Summer!

God's blessings to you all.  I apologize for going so long without writing to you all.  However, I have spent the last week writing some very long and detailed papers.  But I am all done now.  I am writing this between classes quick, then I have two more classes to sit through and I am officially done with my first year of my seminary career.  That means I am a third of the way done with classes, and a fourth of the way done with the entire process.  I have been so richly blessed during this first year, and it has went by so fast.  I cannot believe it is over.
Like I said the last week has been a rough one, but I survived.  I preached my first sermon, wrote my first exegetical paper, and attended my first jambalaya fest.  I did try a couple days ago to upload the video of my preaching for class so you could all see my first experience preaching.  However, it is a QuickTime video, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get it to work with this blog.  I do not want to put my manuscript of that sermon up here because it changed dramatically from what I typed up to what I actually preached.  I like the sermon I preached better so I will keep trying to figure out how to get the video up.  Overall, it went well.  I was kind of quiet, which was shocking to me since I have not been quiet ever.  Also, I was very mono-tone and kind of dry.  It definitely lacked personality and charisma.  However, I think that will come with time and practice.  My exegetical turned out better than I thought and I was quite impressed with my work.  However, we will see if thee Great James. W. Voelz, who probably knows Greek better than most Greeks, thinks as highly of it as I do.
What's the jambalaya fest you ask? Well, let me tell you.  A church from New Orleans raised ten thousand dollars in order to load up a convoy of vehicles, drive all the way to St. Louis and host this awesome feast for us. They brought all the ingredients and made the huge pot of homemade jambalaya. 1600 bowls of it to be exact. They fried catfish and had it on sour dough buns. They had Zapp's chips a New Orleans special I guess, and King cake for dessert. It was such good food and the people cooking and serving were so nice. I ate way too much like usual. They also had Sangria, wine, beer, and a Louisiana punch which definitely had a little kick to it. It was just an amazing thing to see that these good faithful Lutherans raised that much money, to drive all the way up here, cook such great food, and feed the entire seminary campus. We had a great turn out of students, faculty, and staff. The coolest thing is, I guess this is the fifth year they have done this. I was thoroughly impressed.
I plan to pack up my car Saturday and drive to Iowa Sunday.  Then I head to Nebraska Tuesday and start work at the State Wednesday.  I am excited to be working again, even if it is picking up dead animals.  I also am super excited because the guys I am living with this summer have been texting me for the past week telling me there are enjoying a cold beer either beside the pond right by our house, or out on the pond in the paddle boat.  I cannot wait to sit by that pond, enjoy a cold brewski, and just enjoy being back in the heart of God's country with the crops and calves growing.
I do intend to try to at least once a week to sit down and blog.  However, summer is going to be very busy and I may not be ale to keep that intention.  Either way though, I do promise to pick it back up next fall when I get back to school.  Just a little memo to all of you who enjoy following this blog.
My thought for the day comes from Dr. Kolb and confessions class.  A student was asking a question about the burden of guilt.  Now Dr. Kolb loves life and I do not think he has any guilt for anything.  He truly believes in the power of forgiveness through absolution, and he lives his life in that peace of Christ's forgiveness.  So he was explaining to this student that if you confess your sins and hear the absolution, and yet you still feel guilty, you do not truly believe in the power of Christ's forgiveness.  He then went on and put it this way.  "You do not have the right to feel guilt! You should not steal from God.  If you try to stick your hand into the tomb of Christ you steal your sin back, you're liable to have a big rock roll onto your hand!"  I love how he put this idea.  When we keep feeling guilty for our sins, we are reaching into the tomb of Christ, trying to steal back and hold on to a sin Christ died for and forgave.  When Christ forgives us, He takes our sins away, and gives us His righteousness.  Now He does not try to take His righteousness back, so we should not try to take our sin back.  We just leave it in Christ's tomb, which is also where He left them all when He rose and ascended.  All Praise be to Him who has taken all our sins away, not letting us have them back, because instead we have His righteousness.  Happy Ascension Day!
Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you so much for the gift of Your Son, who died to clear us of our sins, rose to give us new life, and ascended to give us our hope of eternal salvation in heaven with You.  Also, thank you so much for not just taking Your Son home and leaving us here alone, but instead, when You called Your Son home on this ascension day, You sent Your Spirit to be and abide with us.  Keeping us in the one true faith until that day that You have promised when Your Son will come again to bring all Your children home.  In the name of Your Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.  


