LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 65

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CONVENTION SERMON
Grace be unto you and peace from God the Father and
from His Son our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
The passage of God’s Word to which we would direct our
attention this evening is found recorded in two different
places in the book of Acts, in the second chapter, then again
in the eighth chapter. In the second chapter, the 32nd
verse, “God has raised this Jesus to life and of this fact we
are witnesses.’’ And, in Acts 8:35, the words: “And then
Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told
him the Good News about Jesus.’’ This is the Word of God.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, a people very
much loved by our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me begin by once
again greeting you in the name of our Master.
We thank God that you have been brought safely to this
convention, and we look forward to working with you in the
days directly ahead, as together we do the work of the Lord.
A word of welcome also to our many guests that have joined
us tonight in this the opening service of our 1998 convention: men, women, and young people and children, not only
from Illinois and Missouri, but from all across our great nation and even around the world. And to you also we would
say, “welcome.” And again I know of no better way of greeting all of you than with those words with which we began,
grace and peace to each of you personally from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Our 1998 convention, I believe, is very significant timewise. When I say this I am not trying to minimize other
conventions we have had in decades directly preceding this.
Rather, saying it is a very significant convention timewise
is simply to point out that this is the last regular convention that we, as a church body, will hold in the present century—and millennium. And as such, I believe it is very,
very noteworthy.
Like most, this will be a convention in which many,
many items will come before the delegates for consideration and decision making. And as those various items come
before the convention for consideration and decision making, there are going to be those times when a definite point
of disagreement exists. But my brothers and sisters in
Christ, when that moment comes, and you find yourself definitely disagreeing with one of your brothers or sisters in
Christ from someplace else in our church, I ask you in the
name of Jesus Christ to treat them with all fraternal joy
and respect in the Master’s name.
When I first went out into the ministry, I remember
something a grand man of God said to me. He said that
when you find yourself disagreeing with someone, maybe
even violently disagreeing with someone as it were, you
must always remember the purchase price with which that
person was bought by the Lord. Recall that the person with
whom you are disagreeing was not bought with cheap stuff
like silver and gold, but with the blood of Jesus Christ Himself, and that you will treat them with that purchase price
always in mind.
You noticed that we have chosen two texts this evening.
I can recall when I went to the seminary some years ago,
in fact, quite a few years ago, they told us it was not im-

proper for a pastor to occasionally use two texts for his sermon. I don’t know whether they are teaching that at the
seminary now or not, but if they aren’t, I’m sure I’ll hear
about it. I suppose as I look back through my ministry,
there may be 5 or 10 times that I have done such a thing.
But tonight I have chosen two texts. And that is because
they blend very well together in the theme that we have
chosen for our sermon. It is the theme, “Bold Witnesses for
Jesus Christ.’’
It was not all that far back that I found myself together
with many of you reading through the entire New Testament again in the series that was mailed out to you from
the President’s office for reading through the entire New
Testament during Lent and Easter and the Pentecost season. And, as I found myself reading through that section of
God’s Word again, I experienced what you always experience when you read through God’s Word. There are those
moments when you notice something or re-notice something and you say, you know, I remember that, but I had
forgotten it. And, oh, how great it is again to see that truth
of God’s Word. In the very first chapter of the book of Acts,
I came across that passage that has furnished us with the
theme for this convention. “And now you shall be witnesses
unto me in Jerusalem in Samaria, and Judea and to the
ends of the earth.” And I remember pausing as I read those
words To the ends of the earth. I thought, O God, make us
that kind of a church body. But then I also remember reading on into Acts 2, and Acts 3, and Acts 4, and all at once,
there was a certain little phrase that was repeated again
and again, and it was the phrase that we have identified in
the very first passage that we shared with you. It is the
Word. “Of this fact, we are witnesses.”
If you were to take a look at the context you would see
that these words of our first text concern something that
happened on Pentecost Sunday. There had been the mighty
rushing wind, the cloven tongues of fire, the ability to speak
in other intelligible languages that they had never learned.
And then they went out in the streets, and Peter delivered
the first Pentecost sermon. And as he preached that first
Pentecost sermon, it was a sermon of Law and Gospel. He
turned to his hearers, and he told them, “You took the Lord
of glory and with your rulers you crucified Him.” Then immediately he went on to say: but that Jesus Christ, whom
you crucified, rose again from the dead on the third day. He
ascended into heaven, and through His life and His death
and His resurrection we have forgiveness with God. Of this
fact, Peter said, we are witnesses.
As I indicated, this is not just in chapter 2 that you find
these words, but when you go into chapter 3 and chapter 4
and chapter 5 and chapter 7, maybe with slightly different
words, now and then, the emphasis is again and again underscored, “Of this fact, we are witnesses.” Peter, as he
looked around, could not help but recognize again those two
very basic truths concerning himself.
One is that he together with all the other apostles were
sinners deserving of God’s wrath. Already, when the Lord
called him into his ministry, he said, “O Lord, depart from
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