EASTER - WEEK 1 - MONDAY

LESSON: ROMANS 10:14-17

“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” Luke 10:16

Christ enters our hearts and takes His stand there through the office of the ministry. Since God has given orders that His Word should be preached, we should never in any manner despise the mortal man in whose mouth that Word has been placed, so that we do not form the opinion that each individual must wait for a special sermon from heaven which God Himself preaches to him verbally.

Therefore, if God grants faith to anyone, He employs the regular means which He has appointed for this purpose. He accomplishes His end through the preaching of men, through an external, human word.

He enters through a closed door when He enters a human heart by means of the Word without smashing or disturbing anything. When God’s Word comes, it does not injure the conscience, disturb the understanding of the heart, or upset the external senses as those false teachers do who smash all doors and windows, break in like thieves and leave nothing whole and undisturbed, and bring it to pass that the whole of life, conscience, understanding, and the senses become completely unhinged and lose all rhyme or reason. Christ does not do this.

God’s Word proclaimed by men converts sinners. There are two factors involved: preaching and faith. His coming to us is the preaching or proclamation. His standing in our hearts is faith. It is not enough for Him to stand simply before our eyes and ears; He must stand in our midst, in our hearts, with His gift of peace.

SL 11:726 (4)

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, awaken and increase in us a true reverence for Your saving Word proclaimed to us by the ministers of Your Word, so that, in this manner, Christ our Savior may take His stand in our hearts with His message of peace and joy as a result of His glorious resurrection from the dead. Amen.

Editor’s note: No American Edition (AE) equivalent for today’s sermon excerpt exists at the time of this publication. For an alternate English translation of this sermon, see Lenker, Church Postil—Gospels, 2:352-63.