Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: 1. Thessalonians 5,1-6. The 3. Last Sunday in the Church Year

Monday, November 10, 2014

1. Thessalonians 5,1-6. The 3. Last Sunday in the Church Year

One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

1. Thessalonians 5,1-6 [7-11] 5514

Drittlezter Sonntag des Kirchenjahres 070 (25. Trinitatis)

Theodorus Tyro, Martyr 306

Martin Chemnitz (b1522), Pastor and Confessor ✠ 8. April 1586

9. November 2014

1. O Gracious and Eternal God, You are Light in the night. You are Hope in adversity. You are Life in the midst of death.
Be Thou our Light, Hope and Life so that through the promise given in our Holy Baptism we may live each day in the confidence of Thou abiding Presence (VELKD, Prayer for 25. Sunday after Trinity § 1). Amen.

2. »Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will arrive like a thief in the night. While people are saying: „There is peace and security,“ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers and sisters, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.«

3. The „end of the world“ theme is quite popular in our culture. Disaster novels and films seem to always crop up from year to year. We have AMC’s popular TV show The Walking Dead where survivors struggle to exist in a zombie apocalypse world. Nicolas Cage recently stared in a remake of the Left Behind series. Earlier this year Paramount Pictures attempted to sail into success with its movie entitled Noah. Our Holy Scriptures contain disaster stories like the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah and the destruction of Jerusalem. For several centuries apocalyptic literature was popular, and in Jesus’ day that literature was common, too.

4. The Apostle Paul instructs the first-century Christians about the events regarding the end of the world. St. Paul connects the end of the world with the second advent of Jesus Christ. He writes in his 1. Epistle to the Thessalonians: »The day of the Lord will arrive like a thief in the night.« Paul tells us that many in the world will say: all is well; there is peace and security. But when all seems calm, then sudden destruction reigns down upon unsuspecting men and women. Noah’s neighbors mocked and ridiculed him until the rains poured down upon them and the waters in the deep burst forth to sweep them all away. The people in Sodom and Gomorrah thought all was well until Lot and his family escaped the city and the fire and brimstone pelted them into oblivion. Likewise, the return of Jesus will surprise everyone and all the wicked unbelievers will weep and gnash their teeth when they behold Him in all His Divine Glory.

5. The world will pass away, but we should not be dispassionate about it nor fear it (Bayer 331). Instead, we anticipate the last day by faith (Bayer 331), and our faith is not waiting for some anonymous Last Thing but for the Last One (Bayer 333). Our Holy Baptism has united us to this Last One who is Jesus Christ our Lord. The Apostle Paul proclaims: »Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him« (Romans 6,3-5.8). Recall also the Baptismal Prayer that connects our Baptism to the Flood: „Almighty and Eternal God, according to Your strict judgment You condemned the unbelieving world through the Flood, yet according to Your great mercy You preserved believing Noah and his family, eight souls in all“ (LSB 268). Just as Yahweh saved Noah and his family from the Flood in an ark, so does He save us from the destruction of the world in the Church. Again St. Paul tells us: »For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him.« The Church proclaims this gospel. The anticipation of the beloved Day of Judgment is thus identical with the anticipation of the „beloved Lord“ (Bayer 334).

6. The world may fear the convulsions that foretell the end of their existence, but Christians know that the last day is not the end of life. All of God’s promises are fulfilled when His Son returns to this earth. The Apostle Paul writes earlier in his epistle: »For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words« (1. Thessalonians 4,16-18). And again in 2. Corinthians: »Therefore, if you are in Christ, then you are a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God« (2. Corinthians 5,17-19.21).

7. This all begins in Holy Baptism, and thus we begin our journey with the Lord in the holy waters of the font. He guides us and provides for us during our earthly life. He is with us unto our final sleep and He greets us in His Paradise. Death and the end of the world cannot and do not separate us from Christ Jesus our Lord. »If God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord« (Romans 8,31.35.37-39). This is Christ’s promise to us, signed and sealed with His own precious blood, and He fulfills what He promises. Amen.

8. Let us pray. O Yahweh, we give thanks to You for Your Name is near. Be Thou our Savior and Defender so that we live each day in the certainty of Your love, mercy and forgiveness. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

✠

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 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Monday, November 10, 2014

1. Thessalonians 5,1-6. The 3. Last Sunday in the Church Year

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