LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1965, Page 32

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82 DOCTRINAL-DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

asked Him: “Who are You? Are You the Messiah?”
What is His answer? “You said it!” There is no other
answer coming from His holy lips. (Luke 22:67-70)

Peter said it in the home of Cornelius, who had
called together his cousins and his uncles and his aunts.
He had called together Tom,- Dick, and Harry, his
friends (Acts 10:24). Peter opened his mouth, and
what does He say? “Jesus gave us a mandate to preach
unto the people that it is He which was ordained of
God to be the Judge of the living and dead. To Him
give all the prophets witness.” (Acts 10:42, 43)

You have no argument with the Missouri Synod if
you say, “The Old Testament has no Messianic prophe-
cies.” You have no argument with us. You’ve got an
argument with Peter. Now, either Peter knew or he
didn’t know, either he was inspired or he was not in-
spired. If he was not inspired, then he lied. He was
inspired and he spoke the truth.

If the Old Testament does one thing, it lifts the
eyes of man to the cross and says, “There’s your
Sender.” The world waited long for Him, ever since
the shadows fell over Eden. The world will ever be
blessed by His appearance among men. He came, He
saw His lost world, and He conquered His lost world.
And through those whom He conquered He expected
to conquer them all, for they had but one mandate:
“Go and share with all mankind what I have given
you.” Not first build cathedrals. Not first develop
liturgical forms. Not first get organized. But first be
My witnesses.

A witness is one who knows. A witness is called
and he testifies. We, as witnesses for the Christ, live
under the mandate to bind the whole world about the
feet of God by the golden chains of His Gospel. This
mandate is meaningless unless we know by whose au-
thority we go out into all the world. Your and my
mandate comes from Him who today sits at the right
hand of God, waiting for God’s clock to strike the
zero hour when victory shall be our eternal destiny.
The church ever lives in the afterglow of Easter. It is
the risen Lord who gave to the church her mandate.

Do you know the Sender? Amen.

II
The Living Lord Gave the Church a Message

”

“Even so send I you.” Perhaps no other words will
be repeated as frequently at this convention as these
words which fell from the lips of our Lord in the after-
glow of Easter. These words place all of us, even in
this century, into that afterglow. In these words lie
rooted certain convictions of ours. The living Lord is
still the strength of the church. The Word of the Lord
is still the infallible tool of the church. The world of
man is still the field of action of the church. “Faith
Forward!” is still the motto of the church. And victory
is still the eternal destiny of the church.

You and I know the mandate: “Go and preach!”
You and I know who gave the mandate, the God-man,
Christ Jesus. But what is the message of the living

k

Lord? His message is brief. “Preach the Gospel to
every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall
be saved; but he that believes not shall be condemned.”
(Mark 16:15, 16)

Words are bridges of thought, or they are nothing.
The Lord wanted to communicate. As He communi-
cated with man, He used the tool of man — intelligible
words. In the words of our text the Lord gave us one 4
key term, “the Gospel, the Good News.” Why is the a
message of the Lord good news? Why is it the Gospel?
Because it helps me here in time to get right with
God, and it will help me in all eternity. In the billions
and billions of words that are spoken by man to man
nothing will help him solve his problems. But when
God communicates from His eternal throne, He helps
man here on earth. There is nothing that will open the
door to a happy eternity except the Word of our God.
From the Father’s throne came words, through the
Son, into the heart of man. These words alone estab-
lish our eternal destiny. Sitting at the side of Him
who loved us, we shall eternally praise Him for His
message.

To summarize this message, this Word and this
Gospel of our God, I need but three words. Every
preacher deals with these three words every time he
steps into the pulpit. Every Christian teacher has to
be conscious of these three words every time he com-
municates with the children, the students sitting at his
feet. Every Christian teacher and preacher is a com-
municator of the thoughts of God, thoughts that come
from above. Which are those three words?

The first word: sinner. The second word: Savior.
The third word: servant. This is the totality of the
message, easily remembered, the three great words of
Christian homiletics and Christian pedagogy. Woe unto
him who takes one of these three away! He has prosti-
tuted his office as a messenger and a communicator
for God.

The Sinner

The first word, sinner. God wants to communicate
with me, and He wants to tell me who I am. Woe unto
me if I rely on the evaluation of my relatives! Woe
unto me if I rely on the evaluation of my buddies!
They all pat me on the shoulder and say, “Good go-
ing!” But not God. God comes to me and says: “Let
me show you a mirror that is quite different from the
one you use every morning when you use your electric
shaver. There you see only your face. Now let me
show you your heart.” The holy law of God says to
me, “Thou!” Thou— what? Thou hast failed! God
wanted perfection. He wanted not 92, 97, 99 percent
performance. He said: “Be ye therefore perfect even a5. -
your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) |.

I’m altogether too prone to compare myself with the
rest of the people living in my block. In the comparison
I can always pull the longer straw. I can always fini
someone in my block who is just a little worse than
I am.

But not so with God. If I look at the messengeTs,
of God whose hearts have been touched by God’s law.