✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Genesis 12,1-4 3518
5. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 050
Theobald, hermit near Vicenza, Italy, ✠ 1066
Henry Vos and John van den Esschen, Augustinians. Martyrs 1523 in Brussels, Belgium.
First Lutheran martyrs
Catherine Winkworth ✠ 1878 and John Mason Neale ✠ 1866, Hymn writers and Translators
1. Juli 2018
1. О Lord God, our Divine Providence, hold us ever in Your keeping, be with us throughout our life, give us greater love for You and renew our faith in You, so that we may serve You and our neighbors in our daily tasks. Amen. (Starck 163)
2. »Now the Lord said to Abram: „Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.“ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.«
3. The Holy Scriptures reveal to us that the Lord is a covenant-making God. He delights in making promises to mankind. He takes great joy in blessing His creation
4. In Genesis 12 (2091 bc), the Lord made a covenant with Abraham: »I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.« The Lord fulfilled this covenant when He brought the people of Israel into Canaan 685 years later (1406 bc) under the leadership of Joshua, Moses’ successor
5. Unfortunately, Israel kept breaking this covenant. They took the Lord’s wonderful covenant and try to make it better. Israel reasoned: If the Lord has blessed us in Canaan, then worshiping all the gods in the land will exponentially increase our blessings. Israel’s flawed reasoning led to unforeseen consequences. By worshiping the Canaanite gods, Israel began to accept the morals and values of the Canaanites, that lead to slandering their neighbors, bribing judges for favorable rulings, ignoring widows and abandoning orphans.
6. The Lord sent Israel prophet after prophet calling the people to repent and return to Him. Israel ignored these pleas of the prophets. We are just like Israel. We take advantage of the Lord’s blessings. We seek to gain more from our greed. We hurt our neighbor if it will better our lives. We are sinners; we are condemned by God’s law.
7. Since Israel broke His covenant, the Lord promised to make a new, unbreakable covenant. Since we break his commandments, the Lord promised to keep those commandments. The Prophet Jeremiah proclaimed: »The Lord declares: „Behold, the days are approaching when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be My people. And no longer will each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying: „Know the Lord,“ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more“« (Jeremiah 31,31-34).
8. Jesus Christ is this new covenant that the Lord promised through Jeremiah. The old testament flowed from Joshua; the new testament flows from the New Joshua, who’s name is Jesus. Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy back to Abraham. The Patriarch Abraham’s name is great because of his descendant Jesus. Abraham is a blessing for all the families of the earth on account of Jesus. Thus the Apostle Paul explains Genesis 12: »Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification« (Romans 4,22-25). »In Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might be given to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, and you are thus heirs according to the promise« (Galatians 3,14.27.29).
9. Christ Jesus Himself says at His institution of the Lord’s Supper: »The cup poured out is the new testament in My blood« (Luke 22,20). In Christ the Abrahamic covenant is properly fulfilled, and it is a covenant of everlasting salvation and forgiveness. This is a covenant of grace based on Christ’s shed blood and it is a testament of Christ’s steadfast love toward all the families of the earth.
10. This new testament in Christ is an unbreakable testament, for it is not based on us or any action on our part. The new testament is completely grounded upon Christ and His merit. »And by that new testament we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all« (Hebrews 10,10). Christ institutes the Sacrament of the Altar to give out the blessings of His testament. This is the greatness of Christ: His testament is pure gift and pure grace. His testament is all His merit and none of ours. His testament is freely given to us out of love. Christ gives His Church the authority and the privilege to proclaim this testament as the herald of the gospel of full forgiveness and eternal salvation. He gives you, His disciples, the task of sharing this gospel to your neighbors so that they may also experience the blessing of redemption that Christ pours upon all the families of the earth. Amen.
11. Let us pray. O Holy Spirit, You have revealed Your righteousness in the sight of the nations; make known to us, through this church, the salvation merited only by Christ alone, so that our hearts are strengthened and our lives are blessed. 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.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
Starck, Johann Friedrich. Starck’s Prayer Book. Copyright © 2009 Concordia Publishing House.
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