The Sacrament as Remedy for the Christian

Luther’s Large Catechism says, “We must never think of the Sacrament as something harmful from which we had better flee, but as a pure, wholesome, comforting remedy that grants salvation and comfort.  (LC, V, 68).  What is the purpose the Sacrament of the Altar?  It is for the forgiveness of sin and strengthening of faith.  

Think of sin as just not an “oops, I did it again,” but rather as  a deadly disease.  It is a terminal cancer that seeks to kill not only the body but also the soul.  It seeks to wreak such havoc upon you that you will despair and die in unbelief.  Sin, as it festers in your body, takes control of your desires and actions.  Now you may think it is ludicrous because there are many out there who don’t believe, or don’t participate in the sacrament.  Even if they do, they participate to their detriment, and yet they seem happy and alive and doing quite well.

Here lies the problem.  Just because they seem to be in good health does not mean they are.  How often do you see a disease like cancer take root in a person as it eats at them and grows upon them for a long while until it is discovered, and by then it is too late.  Luther says earlier, “We always have this obstacle and hindrance to encounter: we look more upon ourselves than upon Christ’s Word and lips.”  For human nature desires to act in such a way that it can stand and rest firmly on itself.  If you are sick with pneumonia or bronchitis do you try and cure yourself?  If you have cancer do you ignore the doctor?  No, we certainly seek out the doctor and we trust in his expertise and schooling, not in our own self-diagnosis. 

In this same way we seek out Christ, who is called the Great Physician.  Jesus says of himself in Mark 2:17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  He is the great healer of souls and he sends out his pastors to administer the medicine of immortality, the salvation of your souls, the Lord’s Supper.

Why is it then that we do not permit some to partake of the Lord’s Supper?  It is as it was said above, some when they partake of the Lord’s Supper, partake of it to their harm because they do not understand what it is for.  For example, when my wife had her stroke back in 2017 the doctor in Buffalo could not administer any drugs because they did not know kind of stroke she had.  If they gave her the wrong drug she very likely could have died.  If you are unwilling to diagnose the spiritual problem, it can lead to the same effect.  If you do not understand what the Sacrament is and why you take it, it will lead to your judgment.  Likewise, if you refuse to admit your sin, you also take it to your judgment. 

It is for this reason that we lovingly practice closed communion.  In the case of an unrepentant person, the pastor says you cannot take this medicine.  He knows that you do not believe what the Sacrament is and he knows that it will not only not do you any good but will harm you because you do not desire grace and absolution for your obvious sin.  Likewise to the one outside of our fellowship, you cannot participate because it will only harm you because you do not understand what you are taking. Luther says, “It is just like a sick person who on a whim eats and drinks what is forbidden to him by the doctor.” (LC, V, 69)  It is not good for them but only causes hurt.  Why does it hurt?  In so doing you become hardened in your false belief and sinful behavior. As Luther says, “those who are called unworthy are those who neither feel their weakness nor wish to be considered sinners.” (LC, V, 74)

But for the one who believes and holds to this confession of faith, you should by all means seek this holy medicine.  It would be like the one who knows they are sick and there is medicine that can save them.  What are they going to do?  They are going to partake of it.  Who refuses to go to the doctor because they know they have a dangerous disease?  So also, why would you refuse to come to the sacrament if you know that your pastor is there to diagnose and save you! 

“But those who are mindful of their weakness desire to be rid of it (their sin) and long for help.”  (LC, V, 70) And so we confess the liturgy, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (LSB pg 184, Divine Service III)  Our help is therefore in the reception of the Sacrament for he promises to deliver to us the forgiveness of sins.  Where do we go?  We come to the Divine Service, for Jesus himself says, “Do this in rememberance of me.”  Luther again tells us, “These are inviting and commanding words by which all who would be Christians are told to partake of this Sacrament.” 

They are inviting words, for Jesus knows that he has given us that which will heal us from the decay of sin that attacks us and he wishes to bestow it upon us.  Understand that you are heavily laden with sin and despair and that Jesus invites you to receive the cure.  The cure is the sacrament.  Learn your sin, understand how you have a stubborn, diseased soul and repent.  For in this alone are you now worthy, because the Holy Spirit has done its work so that he may deliver to you the remedy, the medicine of life offered to you in the Sacrament. 

That Scary Practice Isn't so Scary after All!

Many like to think that Private Confession and absolution is not needed.  And yet here at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church you are always welcome to come and confess your sins.  Why do we see it as important?  Because this is what our confessions teach us.

