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| By Norma A. Boeckler |
Midweek Lenten Service
7 PM Central Daylight Time
Pastor Gregory L. Jackson
Bethany Lutheran Worship, 7PM Central Daylight Time
The Order of Vespers p. 41
The Psalmody
The Lections The Passion History
The Lections The Passion History
The Sermon – Faith Comes from the Sermon - the Report
The Prayers
The Lord’s Prayer
The Collect for Grace p. 45
The Hymn # 653 Now the Light Has Gone Away
The Hymn # 653 Now the Light Has Gone Away
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| By Norma A. Boeckler |
Isaiah 53 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Romans 10:12 For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
17 So then faith cometh by hearing (the report), and hearing (the report) by the Word of God.
Mark 1 28 And immediately his fame (report) spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee.
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| By Norma A. Boeckler |
Faith Comes from the Sermon - The Report
Romans 10 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
17 So then faith cometh by hearing (the report), and hearing (the report) by the Word of God.
People can easily have the wrong impression when they hear various words used in Christianity, especially when people choose to warp and distort their meaning. One of the best ways to get a good view of the truth comes from comparing various passages.
Shining the Light on Dark Passages
This is one instance when a debated term is distorted because of a lack of comparisons. A time-tested principle is that we find the truth by casting light (from bright, easy to understand passages) on "dark" (hard to understand) passages.
That does not mean the Bible is hard to understand for anyone, but people make the plain Word of God obscure by all their arguments and hair-splitting. They may start with their experts and use that as the foundation of truth and ignore the only foundation is the Word itself.
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| By Norma A. Boeckler |
False Ideas
This is an important topic because of the way "faith" is approached by many who are false teachers or poorly informed. The bad information begins with the assumption that faith is a decision made by man, an act of the will.
Another error comes from the source of faith, which they imagine comes from making the Gospel appealing, attractive, or relevant. Remember the movie theater advertising their service as "real, relevant, and relational?" That is typical of Calvinism and its offshoots.
Some will say, "No, do not criticize error!" But Jesus and Paul were especially pointed in their rejection of false doctrine, and so is the seldom-read Book of Concord and the never-read Apology of the Book of Concord.
So we get at the Biblical truth by rejecting false claims of others, in this case, about faith.
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| By Norma A. Boeckler |
Many Places to Begin
There are many places to begin, but I am especially fond of Isaiah 53, which is the Old Testament Gospel. If anything, this chapter (hated by liberals) gives the basic Gospel so clearly that one cannot separate the words of this short chapter from the actual atoning death of Jesus about 1,000 years later.
I was reminded of this when working on the Greek lesson for tonight. The connection is often made, following Paul, with Isaiah 53 and Romans 10 (the Means of Grace chapter in Romans).
The key word can be translated "hearing" or "report." Sometimes it is "rumor" in English, but we consider rumors to be false or hard to verify. The word comes from the word for hearing, and that makes sense. Very little was read in ancient days. The Scriptures were heard in worship, memorized, and also taught in sermons.
Luther often emphasized faith and how it develops in people. They do not make a decision. It is not an act of human will. Faith is the result of hearing the Gospel, the Holy Spirit at work in the Word, always effective in converting and hardening.
Isaiah 53 is a marker for all that would follow, an usual passage in a major book for Jews and those who sought truth in monotheism. Educated people could read the Old Testament Gospel easily in Greek, in the Septuagint.
The report in Isaiah is the Atonement message of the Messiah dying for the sins of the world. It is the Gospel in every sense of the word - God declaring a solution for sin and death, before anyone could imagine or ask for such a measure. This Gospel creates faith, which is why we are called "new creations" or "new creatures" by Paul.
I enjoy the contradictions in "scientific" gardening. They run out of terms for all the beneficial life-forms in the garden, so they say "creatures" as in something created. They are never called "evolutes" - something that evolved. Or they marvel about the intricacies and balance of "nature," without asking what that means.
The Gospel creates faith because it is the message of the Creating Word and the message about the Creating Word.
This is promised by the Gospel, and is even in the Ten Commandments:
Respecting God's Word always brings good results - and the cross.
The benefits are many and last multiple generations.
The Gospel converts children and changes their lives forever.
The Gospel converts adults with more difficulty, because they develop habits and attitudes that resist God's Word. No one can tell how much time, and those who resist the most may end up the most productive (Paul, Augustine).
The Gospel produces many fruits in the lives of believers, and that is not the result of programs and plans but the Spirit at work in the Word.
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| By Norma A. Boeckler |
