Mark – Confident.Faith

Perhaps I am not prudent. On who is prudent shows a great deal of care and thought for the future. As our Old Testament reading states: Those who are prudent will often hold their tongues in an evil age — the implication that speaking the truth may be futile or even harmful (most likely to the speaker). And we are to walk as the wise, not as the foolish. And yet, we must, as Christians, speak the truth. Although the days are evil, to us falls the imprudence of speaking the truth.

God is Truth. To deny the Truth is to deny God. Those who deny God before men will one day answer before the Judgement Seat. Praevaleat veritas ruat caelum — let the truth prevail though the heavens fall. We are not permitted to deny the truth; we are not permitted to look to the consequences and then decide if we will speak the truth. The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, but for us it is the truth and power of God.

Now, we must be careful to distinguish what is and what is not truth, in the sense we are employing here. I have a Golden Retriever — this is a true statement. If I tell you that I have a Chihuahua, then I have lied to you (and, God willing, that will forever be the case), but I have not denied the truth. The truth is something more than mere correspondence with reality, mere accuracy. On the other hand, if someone tells you that men and women are the same or that men can become women or women become men, then that person has denied the truth.

Truth is fundamental; it flows from the nature of God. Truth also pervades Creation — dogs are not cats, men are not women, light is not darkness. Simple lying is not a denial of the truth — if a murderer asks if your wife and children are home, it is your duty to lie. (n.b., the Eighth Commandment is "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.", not ‘Thou shalt not lie.’)

We live in an age when people do not even echo Pilate: ‘Quid est veritas?’ — ‘What is truth?’; instead, we are surrounded by those who simultaneously deny the existence of objective truth and advance clear lies that ‘must’ be believed. Worse, so very many Christians simply go along with these lies. You may lose your job for speaking the truth, but would you rather lose your soul for holding your tongue? The wise of the world hold their tongues to preserve their hides, but we fools for Christ gladly proclaim the ‘foolishness’ of the Gospel — and all the rest of God’s truth — for we know that to die for Christ is gain.

In a worldly sense, it would have been prudent for Martin Luther to remain silent in the face of Rome’s errors and lies. Instead, he took his stand upon the only firm ground of truth — the Word of God. He brought down upon himself the wrath of the secular authorities — both pope and Emperor. For much of his life, he was a wanted — and even a hunted — man, but God preserved him through to the end, and he died of old age in bed. God may have another end in store for you — you may not die comfortably in your bed — but praise Him and give glory to His Name in all things. Remember your Confirmation oath: You sword to ‘suffer all, including death’ before you would fall away from our shared Confession.

The times are evil, and they are certainly not getting better. However, we are not required to win the battles God gives us; we are merely required to fight. So, stand for the truth no matter the cost. Do not deny God in word or deed. Run the race to win; hold your original confidence firm to the end. If we are faithful, the Lord may yet turn to use and be gracious to us.

God willing, we may live to see a resurgence of the Church, and of our people. But nothing in this life is guaranteed — we may not even live to see tomorrow. We must always remember that we are sojourners here, and this is not our true home. Nevertheless, there is work to be done while it is still day.

Part of the good works you render to your neighbor as service to God is speaking the truth. To partake of — or, worse, to advance — the lies of our evil age is to fall below the Christian duty of care. Every person who speaks the lie further entrenches it; every person who fails to speak in opposition to the lie weakens the resolve of others and thereby strengthens the lie.

When it comes to the truth, one who refuses to yield may alter the course of nations or of history, but surely such men have a better go of things when they are surrounded by others who similarly cleave to the truth. Further, your highest duty is to God, and unflinching adherence to the truth is unwavering obedience to God.

Our present society is not founded upon Christ, but upon a collection of lies. We are under no obligation to adhere to such lies or to support those who do. To the persecutor of God and His Church, we owe only unwavering opposition, eternal enmity. We are called to hate evil, for there is no love without hate. However, it is certainly possible to hate without love.

The world will hate you, as it hated Him first. If you speak the truth, reprove in the gate, and seek justice — or even merely support those who do so — then you will be hated by the world. And let us be clear, here: We do not mean so-called ‘social justice’, for such is an evil from the very pits of Hell; no, we mean justice as commanded by God and contained in His good Law. So-called ‘social justice’ is a perversion and a denial of justice and is, consequently, a denial of God before men.