We also keep Confession, especially because of the Absolution.  Absolution is God’s Word which, by divine authority, the Power of the Keys pronounces upon individuals.  Therefore, it would be wicked to remove private Absolution from the Church.  If anyone despises private Absolution, he does not understand what the forgiveness of sins or the Power of the Keys is. Ap XIIB (VI) 2-4

Do not begin to think you don’t need this precious gift.  When you are weighed down by the guilt of your sins, come confess your sins.  But lest you think that is a digging expedition by your pastor, or is going to be a torture by him weaseling out of you more sins to confess we read, “The ministry of Absolution is favor or grace; it is not a legal process of law.  Ministers in the Church have command to forgive sin.  They do not have the command to investigate secret sins.  Indeed they absolve us from those sins that we do not remember.  For that reason Absolution, which is the voice of the Gospel forgiving sins and comforting consciences, does not require judicial examination.  Ap XIIB (VI) 6-9

But what is this confession?  What makes a confession good and right?  We hear from Psalm 32:5, “’I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.  Such confession of sin, which is made to God, is contrition itself…Confession is contrition in which, feeling God’s anger, we confess that God is justly angry and that He cannot be reconciled by our works.  Yet, we seek for mercy because of God’s promise.  Such is the following confession, “against you, you only have I sinned…so that you may be justified in Your words and blameless in Your judgment” (Ps. 51:4).  This mean, “I confess that I am a sinner and have merited eternal wrath.  Nor can I set my righteousnesses, my merits against your wrath.  So I declare that You are just when You condmenn and punish us.  I declare that You are clear when hypocrites judge You to be unjust in punishing them or in condemn the well-deserving.  Yes, our merits cannot satisfy Your judgment.  But we will be justified in this way, namely, if You  justify us, if through Your mercy You count us righteous.  Ap XIIB (VI) 10-11

We see this for example in Jonah 3, when the King recognizes they indeed deserve God’s punishment but that he hoped that God would see Nineveh’s repentance and spare them, not because they deserve to be spared, but on account of God being a merciful God.

For this reason you are always invited to set up an appointment for private confession and absolution and if I am not your pastor and you desire this precious gift, by all means call up your pastor.  Finally there are two fears that often keeps people away.  First is now my pastor knows my deepest sins.  How will he ever see me as a Christian?  The same way that your heavenly Father does, through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.  When we move past expecting people to be perfect and learn that Christians confess their sins, then we can learn what God does for us, he forgives us.  The second fear is probably even worse, he is going to tell everyone my sins.  A true pastor does not.  Pastors are bound by their confessional seal to not betray you in the confession.  Take comfort, your pastor wants you to unburden yourself of your sin.

Not sure what to think about your first confession?  I would encourage you to read this article below written by someone who did his first confession.  It is truly a great confession of faith that he reveals to you.

The door is open.  Come unburden your conscience, receive and enjoy this precious gift of Private Absolutuion laid upon your head and spoken into your ears.  Contact me (pastor.heinecke@gmail.com), or your pastor today.

https://steadfastlutherans.org/2014/01/my-first-time-an-experience-of-private-confession-and-absolution/

The ideology of Daycare to the Church

Daycare Danger of the Church

            I recently read an article by Joy Pullman on the dangers of daycare.  I cannot help but see the parallels to the Church.  If it is not corrected, it will lead to a greater many people falling away from the faith for it seeks to undermine the basic work of the Church. 

The Church is often called the Bride of Christ as Paul teaches in Ephesians 5, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” 

            Paul then goes on to describe what this relationship looks like in the follow verses, but here I diverge and ask the question, what is one of the main purposes of the union of the husband and wife?  Go back to creation: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…”  (Gen. 1:27-28) And just in case you thought that was an Old Testament command, Jesus quotes Genesis, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh.”  (Matt 19:4ff)In so doing he also promotes the rest of the creation account: be fruitful and multiply.

            Since one of the main purposes of marriage is for procreation (despite what appears to be the case in many marriages where children are avoided ) and since the wife is compared to the compared to the Church doesn’t it then follow that the Church is all about creating and nurturing the faith of her children?

            Who are her children?  You are her children. Christians are her children.  You never stop being the children of the Church.  Apart from the Church, we are outside of God.  We have no part with him, but now notice what Paul says in Romans 8:14-17, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”  The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs.”  

