# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 04_S39
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Most Holy God: "So even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel other than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed." (Gal. 1:8.) To him applies also the judgment which the LORD once pronounced upon Saul, who, by not taking the LORD's word verbally and literally, imagined that he was thereby serving the LORD: "Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams; for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected you." (1 Sam. 15:22-23.) What? Saul had not rejected the whole word of God, but had only failed to take literally the one word concerning the ban, and indeed, as he supposed, to God's greater honor. (Compare 1 Sam. 15 in its entirety.) — Here we see that God cares nothing for the good intention of our willful, proud, apostate heart. God desires submission to his Word; whoever, then, rejects one word has rejected the whole Word of God, for, as James says, "whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point has become guilty of all of it." (James 2:10.)

A fifth reason why we should take care never to depart from the letter or from the words of divine revelation is that the devil has, from the very beginning, seduced man to this very thing in order to rob him of soul and salvation. Whence has all the misery, temporal and eternal, bodily and spiritual, come upon us human beings, created after God's image? From this: that our common mother once listened to the devil, who wished to lead her away from the literal sense of God's words, and said, "Yea, hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree in the garden?" (Gen. 3:1.) With this the devil meant to say: How can you take God's words so literally? Should God really forbid eating from just one tree while allowing all the rest? Is God so envious that he would deny you the very finest fruits? Has God not made you lords over all creatures — how then could he have refused you that one fruit? God is a spirit and wills that he be worshiped in spirit and in truth — how then could abstaining from a mere bodily food serve him?

These were the thoughts by which Satan sought to lead man away from the literal sense of God's words. And behold — he succeeded! But what was the consequence? Man fell away from God into sin, death, and damnation. What then? Should we not let ourselves be warned by this most terrible of all examples? Should we, who since that first sin carry distress and death about our necks, not tremble to fall into the very same snares of the evil enemy?

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St. Paul, too, reminds his Corinthians of this, when they had given ear to false teachers, and says: "But I fear, lest, as the serpent deceived Eve through her subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." 2 Cor. 11:3. Or has the devil perhaps ceased to use the means by which he once brought down the whole human race? Has he not tempted Christ in exactly the same way? What did he do but, quoting Holy Scripture, say: "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written: He shall give his angels charge concerning you, and they shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone"? (Matt. 4:6.) The crafty spirit had here quoted a passage in mutilated form, leaving out the words "in all your ways" (Ps. 91:11). It was from this word of God — which promises protection only on the ways of one's calling, not on the ways of presumption — that Satan sought to divert the Lord. But what did the Lord do? He beat back every temptation by appealing to the written Word, and said again and again: "It is written!" He held fast to his first declaration: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." Ah, how shall we one day stand before God, if we let ourselves be roused neither by the fall of our first parents nor by the victory of Christ, to resist the temptations of Satan and of our own hearts, and never to depart from the letter of the Word of God!

To this comes now, finally, also the encouraging example of the saints of God. Above all we recall the example of "the father of all believers" (Rom. 4:11), Abraham. He had to hear the word of God: "Take Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and go into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering." (Gen. 22:2.) Had Abraham wished to depart here from the letter of the word of the LORD, what exceedingly plausible reasons he would have had for it! He could have thought: God has indeed forbidden murder in his own law; God is a lover of mankind and a lover of life; he has given him the promise that his descendants should be as countless as the stars of heaven, and that the blessing should rest precisely on Isaac, and that from him precisely the Savior of all peoples should descend; God's word surely cannot contradict itself; it is also entirely against nature that a father should slaughter his own son, and the offense this would give the neighboring heathen would in the end be ineradicable.

Yes, Abraham could have thought this way, and could have believed he had reason enough to depart from the letter of that word of God written as if in blood. But what did Abraham do? He sought not reasons to evade the word of God that contradicted his reason and his heart, but reasons to be able to remain with the letter of it; "he reasoned," namely, as it is said in the Epistle to the Hebrews, "that God is able to raise even from the dead." (Ch. 11:19.) What then? Should we not let ourselves be spurred on by such a glorious example, which God himself has set before us for our imitation, to die rather than depart from a word of God? Should we not, after this, trust God that, if we let neither reason, nor even an angel, lead us away from his declarations, we will surely not be found deceived; that God will surely vindicate the honor of his truthfulness, and will seal even the most wondrous of his words with the most glorious fulfillment, and will surely not let those be put to shame who have believed him, their heavenly Father, upon his word, in childlike simplicity? — Yes, whoever in this age of unbelief still carries, by God's grace, the faith in his heart that the Bible is God's Word will never dare to contradict God in his own Word or to correct the Holy Spirit; he will interpret no word of the Bible according to his own reason, he will take every word just as God has spoken it, he will fall down humbly worshiping and say with Samuel: "Speak, LORD, your servant hears." For heaven and earth shall pass away, and with them all the wisdom of this world, all the loftiest thoughts of proud human reason — but the words of Jesus shall not pass away, nor even this word: "This is my body; this is my blood." Let the world laugh at such faith and call all fools who trust and build upon inconspicuous words that seem incredible to reason, in defiance of the whole world, in defiance of hell and its prince; Christ's words, here despised, will one day shine through heaven like eternal suns, and from their rays all the elect will drink light, life, and salvation.

We therefore close this section with the verse from that Lutheran hymn, "I come freshly to God's table," etc.:

Reason and sense,
let them ever
compare what may seem possible:
I will now and nevermore
depart from the letter.

Having now shown why the words of institution, like all the words of God, are to be taken literally, we shall, God willing, in the next issue speak of why those words are to be understood not only literally but also properly.

(To be continued.)

Faith Needs the Holy Absolution.

Faith, without the word that meets it in holy absolution and, in the name of Christ, offers it what it wishes to embrace, is to be compared to the outstretched arms and pleading eyes of a small child to whom no mother extends her hands, to take it up and quiet it at her breast.

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Question: Why are the Lutheran pastors not as zealous in running about after members of the congregation as the Methodists, the Albright people, and other fanatics?

Answer: Because the sheep come to a shepherd who is known and trusted. But the wolf must run after them and fetch them. — One might also let the bees answer. They do not fly off with every mouthful of honey