LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Page 56

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56 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS

but he had a God who was as good as His Word. He
had a God who knew him from the womb, who ordered
him to His work, and who sustained him in his task.
He had a God who truly kept His promise, “I will make
you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of bronze.”
What marvels can God do with this human clay that
He has created!

And from that point on in the life of Jeremiah for
52 long and sometimes tragic chapters, we hear this
man of God entoning God’s Word for the people of his
time. It was not always a message of joy and happiness.
He was called upon at times to “pull down and to up-
root, to destroy and to demolish,” but also to “build
and to plant.”

This is always the role of the church, as one man
in a lighter vein has put it, “to comfort the afflicted and
to afflict the comfortable.” But the important thing is
that Jeremiah was faithful.

We come from stock like this. There is no record in
the early history of our Synod that anyone was seeking
popularity, that anyone set out to gain for himself the
acclaim of the world or even to receive the plaudits of
other Christian denominations. But there is a long and
honorable record of men who said, “Thus saith the
Lord.” There is a long record of “It is written.” There
is a long and honored record of bringing the Gospel
to lost mankind, of helping the poor and oppressed, of
ministering to the needs of all men. It is most proper
that this convention be held in this the city where our
fathers first set foot, and one can only believe that
somehow New Orleans must always have loomed espe-
cially large and especially important in the eyes of those
immigrants, because the first mission outreach on Amer-
ican soil beyond the German immigrant was to the
black people of the South. We are celebrating the 95th
anniversary of our entrance into black work this year,
and there is no more noble action in the chronicles of
our Synod than the decision té minister to these poor,
confused, frightened, lonely, unhappy people.

And now we today with our affluence, our growth, our
tremendous scientific advances, living in a great power-
ful nation, and as a great powerful church, stand here
where our fathers stood 134 years ago, and to us also
comes the Word of the Lord with its commands and its
promises, with its asstirances and its challenges. The
question that we of the church today need to ask our-
selves is, are we being faithful? Are we good stewards
of the oracles and the mysteries of God? Have we been
zealous in spreading this marvelous Gospel of forgive-
ness, grace, and eternal life to the millions of people
in the world today? What are we doing with the enor-
mous financial and human resources that are given into
our care?

There is a terrible aftermath to this wonderful be-
ginning chapter of Jeremiah as recorded in the 6th
chapter of the book of this prophet. We read in verse 16

These are the words of the Lord: Stop at the crossroads;

look for the ancient paths; ask, “Where is the way that

leads to what is good?” Then take that way and you will
find rest for yourselves. But they said, “We will not.”

Then I will appoint watchmen to direct you; listen for

their trumpet-call. But they said, “We will not.”

Most of us know the tragic history that followed
from this refusal of the people to follow the words which
God spoke to them through His prophet. The rest of
the entire book deals with almost nothing but catas-
trophes which befell the Jewish people.

We today stand also as a nation racked with corrup-
tion and distrust, in a world filled with war and hatred
and human greed, in a church troubled and confused.
We in many ways on this 125th anniversary stand also
at a crossroads. Again the Lord through this observance
is asking us to “look for the ancient paths.” Our fathers
laid great landmarks for us. Landmarks of faith, land-
marks of heroic action, landmarks of doctrine and of
conviction, landmarks of faithfulness in service and
confession.

And often they did this in times of great difficulty.
Think, for example of the controversy over conversion
and election which took place in the 1870s and 80s.
Here was a controversy on a truly Lutheran subject —
are we saved by God’s grace alone, or do we cooperate
in our own conversion? Missouri stood fast. She was
like a “pillar of iron, a wall of bronze.” She looked
neither right nor left but straight ahead to the clear
light of Scripture and the Confessions. We lost mem-
bers, we lost friends, but we kept the faith, and God
blessed us with great growth, true unity, and our great-
est heritage — our doctrinal purity. This was and still
is our glory, our watchword. It was a Lutheran con-
troversy and we settled it in a Lutheran way — on the
basis of God’s clear Word. At stake were the two great
Lutheran principles of Grace Alone and Faith Alone.
And Missouri held.

Today we face another great Lutheran controversy
—this time on the third great principle of the Word
Alone. Are we to base our faith and work on Scripture
or on man’s reason? Are we going to halt between two
opinions? Not if I know the Missouri in which I learned
the faith, with Christ at its center, with the Bible as its
base, with love and service as its fruit, with the call to
proclaim the Gospel to all the world, with the promise
of peace, pardon, and eternal life. Under the same God
who laid hold on Jeremiah, who made him a “pillar of
iron and a wall of bronze” we shall go forward into
a new era of mission, evangelism, service, and unity
of faith and purpose.

I am confident that as we think of all of God’s un-
speakable mercy and goodness and kindness to us as
individuals and as a church, as we meditate again on
the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, on His glorious
resurrection and ascension, and on His promise to re-
turn and take us to Himself, that we will again be en-
vigorated by the power of His Holy Spirit to move
forward in faith, in unity, in love for one another, and
in a fervent desire to bring the Gospel to all mankind.
As one man has put it, the most tragic man in history
is the one who can learn nothing from history. We see
the history of the Jewish nation. We see the history of

PT MORRE BOER HEI RI RIN AR YL REDE IORI ENTE SPO CPN ST SED NE YY EE

TN ORR AEC

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