instrumental in the fall of man into sin. Furthermore, the devil is not one to give up on using tactics which have yielded him results in the past– he even changed God's Word when tempting Jesus in the wilderness. Do you remember how the devil misquoted Scripture in order to try to get Jesus to sin? Satan said:
But, the devil had removed some of God's Word, as we can see by reading Psalm 91:11-12,
Satan diminished God's Word in order to twist it to suit his evil purpose, but Jesus successfully defeated the devil by rightfully using God's unaltered Word (see Matthew 4:1-11), and that is what we too should endeavor to do.
It behooves us to be on our guard against Satan's continued changing of the Words of God. Yes, the devil is still up to his same old tricks. How? Consider the plethora of modern "Bible" translations on the market these days! God's true Words have been taken away from, added to, and changed by paraphrasing, "dynamic equivalence", and so forth – all under the guise of supposedly making a "Bible" that is "easier to read" or "more accurate", and this has been accomplished under the name of "scholarship" in order to impress the average person and coax him to part with some greenbacks. What has been the result of this torrential flood of different versions of the Word? CONFUSION, as the devil can once again be heard asking, as he did in Genesis 3:1, "Yea, hath God said?" Many people do not know what to believe, because the modern "Bible" translations do not agree amongst themselves or with the King James Version, and very often they contradict themselves within their own pages with their copious footnotes that reverse the very readings given in their text! The devil has indeed raised doubt and confusion regarding the Word of God – especially in those passages referring to the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We must always remember though, that God has promised to preserve His Word to us and He has done so:
Our dear Lord Jesus also assures us that:
With the sure promises of God telling us that His Word will always remain, we KNOW that it has remained! Where is God's true unaltered Word now to be found? In the texts that God gave and preserved, the Hebrew and Greek Words that He gave by inspiration and which were faithfully copied and used by His Church through the years: the traditional Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament and the Greek Textus Receptus of the New Testament. Additionally, God provided for those who cannot read the original languages; God saw to it that faithful and exact translations of His inspired and preserved Words were made when the need became great and the time was just right, as was the case with the German translation of Luther, the Dutch Statenvertaling, the English King James Version, and other reformation-era translations of the Holy Bible.
Be clear about the fact that there is nothing wrong with making a new Bible translation in any language, as long as such translating is done FAITHFULLY and ACCURATELY by qualified, believing Christian people – such translation of course needs to be based upon the God-given and preserved Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek texts and not some perverted, critical substitutes. But realize that not one modern English translation has followed such a course of action! That is why Bible-believing Christians must retain the old King James Version of the Bible – read it, study it, memorize it, and teach it.
The Bible may not be easy to understand in every place – it often requires prayerful pondering – but that does not give sinful men and women the right to change it when God specifically warns against changing His Word. LUTHERANS – please listen to Martin Luther on this subject, he writes thus:
So, next time somebody tells you that it doesn't matter what "Bible" you use, you can tell them it does matter because,
Tell them that you want all of God's Word without changes, deletions, or additions, and that you have it in English in the good old KJV.
M.E.L.
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Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. (Psalm 119:160)
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