Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Calendars go together with culture. They help to reinforce the culture. For example, on July 4th, we could ask our neighbor, “Don’t you know what day it is?” And they could probably tell you. It’s Independence Day. What happened on this day? The Declaration of Independence from Great Britain was signed in 1776. It was the birth of our nation as an independent entity. Besides national events and national culture, there are also more personal calendars. We remember the days of births. We remember anniversaries. Remembering marks the person and event as something special. In our Old Testament reading today we learned about a festival that the Lord himself instituted for his people, the Israelites. The Lord told Moses and Aaron that they were getting a whole new calendar. That month was going to be the beginning of the year. On the tenth day they were to choose a yearling lamb. They were to keep it with them until the fourteenth day. Then they were all to slaughter the lambs at sunset. The blood of the lamb they were to put on the sides and tops of the doors. They were to eat the lamb roasted, whole, over a fire. They were to eat it in haste. That is because they were on their way out. That night the final and worst of the ten plagues against Egypt would come down upon their heads. The Angel of the Lord would strike down the first born in all the houses that were not protected by the blood of the Lamb. So, in a way, this was the Israelite’s Independence Day, although that is entirely the wrong word for it. If anything it’s their “dependence day.” From that day forward they would be dependent upon the Lord their God. But it was the beginning of their nation as a separate entity. They were liberated from their slavery in Egypt. They became God’s own nation, royal priests, the only nation whom God chose out of all the rest. As you heard, at the end of the reading, God tells the Israelites to make use of this day on their calendar. They were to celebrate it every year as a memorial of what happened. And so it came to pass that the Lord Jesus and his disciples were observing the festival of Passover on Thursday of Holy Week so many years ago. They were gathered together in an upper room that had wonderfully been prepared for them in advance. It is in the midst of this meal that Jesus instituted what we call the Lord’s Supper. Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said: “Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup after supper, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying: “Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Perhaps you can see the similarities to the Old Testament festival of Passover. Passover was a memorial of what God did for the Israelites in Egypt. Jesus speaks of the Lord’s Supper as a memorial. Of his body he says, “This do in remembrance of me.” Of his blood he says, “This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Thus this supper is a memorial of Jesus, and what God would do to him and through him such a short time after this. Less than 24 hours after Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, he would be lying in a tomb, dead—the Lamb of God that had been sacrificed for the sins of the world. But the Lord’s Supper is also different than a memorial. With a memorial everybody understands that the thing that had been done is not really there when it gets remembered. The lambs that the Israelites sacrificed on the Passovers following that original Passover were not the same lambs whose blood was painted on the doors of their houses. On July 4th there isn’t a new declaration of independence that is written up and signed. On birthdays the person is not bor

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Our Gospel reading today has two parts. The first part deals with the events that we are familiar with concerning Palm Sunday. Jesus was entering into Jerusalem to celebrate the upcoming festival of Passover that was happening that week. There were more people than usual in Jerusalem because they were doing the same thing that Jesus and his disciples were doing. Interest in Jesus was quite keen because of what he had done just days before. He had raised Mary and Martha’s brother, Lazarus, from the dead, even though he had been dead for four days. This is why the crowd is large, and why they are praying to Jesus: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” The second part of our reading tells us some other things that happened that day. These are lesser known happenings connected with Palm Sunday. It is this second part of the Gospel reading that I’d like to focus on today. The second part is different from the first part. In the first part of the reading there is a joyous, spontaneous parade (which are always the best kind of parades). In this second part the topic is quite different. Jesus speaks about his soul being troubled, about hating one’s life, about death, about being lifted up on the cross. Here on Palm Sunday, even while the crowd was singing and smiling, Jesus came to understand that his hour had come. How did that happen? John says that there were some Greeks there who came to Jesus’s disciples. They said, “We want to see Jesus.” So the disciples went to Jesus and told him about it. Immediately Jesus said, “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” This is what made Jesus understand that his death was quickly approaching: Some Greeks came to see him. So why should this make such an impact? For us Christians it is easy to forget that salvation is really a Jewish, an Israelite prerogative. The people whom God chose out of all the nations of the earth were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Greek people are from an entirely different branch of the human race. They aren’t even distantly related to Abraham, like some of the other people in the Middle East were. When Jesus came he did not disrupt or overturn this basic structure. He was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. When he sent his disciples out, they visited their fellow Jews. