Greetings to you in the name of our Redeemer and Lord Jesus Christ. I have been super busy lately and time is flying by faster than is fair. Minus a few rainy days, the beautiful weather has continued to excite me for spring and even summer. Classes have been going well, but I feel like I am constantly behind even though all we really have right as of now is still just reading.
This weekend I went to Decatur to babysit the nephews while Nate and Kari went to a high school fundraiser with the new high school he will be at next year. I got there Saturday about noon, ate lunch with them, saw the house they have unofficially bought, saw the school, and went swimming with the boys and Nate at the hotel. I had a pretty good time with the boys even though they were tired and cranky from swimming. Then after I got them asleep and Nate and Kari came back, Nate and I went to a restaurant for a couple beers. Then Sunday we went to church and ate lunch together. Then I came back to the seminary, and they went back to Iowa. It was good to see them again, and I always enjoy getting to spend time with those two little squirts. Justin is getting quite the pop-belly on the front of him and had an eerie resemblance as he walked between Nate and me. He is finally realizing he will most likely be a lineman in football, and it is funny to hear him talk about it with an ounce of disappointment in his voice. Since he has always normally played quarterback or running back, he is not the most excited to see what I call the "Richter curse" settling in.
Today was a pretty good day until I found out the recent change in student loans policy. Right now I have all subsidized loans which means they do not start accruing interest until six months after I graduate. However, the laws just changed so now there will be no subsidized loans. This means all student loans starting next year will be unsubsidized, which means the loan will start accruing interest as soon as I borrow them. So while I am still in school and not paying them back, they will still be accruing interest. This ruined a small part of my day, until I reminded myself that the Lord always provides and I can just watch my spending a whole lot more strictly.
My thought for the day comes from Confessions II class. I have several things that I want to mention from my classes, and then will elaborate on one of them. I feel like I am really letting you down with this blog especially looking at my original statement of intention. I want to give fewer details about what I am up to in my daily life, and more details about what I am learning in classes. If you have any objections to that, please let me know, but I assume most of you read it not to hear about my life, but for the tips of knowledge I am learning and can pass along to you.
The first idea is a fun fact from Luther. When reading Luther's explanation to the Ten Commandments in his Small Catechism, the explanation of the first commandment is short but very important. The first commandment is: You shall have no other gods. When answering "what does this mean", Luther states that we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. One simple sentence, and yet it is the reason we are entirely sinful. Luther made the claim that when we break any of the commandments, it is because we do not keep the first commandment. If we could keep the first commandment, it would be easy to keep all nine of the rest. See, if we truly feared the wrath of God, loved Him the same way He loves us, and trusted in Him above all other things in our life, we would not steal, lie, commit adultery, murder, etc. If we feared the wrath of God, we would not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, and if we loved God as He loves us, we would help and support [our neighbor] in every physical need {explanation to the fifth commandment}. If we were able to keep the first commandment, we could keep them all. Now we know that because of our sinful nature due to original sin we can never keep the first commandment which causes us to break all the rest too. Dr. Kolb's quote is that 100 percent of Americans (although I think you could just say humans) are polytheistic because we rely on and trust in other gods in our lives. We put trust in our savings accounts in the bank, or in our cars that get us places, or in all the other things that we put before God and trust in rather than just knowing He is our God who we should fear, love, and trust in above all things. I just thought that was pretty cool that this one little sentence, which we cannot not keep, is the reason we cannot keep any of God's laws as sinners.
The second idea came from Dr. Schmitt's homiletics classes. Now before I give you the tip, I just want to say I have not once walked out of a class with Dr. Schmitt without being scared out of my mind about preaching. Not that preaching is an impossible thing, but it is not easy and is a major responsibility. We define preaching as having four characteristics: 1. authoritative public proclamation of the faith, 2. based on a text of Scripture, 3. centered in the death and resurrection of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and 4. for the benefit of the hearers in faith and life. A sermon must have all four of these components or it is not actually a sermon. Now there are several things we are looking at in each one of those four things, so do not automatically assume your local pastor is not including one of those and is not preaching. My point of telling you this is not so you can critique your pastor's sermons, but rather just so you know the full responsibility of preaching the Word of God to His people each and every week. So each class when we dive deeper into what makes a sermon a sermon, the actual purpose of a sermon, and how to write a "good" sermon, I get more scared each week. Now I know the Spirit will be with me and help me write sermons, but it is still a responsibility I do not want to ever over look. The tip he gave us comes from Melanchthon (who I hope you all know who he is). Melanchthon said that the chief worship of God is the proclamation of the Gospel. So while you may think the most important part of the Sunday morning service is your favorite hymn you get to sing that week, confession and absolution, or even the Lord's Supper (which is so valuable I almost did not even mention it but Melanchthon does too so I thought it was OK). Now if you want to be a wise one you could say that absolution and the Words of Institution are both proclamation of the Gospel, which I would have to agree with you, but the major point of proclamation comes in the reading of the Scripture and the sermon which is based on the Scripture. So if you truly think that you do not need to pay attention during the sermon and wish your pastor would keep his sermons shorter because you just cannot focus that long, just remember how important Melanchthon valued these parts of the service.
