In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
God’s Word is
our great heritage
And shall be ours forever;
To spread its Light from age to age
Shall be our chief endeavor.
Through life it guides our way,
In death it is our stay.
Lord, grant, while worlds endure,
We keep its teachings pure.
Throughout all generations. Amen.
And shall be ours forever;
To spread its Light from age to age
Shall be our chief endeavor.
Through life it guides our way,
In death it is our stay.
Lord, grant, while worlds endure,
We keep its teachings pure.
Throughout all generations. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.
“We keep its
teachings pure.” We pray that the Lord grant
that as long as the ages continue to come and pass we keep pure what his word
teaches. Now obviously, it is not we who
keep doctrine pure. No, it is God who
keeps it pure in our midst. That’s why
we pray for it. But we don’t ask that
angels keep it pure, because God doesn’t send angels to preach it to us. We pray that we keep it pure. And
we don’t pray simply that our pastors keep it pure, since Christ has commanded
us to identify his voice on our own and judge our pastors. So in order for us – for you the hearers who
came here to listen to what God wants you to know – in order for you to make
sure you are hearing the pure doctrine of God’s holy word, you need to make
this prayer your own: namely, that you keep pure in your hearts and minds the
word of God like a seed that grows and bears abundant fruit. You keep it pure by embracing what is true
and by rejecting what is false. You bear
fruit when you do — fruit that coming generations will praise God for – just as
we also praise God for our fathers and mothers in the faith who left us a great
heritage.
The notion
that we today have pure doctrine is mocked by the more liberal churches around
us as arrogant and presumptuous. Who are
we to say that we know for sure that we hold to no error and that everything we
teach is exactly what God teaches. Do we
speak for God? Do we have a monopoly on
the truth? Well, what does Jesus tell
his disciples? Do they speak for
God? Yes! Do they have a monopoly on divine truth? Yes! “He
who hears you hears me,” Jesus said.
“He who rejects you rejects me.” Jesus promised them the Spirit of truth in
our Gospel lesson this morning. For us
to claim to have pure doctrine is not to make a claim about ourselves. It is to make the same claim about Scripture
as Jesus makes.
Only the truth
saves. Falsehood, in whatever dosage, is
sown by the enemy of Christ to rob us of what our Lord wants us to have. Jesus warns us about the bad shepherd who
does not refute error. He is a hireling
who does not care for the sheep. But
Christ’s sheep do not listen to him. They listen to Jesus. They flee every form of false doctrine and seek
to own the truth alone, because it is what Jesus gave his life to secure. “My sheep hear my voice, and I give them
life.”
To know the
truth is not a heavenly goal that we humbly admit to not having attained. No.
Knowing the truth does not depend on us, so it is not humble at all to
say we can’t know it. Knowing the truth
depends on God. The doctrine that God
teaches us is pure, because he promises us that he will not deceive us.
If we want to
know who has the truth, we do well to listen to him who is the way, the truth,
and the life. The one who gave his life
for the sheep will not mislead us. And
we know this because he tells us clearly what source we have of his word. The Bible.
The same Holy Spirit whom he sent in his name is the Holy Spirit who
inspired the biblical words that Jesus was constantly quoting during his earthly
ministry. The same Holy Spirit who gives
us a heart of flesh in place of our sinful hearts of stone is the Holy Spirit
who sanctifies us for eternal life through repentance and faith. He makes us God’s people by teaching us.
A disciple is
one who is taught. That’s the
definition. I’ve seen children’s books
that call Jesus’ disciples his friends.
While that is true – Jesus himself said so – what marked his disciples
as his followers was not the warmth they had toward their friendly companion. It was rather the fact that they sat and
learned from what their Lord and Master taught.
They were with him from the beginning – learning. We are his
disciples too when we take interest in what God speaks to us in his word. He makes us his friends by making us
theologians.
Now, this word
seems a little off-putting. To be a
theologian is to be really good at memorizing facts and thinking about deep
things, right? To be a theologian is
reserved for pastors and professors, right?
But that is not what a theologian is.
Theology literally means words about God:
Theos (God) + Logos (Word) = Theology.
To be a
theologian is nothing other than to hear the word of God and believe it. We become theologians when we become
life-long students of the Bible.
Jesus said, “If
you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). You will know the truth. This is to say that what Jesus teaches us is
pure. The truth will set you free. Free from what? Well, for one, free from the law that condemns
us and holds us to a standard that we, with our sinful flesh, cannot attain. We are free because the eternal Word was made
flesh for us to fulfill the law’s demands in our place. We are free from God’s wrath, because Christ bore
our sin for us. We are free to be the
people of God, because we have his divine favor and approval in everything that
we do. But what is any of this freedom –
how is any of it possible – how will it endure for generations to come – if we
are not certain that we are also free from error? How can we be sure that God’s kind
declaration of “forgiven” and “righteous” through the blood of Christ is indeed
what God declares if we do not know for certain that the source of this declaration
is indeed from God himself? We
can’t. And that’s why we need to be
certain that the Bible, which teaches us these things, is the very word of God without
error and without deceit.
We don’t deny
the human authorship of the Bible. It
didn’t come down with an angel from heaven.
Men wrote it. Just as we affirm
that Christ is true Man as well as true God, so we recognize the human side of
Scripture. But just as Man did not
become God, but God became Man, so also the Holy Spirit did not claim the words
of men, but gave them his own words by inspiration. God wrote the Bible. He did so in human language, namely Hebrew,
Aramaic, and Greek, and with human expressions and perspectives. He condescends. Look at who he’s talking to.
The Bible consists
of the Old Testament, which records the words that God gave to the prophets
before Christ to proclaim the coming Savior.
