LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 71

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CONVENTION SERMON

Grace and peace to each of you personally from Him who

is, who was, and who is truly to come again, even Jesus

Christ our righteousness.

The passage of God’s Word to which we would direct
your attention in this opening service is found recorded in
the Old Testament book of 2 Kings, the seventh chapter,
beginning with the third verse:

And now there were four men with leprosy at the
entrance of the city gate. And they said to each other,
“Why do we sit here until we die? If we say, ‘We will go
into the city,’ the famine is there, and we will certainly
die there. And if we stay here, we will also die; so let us
go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender,
and if they will spare us, we live; and if they kill us,
then we are dead.”

At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the
Arameans. And when they reached the edge of the
camp, no man was there; for the Lord had caused the
Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and of horses
and of a great army, so that they said one to another,
“Look, the king of the Israelites has hired the Hittites
and the Egyptian kings to come and attack us!” So they
had gotten up, and they had fled in the dusk. And they
had abandoned their tents and their horses and their
donkeys, and they left their camp just as it was, and
they ran for their lives.

The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the
camp, and they entered into the tents, and they ate and
they drank and they carried away the silver and the
gold and the clothes, and they went off and they hid
them, and they returned and they entered other tents
and they took some things from them, and they went
and they hid them also.

And then they said to each other, “What we are
doing is not right. This is a day of good news, and if we
keep it to ourselves and wait until the daylight, surely
punishment will overtake us; so let us go even now and
report to the king’s people the good news.

This is the Word of our Almighty God.
Fellow members of the family of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the family of our Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

’ Let me begin by once again extending to those of you whom

I have not had the opportunity of greeting a word of wel-
come and greeting in Jesus Christ. We thank God that you
are here and that God has brought you safely to this con-
vention. We pray God’s every blessing upon you as we meet
here these days.

But let me also extend a word of greeting to the many
guests that we have with us this evening from the greater
St. Louis community and far beyond, especially the fami-
lies of delegates assembled here. To you also we want to say
greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. God bless.

Let me begin by asking you a question. What do you do
with good news once you've heard it? How do you person-
ally handle good news once you have become a possessor of
it? I think the natural reaction for most of us once we have
heard good news is to tell other people.

There are a lot of grandparents here this evening, and I
surely do not have to tell you what you as grandparents did
when you became a grandpa and grandma for the first
time. I know what I did. I got on the phone and I called
everyone under the sun and said, “Hey, guess what! Beth
had a little boy last night. ’'m a grandpa.” It’s good news!
You have to share it with the world.