✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ
Job 14,1-6 5418
Drittletzter Sn. n. Kirchenjahres; 25. Trinitatis 070
Martin, Bishop of Tours, † 400.
✠ Armistice, Remembrance, & Veterans Day for Christian soldiers who have served the State. ✠
11. November 2018
1. О God, the Great Physician, teach us to trust not in our earthly possessions but to seek the riches of heaven, so that we rest secure that we are found in Your grace and promised eternal fellowship with You. Amen. (Starck 228-29).
2. »Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not. And do You open Your eyes on such a one and bring me into judgment with You? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one. Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with You, and You have appointed his limits so that he cannot pass, look away from him and leave him alone, so that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day.«
3. Job tells us the brutal reality of living in a fallen world: a person’s life is few of days and full of trouble. He laments that all people seem to fall under the wrath of the Lord’s judgment. We are sinners and unclean; who can bring a clean thing from that which is unclean? We are unable to redeem or justify ourselves before the wrath and judgment of the Lord.
4. Jesus spoke about the day of the Lord’s wrath and judgment in our Gospel periscope. He used the historical example of Antiochus Epiphanes IV who in 168 bc entered Jerusalem and offered up a desolating sacrifice on the altar of burnt offering (1. Maccabees 1,54). Antiochus had also placed a statue of Zeus in the most holy place of the temple, thereby turning the Lord’s temple into a temple of idolatry. Jesus explained to His apostles that just as Antiochus desecrated the temple, when the apostles see another abomination which causes desolation standing in the temple they should flee from the area. Jesus’ warning came to pass a few decades later when in ad 70 General Titus lead his legions into Jerusalem, crushed the Jewish rebellion against Emperor Vespatian, planted the Imperial eagle standard on holy ground and destroyed the city and the temple.
5. We live in a world ruled by the 2. Law of Thermodynamics: Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out. This is called entropy. This law is shown in the following example: A hot frying pan cools down when it is taken off the kitchen stove. Its thermal energy, which is „heat“, flows out to the cooler room air. The opposite never happens. British scientist and author C.P. Snow has an excellent way of remembering this law: „You cannot break even. You cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases.“ We find such entropy in Job 14 and Matthew 24. Mankind’s entropy began in the Garden of Eden. The Lord’s law promises disorder to Adam and Eve: if you eat from the forbidden tree, then you will die. Sinners die; nature trembles with natural disasters; creation breaks down. The 2. Law of Thermodynamics is the result of this fallen world on account of man’s sin and the Lord’s curse upon that sin. Yes, our end result is disorder, entropy and death. Or as Job poetically said: »Man born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. He arrives as a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.«
6. Just as a flower cannot cease to wither nor a shadow prevail against the sunlight, we cannot solve our dilemma of sin. But Job does not end with his lament; a few verses later he declares: »O Lord, You do not keep watch over my sin; my transgression is sealed up in a bag, and You cover over my iniquity« (Job 14,16-17). The Church confesses and preaches that Christ has acquired salvation for us. Job confesses this a few chapters later: »I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. After my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God« (Job 19,25-26).
7. God the Father has not rejected us nor has He forgotten us. He knows our sinfulness, and He sent His Only-begotten Son to merit our forgiveness. The Apostle John proclaims it this way in his Gospel: »For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but He sent the Son so that the world may be saved through Him« (John 3,17). The holy apostle proclaims the doctrine of justification!
8. Jesus did not come to judge us but to justify us. Jesus can bring a clean thing out of an unclean. Only Jesus is righteous, and He gives us His very righteousness to be our own. »The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it, but the righteousness of God is manifested through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no difference, because all sinned and fall short of the glory of God and all are justified as a free gift by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation through faith in His blood which shows His righteousness by passing over former sins. In the forbearance of God, to show His righteousness at the present time, to be just and the one who justifies by means of faith in Jesus« (Romans 3,21-26).
9. This pure gospel soothes consciences burdened by tribulation, sin or death. The gospel, brings us blessed assurance (seligste Versicherung): Fear not, dear Christians, fear not, for we are saved by Christ alone (solus Christus) and no one and nothing can snatch us out of Christ’s redeeming hands: not our sins, not the tribulations of the world and not even the Devil himself. We are free; we are forgiven; we belong to Jesus. Christ’s vicarious and substitutionary death solves our real, deadly problem: (which is our) sin. There is now full and complete peace between God the Father and us. We are righteous and justified on account of Christ’s merits which have now been credited to us. This is the doctrine of justification that Christ Jesus established for us and our salvation. Revel and rejoice in what Jesus has done for us. Amen.
10. Let us pray. We give thanks to You, O Lord Jesus Christ, we give thanks, for Your Name is near, and where Your Name is, there is salvation so that we are assured of our right standing before God the Father. 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 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.
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