LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1965, Page 33

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DOCTRINAL-DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS 33

and have truly believed the message, “Thou art the
man!” then I know that I ought to evaluate my own
life as did they. Let’s take an example. Let’s use
a picture.

Let us say St. Paul imagined a ladder from earth to
heaven. On that ladder God arranged all the people
according to their goodness, the best men on top and
the worst at the bottom. Where did Paul put him-
self on that ladder? Not at the top! He looked at that
bottom rung of God’s ladder and said, “That’s where
J belong. I am the chief of sinners.” If that had been
I, I would have said, “Oh, I can’t say I deserve the
top rung. That would be pride. But I surely want to
have rung number two.” God comes to me and puts
me way down at the bottom. “Failed! You had an
examination in life to write, and you’ve flunked! You
can’t get into My heaven.”

The most powerful sermon on this subject that I will
ever preach in my life will be from my casket. You
know the time, when my relatives will gather around
my casket and see my cold body, my face all powdered
up with pink powder by the undertaker. And they
will say, “Didn’t the undertaker do a nice job on him?”
In that moment I will be preaching the most powerful
sermon of my life. I will be shouting at everyone who
comes to view my body, “This man sinned! That’s
why he’s dead! The wages of sin is death!”

This is what our modern world doesn’t want to hear.
The modern world, in which you and I live, no longer
wants to call sin sin. It no longer wants the sinner to
be called the sinner. It wants man to appear as one
who gradually, age after age, aeon after aeon, is climb-
ing higher and higher up the ladder of perfection, up to
the perfection of the deity. Condemned! Damned be-
fore God I stand! That’s what God’s law says to me.

But God doesn’t leave me there. He knows that
in my first parents I lost everything and that I needed
help. What did my first parents lose? What was the
loss of Eden? Adam and Eve, who had neither human
nor animal antecedents, who were created in the image
of God, lost their holiness, their happiness, their health,
their home, and their heaven. Easy to remember!
Down the drain went the five great H’s of Eden. But
God did not leave man there. Paradise Lost had to
become Paradise Regained.

The Savior

Out of eternity there comes the echo of His plan.
Before the foundations of the world were laid (Eph.
1:4), there was an ecumenical council in heaven in
which there was concurrence of Father, Son, and
Spirit as to the plan of salvation. There was unanimity
when the blueprints for the salvation of the world
were drawn. The Son concurred, “Yea, Father, yea,
most willingly, Pll bear, ’1l do.” In the fullness of time
He came, and He paid what God demanded. What
did He pay? Don’t start with His blood. That came
last. He started with perfection. That’s what He laid
into the balances of justice, a life without sin, a life

of utter and complete holiness. And this He presented
to His Father, “Here, Father, I do it all—for them!”

Then He took a burden, yours and mine, and car-
ried it to the cross. There He called out, “It is finished!”
What was finished? His life? No! Three days later
He was alive. It was something else that was finished.
Now the blueprints of God that had been drawn way
back in eternity could be rolled up because the salva-
tion of man was assured. The bloody job of redemption
was completed.

Does our modern world want that message? Not at
all. Tll tell you what the modern American wants.
Here is the modern American religion. All of you
remember the old-style druggist’s scale, where you
have one pan here and one pan there, and they are
connected by chains and a bar, and in the center there
is a marker. It rests on dead center. The druggist
takes a weight and puts it into one pan, and it goes
down. On the other side he puts his little piece of
paper and pours onto it the powder, the medicine. As
he pours, one side of the scale goes down, and the
other side goes up. When the marker is dead center,
he says, “Now I’ve got enough.”

That’s exactly what the American thinks happens
in religion. Just the old druggist’s scale all over again!
On the one side you put all your bad deeds, and the
scale goes down. How do you bring that back to dead
center? All you have to do is put your good deeds on
the other side, your contributions to the Red Feather
agencies, your kindness to the neglected, your loans
to those who can’t ever pay you interest. All these
good deeds you put into the balance. And as you put
your good deeds into one side of the scale, the Ameri-
can says to himself, your bad deeds on the other side
of the scale begin to be lifted. And then, when the
marker shows dead center, you are right with God!
Dead center nothing! You’re just dead!

What is it that God puts on the other side of the
scale? Only the cross of His Son. What lifts my sin-
laden side of the scale? Only the cross of my Redeemer.
That alone assures me of God’s mercy, assures me of
pardon, and springs open the doors of a blessed enter-
nity. The cross lets me see the immensity of God’s love.
This is the message of love that God sends to me in His
letters of love: “The blood of Jesus Christ . . . cleanses
me from all sin” (1 John 1:7). I must know:

Is This Message Trustworthy?

That’s were I have trouble. Where should I start
in that volume, the Bible, and say, “This word I can
trust”? Either it’s a unit and wholly trustworthy, or
I begin to pick it to pieces and say, “This part I can
believe, and that part I cannot believe.” We call men
to teach others. In the measure in which our colleges
and seminaries of today do not communicate to our
young, embryonic theologians the trustworthiness of
Scripture, they have failed. Unless they have communi-
cated to this new generation loyalty to the Scripture,
they have failed. Our young men are to know that
when they take this book there is a uniqueness about