‘These things says He whohas the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.2 Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect beforeGod.3 Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast andrepent.Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon youas a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.4 You havea few nameseven in Sardis who have notdefiled their garments; and they shall walk with Mein white, for they are worthy.5 He who overcomesshall be clothed in white garments, and I will notblot out his name from theBook of Life; butI will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.
6 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” ’
At the beginning of the Church Year, the season of Advent gives us a wonderful opportunity to consider our own preparations for when our Lord calls us Home to be with Him. Advent focuses largely on our Lord’s second and final Coming when He will put an end to all things and bring His Bride, the Church, to Himself. As we consider the certainty of Last Day, we are encouraged in today’s reading to focus on a few very important things.
First, our Lord knows our works. Truly He knows all things, therefore we cannot hide anything from Him. All works done in and from faith are pleasing to God and serve our neighbor. Though works do not save us, they are they are good for our neighbor, and they are good and acceptable in God’s eyes when they are done in faith.
Next, we are to be watchful and ever looking forward to the Day of the Lord. Being watchful includes availing ourselves of all the ways our Lord wishes to come to us – His Word and Gospel preached, and His Sacraments rightly delivered. Those are the ways that God prepares us for His Coming; those are the ways by which we are strengthened and kept in the one true faith until the end.
Further, we are to hold fast to what we have received. We receive God’s Word preached from our faithful pastor. We receive Christ in His Sacraments. We continue in the church catholic and take our place among all the faithful who have gone before us.
And we get to repent. Repentance itself is a work of the Holy Spirit wrought through the preaching of God’s Law. Repentance – admitting our sins and pleading for God’s mercy in Christ – is an excellent Christian discipline, for then we are always aware of our sinfulness and appreciate all the more what Christ has done to pay for all our sins.
Let us pray: Heavenly Father, give us Your grace and peace this Advent season that we may, by Your blessing and work in us, be prepared for Your final coming and victory; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Posted inDevotion|Comments Off on Each Day in the Word, Sunday, December 11th
3 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7 in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
The themes of Advent—Christ’s coming and our need to lead pious lives of daily repentance as we wait for Him—are set forth beautifully in today’s reading.
Christ admonished us in Sunday’s Gospel, “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly…Watch, therefore, and pray always” (Luke 21:34,36). St. Paul reissues this same warning as he writes to the Colossians. Instead of indulging in sinful, earthly pleasures, instead of focusing on temporal, earthly goals, remember your Baptism, where you were joined with Christ, buried with Him and also raised again to life, where you were made alive together with Him, where all your trespasses were forgiven you (cf. Col. 2:12-13). Remember that your primary goal is living with Christ in heaven! If your life has been tied to Christ so intimately, if your goal is to live a life of sinlessness in heaven, then what place do sexual immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness have in the new life Christ has given you? What place do anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, and filthy language have in the lives of those who are preparing for heaven, whose life is already hidden there in Christ?
Keep looking up. Watch. Pray for God’s help to preserve you in watchfulness and in leading a life that is worthy of your calling. The God who created the new man in you, who has united you to Christ as your all in all, is faithfully devoted to preserving and strengthening you until the end.
Let us pray: Holy Father, bless us and keep us from all sin and shame. By the power of Your Holy Spirit, draw our eyes and our hearts heavenward, where our dear Lord Jesus sits at Your right hand. Amen.
Posted inDevotion|Comments Off on Each Day in the Word, Saturday, December 10th
12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
15 Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. 16 Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.
Faith and love are not perfected in this life. The goal is not reached here. As long as we carry around our sinful flesh, our faith will be imperfect, and our love for others will be tainted with the sinful devotion to self.
But, as Paul knew, that’s no reason to give up! Martin Luther’s words reflect the meaning of the apostle: “This life is not godliness, but growth in godliness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way; the process is not yet finished, but it has begun; this is not the goal, but it is road; at present all does not gleam and glitter, but everything is being purified” (AE:32:24).
The goal toward which we are pressing on will be worth all the sighing and struggling and wrestling. The goal is to live under Christ in His heavenly kingdom, to serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, to live forever in the perfect love of God, and in the perfect love that every citizen of heaven will have and show toward one another, without the weight of the flesh to muffle or diminish it.