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well that salvation comes from the Jews. Now, as it turns out, there were non-Jews who came to believe in Jesus. The Samaritan woman believes in him. Then her whole village came to believe in him. There is one outstanding male example of faith and one outstanding female example of faith. Both of them are non-Jewish. The man who is said to have great faith is a Roman Centurion. The woman who is said to have great faith is the Canaanite woman, whom we heard about four weeks ago. On the other hand, while there certainly were Jews who believed in Jesus, most did not. After his first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth the men of the synagogue want to throw him off a cliff. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem are especially hostile to him. They believe that he is a dangerous heretic who is leading the people astray. So already before Palm Sunday you see that the Jews, the people who should have received Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, were resisting him. These are the nobles of the human race, who, if anybody has a claim to the King’s Son’s wedding banquet, they do. But they are unwilling to come. On the other hand, people who don’t belong at the wedding banquet—the non-Jews—are being compelled to come in. This is not by accident. It is all there in the Old Testament. God threatens to punish all who break his commandments, and the worst punishment that God can inflict upon a person is hardness of heart. When his people, who have had his promises and commandments, who have been visited by him and know his will, do not repent, then God will

Audio recording  Sermon manuscript: This Lent season we have considered baptism by answering the fundamental questions of our catechism: What is baptism? What benefits does baptism give? How can water do such great things? and What does such baptizing with water indicate? Here, at the end of our series, we will take up a topic that is important, especially where we live, because churches are divided on the question of whether infants should be baptized. Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and perhaps a couple other smaller confessions have their babies baptized. The great many church bodies that originated in Great Britain, such as Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians; as well as others such as the Evangelicals, the Hutterites, the Amish, and many others, either do not baptize their babies at all, or they mean something different than we do when they baptize. Baptism is said to be a mere sign or a kind of dedication, or initiation into the community. It is not seen as the bestowal of forgiveness, life, and salvation. So first, let me say a little something about controversies in general. Whenever an article of faith becomes controversial, Christians talk and write about it. By God’s grace this can open up new understanding for us. It also can reveal those who are not genuine Christians so that they can be marked and avoided. Controversies can be good, therefore, by increasing knowledge and understanding on the one hand, and by purifying the church of false teaching on the other. However, controversies also can have many negative effects. This is why the apostle Paul warns Christians to avoid useless controversies. Controversies can draw out all the evils of the old Adam—pride, anger, triumphalism, party spirit, and so on. Plus, as the controversy goes on, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry writes a book about it, so that the material to be learned grows and grows. It can get to the point where there is so much stuff that has been said, and everybody wants to put their little twist on it, that we might just want to give up. While this is an understandable reaction, it is not good. Remember what I’ve told you several times before: God’s revelation to us is clear and simple. He says things like: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Go baptize in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Baptism saves you. It is not God’s truth that is complicated. The devil’s lies are complicated. He always basically says what he said at the beginning: “Did God really say…?” Then, when the lies are complicated and sophisticated, it can take a lot of effort to get things straight again. Think of a ball of yarn. Originally it is wound in such a way where it comes off simply and easily. But if someone comes and makes hay with it so that it gets all tangled, then it can be quite a task to sort that stuff out again. Of course it’s easier to just chuck the whole skein of yarn and buy a new one. The devil would like us to do that with God’s revelation too. He’d like us to believe that it is too complicated and full of contradictions. Might as well chuck it and believe some other creed. This inevitably means, though, that you end up believing in some other god instead of bearing the cross of the true God. With infant baptism we are dealing with something that has been tangled over the past 500 years. There is a lot that we could talk about. We certainly won’t deal with even a tiny fraction of the stuff that has been written about it. What I want to try to do is apply the most fundamental teachings of the bible to the situation. The argument goes like this: Baptism saves. Babies need to be saved. Therefore babies should be baptized. Let me say that again: Baptism saves. Babies need to be saved. Therefore babies should be baptized. I do not intent to spend much time at all on the first part of the argument, that baptism saves. We’ve been looking at that for four weeks. I hope it is clear to you that baptism is

