Christmas is a Matter of Life and Death – Sermon for December 31, 2023

December 31, 2023 Sam DeLaurentis

Listen to Pastor Gawel’s sermon for December 31, 2023, taken from Luke 2:21-40.

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St. Andrew Lutheran Church - 圣安得烈基督教路德宗教会

3 days ago

Watch Pastor Gawel’s sermon for November 3, 2024, taken from Romans 3:19-28. ... See MoreSee Less

The Time to Rejoice is Now - Sermon for November 3, 2024

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Watch Pastor Gawel’s sermon for November 3, 2024, taken from Romans 3:19-28.

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St. Andrew Lutheran Church - 圣安得烈基督教路德宗教会

7 days ago

Happy Reformation Day! On this day we especially give thanks to God for the truth of the good news of full and free forgiveness through Jesus -- truth that God restored to the church through the reform movement that began in the early 1500s in Germany, known as the Reformation. Read the devotion excerpt below from Pastor/Professor Daniel Deutschlander (former vacancy pastor at St. Andrew) to find out more about what the Reformation was all about / why the church needed reforming, and what the Reformation still means for us today. Then go to Northwestern Publishing House's Facebook page to continue reading parts 2 through 4 of this devotion. And, join us for worship this coming Sunday (Nov. 3, 9:30am), as we commemorate the Reformation in our worship service, giving thanks to God for the pure teaching of his Word and the comfort of the gospel of salvation through Jesus by God's grace alone!Read today's devotion, The Festival of the Reformation part 1 of 4, from "On Giving Advice to God Part 2," a devotion book that reflects on the Lord’s endless knowledge of all things and his perfect plan to save usIsaiah 66:1,2 – Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”For hundreds of years Lutherans have observed October 31 as a day for celebrating the blessings of God that have come to us as a result of the Lutheran Reformation. It was on this day in 1517 that Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. He called for a debate over the value of indulgences. The indulgences that so infuriated Luther were scraps of paper hawked on the streets by which the purchaser was promised—for a price—a remittance of time spent in purgatory. The whole business of indulgences, like the whole doctrine of purgatory, which was at the bottom of the indulgence traffic, was a horrible insult to the mercy of God and the merit of Christ. Both the heresy of purgatory and the blasphemy of indulgences purchased to get out of it hid from the eyes of the people almost the entire doctrine of salvation as revealed in the sacred Scriptures. In sum, the teaching was that after this life Christians must go to a place of suffering—purgatory—to be purged through suffering for sins not fully purged in this life. According to the pope and his minions, only the guilt of sin was taken away by the suffering and death of Jesus; punishment still had to be endured by the sinner. Some of that punishment could be taken care of in this life through the penance prescribed by a priest after the sinner made confession to him. Masses bought, prayers said (prayers said as a punishment!), and indulgences paid for could lessen the time of purging. But there would always be some punishment left over that still needed to be endured after death. And so for comfort, the sinner could buy indulgences for himself and even for his dead friends and relatives. For how could one think of the suffering yet to come for oneself or the suffering already inflicted on dead loved ones without wanting to alleviate it? And here was the solution, here the cure: Buy more masses, pray to the saints and ask for their help (another soul-corrupting false doctrine!), and buy indulgences on the street!Where is Christ in all of that? Where is his glory as the one and only and all-sufficient Savior in all of that? All of that beautiful gospel had disappeared; it had been smothered by the imagined value of masses purchased, prayers said in order to earn God’s favor, and indulgences bought to set aside God’s anger against the sinner.May this brief summary of the church in Luther’s day be sufficient to satisfy the reader that the celebration of the Reformation should never, no, never go out of our calendar or our grateful memory! But some will protest, “No! We don’t want to remember the Reformation! Things have changed in the church. Even Catholics don’t talk much about purgatory anymore. Why bring up all these bad memories of division and conflict in the church? Better that we concentrate on things that unite us instead of dwelling on things that divided us five hundred years ago! Besides that, we live in a secular age; the legions of agnostics and atheists laugh at Christians, whatever label they may wear. Indeed, the persecution of ‘Christian values’ is becoming more open and growing even in supposedly tolerant western democracies; it seems that the only thing not to be tolerated these days is any mention of Christ as Savior and the Bible as the Word of God. So we all have to get together to defend what little is left of Christianity and forget about anything that might divide us! Yes, we have to build the house of God on earth together, no matter what our differences may have been in the past!”Well, what about that objection? Don’t those who say these things have a valid point? Most “Lutherans” have decided that they do! Few indeed are the churches that have special services marking the anniversary of Luther’s bold challenge in 1517. In fact, where there is any note taken of the Reformation, it is usually to give thanks that it is over and done. Instead, there is a celebration of the restoration of fellowship with Rome and anyone else, even non-Christians, who might care to worship together. Because, don’t you see, we have to build the house of God on earth! Doctrines are dismissed as too divisive to talk about and are renamed “faith traditions.” That way doctrines are disposable, just like any traditions that have become a bother: “You think this; we think that. Whatever you think is right is right for you; that way no one is ever wrong and we can all agree and get along.” What should we answer to all that? Why not do what Luther did? Yes, why not do what the church rightly so called has always done? Why not go back and ask God what he has to say about all this? The verses above are a good a place to start. Should we build God a house on earth, a church with our opinions, our decisions about what in his Word matters and what does not, about how much of it—or indeed if any of it—should be taken seriously? Is our faith just a tradition, a matter of our opinion, with one opinion as good as another? Will God dwell there where we have built him such a house, established for him such a church?“Thus says the Lord: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord.’ ” Those words of God—not words of a mere man nor just some dead prophet’s opinion—should send a shudder down the spine of anyone who is arrogant enough to think that we can build a house for God, a church in which God should dwell. In fact, these words of God stand as God’s own rejection of the works and opinions of all false teachers and all false religions. God created the world and God builds his house on earth, the church, by his Word—not ours.Should we still bother with the celebration of the Reformation? “Thus says the Lord”! That’s what the Reformation is all about. That’s what the church faithful to the heritage of the Reformation is all about. That was the phrase that ruled Luther’s thoughts and actions. Yes, it is the phrase that began, continued, and ended the work of all the apostles and prophets and of all the great church fathers down through the ages. Do you notice how that phrase is altogether absent in the thinking of those who want to set aside doctrines revealed in the Scriptures for mere “faith traditions” of their own choosing?How unspeakably ungrateful that is, given the essence of what God says in all of his Word. It is in his Word that God builds the church by showing us the wounds of our dear Savior. It is in his Word that God warms and brings to life our dead, stone cold, and doomed hearts so that we embrace Jesus and his cross in faith for our salvation. Yes, it is God’s Word by which God builds his house of faith, apart from and outside of which there is no salvation. Where “thus says the Lord” is absent, we should not expect to find his house. Where “thus says the Lord” is twisted with a pick-and choose smorgasbord theology, we should not expect the Almighty to be any more pleased than he was with the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day who did exactly that. Because of all the twisting of God’s Word and indifference to it that is so common in our day and a constant temptation, we have good reason to pray.From On Giving Advice To God Part 2, by Daniel M. Deutschlander © 2018 Northwestern Publishing House. All rights reserved. ... See MoreSee Less

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