That goal was already purchased for us by our Lord Jesus. We press on, not to earn it, but to arrive at it. We run the race, not to win God’s grace, but because God has made us His own through Holy Baptism and has set us on this path to run, to pursue faith and love with our whole being until He Himself perfects us in the life to come.
Let us pray: O God, mercifully grant us Your grace, that we, running the way of Your commandments, may be made partakers of Your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Posted inDevotion|Comments Off on Each Day in the Word, Friday, December 9th
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
14 Do all things without complaining and disputing, 15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.
17 Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. 18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.
It is the Holy Spirit who works faith and love in us—the faith by which we are saved, and the love by which we show ourselves to be children of Him who is love. Both of these are the work of the Holy Spirit. And after we have been brought to faith in Christ, God calls on His children to cooperate intentionally with His Spirit that we may grow in love. He admonishes us to use the Means of Grace by which He works, to walk according to God’s commandments, to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”
The Lutheran Confessions highlight the comfort of this phrase. “To all godly Christians who feel and experience in their hearts a small spark or longing for divine grace and eternal salvation this precious passage is very comforting; for they know that God has kindled in their hearts this beginning of true godliness, and that He will further strengthen and help them in their great weakness to persevere in true faith unto the end” (FC:SD:II).
In today’s reading, God commands us to do “all things without complaining and disputing.” That runs contrary to our flesh, which wants to grumble as soon as it experiences the slightest opposition. But we have God’s promise to work in us and to strengthen us, so that we may learn to walk with His Spirit and to rejoice in His love instead of complaining.
Let us pray: Grant to us, Lord, the Spirit to think and do always such things as are right, that we, who cannot do anything that is good without You, may be enabled by You to live according to Your will; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord. Amen.
Posted inDevotion|Comments Off on Each Day in the Word, Thursday, December 8th
Two years ago, we walked through the first three chapters of the book of Revelation, during Advent and during Lent, focusing on the seven letters to the seven churches. We’ll cover those chapters again this year, but we won’t stop there. Tonight we begin a year-long journey through the whole book of Revelation, and I’m looking forward to reviewing it myself even as I teach it to you. Because the Revelation of Jesus Christ was given to John, not only for the strengthening and comforting of Christians who lived at that time, but for the Christians who live in every time, and especially for us Christians who live in these dark times as the world rushes headlong to its own destruction.
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants the things which must soon take place. He sent it by his angel and made it known to his servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to everything that he saw.
“Revelation” is our translation of the Greek word “apocalypse.” The true meaning of an apocalypse is the revealing or the unveiling of something hidden. In this case, the hidden things are future things, from John’s perspective, things that “must soon take place.” The only way for us human beings to know future things is for God, who dwells in the past, present, and future all at once, to reveal them to us. The “hidden things” are future things, but also present things that are going on behind the scenes, things that we can’t see, so God has to reveal them to us. The “soon” includes things that would literally happen in the near future to the churches of God at the time of John, near the end of the first century AD. But it also includes the things that are coming “soon” for every generation of Christians, because the book doesn’t only describe the very last events of the story, right before Christ returns. It reveals many things that have been going on for this entire New Testament period.
According to John’s introduction, God the Father gave this Revelation, this apocalypse, to Jesus, so that Jesus, in turn, might show His servants the things which must soon take place. Why is God the Father giving a revelation to God the Son? Because that’s the way it works in the Holy Trinity. God the Father is the Source of the information. Jesus is the Revealer of the information, the Doer of the Father’s will. And even now, as the God-Man, in His state of exaltation, Jesus remains the true Prophet, the One who reveals the Word of God to mankind.
He did that revealing, in this case, to John, through an angel. It’s an angel who appears to John and shows him the revelation. John is called Jesus’ “servant” or even “slave.” So God chose to use his servant John to reveal those hidden things to all of His “servants” or “slaves,” that is, to all Christians, because we all need to know certain things that will happen leading up to Christ’s return.
Then we encounter the first of seven divinely inspired beatitudes in the book of Revelation: Blessed—that is, fortunate, happy, enviable—is the one who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things that are written in it, for the time is near. John doesn’t envision the situation we have, where every Christian has a Bible to read in his own home. “The one who reads” is the one who is to read this letter out loud in the Church: the pastor. And those who hear are the members of the congregation. So preachers and hearers are all called blessed here, blessed, because we get to see what’s coming, we get to see the reality, how things really are behind the scenes, blessed if we not only read and hear, but also keep—that is, cherish, believe, and put into practice—the things that are written in this book.