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: I’d like to consider our Old Testament reading today about Abraham and Isaac from two perspectives. First, I’d like to consider how an unbeliever might regard what is going on. Then I’d like to consider how a believer understands what is going on. By looking at this event from these two different perspectives, I hope that you can see the radical difference faith makes for how a person understands God and his actions. So let’s begin with the unbeliever’s perspective of Genesis 22. In a way, Genesis 22 is one of the unbeliever’s favorite parts of the Bible. The unbeliever wants to believe that the bible is irrational, unreliable, full of tales and myths, and even those tales and myths are often more disturbing than edifying. Thus it is below the dignity of any sane, rational person to believe what the Bible says. Genesis 22 seems to offer support for such a view. After all, what kind of a God says to anyone, much less to one of his faithful followers, that he should sacrifice his son, his only son, whom he loves? It is a monstrous thought. Any parent can tell you the utter repugnance they have toward such a thing. A parent would much rather sacrifice their own self, and spare the child, rather than put any child whom they love to death. So the idea of God demanding such a hateful thing is the kind of stuff that makes people say, “If God is like that, then I don’t want to have anything to do with him.” Thus we can see that the God of Genesis 22 is hateful to the unbeliever. Abraham, the believer, is also hateful to the unbeliever. What kind of deranged fanatic is willing to go through with something like this? If Abraham is willing to do this, then what is he not willing to do for his God? Abraham seems to be the type of person that makes people say that organized religion is bad, that all kinds of atrocities have been done in the name of religion. So that’s what an unbeliever thinks of this God and Abraham his servant. Wwhat kind of God and what kind of believer would be more acceptable to the unbeliever? That’s actually pretty easy to answer. All you have to do is consider the popular beliefs all around us. Unbelievers are pretty content with how the average person thinks about God and how people should be pious. Let’s get a little more specific. Unbelievers want a God who is very detached and afar off. He’s out there somewhere, but he doesn’t say much and he doesn’t do much. If anything he is just happy to watch people have a good time on this earth. He doesn’t make any specific serious commands. He might have some suggestions, but it’s always up to the person whether or not he or she would like agree with him. He certainly, never ever, says anything weird like: “Abraham, sacrifice your son, your only son, whom you love.” God, to an unbeliever’s mind, always has to present himself in such a way where everybody wantsto believe in him. If God should happen to break that rule, like he does here, then we can just ignore that. Cut it out of the Sunday School curriculum. This kind of thing happens all the time, even with good publishing houses, like our Concordia Publishing House. They mean well. They do not want to scandalize anybody with the gory or seedy details. But this editing only plays into the unbelieving mind we all have. All people, to a greater or lesser extent, believe they have the right to believe in God only to the extent that we want to. If God does something we don’t like, then we can safely ignore that. So what this means is that a person can pledge allegiance to God, but despise whatever nasty things the Bible says that he has done. So what is important for them is that the ideaof God and the idea of faith are embraced. That is considered sufficient. These things should never get too specific. If these things get too specific, then it might cramp our style. And, after all, what is really important about life is that we always have a good time. In order to always have a go

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The second reading that we heard tonight, from Matthew’s Gospel, is very valuable because it answers a very basic question: “What does it mean to be a Christian?” First and foremost is the confession of faith. Jesus asked the disciples who people were saying that he was. They gave the answers that they were hearing. These were very flattering answers. They thought Jesus was one of the mighty prophets from of old, or that faithful-unto-death-greatest-man-born-of-women contemporary, John the Baptizer. Then Jesus asked the disciples what they thought. Was their answer any different than the crowds? Yes, it was. No matter how flattering other answers might be, they are nothing compared to Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ.” There is only one Christ. Peter is identifying this man, named Jesus, from the town of Nazareth, as that Christ. He is saying that Jesus is the rightful son and heir and king, descended from King David. He is saying that Jesus is the one through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed, as God had promised Abraham. So this man is the culmination of Israel’s history and the central figure in all existence. In a way, it is an outlandish claim. But this has been the claim that all Christians make. If anyone does not believe that the man Jesus was and is the Christ, then that person simply isn’t a Christian. There is no more basic Christian Creed than to say, “I believe that Jesus is the Christ.”  