But where is the comfort in this? It is everywhere. We may be comforted knowing that God prepared our good works for us; we may be comforted knowing that Christ will not lose a single sheep from His hands; and we may be comforted knowing that the war has already been won. We are fighting a defensive action — we must merely hold out until our Lord returns, or we are relieved from duty.

Sin, death, and the devil have already been defeated. Although the times are dark and the days evil, these are but the birth pangs of the new Creation; this old world is passing away, is doomed to fire. We, however, are being saved by the Gospel, by the very power of God. In the waters of Baptism, you were united to Christ in His death and resurrection. You will not taste the second death.

Do not worry overmuch about the state of the world, for the outcome is wholly in God’s hands. Do your duty as father or mother, son or daughter, brother or sister, or neighbor. Even if the world is to end tomorrow, do your duty. As Luther put it: ‘Even if I knew that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today.’

Amen.

Adam walked with God in the Garden., and yet God says that it is not good for man to be alone. We tend to pass over this section of Scripture too quickly. Man, in Paradise, walks with God, and yet God states unequivocally that Creation is incomplete because man has no helper fit for him. God makes woman specifically for man — more, all other creatures are made from the dust, but woman is made from man. Adam immediately recognizes what God has done:

This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh[.]

And so ‘a man will leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’ This does not mean abandoning one’s parents (for those who do that have forsaken the faith and are worse than unbelievers); rather, it means a shifting of priorities. For the woman, her husband assumes the role of head that her father had theretofore held; for the man, he must care and provide for and protect his wife. The wife is the fruitful vine and the husband is the vinedresser — so also the Church and Christ.

“And the two shall become one flesh.” Now, this certainly encompasses the physical union — if it did not, then the woman could not be a fruitful vine filling the home with children — but it is more than that. However, we must get the basics correct before we can move on to more advanced matters. To be blunt: Marriage is sexual intercourse and sexual intercourse is marriage. This is why adultery is such an egregious sin — the man who lies with a married woman steals her from her husband and claims her for himself, and the woman who lies with a man who is not her husband steals and defiles her body, rejecting and violating her husband’s rightful headship. Again: Marriage is more than the physical union, but it is certainly not less — no marriage is truly valid until it is consummated.

The natural — and inevitable — outcome of marriage (barring the physical effects of sin on our world and our bodies preventing it) is children. This is by God’s design. There is no better environment for raising children than a home with their biological parents who are still married to each other. And, again, this is why adultery is such egregious sin: Adultery is divorce and divorce is adultery. Adultery destroys homes and causes permanent (in this life) harm to any children in those homes. It is to our great shame that divorce is so easy and adultery is unpunished in our society. But let us return to children.

We are told, explicitly, in Scripture, that God’s promises are ‘for us and for our children’. In the Old Testament, all males were circumcised on the eighth day. It was the duty of the head of the household to see that this was done. In the New Testament, the antitype (Baptism) has replaced the type (circumcision). The antitype is always greater, is always more complete than the type. Only males were circumcised — female members of the household were included in the covenant under their head (i.e., their fathers and then their husbands). Baptism, being the antitype, is available to both men and women, boys and girls.

Some would contend that children should not be baptized. I would, first, ask where they find such a command in Scripture, and I would, then, second, highlight that they have taken Baptism — the antitype — and made it lesser than circumcision — the type. To contend that children were included in the Old Testament, but must now be excluded in the New Testament, is not merely wrong, but actually demonic — remember: all false doctrines are ‘doctrines of demons’.

The Church has always baptized infants; the Church baptizes infants; the Church will — so long as the Earth endures — always baptize infants. But what of those who deny Baptism to children? The people brought βρεπη to Christ — that is, they brought Him their infants. The disciples attempted to prevent these parents from bringing their children to Christ and He rebuked them: ‘Let the παιδια (the children) come to Me, and do not hinter them.’ But Christ goes further: He says that the Kingdom belongs to such as those children and that no one will enter the Kingdom unless he receives it as would a little child. Some who teach falsely may be saved, but they endanger souls with their lies. We must pray that God enlightens them, and, if they will not be enlightened, that they will be struck mute. Better to enter the Kingdom with one’s tongue torn out than to enter the fires of Hell with one’s deceitful mouth intact.