            Adoption makes you legally and legitimately part of the family of God.  Paul uses this same illustration to bolster his argument in Galatians 4 and Ephesians 1.  Adoption is a blessed gift that many children have been given because by it they know they have security and safety, a family that will always love them and never dismiss them.  So for Christians, adoption gives you the blessed assurance that you belong.

            Here finally, we make that correlation to the truths the article brings out.  Children need a mother and a father.  This is the only combination of adults that has been prescribed as godly and right.  Children need a mother to nurture them and I refer you to the article above for such a great explanation, but here is where the Church is needed by all people to nurture them.  What we have instead seen, in ever increasing numbers, is that people don’t think they need the Church, just like the growing belief that we don’t need mothers and fathers to be mothers and fathers.

We simply are coerced into doing what the world teaches us to do—we allow the world to be our daycare.  Our children are cared for by sports and other clubs.  Adults seek out other daycares for themselves: nature, work, shopping, sports for them.  All of these things are encouraged by a culture of death who wishes to rip each child from the womb piece by piece.  Those they can’t rip apart, they strive to force upon them a group think in order to tear them away from the only ones who know what is best for them—their mother and father—and tearing them away from Christianity.  And we are letting them. 

If those who are left are to be spared and if we are to regain any souls from this daycare culture, we must be rebuked.  We must have it pointed out to us that the reason we are seduced by this evil is that we have striven to make for ourselves gods, a new god of money that the devil has deceitfully woven together.

Secondly, may we exhorted to drink from the breast of the Church.  And I mean exactly what it says, just as we read in 1 Peter 2:2-3, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”  Mothers, your children long for your nurture (again see the Pullman article).  There is only a façade of joy found in that which is outside of our holy mother, the Church.  The exuberance of winning a championship game or shooting a massive elk, does not bring you true joy, but only more longing for what is next. 

Instead, when we cling to the Church, like a babe to his mother, taking in the simple truths of God’s Word in Law and Gospel, receiving the forgiveness of sins through the Sacraments, we finally find joy and hope.  We never lose that sense of joy, but instead it becomes your thing that you look forward to clinging to.  Scripture clearly state you are to be like infants.  Be connected to your holy mother.  Hold on to her tightly and never let go.  We long for that constant connection, and the world has said you can find it apart from your mother, but how wrong it is!  Yes we should desire to stop being fed milk and to move to solid food, but even then, that does not mean that you are separated from the Church but rather all the more you cling to your mother who directs you to the other provider, the Father.

What we have found also in society is that men are no longer men.  (Here I would encourage you to get a hold of the book Man Up! by Rev. Jeffrey Hemmer to understand true, Biblical manliness.)  Men need to be providers but instead we emasculate ourselves and choose laziness.  Men don’t take the role of headship and we turn it over to women.  Men choose the route of no commitment and do the most despicable thing and they refuse to marry the woman and force her to accept what she knows is not right as well.  They walk right back into the roll of Adam and do not defend the women.  Men need to re-embrace their proper, Biblical role and recognize the importance of leading women and being a husband who will provide for his wife and children.

Again, this has an important part within the development of children in the church.  The Father is the provider of the Church; he is the one who fights to keep her and her children safe.  He vehemently opposes those who seek to tear his children from his arms.  He strives diligently to teach all his children in his care.  He weeps for those who have died.  He mourns for those who have run away and seeks to get them back.  He prays that they will one day return.  The Father is your pastor.  It is why you may address your pastors as Father because they truly take on an important role of protecting the Church whom he has been married to in his installation.  In his Divine Call, he promises to be the protector and provider. 

This brings us to some of the greatest truths of our parents.  Are our parents perfect?  Certainly not.  Mothers and fathers often err.  Our local churches certainly make mistakes.  Our pastors are not definitely not perfect either.  They are sinful men who do wrong, and yet, they care about you.

This brings us back to the children.  We, the children, are often upset by our parents are we not?  Like two year olds we throw tantrums when we don’t get our way.  We constantly seek to test our boundaries to find out what is right and wrong.  We may even engage in doing something wrong willfully just to see if our mother and father will reprimand us and then forgive us and take us back in.  We constantly ask why in the hopes that our questions will be answered.  Your church and your Pastor want what is best for you.  Repent of your stubbornness and foolishness.  Do not attempt to supplant your pastor with your own wisdom.  Don’t be seduced by what your fellows siblings try and talk you into.