I apologize, my catechism is packed up so I will not include a section from this time.

First Sermon

Hello and God's blessings.  I do not have time to actually post this week, especially since we just got another ten page paper added to our work load today.  However, I am still surviving for now.  Tuesday was Call day.  I ushered from 12:30 P.M. until 9:30 P.M.  It was a fun day, but it was a long day and my feet certainly hurt.  I will try to tell more about that exciting day if I find a free moment.  However, since I now have 42 pages worth of papers to get done, writing is not going to be my first choice of activity for my free time.
I did decide I would post my first sermon I wrote for Homiletics class.  It got a B+ and Dr. Schmitt did not really have anything negative to say about it, he just found several places that could have been better.  Of course if you have the gift he does, of being able to see profound proclamation out of anything and in the coolest ways, it is easy to find things to improve in any sermon.  Two warnings.  One, keep in mind it is written in oral style so there are grammatical mistakes, fragments, etc.  Two, it is my first official sermon and hopefully Lord willingly they will continue to get better.  The style of this sermon is called a four page sermon where you find the "law" in the text, the "Gospel" in the text, the "law" in the world, and the "Gospel" in the world.  I had them clearly marked to be graded, but took them out for your sake.  I did not make any of the suggested improvements Dr. Schmitt commented on, so you are seeing the exact text I turned in.  I have turned in my second sermon, but will not get it back until I preach it next Thursday.  I am very nervous to get up in front of the class and preach my sermon, but I will get through it.

Here is my sermon:  Titled: The Throne is Occupied!
Text Ephesians 1:15-23

v  Hymn of the Day:  LSB 492 “On Christ’s Ascension I Now Build”

v  Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            Today’s text comes from the Epistle Reading which we have already heard. 

This section of St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is very complex and he manages to say so much in just these few verses.  Paul is using prayer to give thanks for the faith of the Ephesians, and he clearly states everything he is praying for.  Now we are not going to look at everything Paul is praying for today, and we are not going to even look at what Paul is doing through his prayer.  Rather we are going to focus in on one small, but very important, part of Paul’s prayer.  Since this is Ascension Thursday and you all have made the extra trip to church this week for tonight’s service, I think it is only appropriate that we focus on the ascension that Paul includes in this prayer.  Paul does not just flat out re-tell the event of the ascension, but we heard that in both the readings from Act’s and Luke’s Gospel.  Paul does however include the ascension in verse 20 of this passage.  We read verses 19b through 21b: “according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.”  This is the ascension of our Christ that Paul adds to the opening of his letter.  However, as simple as it is, it paints a picture that may not be seen unless you stop and really think about this event.  I am going to verbally paint this picture for you, and then as I continue through my sermon, hopefully the picture will become clearer and clearer for you until you are able to leave here with its full beauty in your mind.   The picture of ascension that I want to paint for you is the same picture that I have in my mind every time I recite the Apostle’s Creed.  When we confess that “He ascended in heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead”, I see our Lord, or a better imagery for this picture is our King, our triumphant King, in all his glory and majesty, sitting on his throne at the right hand of God the Father, reigning above all other powers and dominions, as our ruler and judge when we come before His throne as we enter eternal life.  And it is this King who is only able to sit in his throne because He was victorious, victorious indeed, that we put our entire trust of our faith in.  Keep this picture in your mind as we continue on.   