The women and children in ancient Israel — even though only males eight days old or older were circumcised — were covered by the head of the household. So today — the children of believing parents should be baptized. ‘This promise is for you and for your children.’ Under the headship of their Christian fathers, Christian children should be baptized. In the waters of Baptism, we are united to Christ as our one true Head; we become part of His body — the Church. It is evil to deny to children this union with Christ on the grounds of (faulty) rationalism and enthusiasm. Satan loves unbaptized children.

There are, ultimately, two ‘prime’ heads: Christ and Satan. Those who have not passed through the waters of Baptism and, thereby, from death to life and from the devil’s kingdom to Christ’s Kingdom have Satan has their head; such persons are, as we all once were, dead in sin and trespass. We who have been baptized and believe are no longer members of the devil’s kingdom, slaves to sin and death; we have been given new life and we have Christ as our Head. Baptism is the first death and the first resurrection; those who experience the waters of Baptism will not taste the second death.

But do not tempt God and do not return to your old ways. Run the race to win — persevere to the end. Yes, you will stumble and even fall, but Christ will be there to lift you back to your feet — He will lose none of the sheep the Father has placed in HIs hands. ‘Open-eyed my grave is staring, / even there I’ll sleep secure.’ There are some Lutheran graves with two (Latin) words on them: “Baptizatus sum.” — “I am baptized.” You are a child of God — you belong to Him. Christ bought you with His blood.

In the first Adam — the head of our race — all men sinned; in the second Adam — Christ — all are offered new life in the waters of Holy Baptism. Christ is the Head of all those who have passed from death to life. He is the Head of the Church. But we are an unfaithful bride — we stray even after our Baptism and we must continually return to the Word and the Sacrament for the forgiveness of our sins and the renewal and strengthening of our faith. To the pharisees that tried to entrap Him, Christ declared that divorce was not part of God’s good plan, and that is good news for us: Christ washes His bride whiter than snow, and He will protect and preserve her. The Church will endure.

Amen.

Wealth is a blessing, but it is also a test. Will you be faithful with what God has given you? Or will the corrosion — the idleness — of your wealth testify against you at the Judgement? Do you trust in your wealth or do you trust in God? To trust in your wealth is to set it up in your heart as idol — as your god. For that in which you place your trust and to which you look for good is truly your god.

But what can wealth actually buy? A new house, a fast car, and many other such things. There are men with enough wealth that their yachts have smaller yachts moored inside them, helipads for excursions, and entire theaters. ‘Fool, tonight your soul is required of you!’ They will take none of it with them, but their excesses will surely testify against them. As will the words of those who defend such things testify against them.

Your wealth is not yours — you do not own or deserve a single penny. All you have comes from and belongs to God. The God Who can demand your soul certainly has dominion over your wealth. Just ask Job in Whose hands our material goods rest. Job’s faith is praised because it was steadfast and because he was faithful with much and with little. The poor widow still tithed.

And what does Scripture say about tithing? Yes, certainly, we are — as Christians — free to determine how much we will give (n.b., how much, not if), but we must not ignore the words of Scripture. Not only does God condemn the Israelites for not tithing, He calls them robbers. Further, God — here — invites us to test Him. He challenges us: If we faithfully tithe, He will bless us. The faithful nation receives God’s blessings and gifts; the faithless nation receives the wages of sin. One need not be a prophet to discern the sort of nation in which we live today.

We are richly blessed, certainly, but our wealth has become for us a snare and we are spiritually bankrupt. Or do you think that we live in a faithful nation? We are more decadent than Imperial Rome at her height. We sacrifice more children than all of Canaan combined. We are more depraved than Sodom and Gomorrah before the fire from Heaven erased their evil from the Earth. The Amorites took four hundred years for their wickedness to be complete; if nothing else, we are efficient — our wickedness will surely be complete before we hit three hundred years.

