# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1959_S2
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

2 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

under God’s tent. Hence we must enlarge the place of the tent,
we must stretch forth the curtains, we must lengthen the cords.
We have no alternative.

2. Strengthen Thy Stakes

When you erect a tent, it is of utmost importance to have
strong stakes and to drive them securely into the ground. This
applies also to our work for Christ. The Savior has given us defi-
nite instruction for this work, in words which brook no misunder-
standing: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to
every creature.” We Christians have the express command to
bring to alarmed and terrified sinners the good news of God’s
grace in Christ Jesus. There dare not be any watering down of the
message that we receive forgiveness of sin and are restored to
peace with God solely by God’s grace, for Christ’s sake, through
faith, When modern pulpiteers mislead people with sophistry,
rationalism, or even with mere ethics and morality, we must be-
come all the more courageous and insist on driving God’s stakes
ever deeper. Without equivocation we must tell a dying world:
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” “God
made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be
made the righteousness of God in Him.”

But Jesus also stated in unmistakable words: “Teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded.” Read this
command alongside of other clear-cut statements which fell from
His lips, and you must come to the conviction that Christ was
vitally concerned about pure, unadulterated doctrine. Hence you
and I must insist on true doctrine. We must drive the stakes sup-
porting God’s tent ever deeper into the divinely inspired and iner-
rant Word of God.

We are living in a day when many congregations are highly
interested in erecting beautiful church edifices. Beautiful church
buildings serve a good purpose if at the same time the congrega-
tion remembers the strengthening of the stakes. But the greatest
beauty of any house of God must ever be that God’s Word be
preached in all its fullness, all its sweetness, and all its purity.
That strengthens the stakes.

We are living in a day when some give much attention to
liturgy. Whatever proper form of worship the congregation may
introduce, the thing of primary importance must be true preach-
ing. There must be thorough indoctrination of God’s people in
God’s holy Word that they may grow in grace and in the knowl-
edge of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That strengthens the
stakes.

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