Remember, we are a family.  The daycare that the world is trying to foist upon you is only problematic.  As one wise man once said, the family that prays together stays together.  So also the family that gathers together for the divine service stays together.  If you have been away, return, they will always welcome you back.  When you recognize your relationship within this holy family, that you are always a child in need of the nurturing you are provided, your roll within the church begins to solidify.  You will not tolerate your own excuses to avoid the Divine Service.  You will even rebuke your own family members over the dreadful sin that they are committing of abandoning the family they were adopted into.  You will seek out your Father, and beg for private confession and absolution.  You will certainly go to nurse at your holy mother’s breast on the Word and Sacrament that has been provided for you.  Don’t be seduced by the false logic of the world that says you don’t need the Church or a pastor.  Instead rejoice that your holy mother and father, your church and your pastor, strive to claim you every day of your life and the Holy Spirit will always work through these gifts given to you to create and strengthen the faith.  We don’t need daycare, we need what God has given to us, our Mother and our Father.

Why Is the Church so Important?

Why Is the Church so Important?

In the Reader’s edition of the Book of Concord there is a daily reading (Monday through Friday) that has been developed to help guide you through the big book.  My church this year has placed in the bulletin those daily readings on the Book of Concord and last week, while I was on vacation we read these beautiful nuggets from Luther's explanation on the third article of the large catechism on the Creed:

"But how does He (the Holy Spirit) accomplish this (to make me holy), or what are His method and means to this end? Answer, "by the Christian Church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. For in the first place, the Spirit has His own congregation in the world, which is the mother that conceives and bears every Christian through God's Word. Through the Word He reveals and preaches, He illumines and enkindles hearts, so that they understand accept, cling to, and persevere in the Word." (LC II 41-43)

Notice how Luther here drives you to realize that Christians are made and preserved not by means of your own special ideas but through his Church There are many wacky, bizarre ideas that have always existed.  The problem is that these ideas are so easily found today by the world with the internet, social media, blog posts, and so on

Later, he continues, "We further believe that in this Christian Church we have forgiveness of sin, which is wrought through the holy Sacraments and Absolution and through all kinds of comforting promises from the entire Gospel. (LC II 54)

Where do we go to receive the forgiveness of sins? In the Church! When we claim we don't need to go to Church and receive the sacrament we are claiming we don't need Christ period.

Luther teaches, "Everything, therefore, in the Christian Church is ordered toward this goal: we shall daily receive in the Church nothing but the forgiveness of sin through the Word and signs, to comfort and encourage our consciences as long as we live here. So even though we have sins, the grace of the Holy Spirit does not allow them to harm us. For we are in the Christian Church, where there is nothing but continuous, uninterupted forgiveness of sin. This is because God forgives us and because we forgive, bear with, and help one another. But outside of this Christian Church, where the Gospel is not found, there is no forgiveness, as also there can be no holiness." (LC II, 55-56)

Notice again: no Church, no forgiveness. The Gospel is not found in the world only the Law, and when we divorce ourselves from the Divine Service, we divorce ourselves from forgiveness. Does this mean we cannot forgive one another? Certainly not! But your ability to forgive is predicated on the fact that we have not denied ourselves of Jesus' gifts of forgiveness. Just as we pray in the Lord's Supper, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We are not forgiven because we forgive others, we forgive others precisely because we have been forgiven already.

Luther again, “Now this article of the Creed that must always be and remain in use.  for we have already received creation.  Redemption to is finished. But the Holy Spirit carries on His work without ceasing to the Last Day.  For that purpose He has appointed a congregation upon earth by which He speaks and does everything.  For He has not yet brought together all His Christian Church or granted all forgiveness.  Therefore, we believe in Him who daily brings us into the fellowship of this Christian Church through the Word.  Through the same Word and the forgiveness of sins He bestows, increases, and strengthens faith.  So when He has done it all, and we abide in this and die to the world and to all evil, He may finally make us perfectly and forever holy.  Even now we expect this in faith through the Word. (LC II 61-62)

For this reason we have the Church who distributes the bridegroom’s means of grace to us, her children.  The work of the Holy Spirit is ongoing as we need this forgiveness daily.  We are constantly under attack by the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh that want us to fall away from Christ.  They seek to draw us away from the Word of God which is our only hope in this valley of sorrow.  They connive to figure out how best to keep you from receiving Jesus’ gift of forgiveness.

These words are also the basis for my facebook live post, which can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/PrinceofPeaceLCMSBuffaloWY/videos/304012676965097/