Are we really such fools that we think God will simply overlook our sins, our manifest crimes, our deep and abiding evil? Yes, if we repent, God, in His infinite mercy and grace, will forgive us. But we do not repent — we are a nation of prideful, high-handed sinners. The entire calendar is slowly being taken over by celebrations of sexual degeneracy, and even pastors — let alone laity — seem unwilling merely to voice Scriptural truth. There is an ongoing — and worsening — epidemic of transsexualism, and the Church is largely silent. Aborted fetal tissue is used for medical experimentation and drug production, and the Church is largely silent. Those who fail to condemn evil become, thereby, complicit in the evil.

If these are not the true End Times, then it will surely take a miracle to salvage the shipwrecked and sinking vessel that we call a country. Do we have a single faithful man in a position of power in the left-hand kingdom? Not a single one comes to mind. Perhaps there is a faithful man serving as city dogcatcher somewhere. Nations often receive the rulers they deserve.

You may think: ‘What about freedom — of religion, et cetera — and liberty?’ You wicked servant. Who empowered you to relax the commands of God? ‘But surely,’ you may think, ‘there is a separation of Church and State?’ You illegitimate child of Satan and his ‘Enlightenment’. Where does Scripture separate the kingdoms in such a fashion? Where do the Confessions do so? The authors and signers of our symbolic books certainly did not believe in or advance such a separation, for it is wholly foreign to Scripture. Our Confession was presented to the Emperor by princes.

Faithful rulers are a great blessing from God. Yet we find ourselves ruled by demons. In no small part, we have done this to ourselves. What battlefield have we not abandoned? For nearly a century, now, we have ceded the left-hand kingdom to evil men. Have we suddenly become Anabaptists? And the right-hand Kingdom fares hardly better. We are surrounded, inundated, overrun by heretics and the heterodox. Sects and schismatics alike proliferate, and we even export them abroad. We are, as a nation, a font of idolatry, false doctrine, faulty theology, and enthusiasm. And our own Synod is not immune.

"[I]f the foundations are destroyed, / what can the righteous do?" A great many Christians have, historically, met deaths that the world would consider untimely. You should expect nothing better than martyrdom, and you should — with Job — thank and praise God in all circumstances. We have — in Christ and His Passion — already won the war, but we will not win every battle. But you need not worry, for the God Who created you from nothing and recreated you in the waters of Holy Baptism with His Word will just as easily raise the saint who goes to the lions or to the fire as the one who dies peacefully in his bed and is buried.

We live in a fallen world, and it is seemingly occupied, at present, with attempting to find the nadir, but, of course, there is no bottom, no floor when it comes to sin. Things can always get worse. But they can also get better. We are called to make things better. Run the race to the end, serve faithfully, and hear Christ’s words: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’

As Lutherans, we know better than to fall for the Anabaptist lies of quietism, pacifism, and the avoidance of public offices. If Christians do not occupy public offices, then surely someone else will. We are the Church Militant. We are Christ’s body. It is incumbent upon us — it is our duty — to advance the Kingdom. Those who grow up in a Christian nation are — much like those who grow up in a Christian home — more likely to remain in the faith. Christ crucified for sinners is the heart of our faith — His blood washes us white as snow. But it may be our blood He uses to advance the Kingdom. May we not be found wanting.

Amen.

You may be operating under the belief that our reading from James does not apply to you. ‘I am not a teacher.’ you may say — ‘at least not a teacher in the Church’ you may think. And that may be true, in a strictly limited sense, but the proper understanding of Scriptural warnings and duties is seldom the strictly limited one. Are you a husband? You are a teacher with regard to your wife. Are you a parent? You are a teacher with regard to your children. The central issue for the teacher is the duty to speak the truth, and that is certainly not limited to religious matters.

All truth is one. To teach falsely with regard to any truth is to become a false teacher and invite the stricter judgement. Certainly, it is a more egregious violation to stand up in the Church and lie about God or His Word, but do you for a second believe that God will ignore it when you lie about Him elsewhere? The God Who watches as a false teacher preaches works righteousness is the same God Who sees you put pronouns in your bio on social media. Or did you think that God would simply ignore Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok?

And do not for a second believe that you will escape scrutiny by declining to take up the task of teacher. If you are a husband or a father — and you had best be the former if you are the latter — then I direct you to the undertitles in the Small Catechism: ‘As the head of the household should teach.’ Just as abortion does not preclude a woman from becoming a mother, but merely makes her the mother of a murdered child — of a child she murdered — so failing to properly teach your wife and children does not prevent you from becoming a teacher, but merely makes you a failed one. And mothers? You are also teachers of your children — God will require their souls from you no less than He will require yours from your husband.

