# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1859_S344
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

344	On Advent Sermons.

Also the following texts are suitable for an introductory sermon: Ps. 85:9–11. How goodness and truth meet one another in the Advent season. 1 Cor. 1:30, as the sum of all prophetic testimonies concerning Christ. Ps. 14:7, cf. Ps. 102:14. 2 Pet. 1:19–20. John 1:40–45.

I will add a few further hints for the working out of this sermon. All the prophecies of the Old Testament portray Christ according to his person and office, and there is accordingly one Christ in the Old and New Testament, according to the testimony of Heb. 13:8: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever. Compare on this Dr. Luther's sermon on the Gospel of John 3:25–27. All the prophecies are a further unfolding of the first promise, Gen. 3:15, which was the sole source of comfort for all believers for sixteen hundred years, down to Noah, to whom the second promise concerning Christ was given, Gen. 9:26–27; further, to Abraham, etc. These promises become ever more frequent and clear. All the prophecies of the Old Testament were fulfilled through Christ's first coming, and were only then fully understood — just as Simeon fully understood the promise that he should see the Lord's Christ only when he took him up in his arms, and just as the Lord's disciples had their understanding of all the prophecies of Christ's death and resurrection opened to them only on Easter Day. As the believers of the old covenant longed for Christ's first coming, so the believers of the new covenant long for Christ's second coming on the Last Day. As surely as God has fulfilled all the prophecies concerning Christ up to now, so surely will he also fulfill all his other promises to each of his believers, as well as to his whole Church. Hab. 2:3–4.

In the papacy nothing was heard of such Advent sermons, for there it was said: no prophet preaches any more, and no teacher teaches us any more, Ps. 74:9 — just as Dr. Luther also says in these words: "The preparation, namely for Christ's spiritual coming in Word and Sacrament, does not consist in your wanting to prepare yourself worthily by your own prayer, fasting, mortification, and works, as all the sermons in Advent now urge and foolishly insist." (11, 149.) In this too Dr. Luther has shown us the right goal and the right way to it, both and above all through the often-mentioned application of Ps. 85:11, and also through his exposition of the Advent pericopes and of individual prophetic books. On this path, no doubt, many of his students and fellow workers followed him, in preaching and in writing — for example, Regius in his dialogue. But with the falling away from pure doctrine, and with the decay of the Lord's beautiful services of worship, the right observance of Advent also fell away, along with the eloquent lips of preachers out of Moses and the Prophets, and along with the burning hearts of the hearers — both of which will show themselves anew, and all the more richly, the more diligently we too, in this regard, inquire after the former ways and walk in them, Jer. 6:16.

2nd Sermon. Text: John 5:46–47. The prophecies (and types) of Christ in the five books of Moses.

Gen. 1:3. (Testimony of the deity of Christ.) 3:15. (See Dr. Lu-