I want to just very quickly include one more fun statement that came from homiletics. There are many, many, many amazing tips and guides he gives us to use during our sermon prep and preaching that I think are so amazing and had never thought of before, but I do not want to include these just in case you have a pastor who does one of them, I do not ever want to hinder the support a pastor has by his members. This fact however comes from the pastor's prep work all week as he is trying to decide what to include in his sermon and what not to add. "There are many very good Christian things you will NOT say every Sunday." Every text can produce so many good sermon ideas as you are working through it. However, wanting your sermon to be focused down to one theological point, there are many great ideas that you will come up with and will not be able to fit into your one point. So while it is a great Christian idea or point, it just does not fit with your sermon and does not get added. However, in the three-year lectern series, these great ideas can hopefully fit into your sermon the next time you preach on this same text.
I will add a blog later about everything we are learning in Synoptic Gospels. For now all I will tell you is that if you truly want to be able to understand the New Testament to the best of your ability (with respect to fully understanding culture and recent history of that time period) the book we are reading about inter-testament history, is Charles Puskas' book titled An Introduction to the New Testament. Use the second edition, not the first if you are actually interested in checking it out. It is actually not that long and a fairly quick easy read. It is just so dense with useful material, it is almost more of a resource book than just a text book.
The final point that I want to say and fully reflect and think about is a fun fact that Dr. Kolb said in Confessions II. Again, that class could have an entire blog of its own, and we have only had two class sessions so far. The statement he made the other day just really got me thinking though. Before I tell you what it is, let me tell you his joke and following quote just so you can get a feel for the guy. He is an older guy and kind of soft spoken, but super nice and friendly and probably about as smart as they come. His joke was he wrote the name Otto on the board because it was a guy we were talking about, and he stopped and said, "Oh man I spelled his name backwards." Then when we all laughed, he said, "Oh don't laugh at that joke. You really should not encourage me." But his statement was that life from God is no more deserved than life from your parents. Now when you just hear that on a level one surface it makes sense that we do not deserve life from God. However, when I stopped and thought about it, I had never thought about the fact that I did not deserve life from my parents either. Did you deserve for your parents to create you and bring you into this world? Life from your parents is a gift. Even for couples who do not stay together after the child is born, it still took both of them to create you, and it was a gift that they brought you into the world. This really struck me funny since most of the time we hear parents talking about their child being a gift to them, which is a good attitude to have, but they also could say they gave that child a gift by bringing them into this world. Although it might not work best to tell a dramatic teenager who "hates" their life, that they did not deserve to be brought into this world, because most likely they will agree with that statement. However, when you think about life as a gift from your parents, it makes you appreciate your parents more and puts a whole new level of respect there for them. They did not have to bring you into the world but chose to anyway. This is true of God. He did not have to give the gift of life in this world, and yet He gave it to you as sure as you sit there reading this. Now our parents gave us life on this earth, but they also gave us original sin. Do not hold that against them though because we are sinners on our own enough that we cannot blame them for the original sin we have, plus you will pass the same thing on to your kids. However, the point is life from your parents was a gift, but life from God is a much greater gift. God not only gave us life on this earth, but through the death and resurrection of His Son He has given us life eternally in heaven with Him as well. This is truly a gift of life that we should always be thankful for and truly appreciate. In my mind though this can also be used to show that life from God is a FREE gift, and is not based on our merits or anything we do. If you spend your entire life being a great kid rather than being a terrible child to your parents, does it change the fact that they gave you the gift of life on this earth? No! So if you are a faithful child of God rather than a terrible sinner, does that change the fact that God gave you eternal life through your baptism? NO! It is one hundred percent undeserved, unmerited, and free from our gracious and loving Heavenly Father. All Praise be to Him who freely gives us this most amazing and wonderful gift.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the gift of life both on this earth and the gift of life to come after this world that we have our secure hope in. We certainly did not deserve either and yet out of Your grace and mercy, You chose to save us, claim us as Your children, and give us the gift of life. Be with us as we use that life to serve You, knowing that our serving You is not necessary for salvation but is what You have called us to do as Your Redeemed children. We pray in the same name that saved us and gave us our new life in our baptism, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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