And so what does it mean to be a teacher? It is nothing more than to have a duty to instruct someone in the truth. This duty may be — to some degree — assumed, but is more often simply acquired. If God has given you the gift of intelligence, then know for a certainty that He will require from you that you put that gift to proper use.

Of all the gifts God bestows, intelligence may be the most dangerous — although it could be debated how precisely the curve interacts with the danger. God does not bestow gifts randomly or without purpose. If God has blessed you with an agile mind, a keen intellect, or a sharp wit, then He has done so for a reason — and it is incumbent on you to make good use of your gift. Failing to use your gifts is just as much sin as is misusing them: From him to whom much has been given will much be required.

You may be thinking ‘thank God I barely passed by classes’ or ‘good thing I got all Cs’, but, leaving aside the matter of the correlation between grades and intelligence, you should not be so quick to presume you have not fallen afoul of this duty simply because you are comfortably average, or even if you are significantly below average. To attempt to exercise a gift you have not been given is just as much a sin as failing to use a gift you do possess. If you are not a prophet, then prophesying is sin; if you are not called o teach, then teaching is a sin. And do not neglect the fact that a call to teach one person is not equivalent to a call to teach another. Wives, you are to teach your children; you are not to usurp your husband’s headship and attempt to teach him, nor are you to teach in the Church.

Do you enjoy arguing on the Internet? You may be teaching — best make sure you are teaching the truth. Or do you think that you will evade God’s rules on a technicality? The Jews hang special ‘cords’ — called an "eruv" — to — per their rules, not God’s — delineate certain public spaces as private in an attempt to circumvent their fundamentally disordered understanding of what it means to keep the Sabbath. ("What does this mean? We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.") A sizable chunk of New York City is actually encompassed by an eruv. A reminder: God will not be mocked.

And so what are the respective duties — teachers to students and students to teachers? The duty of teachers is simple — if by no means easy: teach the truth; do not mislead your students. Yes, it is a greater sin to lie directly about God, but lying about His Creation is still egregious sin. Do you hold that there are more than two genders or that they are not biologically determined? You are a false teacher. Do you adhere to Neo-Darwinian Evolution? You are a false teacher. Do you deny the reality of the nations? You are a false teacher. To deny any truth is to deny Truth. God’s Creation is a reflection and a product of His Nature; to deny the nature of Creation is to deny the Nature of God — is to lie about God. Teachers, you must speak the truth, no mater the consequences. Praevaleat veritas ruat caelum.

The duty of students is to be teachable; in the words of our Isaiah reading, the student must be neither rebellious nor inclined to retreat to his former (incorrect) ways. But this is not a hapless or a mindless credulity — use what gifts and resources God has given you. Hold your teachers to the Word of God. Ultimately, it is the Scriptures that are your one infallible teacher and you must hold all other teachers to the standard of Scripture. This is not ‘me and my Bible under a tree’ — we are not Schwärmer; we stand in a long line of faithful teachers God has raised up to instruct and to protect His Church. We hold to the Confessions because they are faithful to Scripture, because they guide us along the strait and narrow. If you believe a teacher is in error, demonstrate the error from Scripture or the Confessions — if necessary or helpful, enlist the aid of other teachers. The wise teacher will thank you for the correction; the false teacher will reveal himself.

God has provided us with a wealth of resources to guide us through this life, and we must make use of them — instruct your children from the Catechisms, read from the Scriptures with your spouse, attend Bible studies, listen to (good) podcasts. There is no excuse for ignorance. Never before in history have we had such a wealth of resources. Yes, there are dangers — false teachers who would lead astray — but God has not abandoned us and the Spirit will lead us into all truth using the Word and faithful teachers.

Above all, hold true to the core of our faith: Christ crucified for sinners. Do not fall for the siren song of Gospel reductionism — do not deny the Law or the nature of reality — but boldly profess that all truth is one. The same God Who shed His holy, precious blood for you on the Cross is the God by, for, and through Whom all things were created. Do not deny Him by denying His Creation or His Nature. God will not be mocked.