John, to the seven churches in Asia: Grace to you, and peace, from him who is, and who was, and who is to come. We’ll hear more about each of those seven churches in the weeks to come. John is the writer, but the grace and peace he delivers to his readers don’t come from him, just as they don’t come from me when I begin my sermons with similar words. Grace and peace come from the Triune God: From him who is, and who was, and who is to come, here referring to God the Father, since the Spirit and the Son are mentioned next. That’s essentially the meaning of His name, the LORD, Jehovah, or Yahweh. While the world changes around us, while people come and go, God the Father is, just as He was, just as He will be. He doesn’t change. And He doesn’t go away, no matter how much men try to ignore Him or contradict Him.
And from the Seven Spirits before his throne. This is clearly a reference to the Holy Spirit, who is said to be “seven” here because of the sevenfold gifts He gives, as proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah: wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and godliness, and the fear of the Lord. Also seven, because He gives them in perfect measure, in just the right measure, everything His Church on earth needs as it waits for Christ’s appearing.
And from Jesus Christ, the Faithful Witness, and the Firstborn of the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth. Grace and peace are bestowed on the churches by God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son. He is the faithful witness, the faithful “martyr,” who stood before Pontius Pilate and allowed Himself to be killed rather than to deny the truth of God, which would have been to deny Himself. But Jesus’ martyrdom didn’t end in death. He was raised from the dead, the “firstborn,” the first one to be raised from the dead, never again to die. And if the kings or presidents or governors of the earth trouble you or oppress you, know that this same Jesus Christ, whose servants you are, is the Ruler of the kings of the earth. They don’t intentionally do His bidding. No, they do many wicked things. But He still rules over them so that all that they do, even the wicked things they do, must serve for the good of those who love Him.
To him who loved us. Who loved us, past tense, because John is talking about that great act of love on the part of the Son of God that began with His incarnation and continued all the way up to His death and burial, all one great act of love. That act of love was done for all people, but what John says next doesn’t apply to all people. To Him who washed us from our sins in his own blood. That’s Holy Baptism, the washing with water by the word, the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Spirit. It’s that strange washing with the blood of Christ—the “rosy-red water of Baptism,” as Luther called it—that leaves a person, not dirty, but clean, justified, forgiven. To Him who made us kings and priests to God his Father. It doesn’t look that way right now, that believers in Christ are kings and priests. But Jesus didn’t look like a king or a priest on earth, either, and yet He was and is. And He has made you kings of a much better kingdom than this world is, and priests who have direct access to God with your prayers and with your sacrifices of thanksgiving. To him be the glory and the might forever and ever. Amen.
Behold, he is coming with the clouds; and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. John points our gaze upward, to behold in faith our Savior coming with the clouds. It will happen. He will come. And it won’t be in secret; every eye will see Him, including those who pierced Him on the cross, because He will raise them from the dead and they will have to answer for it. Those who pierced Him by attacking His body, the Church, will also see Him. All the people who mock you and marginalize you now for believing in the God of the Bible, for believing God’s Word when practically the whole world tells you you’re wrong—they will see Jesus coming with the crowds. And they will mourn because of Him. Because when they see Him, their time of grace will have ended, and they will experience His wrath and punishment. Then, finally, the words of the prophet Jeremiah will be fully fulfilled: He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. To that John adds a, Yes, amen! It isn’t wrong for Christians to yearn for the day, even to pray for the day, when our enemies will mourn and be condemned. At the same time, it has to be our goal, now, for our enemies to repent before that day, so that they are converted from being our enemies and reconciled with God through faith.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. Here it isn’t just the Father speaking, but the Lord—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Nothing comes before Him. Nothing comes after. No one can get rid of Him, no matter how hard they try. And no one has power to thwart His plans, because He is the Almighty. Behind all the terrible things that happen in the world, behind all the apparent successes of the wicked, the Lord is ruling unseen for the good of His Church, waiting to show Himself visibly in the end. Everything is going according to His plan, though we don’t see how.
But that’s what the book of Revelation is for, to give us a glimpse of those things that we can’t see, to reveal the truth of God’s hidden reign over the wickedness of this world for the good of His holy Church, and to unveil what the future looks like for you who hold fast to the Lord Christ: victory in spite of struggle, life in the midst of death, and glory at the end of it all! Amen.
