LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 73

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CONVENTION SERMON 3

some fantastically good news. It is the Good News of our
salvation in Jesus Christ. Do I need to tell you, or Al Barry,
what we really deserve from God? All you have to do is take
your life and compare it to the Ten Commandments: Thou
shalt have no other Gods before me. Thou shall not take the
name of the Lord thy God in vain. Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy
mother that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live
long on the earth. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not com-
mit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear
false witness against one another. Thou shalt not covet thy
‘ neighbors house, nor his manservant nor his maidservant,
nor his cattle, nor anything that belongs to thy neighbor.
And then to really cap it off, God says, “And the soul that
sinneth it shall die,” and “Cursed is everyone who continues
not in all things written in the book of law to do them.” And
that is not very good news for us. The Good News of all
good news is that I have the joy of announcing to you from
God’s Almighty Word that God loved you and me so very
much, and He loved the world so much that He sent His
only-begotten Son into this world to take upon Him flesh of
our flesh and to keep the Law perfectly in our stead—and
finally to go to the cross to suffer for the sins of all mankind
and to rise victorious on the third day. And that through
faith in Him we have forgiveness with God, life, and salva-
tion. Now that’s Good News!

Down through the years, as often as I have visited with
my brother pastors, I have used this illustration—there
may be some of them here tonight. Let’s say you go to the
doctor for your annual physical, and the doctor tells you
that he found a lump that was not there a year ago. He
says, “I've always been very honest with you, and I need to
tell you that I’m certain it is cancer. We'd better get you
into the hospital as quickly as possible. I’ve lined up a sur-
geon, and we'll do the surgery, and we'll see how it goes.”
It’s a shock, but you schedule yourself into the hospital for
the surgery, go through the surgery, and now you are com-
ing out of the anesthetic, and you are lying in your bed.
Your doctor comes into your room. He walks by your bed,
and he looks out the window and says, “It’s been terribly
hot these last several days. But you know there is going to
be a break in the temperature. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
He tells you all about his flowers and how they have lived
through this heat. That’s good news. He says, “Our grand-
children are coming this weekend, and I’m going to be able
to spend a couple of days with the grandkids. How I look
forward to that.” That’s good news.

But what are you really waiting to hear from your doc-
tor? You are waiting for him to come over and take you by
the hand and squeeze it and say, “Yes, it was cancer, but
we got it all. You’re going to live!” Now that’s good news.

And that is the message of the Gospel. That our Lord
Jesus Christ came into this world and He got it all. He got
all the curse, all of the damnation, all of the hate, all of the
punishment that you and I deserved. He got it all. And
through faith in Him you are forgiven. Yes, He got forgive-
hess, not just for some of your sins, not just for many of
your sins, not just most of your sins, but for all of your sins!
You are forgiven and at peace with God in Jesus Christ.
Now that’s good news!

So I guess that takes us back to the question, doesn’t it?
What are you going to do with it? What are we in The
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod going to do with it dur-
ing the next triennium? What are we going to do with this
Good News, Missouri? Well, I would hope that first of all
we would be a church that recognizes it, rejoices in it, and
thanks God for it. In our daily prayers we should thank
God for the forgiveness of sins and the life and salvation
that we have in Jesus Christ as our Savior. It is very easy
not to thank God enough for our forgiveness. But you
know—it can’t just stop there. It can’t just stop with a
150th anniversary celebration. It can’t just stop with other
things like that. It must be a matter of sharing it with the
world that is around us. Even as we have for the past 100
years in world mission, across our entire nation—share it
with the world, so that they may also know the salvation
that is theirs in Jesus Christ. And hopefully also be saved.

During this convention we will talk about 150 years of
God’s fantastic blessings upon us. We will talk about 100
years of mission activities overseas, not to speak of all those
within our United States. We will talk about 100 years of
deaf ministry and 75 years of campus ministry and the list
will go on and on. All of it should be a cause for us to give
our thanks to God, and also a call to reach out and share
the Good News even more in the years ahead.

I get a lot of letters through the mail. Every now and
then they come to the house, too. There was one that came
to the house from a woman whose grandfather had been an
LCMS pastor. She knew that this convention was coming,
and she wrote, and while I don’t remember the exact words,
this is sort of how her letter went. She said, “We have been
so blessed as a church body. We have been so blessed with
the truth of God’s words down through the years—how my
grandpa taught it to us! God forbid we ever become
ashamed of or deny the truth of the Holy Scriptures and
the Lutheran Confessions.” She went on to say, “I hope that
God will stir us within the Synod. That He will genuinely
stir us so that as we move into the future we will share as
we never have in the past with others the saving Gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Nearly 2,800 years ago four men walked into an
Aramean camp and they found some fantastically good
news. And they had to face the question, “What are we
going to do with it?” Tonight a bundle of delegates and
friends and guests from all across St. Louis and beyond find
themselves assembling in an opening worship service.

We've heard again the tremendous Good News of God’s for-.

giveness to us in Jesus Christ. But the question is the
same, “What are we now going to do with that Good News?
What are we going to do with it?” __

It would be my hope and prayer that it will be a growing
crescendo in the years ahead, that we as a church body
would say, and say it again with great clarity, “Let us go
now and tell the king’s people the good news. Let us go now
and tell the king’s people the good news!”

O God, make us more and more that kind of a people
and that kind of a church. For Jesus sake, In the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A. L. Barry, President