Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: 1. John 5,1-4. Jubilate

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

1. John 5,1-4 2616

Jubilate 038

Anicet, Bishop of Rome, Martyr 173

17. April 2016

1. O Lord God, Heavenly Father, who of Your Fatherly goodness does suffer Your children to come under Your chastening rod here on earth, so that we may be like unto Your Only-begotten Son in suffering and hereafter in glory: We beseech You, comfort us in temptations and afflictions by Your Holy Spirit, so that we may not fall into despair, but that we may continually trust in Your Son’s promise, so that our trials will endure but a little while, and will then be followed by eternal joy; so that we thus, in patient hope, may overcome all evil, and at last obtain eternal salvation. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the Jubilate)

2. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. Our faith is the victory that has overcome the world.

3. The Apostle John tells us in his Epistle: »Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Our faith is the victory that has overcome the world.« You are a child of God, and you have overcome the world by faith in the crucified and risen Christ. The Holy Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation point us to this dying and rising Christ. He was sent to redeem the fallen and cursed world.

4. „The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost. For none now live who remember it. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend, and legend became myth“ (Galadriel’s monologue in the Lord of the Rings movie). Genesis recounts the old truth we have buried and forgotten: »The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually« (Genesis 6,5). That was the state of the fallen world prior to the Flood. Lest we comfort ourselves that we are better people and less wicked than our Antediluvian ancestors, consider St. Paul’s indictment upon us: »None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one« (Romans 3,10-12; cf. Psalms 14,1-3; 53,1-3; Ecclesiastes 7,20). We have clearly lost the Image and Likeness of God in our fall into sin. The first Adam was created and begotten as God’s son. He was in all creation just below God Himself, even more glorious than the Archangel Lucifer who bore the very light of God. In his rebellion, Adam exchanged the glory of God for the glory of corrupted man.

5. God the Father does not tolerate the corruption of His fallen creation in man. God, therefore sent His own Son, begotten before all worlds, who is Light of Light and True God of True God, to redeem man. Jesus is this Second Adam who bears the perfect Image and Likeness of His Heavenly Father.

6. St. John tells us: »Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him.« We are thus twice-born, for of everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him: 1. through our inheritance as sons or daughters of Adam, and 2. as sons or daughters baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

7. The Old Adam was created in the Image and Likeness of God to believe in God and do good works. But the only works the Old Adam excels in are the works of the flesh that delight in wickedness and result in evil. The New Adam is True God in all His Image and Likeness according to His Divine Nature. He shows us the Father, and we are baptized into His death and resurrection so that we are again true sons and daughters of God by grace through faith. Jesus used a different metaphor for it in today’s Gospel Lection: »I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.« (John 15,5).

8. We are sons and daughters of God in Christ Jesus to believe on Him for forgiveness and salvation, then to produce the good works that are born from faith as befits people born and reborn in the Image and Likeness of God.

9. Sometimes the Holy Scriptures describe good works with the phrase „works of mercy“ (διακονια). From this we get the English word „deacon“ and „deaconess“ which generically mean „one who waits on a table“ but in the New Testament is used to describe an act of service or ministry to another. Jesus Himself exemplified these works of mercy in His life and public ministry.

10. As His public ministry drew to a close on Maundy Thursday, Jesus proclaimed: »Greater love has no one than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends« (John 15,13). Jesus laid down His life for both His friends and His enemies, for Jesus willingly and lovingly died for the whole world: for those who would believe in Him, and for those who would reject Him. He then became the first fruits of those of the resurrection, for by His resurrection we will also be resurrected on the last day. His love, His forgiveness, is for you: for all believers and also for all who reject Him. Jesus exhorts us to testify of His love and forgiveness with words and works of mercy. The world may hate us, but the world hated Jesus before it hated us (John 15,18). If they persecuted Jesus, then they will persecute us; if they keep His Word, then they will keep ours too (John 15,20). Whoever hates Jesus also hates God the Father; but whoever loves Jesus also loves the Father (John 15,23). Beloved in Jesus, our friends love us, but our enemies hate us; nevertheless, Jesus wants us to do works of mercy for both friends and foes alike so that they may see the love of Christ, and in seeing that love may believe the gospel when they hear it: that Jesus loves them and died for them in order to forgive them and save them.

11. Our works of mercy are needed now more than ever. We live in a land with a culture that is fast abandoning its Christian heritage and foundation. Generations of Christians have cultured and nurtured Western civilization into a culture that gladly put the neighbor first by the nature of grace and not the coercion of civil laws. Classic Liberal philosophy is firmly grounded upon Christian faith and theology. What calls itself Liberalism today in America is a mere shadow of that once great philosophy. 21. Century Liberalism is more and more becoming angry, intolerant and coercive. Day by day it casts an ever-lengthening unfriendly and disapproving shadow upon everyone and every position that does not agree in lockstep with it.

12. Our nation and our neighbors need Christians and Christianity now more than ever. The farther our culture digresses from Classical Western civilization, the more callous, intolerant and oppressive our culture will become against all others who voice a dissenting opinion. Many cultural elites parrot the political correct view that God and society must be separated from each other. Nothing could be further from the truth! Our society needs Jesus, faith in Him and the works of mercy that naturally flow from faith. Be that son of God, be that daughter of God, who stands strong in your faith, trusting only in Jesus and doing merciful works that will benefit both nation and neighbor. Amen.

13. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, Thou preserves the lives of Your Christian people. Give us Your life and strength so that we live, move and have our being in You alone, our Risen Lord. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

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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 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Monday, April 18, 2016

1. John 5,1-4. Jubilate

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