LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 58

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

So Mary sang, in effect, “The Lord promised a Savior, and here
and now He is! Here and now.” The psalmist wept in anxiety on
his bed and needed the strength to carry on in the morning. He
needed help now … for tomorrow! To carry on, to move forward,
he remembered the Lord’s promises and that the Lord kept and
keeps His promises. The writer to the Hebrews says, “Remember
your leaders” (look back!) and “imitate their faith” (look forward!).
And so we have two faces on our gavel—Luther and Walther. Hermann Sasse, who prayed daily for the Missouri Synod, said, “It is
always a sign of a deep spiritual sickness when a church forgets
its fathers” (Lonely Way, vol. 2, p. 223). In the broad sense here,
we include all our mothers and fathers in the faith—our parents,
our grandparents, those who have gone before us into heaven,
the founders of the Synod, the Church, the saints of the Scriptures, Moses, David, the apostles, and more. In forgetting these,
the Church forgets the merciful goodness and deeds of God in
caring for His saints. But in the narrower sense in which Luther
and Walther are “fathers of the Church,” when such leaders are
forgotten, it is a sign of sickness, because what comes with it is often
a lack of scriptural fidelity, a lack of clarity on the Gospel and all
its teachings, and especially a lack of the fathers’ zeal to proclaim
and share the message of salvation in Christ alone. Walther said
the Church is the mission society par excellence. Every Christian
is a missionary, wherever God has placed him or her. Luther said
time and again that every Christian is to speak the Gospel and
bears the keys to forgive.
On our gavel is, therefore, also carved Rom. 3:28: “For we hold that
one is justified by faith, apart from the works of the law.” Fallible
as he was, Luther pointed the Church back to this fundamental
truth of Holy Scripture. It was this fact—the free forgiveness of
Christ by faith alone—that he said “moved all of my theological
thoughts day and night.” It was this fact of salvation by grace alone
that gave Luther, who was himself a weak and often sickly man, the
strength to stand in the face of the world, the devil, and the flesh.
It was this Gospel that enlivened his very being when he stood
before the emperor and confessed, “Here I stand! I cannot, I will
not recant. God help me. Amen.” And the Gospel flew forth—midst
trials aplenty, to be sure—but the Gospel flew forth!
Sasse also noted that every great era of advancement in the history
of the Church begins with the cry “Back! Back to the Scriptures!”
In the Lutheran Church, every great era of mission and growth
has begun with the cry “Back to Luther!” The prophets in the Old
Testament cried, “Remember the covenant and the testimony!”
“Back to the Word of God!” John the Baptizer came crying out,
“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand! Hear what the Scriptures say! ‘A voice crying in the wilderness! Prepare the way of the
Lord!’ ” Jesus came preaching, “Repent! For the kingdom of God
is at hand!” He stood up in Nazareth and read Isaiah: “The Spirit
of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim
good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Luther came preaching, “Back
to the Scriptures! Back to the Gospel of grace alone!”
In the midst of widespread apostasy from the Word of God, from
the Gospel, from the Lutheran Confessions, God raised up another
fallible human being—in many respects physically and emotionally
very weak. And yet C. F. W. Walther’s message 175 years ago was
“Repent! Back to the Scriptures! Back to the teaching of grace and
58

|

2 0 1 3 C o n v e n t io n P r o c e e d i n g s

free eternal life for the sake of Jesus! Back to Luther! Back to the
Church’s confession!”
We may joke about old Walther. We may chuckle about his looks.
Some may criticize his method of doing theology. But note this:
what Walther and the founders of the Missouri Synod were able to
do 175 years ago, which led to the founding of this church body, is
a remarkable accomplishment by the grace of God. We live today
from the blessings that God granted to our fathers in the faith.
This Church confesses that “There is salvation in no one else, for
there is no other name under heaven given among men by which
we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “The Gospel is the power of God
unto salvation for all who believe” (Rom. 1:16). For all our weaknesses, this Church confesses to this very day that the Bible is the
very Word of God, inspired and inerrant. This Church confesses
the full authority of Luther’s catechism and the whole Book of
Concord, the heart and soul of which is the Gospel. The Book of
Concord has this one purpose: certainty of divine favor in Jesus
Christ for troubled souls.
Like the hammer blow of this gavel, the past is abruptly behind
us. We will never see it again. It’s gone. But the echo of the blow
goes forward and out into this hall. And all the past comes to a
head in this moment—to teach us, to console us, to motivate us.
The echoes of the past reverberate right into our present and so
into our future!
Listen to the blessings of the past echoing to this very moment:
1. We have the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No doubt. Done deal. It is
finished. “The blood of Jesus Christ … cleanses us from all sin”
(1 John 1:7).
2. We have the sacred Scriptures. They bear witness to all the great
salvific deeds of God Himself. There is no doubt what or where
God’s Word is.
3. We have the Gospel in preaching, in Baptism, in the Sacrament.
4. We are blessed by the catechism and all its teaching expanded
in the Confessions.
5. We have a clear confession of faith and polity that has stood the
test in our Synod Constitution.
6. We have fantastic seminaries in good shape and friends all over
the world seeking our partnership.
7. We have thousands of faithful pastors.
8. We have thousands more faithful teachers and church workers.
9. We have a university system to die for with 30,000 students.
10. We have the worldwide outreach ministries of the Lutheran
Women’s Missionary League and Lutheran Hour Ministries.
11. We have LCMS international mission that works in some 85
countries.
12. We have 35 districts, all at work where they are, striving to
share the Gospel.
13. We have partners all over the world, and the number grows
monthly.
14. We have 2,200 early childhood centers, grade schools, and
high schools.
15. We have 100 mission organizations and 130 mercy organizations.
RE P ORT O F T H E P RESIDENT