            The Ephesians, to who Paul sent this letter, have many people who are new to their faith.  They also have believers who have been following Paul’s teachings since he left them.  However they are all going to have to deal with sin and death.  It is part of our sinful world and Paul knows this.  The devil tempts these Christians to try to drive them away from their faith.  If the devil even tempted Jesus, the Son of God, you know he tempted these Ephesians that much more, hoping to make them stumble and fall away from their faith.  The devil’s ultimate goal is to drive these faithful people to complete and utter despair, leaving them feeling completely abandoned and alone.  Then he is able to get them to doubt God, and they may even be foolish enough to reject their faith.  The devil will use tragedies, their persecution, natural disasters, and unexplainable deaths to bring about their despair.  He is constantly lurking in the shadows, waiting for one of them to be alone and weak.  He wants to isolate them, because like a hunting lion, it is easier to pick off one weak member of the herd than to take on the entire herd at once.  He is constantly a threat to their faith because he is able to use their sinful nature to get them to stray from God and His ways.  The devil, sin, and death in this world are their enemies.  They are what shake their faith and make these followers of Christ question what they really believe.  From the fall of man, the devil has been preying on every human being that shows even the slightest signs of faith.  

            However, these attempts by the devil through sin and death, trying to make them feel helpless and alone is exactly why Paul includes the ascension in this letter to the Ephesians.  He includes the resurrection and ascension because this is the victory our king has won for His people.  The devil, sin, and death are the enemies, trying to constantly make Christians fall away from their faith and essentially away from God.  However, this is the entire reason Christ took on flesh.  Through His death, His resurrection, and His ascension, He completely defeated these enemies of His people.  Christ won victory over sin, death, and the devil by being the perfect sacrifice, by paying the price that no human ever could, and by being the King who triumphantly won the battle.  Paul, knowing the troubles and strife’s that these new believers are going to face, is reminding them that they can put their trust in their triumphant king who reigns above all other powers and dominions, including sin, death, and the devil, from his throne in heaven. 

            So these Ephesians hear the good news of their triumphant king from Paul in his letter to them, and this allows them to put their trust in Christ.  But what does that mean for us?  Many of you are probably saying to yourself, “Well Pastor, of course we know Christ won over sin, death, and the devil.  We hear that message every week.” And knowing most to all of you, I do honestly believe you do know that Christ is our Savior.  However, just because we know the message, does not necessarily mean we always believe it’s true.  Because you see it is almost impossible for us to wrap our human minds around the fact that God sacrificed His own Son, in order to save us horrible sinners.  We are his fallen race that He should have damned to hell, but instead He sent His own Son to receive His wrath and the full wages of our sins.  This is where the fourth use of the law comes into play.  Now since you are all such wonderful Lutheran people, you probably just found yourself thoroughly confused when I said the fourth use of the law.  Because every good Lutheran knows there are only three uses to the law.  However, when I was in my Confessions II class with the honorable Dr. Kolb who translated the Book of Concord, we talked about a fourth use of the law.  This was the first time I had ever heard of this use.  The fourth use is also sometimes called the demonic use of the law.  Because when faithful people know and understand the first three uses of the law, and they use the three uses to repent often, the devil does not like this.  He tempts them to sin, but even when he can get them to stumble, they immediately turn to Christ and receive His forgiveness.  So the devil, tricky as he is, tries a different approach.  Instead of tempting them to keep sinning, he simply whispers in their ears, “You really think the Lord forgives you.  You of all people, who sin daily, you think you are good enough for Him?  You cannot be serious, you cannot really believe that you, you dirty sinner, are saved from everything you do wrong!”  And maybe at first we do not listen to him, but the devil is a persistent guy, and he just keeps getting us to stumble and then immediately whispers the lines of doubt in our ears.  Haven’t you ever felt this way?  Have you really never felt so dirty of your sins, or so guilty about something you did, and just plain so ashamed you did not want to pray to the Lord.  I know I have felt this way at times.  I make up the excuse that I will pray to the Lord tomorrow because I just do not feel right doing it today.  I think we have all had those times when the devil tricks us into believing that yes we know the price Christ paid, and we know He forgives sins, but His Gospel, His grace cannot possibly be for us personally.  It cannot really be that easy to just be free from all our sins through a simple prayer.  This is how the devil gets us.  And as we begin new outreach programs with the college students and the campus ministries, we have new believers in our midst just like the Ephesians.  And if we, who have been faithful members of this church for years, can fall into the devils trap of doubt and questioning, just think how easy it will be for them to question if they are truly forgiven.