If someone were to ask what you believe, you could answer them, “I believe that Jesus is the Christ.” Notice what Jesus adds to this. Notice what the implications are for the person who makes this confession. He says, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Jesus gives to Christians the authority to retain the sins of the unrepentant as long as they do not repent, and to forgive the sins of those who repent. The salvation that Jesus has accomplished by his atoning sacrifice is distributed authoritatively when his disciples deal with people in God’s name. Here, again, we have something that is wonderfully simple. What is a Christian? Someone who believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. What is the Christian Church? It is the defeat of hell by the forgiveness of sins that Christians are authorized by Christ to give to one another. However, those who do not repent are excluded until such time as they do repent and believe in Christ. Thus the Christian Church which is solely made up of believing and confessing Christians is a great light to this condemned and dying world. Corruption and decay are all around us. Death ruthlessly takes its prey. The devil carries away cartloads upon cartloads of souls who remain in bondage to him by believing his lies. Christians know the truth: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. In him is redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So at the beginning I asked, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” First and foremost is the confession of faith. Jesus is the Savior, who is Christ the Lord. But what does baptism have to do with this? We’re supposed to be considering the significance of baptism tonight. Baptism is not just plain water. It is not a disconnected ceremony or a technicality. It is intimately tied up with faith and confession. Whoever is baptized is baptized into Jesus, into his death. Baptism is the renunciation of the devil, and all his works, and all his ways, and the reception of a new birth as a child of God, with Jesus as our brother. Baptism is the thing that is to be done first thing with anyone who comes to believe that Jesus is the Christ, as the example of the jailer in Philippi shows in Acts chapter 16. When he believed in Christ, he and his whole household were baptized at once. Within baptism itsel

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The apostle Peter has an interesting phrase in his second epistle. He is writing to Christians about how they have to live in the midst of people who are like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. He says that these people “have hearts that have been trained in covetousness.” The word that is used for training is “gumnazdo” in the Greek. Perhaps you can pick up the English cognate if I say gumnazium, that is, gymnasium. What do people do at a gym? People have hearts that have been trained, like someone working out at a gym, in covetousness, in the desire to get more and more. This covetous heart has been implanted in us by the fall into sin. It is apparent already in toddlers or even younger. As soon as we can manage it we say “mine.” In order that we wouldn’t grow up to be totally antisocial, our parents had to teach us to share. But this might be debatable. Were we really taught to share or were we taught that we couldn’t snatch things out of another person’s hands? Those aren’t the same thing. To be sure, the violence of snatching is frowned upon. It’s too direct and unambiguous. You’ll never get ahead in life that way. You have to be more subtle. Unintentionally, we were taught that it is alright to take what belongs to others, but it had to be according to certain rules. Think of how it is among siblings. In a way we were allowed to abuse our siblings, so long as it didn’t get to the point where they called in the authorities. Or, on the other hand, some of us learned how handy it is to call in the authorities for every little thing. That was another way that we could abuse our siblings. It’s the law of the jungle, but kids learn how to keep the volume down to an acceptable level—not because they are good, but precisely because they are evil. It’s not that parents intentionally set out to achieve this kind of thing with their children. Rather, we know not what we do. Since this way of living is so thoroughly engrained in us with our sinful nature, it makes it hard to know that there could be anything different. We can’t know what is actually going on. And this is where that phrase from the apostle Peter can give us some insight. If we have hearts that have been trained in covetousness, if we’ve been working out at always getting as much as we possibly can so long as it is legal or socially acceptable, then it becomes second nature to us. When anything becomes second nature it means that you no longer have to think about what you are doing. Repetition creates muscle memory. For example, I’ve done a lot of typing over the years. I don’t have to think about which buttons I have to push in order to get words on the page. The only time that I ever have to think about the buttons I’m pushing is when I’m trying to spell an unfamiliar word. Otherwise all the words simply