LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 75

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Lies Steal Our Joy
COLOSSIANS 1:21–22

Rev. Robert M. Zagore
Executive Director of the LCMS Office of National Mission
67th Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod • July 21, 2019 • Midday Prayer
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father, and
the Lord Jesus Christ!
“And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing
evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his
death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above
reproach before him” (Col. 1:21–22).
Our theme for this convention is “Joy:fully Lutheran.”
Everybody likes joy, but the “fully Lutheran” part often
runs against our modern sensibilities. Shouldn’t we just
be “fully Christian” or “fully spiritual”? It’s been a debate
going back to the days of the Reformation and Philip
Melanchthon. My contention may sound controversial,
but it is biblical and logical. The best path to be fully joyful
is to be fully Lutheran. By fully Lutheran, I mean people
who stick with God’s Word, who rightly divide Law and
Gospel, who administer the Sacraments according to
Christ’s institution and who hearken to the pattern of
sound words found in the Lutheran Confessions. Christ
came to set us free. Our sorrows will end with joy (John
16:22), our prayers will be answered and result in joy
(John 16:24), and Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father
to give us joy (John 17:13). Anything that diminishes Jesus’
Word, Jesus’ teaching or Jesus’ gifts steals our joy.
Therefore, all false teachings steal the joy Christ came to
give us.

in his basement with all sorts of cool accessories like a log
car that actually dumped the logs when you hit a button,
a boxcar with a policeman chasing a hobo, and an engine
that belched real smoke. Best of all, we had matching
railroad outfits and striped engineer hats. We used to play
for hours. I always seemed to wear out before he did.
Then one day, he was driving his truck in a strange town,
and he died. His heart just stopped. Since I grew up
Roman Catholic, my mom came to me and told me that
Grandpa was in purgatory. It was just like hell, with
flames and suffering, and he’d be there for hundreds or
thousands of years! But if we prayed hard enough and
long enough, Grandpa would get to heaven faster.
My grandmother, too, believed the lie. She had lost the
love of her life, her protector and her knight in shining
armor. He was a good son of the church, and he had in his
will that he wanted masses to be said by a priest after he
died to get him to heaven more quickly. My grandfather
left her with a mortgage, a truck payment, no job and no
money. She was forced to go from relative to relative
asking to borrow money for the large suggested donation
for a month of daily masses for the dead.

I should start by telling you that I’m a convert to
Lutheranism. I grew up Roman Catholic. If you don’t
know that, not much of this story will make sense. I
learned about a false teaching’s ability to steal your joy
when my maternal grandfather died. I was only a boy. He
was a real hero to me. He was a trucker, and the idea of
that big truck and my grandpa driving it all over the world
was amazing to me. I was sure he drove that truck from
Cleveland, Ohio, to strange and exotic places like Florida,
Mexico and China. It didn’t matter that there were oceans
in the way. He had windshield wipers! If anyone could do
it, my Grandpa could!
He used to love trains too. There were train tracks at the
end of his street. We would walk down the road and
watch the trains go by, and he would tell me what was
inside the cars and where they were going. I really
thought he knew. After all, he had a Lionel train set down
Convention Sermons

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2019 (67TH) LCMS CONVENTION | 75