✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Job 23 4619
11. Sn. n. Trinitatis 056
Joshua
Aegidius, Abbot, appr. ✠ 715
Aegidius, monk ✠ 1203
1. September 2019
1. O Lord, who humbles the exalted and exalts the humble; give us the humility to approach You, as the tax collector did, confessing our sins, so that in such repentance we trust in Your mercy and forgiveness. Amen. (Luke 18,14)
2. The speech in Job 23 may have been running through the mind of the tax collector from Luke 18. Job laments: »For God will complete what He appoints for me, and many such things are in His mind. Therefore I am terrified at His presence; when I consider, I am in dread of Him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; yet I am not silenced because of the darkness, nor because thick darkness covers my face.«
3. Job gives voice to every conscience guilty of sin: we are terrified before God and hide from Him. This was the response from Adam and Eve after they had sinned; they hid from God when they heard Him in the Garden. Sinners fear an angry God; Jonathan Edwards famously preached on this topic in 1741. He writes: „There is nothing that keeps wicked Men at any one Moment, out of Hell, but the meer Pleasure of GOD. By the Meer Pleasure of God, I mean His sovereign Pleasure, His arbitrary Will, restrained by no Obligation, hinder’d by no manner of Difficulty, anymore than if nothing else but God’s meer Will had in the least Degree, or in any Respect whatsoever, any Hand in the Preservation of wicked Men one Moment“ (Edwards 5,4). That right there is some good ole’ American Evangelical preaching.
4. Another Jon, the Baptizer, proclaimed: »Produce fruit in keeping with repentance! Already the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire« (Matthew 3,8.10). God’s law is meant to awaken in us the knowledge of sin and to fear His wrath and punishment. His law makes our hearts faint; God terrifies us. So sinners hide, we bargain and we shift our blame all in an attempt to appease God’s justified wrath upon us and our sins. Our conscience also affirms God’s indictment upon us: we deserve eternal separation from Him in hell. Edwards unloads with the law for 23 pages before he gets to the gospel, such that it is, which is roughly 2 brief paragraphs at the end, and the only comfort he gives to the sinner is a generic flee from God’s wrath and draw near to his Door of Mercy (Edwards 23,25). Job too leaves us a bit high and dry, simply affirming that: God has terrified me, yet I am not silenced because of the darkness that covers my face.
5. What Job and Edwards leave hidden about God, Jesus reveals with bright, illuminating light as He throws open the Door of Mercy: »I tell you, this tax collector went down to his house justified« (Luke 18,14). The tax collector fell before God and petitioned Him for propitiation (Luke 18,13). To propitiate is to bring forgiveness and to have mercy. Although God hates sin and the rebellious sinner, and in His holy justice must punish sin and condemn sinners, God is a God of love who does not want to damn His creation to perdition. God, however, in His holiness and righteousness cannot just overlook mankind’s iniquity. Sin must be atoned for and the sinner must be punished. A propitiator is one who appeases God through a sacrifice, and one who atones for our sins by sacrificing Himself. John proclaims that Jesus Christ is the Propitiation for all sinners, yes for the entire world. Therefore, God sent His Son to atone for sin, Himself being the sacrifice to bear all sin’s awful load. Jesus became the Chief Sinner on the cross, and by becoming the Sinner who bears the sin of the world, He bore our just punishment and condemnation in our place. Jesus has atoned for sin, paid the ransom price and has merited the forgiveness of sin.
6. Job was not silenced by the darkness because he trusted in God’s mercy; Edwards Door of Mercy is Christ. In John’s Gospel Jesus proclaimed: »I am the Door; whoever enters through Me will be saved« (John 10,9). The journey to the Door of Mercy begins at the cross; there Christ was crucified for sinners and in being crucified He paid our ransom price. Next we pass the tomb and discover that the tomb is open; Jesus is God and has risen to new life. Finally we draw near to the door of heaven where we see God the Father standing there and looking out. While we were still far away, He sees us, and filled with compassion, He runs, hugs us and kisses us. His prodigal sinner has returned! He calls for a great feast, He dresses us in fine clothes and put the ring on our finger to let everyone know: this man, this woman, is My child. Then the celebration begins, and it will never end in heaven (Luke 15,20-24).
7. Let us look upon the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as the foretaste of this great heavenly feast. Here Christ gives us His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Here God is revealed: He is loving and merciful to sinners.
8. As we walk the path of our life, let as always remember that Christ is with us. »O Lord, You have investigated me. You know when I sit down and when I get up. You understand my thoughts from afar off. You keep track of when I travel and when I stay; You are familiar with all my ways. Before there is a word on my tongue, You already know it completely. You put a fence behind me and in front of me; You have placed Your hand on me« says the Psalmist (Psalm 139,1-5). „Afoot and lighthearted, we take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before us; the long brown path before us“ (Whitman I,1-3). The light of Christ guides our way, the Door of Mercy open before us. Amen.
9. Let us pray. O Jesus, our Dwelling Place; let Your deeds always be proclaimed among us, so that we hear Your voice and follow You to the pastures of heaven. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands.
Edwards, Jonathan. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=etas
Whitman, Walt. Songs of the Open Road. Leaves of Grass. Copyright © 1900. https://www.bartleby.com/142/82.html
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