flow out of my fingers. Equipment operators can do the same thing. At first a backhoe operator needs to think about what each movement of the controls is going to do with the boom and the bucket. Eventually the machine almost becomes an extension of himself. He thinks about what he wants to accomplish without having to think about what movements he might need to do with his hands or his feet. So if we’ve been trained in covetousness, if we’ve been trained in always getting more and more, then we won’t even think about what we are doing. We will screw over or rip off whomever we might be able to do that with without giving it a second thought. “That’s just life,” a person might say. And when it comes to parenting, Luther has a proverb about that. He says, “One fool raises another.” If we have hearts that have been trained in covetousness, and if we have been trained well, then how can we possibly do anything different than raise our children the same way we were raised? It doesn’t even enter our minds to do anything different. This is why the Bible is a strange book, and why it is so difficult for people to read. God’s Word te

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: For the question from the catechism that we will be considering tonight it is helpful to know the question that comes before it: “What benefits does baptism give?” Answer: “It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this as the words and promises of God declare.” Think about what is being claimed here about baptism. It forgives sins. It rescues from death and the devil. It gives eternal salvation. These are not small things.So our question tonight naturally flows from that: “How can water do such great things?” Baptism is such a simple thing that it appears that it is not even very good at washing the body, much less being capable of forgiving sin, rescuing from death and the devil, or giving eternal salvation. Such grand things seem like they should require grand efforts on our part, or at least a grand ritual. Baptism doesn’t seem to fit the bill. So how can water do such great things?The answer is extremely simple. It can’t. Water certainly can’t do these things. But remember the definition of baptism that was given with the first question in the catechism: “What is baptism.” Answer: “Baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word.” Baptism isn’t plain water. It is a wordy water. God’s word has been stuck into it. It is God’s word in baptism that makes it do what it does, together with the faith the trusts this word of God in the water.So let’s take a moment and consider this “active ingredient,” if you will, that is in baptism. How did God create the heavens and the earth? Did he get out a mixing bowl, put in the ingredients, mix it together, and stick it in the oven? No. He spoke the world into existence. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. When God speaks, things happen. This is a power that human beings do not have. I can say, “Let there be light,” until the cows come home but no light is going to be created.Unless, of course, God commanded me to do such a thing. Suppose that God said I should say, “Let there be light,” and he promised that light would come about as a result. That would be an entirely different thing. This is how the miracles generally happen in the Scriptures. God told Moses to stretch out his staff over the waters and that he would divide the Red Sea in two by doing so. A person could ask the question, “How can stretching out a staff over the waters do such great things?” The answer would be: “It can’t.” But when God tells you to do something and promises that it will produce results, then that’s an entirely different matter.With this line of reasoning you can understand something important about our sacraments. If God did not command baptism, if God did not promise that it saves, and if were just something that Christians decided to do on their own, then it would be an empty and powerless thing. That would be like Moses deciding on his own that he is going to hang out his arm with a staff in it. Without God’s Word Moses could have stretched his staff out over the water until his arm fell off. It wouldn’t have divided in two. But if God tells you to do something and says what it will accomplish certain results, then we should be absolutely certain about that. So with baptism God says we should apply water with the words, “I baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He also speaks to the benefits when he says, “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved,” and he says, “Baptism now saves you.” Since this is what God clearly says, he’d have to be a liar for that not to take place.The same thinking also applies to the sacrament of the altar. Without God’s Word the bread would remain bread alone and the wine would remain wine alone. But when Jesus says, “This bread is my body,” then what used to be merely bread is most assuredly also Christ’s body. Furthermore Jesus tells us what th