Amen.

For God shows no προσωποληψία — a word that appears only four times in Scripture: in the verse in Romans just quoted, in our reading from James, in Ephesians 6:9, and in Colossians 3:25. A curious word in Greek — if we take the ‘literal’ meaning, then it would be something like ‘face taking’, which sounds quite odd until we actually think about it. To commit the transgression of προσωποληψία is to regard that which is not relevant, or, as our study Bible puts it: ‘to judge unfairly on the basis of worldly criteria’. In our reading from James, this partiality is demonstrated by way of an example — the preferential treatment of the wealthy.

But it is always morally wrongful to show preferential treatment to the wealthy? Would not such a blanket condemnation condemn such things as VIP tickets, private jets, luxury vehicles, expensive restaurants, and a whole host of other such things? If the prohibition is not properly understood, yes. But it is not a blanket condemnation, for we must look at the context: The condemned partiality is being shown in the Church with regard to irrelevant, worldly criteria. The wealth or poverty of an individual should not decide where he may or may not sit in the Church, and the poor should not be made to feel unwelcome.

And yet the pastor stands before the congregation where others are not permitted to stand, and speaks words others are not permitted to speak. Ah, but that is not according to irrelevant, worldly criteria — the pastor is called and ordained, and so stands before the congregation properly and not due to any partiality. Similarly, we may provide preferential parking, seating, et cetera, to the old or the infirm. The issue is the appropriateness of the criteria we are employing as warrant for our actions. And so, in the words of Leviticus, we rise before grey hairs and honor our elders, but we do not permit the large donor to have his own parking space or a reserved pew, at least not because of his wealth.

As you have undoubtedly noticed, this is a matter primarily of the right-hand Kingdom in our reading from James, but the rule applies in the left-hand kingdom as well. We are prohibited from perverting justice — we may favor neither the rich nor the poor. All truth is one, and to subvert justice is to pervert truth. The propriety of any of the aforementioned forms of special treatment afforded the wealthy is a separate matter — the central issue is justice (when dealing with the left-hand kingdom). But let us return to the right-hand Kingdom.

In our Gospel reading — and do carefully note that — Christ calls a woman a ‘dog’. Or does He? The Greek word for ‘dog’ is κυων, but Christ calls her κυναριον, not god, but the diminutive ‘little dog’ or ‘puppy’ — the term you would use of a household pet. Perhaps His disciples missed His point, but the woman did not, and she answered Him in kind, saying that even the family dog feeds on the scraps. But what point was Christ making? He was testing her faith and instructing His disciples. There is nothing special about Jewish blood — the blood descendants of Abraham are not saved by their blood. There is only one Blood that saves, and it was spilled on Calvary, and we receive it in the Sacrament.

Christ was not insulting the woman — He was teaching. He commends her for her faith while simultaneously making a polemical point against Jewish conceptions of how one is saved. Again: This is the Gospel reading.

When Christ came, He healed the blind and the lame as our reading from Isaiah prophesied and the mute and the deaf as the second half of our Gospel reading related. And yet the Jews saw but did not see, heard but did not hear. Trusting in their lineage, many of them rejected the clear teaching of Scripture that we are saved by faith alone. And yet Judaizers persist to this day. Some take the form of ‘Messianic’ Jews, who insist on keeping the ceremonial law — a righteousness of works — by which none is saved — instead of faith. Others take the form of Dispensationalists and ‘Christian’ Zionists, who insist that the Jews are special in some way — a significantly more egregious partiality than that shown to the rich man in our reading from James.

You are not saved by your blood — whether it is German or French or Dutch or Jewish or anything else; you are saved by His blood, by the holy, precious blood that Jesus Christ shed to cover the sins of the world. If you would be saved by your blood, then you will die in your sins. Solo Christo — by Christ alone — are we justified, washed in the blood of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.

It is God Who sets the prisoners free, opens blind eyes and deaf ears, heals the lame and the sick, and makes us white as snow. Do not be deceived by false teachers who would preach another gospel and another righteousness — whether of the blood of men, the Law, or anything else. Outside Christ, there is no salvation. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus — by grace through faith we are made members of the Body of Christ, His Church. With God, there is no partiality. Amen.