LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 57

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58 CONVENTION SERMON

home with the determination that your faith in Christ
will be the spark plug that starts things moving in your
congregation, in your circuit, in your District, in your
institutions of higher learning.

You ask, ‘What canI do?” Plenty! First, keep your
eye on the city that lies beyond Denver. You’ve been
focusing on Denver long enough. Now lift your eyes
away, and if you have the eyes of faith, you can see the
city beyond the horizon of time and space. That’s what
you can do for yourself.

Second, you can set the dials of your ears on the
wave length of the Word of God. God gave you two
ears so that you might do a little more listening than
talking. Let’s listen to the edifying Word.

In the third place, you can help your congregation
listen. You can help your people listen to the voices
of the young people who are attending our convention.
The youth has something to say to us today about their
faith, about their love for Jesus, about the way they
think in their time they can serve Him best. You be
the spark plug in your congregation to help us of the
older generation sit down and listen to youth. Further-
more, listen to the cry of the minorities in our country.
You be the spark plug that helps your people sit down
and listen to the needs of these people — the need to
be accepted as a first-rate citizen, the needs they have
in their home life, their educational life, their cultural
life. You can help your people listen to the cry of the
black man and of the American Indian.

In the fourth place, you can help your congregation
act. When you get home, will you be the one who will
start things moving in your circuit for a more aggres-
sive evangelism campaign? Will you be the spark plug
to strengthen your educational agencies? Will you be
the spark plug that prompts your congregation to adopt
a better stewardship program? You can be if you keep
your eye focused, like Abraham, on the city that is the
destiny of God’s people. When you get home, you will
talk to people about this convention. Tell them that
you and the rest of us recaptured the obedience of faith.
Tell them that. you delegates determined to be like
Abraham and live out your faith in love. You can be
that type of dynamic delegate who will be the helper
of the joy of God’s people, because at Denver you
focused on the city beyond.

A Word to Youth

I have just a word for you young people. You too
can go home and be God’s voice. Help the other young
people in your congregation steer clear of that “Bryl-
creem” religion. Do you know what that is? That’s the
kind of religion which says, “A little dab’ll do yah.”
Tell them that “a little dab” won’t do. Go back home
and show them there is joy in your religion. You young
folks can do it if you will keep your eye on the city
beyond. Don’t think that God is going to wait until you
are in Medicare until He will call you to the city be-
yond. The other day I buried a young West Point grad-

uate. He had not yet received his commission. In the
few moments of a joyride the week before graduation,
his car hit a bridge abutment. Then we buried him.
God came quickly. This young man thought he had
lots of time. He thought he was going to grow old in the
service of his country. You young people, remember
such young men who already lie under the soil because
God called early.

A Word to Scholars

May I say a word to you scholars and theologians.
May we as a convention beg of you to keep your eyes
on the city beyend. You don’t have to borrow your
theology any more from Heidelberg than you do from
Oberursel, or from Union Seminary than you do from
Fordham University. Why don’t you go to headquar-
ters? And what’s headquarters? Your Holy Bible.
That’s the kind of scholarship we need in our age, the
kind of scholarship that is ultrabright. Ultrabright
scholarship recognizes in this Book its text appeal.
If a text doesn’t have any appeal for you, then leave
it alone. This type of scholarship realizes that it is help-
ing young men gain the tools for the study of Scripture,
ever learning how to dig into the Word. If you as
a Christian scholar show high respect and high delight
in the Word of our living God, don’t forget that these
young men will be influenced by your attitude. They
will drink it in and by their obedience to the Word
become the benefactors of the world. And you will
be the one who has prepared them. The church of to-
morrow will thank God that He sent a scholar like you
for such a time as this.

Finis

We come to the close. If at Denver in the sessions
of the next days we focus on the city beyond, the New
Jerusalem, and remember at what a price that city
with its joy and glory was purchased for us — the price
of the Son of God dying on a cross, His blood being
shed innocently, that I the guilty one might live forever
—then our discussions and decisions will have a God-
pleasing foundation. If at Denver we give to our God
the obedience of faith as did Abraham, then the prob-
lems of our world and of our church will find some
solutions. If at Denver we remember the words of our
Lord to His own, “These things have I said to you that
your joy might be full,” then we will hug the edifying
Word with its glorious Christ to our bosom and rejoice.
Let us listen to the Spirit of our God as He tries to lead
us into action as the church moves forward. At the end
of time He will lead us to the city beyond, where we
shall be at His side forevermore.

If in some way this service tonight, with its Scrip-
ture readings, its prayers, its hymns, and its message,
has helped you walk with Abraham, close to God in
the obedience of faith, then we say, “Soli Deo gloria.”

When once we have said, “Soli Deo gloria,” then we
do not mind when men write our name—on water.

Amen.
VIcE-PRESIDENT PauL W. StreuFErT, D.D.

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