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The bible presents us with a tremendous either/or. Either we are a child of God or we are a child of the devil. Either we are on God’s side or we are on the devil’s side. Either we are obedient to God or we are obedient to the devil. Either we are receiving the Holy Spirit or we are possessed by one or more evil spirits. We’ve never liked this either/or very much. In our modern times we seem to have been given a powerful argument against it. There is a widespread belief that somebody somewhere discovered that there are no such things as evil spirits, nor is there a devil. These are just relics from a previous time in human development when people were too stupid to know any better. There is a variation of the same argument that is used with God’s existence. Supposedly somebody somewhere discovered that God doesn’t exist. It is believed that ancient people had to make up the existence of God because they were too stupid to explain the world in any other way. This mindset obviously fosters a feeling of superiority over our ancestors. That is where the greatest strength lies in that line of reasoning. We are able to do things that they couldn’t. We can move mountains. We can make the deaf hear and the blind see. These signs and wonders are taken to be incontrovertible proofs that God can’t exist. The logic runs like this: Ancient people didn’t have modern technology. With modern technology we are able to do seemingly god-like things. Therefore, if ancient people would have had modern technology, they never would have had to believe in gods. But there has never been a need to resort to logic for anyone to be convinced. We have run away from this either/or from the start, that is, from immediately after the fall into sin. Before the fall into sin Adam and Eve knew with all their heart, soul, and mind that God existed. Immediately after the fall they could no longer bear this thought. After all, if they brought that thought to mind, then those words would immediately float to the surface: “In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” Just to keep their sanity they needed to put some distance between themselves and God. They got busy making clothes and storing up some food. They started to make a living for themselves. They had to put their mind on other things besides the thought of whom they belonged to. This busyness allowed them to think they were independent, not subject to the either/or. That was as refreshing to them as air is to a drowning man. Plus it was even plausible. The devil had wisely went away. They weren’t obedient to him were they? Sure, they obeyed him that one time, but now they could make up their own minds. With God, they knew that they hadn’t been obedient to him. But that didn’t seem to matter. After all, the punishment that was threatened didn’t come. Plus isn’t that the very thing that the serpent had said, “You won’t surely die…” So, they thought, there must not be any either/or. Let’s just get busy making the most of our lives. They did not need modern technology to teach them that there is no such thing as gods or devils. They wanted to believe that. They wanted to be deceived. And, if you believe in yourself, and never give up, you can usually get what you want. You might think that God coming to Adam and Eve in the cool of the day and preaching to them would have put a stop to this delusion. Adam and Eve became aware of the consequences of their obedience to the devil, but they also learned from God that one would come who would crush the serpent’s head. But sin sank deeply into Adam’s loins. While Adam and Eve believed, probably with as much difficulty as anybody else, all his descendants are predisposed to reject the thought that either we are obedient to God or obedient to the devil. I think you can easily see that this is true in our day. You can already see the same thing with Cain and his children and grandchildren. Genesis chapter 4 shows how unb

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Last week we considered the question: “What is baptism?” The answer was very simple. It is the application of water together with God’s Words: “I baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The whole process takes less than a minute. With such a simple ceremony we naturally tend to believe that it can’t do very much. This is why it is important that we do not just stick with the thoughts that come naturally to us, but that we be informed by what Jesus and his apostles teach concerning baptism. We can begin with what we have heard from the final chapters of Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels. The last chapters of all four of the Gospels are very important. When Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples he did not talk to them about the weather or merely mundane things. He had just won the victory by his death and resurrection. Now his kingdom is to be extended into the whole world. How? This is what all the endings to the four Gospels address: How is Christ’s kingdom extended? And, as you yourself have heard, baptism plays no small role in the readings that we heard from last week and this week. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says, “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have instructed you, and, behold, I am with you always even to the end of the age.” There are really only two things that specifically get mentioned by Jesus: baptizing and teaching. If baptism were of minor importance, or, of no effect, then how could it be so prominent in these highly important final words? In our reading tonight we hear Jesus instructing the eleven: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation.” This is a very simple statement. The Gospel is the good news of great joy that is for all people. The Gospel is the story of Jesus, who is Christ the Lord. The disciples were to preach this wherever and whenever the opportunity to do so might arise. But you might be wondering, “Where’s baptism? What does baptism have to do with this?” That comes immediately after this opening statement. “Go, preach the Gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” The preaching of the Gospel is to result in belief and in baptism. The idea of a message resulting in belief is not surprising. This is what happens with all messages, I suppose. Either they are believed or they are not believed. So the fact that Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved,” is deliberate and significant. