LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2023, Page 75

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CONVENTION SERMONS

We Preach Christ Crucified

HOSEA 6:1–6; 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18–25; LUKE 24:36–49A
LCMS President Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison
68th Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod • July 29, 2023 • Opening Divine Service
We preach Christ crucified, the power and the wisdom of
God.
Luther said on Hosea, doesn’t God do strange things?
Hosea comes in the time of the second-to-last king of
Israel, Jeroboam. He wanted to do what was right, says
Luther. He did many good things. But he didn’t get rid of
the idolatry.
They were still worshiping the [idols] of their ancestors.
They were still killing the prophets, sacrificing their
children, and filling the land with the guilt of blood. So,
says Luther, Hosea preached hard against idolatry, and he
preached for a purpose (Hos. 6:4–6):
What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes early away.
Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
God does strange things. He has Hosea pick a harlot for a
wife, [a woman] who marries him and lives chastely with
him, to invite people to repentance, [to invite] adulterous
Israel to repentance.
You have gone astray. You have forsaken the Lord. You
have transgressed His Law. You have gone after other
gods. You know it’s true, of every one of you. Me too.
You indeed know that the universal word of Law of Hosea
or Jesus or St. Paul—“Be perfect as your Father in heaven
is perfect”—applies to us all. The Law is given that every
mouth be stopped and the whole world held accountable
to God.
We, this week—in this convention center, in this city—
are not a bunch of holier-than-thou prigs looking down
our noses at the people “out there.” They might say, “Oh,
look at those hypocrites in that convention center.” And
you should say, “Yeah, I know, and there’s always room
for one more.”
Convention Sermons

We are sinners—repentant sinners who have a Savior.
“Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that
he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind
us up” (Hos. 6:1).
It was 2009, and I had traveled down to Haiti just days
after the great earthquake. We were in an area where
there was an orphanage just across the Dominican
border. It was a MASH [mobile army surgical] hospital.
Our missionaries, with [Latin America and the Caribbean
Regional Director Rev.] Ted Krey at the lead, were taking
care of hundreds and hundreds and, finally, thousands of
people … on the site of what had been an orphanage.
I put my sleeping bag in a house, a brick house that had
been left unfinished, a very nice, unfinished house. All of
a sudden the earthquake started to rumble, and I got my
bag and got out of there and slept outside for the rest of
the week.
It was unpleasant. All my clothes had been left at the
airport or caught up in the baggage somehow. What a
week. The earth started to rumble. We ran over to an area
where there were about a thousand individuals lying on
the ground, most of them with three casts or four casts on
their arms and legs, having been crushed from the falling
buildings in Port-Au-Prince, [Haiti].
There were people in a two-story building who had been
rigged up to IVs, et cetera, with casts on, jumping over the
wall onto the ground, breaking their casts, breaking their
pelvises. It was horrid. People were screaming, weeping.
The evening was coming on quickly, and all of a sudden
this guy starts announcing on a megaphone, “God is
judging you. Hell is upon you. This is the judgment of
God.”
I said, “Who is that idiot? And where did he get that
megaphone?”
Somebody said, “That’s our megaphone.”
I said, “Go get it from him!” We wrestled the megaphone
away from the guy. These people had been hit by the Law
in the strongest way possible. They needed the Gospel.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2023 (68TH) LCMS CONVENTION | 75