These words still speak to us of the one, identical Jesus who is the
same yesterday, today, and forever. The
spiritual struggles and earthly woes of the ancient Christians, which only
Jesus can address, are recorded and addressed on these sacred pages. And so it is still God who comforts us
through what the Old Testament teaches.
The Bible
consists also of the New Testament, which is the record of Christ’s life on
earth as well as the testimony and instruction of the Apostles during the first
years after the Holy Spirit was sent from the Father. Their message was the same, but clearer,
because it more vividly presented Christ, the crucified Savior of mankind. What appears hidden to our dull minds in the
Old Testament is revealed in the New.
The prophets
and Apostles were sent primarily to preach.
They spoke for the hearing and edifying of the saints. But they were also told to write what we have
today. They wrote to the children of
Israel, to kings, to historians who kept their records. But it was God who dictated to them what to compose. They wrote to Galatia, Asia, to all the
beloved who were called to be saints in Rome.
But it was the Spirit of God who was speaking through them also to
us. Jesus promised his disciples that
the Spirit of truth would recall to their minds all that Jesus had told
them. And he would not lead them into some
truth so that they were left having to fill in the blanks with their sharp
minds. No, he would lead them into all
truth. This means that the Bible as
we have it is not only true and authoritative as God’s word. It is also sufficient. There is no other word that we need. There is no key to understanding it other
than what is written within it.
So then, why
do we use other words? Why do we compile
creeds, and confessions if all we need is the Bible? For the same reason we preach. The Bible is not a mantra that we repeat in
order to be saved. It is a message. It conveys knowledge that can be understood
and proclaimed, and that must be proclaimed and confessed. The Church writes creeds in order to provide
a summary of what the Bible teaches. It
is the word of God – although not as the Bible is. The Bible is inspired word for word. But the Apostles’ Creed, for instance, is the
word of God, because it teaches what the Bible reveals. We bind ourselves to these words not because
we need something more than the Bible, but because we believe what the Bible
teaches. Listen to these words from the
Formula of Concord, to which every Lutheran pastor and congregation pledges
himself, because it is a true and faithful exposition of the Bible:
We believe,
teach, and confess that the only rule and standard according to which all teachings
together with all teachers should be evaluated and judged are the prophetic and
apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testament alone, as it is written Psalm
119:105: “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” And St.
Paul: “Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you, let him be
accursed” (Galatians 1:8).
However, other
writings by ancient or modern teachers … must not be regarded as equal to the
Holy Scriptures. But all of them are
subject to the Scriptures and should not be received in any other way or as
anything more than witnesses that testify how this pure doctrine of the
prophets and Apostles was preserved after the time of the apostles … (Rule
& Norm, Epitome to the Formula of Concord)
Pure doctrine
is not a matter of having your theological ducks in a row. It is not a matter of establishing a system
that cannot be broken so that you can simply plug yourself into it and be saved. But this is not to say that the pure word of God
cannot be laid out in simple and accessible articles of faith. It can.
Indeed, it must. Jesus teaches us
the truth so that we might confess it.
To confess Christ before men, as Jesus tells us to, is to confess what
it is you believe about what the Bible teaches.
And what does the Bible teach, but Christ. Pure doctrine saves us not because being
right saves us, but because Jesus saves us.
He is the Key to understanding the Bible.
God’s word is
a lamp to our feet because it presents to us the gospel of Christ. That is its purpose. To deny the clear light of Scripture is to
preach another gospel. To mock the idea
of pure doctrine is to sneak away with it the pure confidence of Jesus. This is what the devil does. He has two related aims. First, he calls God’s word into question in
order that, second, you doubt and lightly esteem God’s favor. And so this is how persecutions come to
afflict the Church as well. When the
devil attacks the Bible, it is not just a matter for intellectual scholars to
address. It concerns every Christian –
every theologian – every disciple of Jesus.
Because when the sure word of God is attacked, so is the foundation of
our faith, Jesus Christ.
At the root of
every sin we commit is the sin of unbelief.
In the baseness of our sinful hearts we do not truly believe in God’s
threats against our disobedience and we do not trust God to deal justly. It is because sinners do not believe what God
says that they fall into sin and vice.
And so it is also because Christians doubt the truth of what God has
promised in the gospel that they despair of grace and fall into the snare of
the devil. Their ultimate problem is not
just lust or laziness or greed. Such
weakness is common to all flesh. Their
ultimate problem is that they don’t believe what God tells them. We need God to increase our faith – first and
foremost. If we think that something
else – some issue that we need to address, some program that we need to
complete, some advice that we need to carry out – is more pressing for our
troubles to be met, we are simply wrong.
We need to hear what the Bible teaches, because we need to hear what the
Spirit whom Jesus sends from the Father testifies of.
He is the
reason the Bible is written. Every
syllable is recorded in order to lead us to Christ. Jesus sends the Spirit from the Father,
because that is where Jesus is serving as our High Priest and Advocate. He sends the Spirit from the Father, because
it is before the Father’s throne that Jesus shows what he has done to atone for
our sins.
His disciples were with him from the beginning. And so also from the beginning of our
Christian lives we have been with Jesus.
And he has been with us. He is
with us where he promises to give us what we need. He works and strengthens our faith where he assures
us of his work for us. He forgives us
and deigns to take us on and keep us as his pupils. His teaching is for our good. His ultimate goal is the same as his initial
call – to be gracious to us and to deliver us from our sin, guilt, and
fear. We know where Jesus remains with
us. Through the forgiveness of our sins,
we are assured that the Spirit who first gave us life in his name is the Spirit
who makes us wise unto salvation. When
we learn about God, therefore, we learn about our own eternity in his
love. Amen.
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