            So what do we do?  Do we just keep saying that we believe in Christ’s grace and forgiveness of sins, push the doubt to the back of our heart, and hope that on judgment day it is not enough to keep us out of heaven?  To use Paul’s famous answer, Absolutely Not!  We hear in this text today, Paul telling the Ephesians, but it is still true for us also that all authority and all dominion are under Christ’s feet.  The devil still roams this world, we still stumble to sin, and these bodies of ours will wear out and death happens.  However, we have a king who has power and dominion over all of these.  We have a king who came to earth to fight the good fight.  He fought the battle against sin, death, and the devil.  And He WON! How do we know He won?  Because of this special day we are here to celebrate today.  See if Christ had just died, He would have paid the wages of sin, but He would not have defeated death.  And even if He had resurrected and defeated death, if He had not ascended into Heaven, we would not have the hope of life with Him in heaven.  In our Hymn of the day we sang the line “On Christ’s ascension I now build the hope of my ascension!”  See when Christ ascended into heaven He officially proclaimed that His work was complete.  Everything He came to do on earth, He had accomplished.  And it is because He ascended into Heaven as the victor, that we too are able to have the hope of eternal life with Him in heaven.  He is our victorious king who went home to sit in His throne.  See in the Old Testament when an enemy would be a threat or be attacking the people, the king of the people would go out with his troops to battle.  He would watch the battle to know if he had won or not.  Then when he won, he would return to his city and sit in his throne on the gate to let everyone know that the battle was over, the victory was won.  His sitting in that throne was the sign to all the people that He had been victorious and had kept them all safe from their enemies.  He was back in his throne reigning over them, watching over them because they were now safe with their enemies being pushed back and wiped out.  This is the same message we get after Christ’s ascension.  Christ came to earth to fight the battle.  When He had officially won and completely defeated the enemy, He returned home to His city again.  And He sat in His throne at the right hand of the Father, where He still sits today.  He is sitting on His throne over the gates letting all of His people know that He is back from fighting, He was victorious in His fight, and His people are safe from their enemies as He reigns and watches over us.

            So you see that picture of Christ sitting in His throne at the right hand of the Father is not just a simple picture.  It is a sweet and beautiful proclamation that assures us He is our victorious king, He has defeated our enemies, and He does reign over us, watching over and protecting us.  He sits on His throne over the gates waiting for us to walk through those gates and join Him in Heaven.  That’s a pretty priceless painting if you ask me.

         And how do we now that this sweet, sweet Gospel, the forgiveness and grace of this triumphant king truly is for us personally and individually?   Because we have His name on our hearts.  Through our baptism, we have died to sin and been made alive to Christ, our King.  We are His people who live under His reign and protection, and when our enemies try to harm us, He is watching from His throne.  It is through our Baptism, where He claimed us as His own, that we can ignore those whispers of the devil and always know Christ’s forgiveness is for us, personally and individually.  “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved” This is the assurance our King gives us.  We have the certainty of His saving grace in our King reigning from His throne.

        We stand to sing Hymn 464 “The Strife is O’er, the Battle Done” to proudly proclaim that we know our triumphant King has won the Battle and His grace and forgiveness is truly for us, His beloved People!

For My prayer I will use the the hymn 464:

The strife is o'er, the battle done;

the victory of life is won;

the song of triumph has begun:

Alleluia!

The powers of death have done their worst,

but Christ their legions hath dispersed;

let shouts of holy joy outburst:

Alleluia!

The three sad days are quickly sped;

he rises glorious from the dead;

all glory to our risen Head!

Alleluia!

Lord, by the stripes which wounded thee,

from death's dread sting thy servants free,

that we may live, and sing to thee:

Alleluia!  Amen.  

I will continue with the Small Catechism next time.  My apologies.