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to result in being baptized. Why is this? Why isn’t it just left with belief, when that seems to make more sense to us? Other passages from Scripture that speak about baptism help to answer this for us. It is clear from these passages that baptism is not an empty ceremony, or, as Luther puts it in the Catechism, that it is “not just plain water.” Baptism works. It does stuff. It isn’t just an empty sign or symbol. In our reading tonight from Peter’s first epistle, he likens baptism to Noah’s ark. I assure you that Noah and his family were not riding on a sign or a symbol. They were riding on something very substantial that saved them from the waters of destruction. The ark was very real and produced very real results. Peter says, “And corresponding to that—i.e. to the way that the ark saved Noah and his family—baptism now saves you.” So the way that you should think about baptism is that it is something that prevents us from being judged and damned. Those outside of the ark were judged, convicted of sin, and were punished by God with death. Noah and his family were preserved from that judgement by residing in the ark. Likewise all people would be judged and damned as sinners, unless they received the benefits of baptism that change the situation. Peter speaks t

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: All three of our readings today deal with something that is important for us to understand. I have to warn you from the outset, though, that it is a hard thing to learn. Here is what we can learn: Although there is sadness in all three readings, that sadness was for the good. All the Christians involved ended up praising their God who laid these burdens on them. So first let’s look at the sadness in each of the readings. In our Old Testament reading Jacob is being put through the wringer. He’s so frightened of his brother Esau coming and slaughtering his family that he splits them into two groups. The thought is that while Esau and his men are slaughtering the one group the other group, would be given enough time to run away. Can you imagine the anguish involved with such a decision? He has already given up half his family as being as good as dead. Shouldn’t this be enough trouble for anyone? But we’re not done yet. Then this mysterious man shows up in the middle of the night who tries his darndest to kill Jacob. They wrestle with each other to the point of exhaustion. The man does what seems like a cheap shot. He touches Jacob’s hip and puts it out of joint. I don’t know what it feels like to have your hip bone pulled out of its socket, but I can’t imagine that if feels good. Still the wrestling goes on until it starts to grow light in the east. Then Jacob does something so wonderful. The man tells him to let him go. Jacob, who had to have been exhausted beyond words, refuses. He knew that he was not wrestling with just any ordinary man. He was going to demand a blessing from him before letting him go. And so the man gives Jacob a new name, a name that stuck. He was now going to be called Israel, for he wrestled with God and man and prevailed. Jacob, for his part, gave that location a new name. He called it “Peniel,” which means “face of God.” He knew that he had been in God’s presence and survived to tell the tale. Now you might be wondering, “What’s so sad about this story?” It’s only sad from a certain perspective. It’s sad if you understand that life is supposed to be about having fun, of minimizing pain and of maximizing pleasure. With that perspective what happened to Jacob is exhausting at best and probably more like torture. But this is eliminating from the consideration what gives Jacob joy—and that is the relationship that he has with God. He came to know his God better, to rely on him more, and to love him more. Let’s see what is sad in our epistle reading. Paul says something nonsensical to the pleasure seeker: “We rejoice in our sufferings.” The verb there is actually a little stronger in the Greek. Perhaps the translator was a little timid. The word that is translated as “rejoice” is normally translated with “to be proud of,” or even, “brag.” So then the sentence would read: “We boast in our sufferings…” We are not normally proud of the things that we have suffered. If anything, we tend to be ashamed of them. The sufferings that Paul has especially in mind are the things that he has lost for the sake of the Gospel. He lost friendships. He lost his good name. I’m sure that he lost business. He was beaten, stoned, left for dead. Are not these sad things? Are these things that you would want to have happen to you? At best they seem to be things that one should just grit his teeth and bear. They certainly do not seem to be things that one should brag about. And, again, if these things were considered just on their own, without reference to God, that would most certainly be true. But as Paul also says in our reading, he knows that he has peace with God, having been justified through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Just before he says that he boasts in his sufferings he says that he boasts in the hope of the glory of God that he has because of that relationship with God. He uses the same word. He boasts about his hope of glory. He boasts about his sufferings. They are connecte