Devotion 6.18.17

I have, and you have in your lifetime,  met people who believe they have no sin.  Oh? you ask.  Yes, and they say things like this:  "Well, I may not be perfect, but at least I've never...."  That is called meeting a level you believe to be the letter of the law but failing to understand the spirit of the law.  It is always easy to look at the poor slob next door and say, "Thank God I'm not like that," and not realize you are acting out the parable from Christ about the Pharisee thanking God for being himself and not like "other men." (Luke 18)  Christ states emphatically that the more worthy prayer was the tax collector's prayer, unable to even look to heaven, asking, "God have mercy on me, a sinner." (v 13)  Christ states, "I tell you that this man, rather than the other man, went home justified before God." (v 14)

Yet we go on in our lives full of piety and thankful that we are who we are and not like those "other men."  That's a sad statement from the very confession we use from 1 John, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."  Paul notes in Romans 5, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned - for before the law was given, sin was in the world.  But sin is not taken into account when there is no law."  The law gives us measure of our sins, but sin existed before the law.  We know we all sin, so to say otherwise is deceiving ourselves and probably denying Christ as the light in this world who frees us from sin, Satan and death.

So, when we read the Fifth Commandment, "You shall not murder," we dust our hands and say, "Well, at least I've never done that."  "But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgement," (Matthew 5:21) is Christ's response to the subject of the Fifth Commandment.  In essence, the violation of a commandment is what is on our heart, not in our actions.  Have I physically killed someone?  No.  Have I violated this commandment?  Absolutely. Is one better than the other or worse?  No, not in God's eyes.

Luther asks what God requires of us in this commandment, and surprisingly, it isn't that He expects us not to kill, rather, "We should help and support our neighbor in every bodily need, and we should be merciful, kind, and forgiving toward our neighbor.  Likewise, we should avoid tempting our neighbor in acts of self-destruction (excess in drinking, use of drugs, etc.)."  Interesting, Luther doesn't mention not taking life (he does in the definition of murder in the various forms of the taking of life), but rather God expects us to "love our neighbor." 

We pray that we are honest with our own hearts and examine our own lives honestly.  We pray that we take those sins of the heart, capable of violating the commandment in the same way a heinous earthly crime might, to our Lord Jesus Christ, seeking His forgiveness and grace.

Hope Men's Ministry

Devotion 6.16.17

It is fitting that the Friday before Father's Day we have the opportunity to look at the 4th Commandment beginning the Second Table of the Ten Commandments.  The entire Men's Ministry at Hope Lutheran Church and School, and probably other churches if yours has a ministry for men, was intended to create men of Christ, dedicated to uniting in fellowship around the Word through growing to become the men Christ desires us to be in service to Christ, the church, our families, our neighbors, and the entire community, believers and non-believers alike.  The First Table defines our relationship to God, and the Second Table defines our relationships here on earth, beginning with our primary figures in our lives, our parents.

It's interesting to note that God speaks to us in the First Table and places Himself at the top of our priorities:  "You shall have no other gods;" and, then on the Second Table, He places our parents at the top of our priorities:  "Honor your father and your mother."  In all we do, we place God first in our lives.  In all we do on earth, our parents begin us on our path to do just that.  As fathers, we are the primary spiritual driver in the family.  Hebrews 12 speaks to this as the author notes that we have all had fathers who disciplined us, all the more reason to receive the discipline of our Father for our spirit and eternal life.  The Catechism notes Proverbs 22 as it says, "Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old."

We pray that we devote ourselves to better understanding God's expectations for us in our lives.  We pray that we read, learn, and digest God's Word and its meaning for us as men of God and as husbands and fathers, a role given as a role of responsibility.  We pray that we are there for others who need that fatherly figure in their lives with their own father possibly not being there for them.

Have a blessed Father's Day this Sunday.

Hope Men's Ministry

Devotion 6.15.17

Why do the commandments on my wall in the house look different from the ones in my church (and in the catechism)?

This is one of those little things that annoys me but it really shouldn’t.  It really is just a matter of tradition.  In the end, I would encourage you to teach it in the tradition in which we practice and worship.  Some church bodies number the 10 commandments differently.   Below is a list of “all” the commandments and if you read them you will notice there are 11.

1. You shall have no other gods before me
2. You shall not make for yourself an image
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy
5. Honor your father and your mother
6. You shall not murder
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal
9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house
11. You shall not covet your neighbors wife, or manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to you neighbor.

Some traditions combine 1 and 2 as one commandment (as we Lutherans do) and others combine 10 and 11 (we Lutherans separate).  The debate can go on and has gone on even going back to the 3^rd century.  The debate is even more complicated than just the two simple suggestions here.  Some Jewish traditions consider the 1^st commandment to be what we call the preface, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”  In the end, does it matter?  Not really.  Different traditions have their different ways.  I believe it would be easier to simply say we have 11, but that would mean changing a lot of books and history, including the Bible which refers to their being 10.  In the end, I don’t believe one way is right and the other wrong.  Though it is annoying.  But here is a little further explanation as to why we number the way we do.

Simply put, we number it the way we do because that is how it was numbered in the time of the Reformation. In fact it was Saint Augustine who numbered it this way, to which Luther was an Augustinian monk before the reformation.  Therefore still today Catholic and Lutheran churches follow the same numbering. 

What about the Bible?  Well, the Bible doesn’t help us much here.  We would say that the #2 above is simply epexegetical to meaning "it is further explaining."  But when you read the 10 commandments in Deuteronomy 5 with #10 and 11, there is a different word used for coveting wife and coveting everything else, therefore we separate them.  But the 10 commandments account in Exodus 20 do not have as clear a distinction.   It’s also important that when reading we remember that the verse numbering and paragraph breaks as they are were added by contemporary scholars, not part of the original text.  Therefore, their biases often are seen in numbering and break decisions. 

Devotion 6.14.17

If you could summarize all of life down to one statement, what would that be? Would it be a serious statement coming from some deep philosophical vein?  Would it be some substantive, quantitative voice of rational thought about the interaction of all elements that comprise life?  Would it be something off-the-wall like a Yogi Berra statement, such as, "Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too."


There are two tables to the Ten Commandments, and the first table confirms our relationship with God.  No other gods, name in vain, and Sabbath Day.  God states his commands for how we are to revere, honor, speak of, interact with, and in all hold Him in awe, fear, and love.  As Christians, these commands speak to us in terms of what separates us from, as they did with Israel in the Old Testament.  They are commands, but they also speak to how God's people are to "be."  With Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection giving us eternal life, our commitment changes to following the commands as a response to God's love, knowing that even when we stumble, we are forgiven.


How do we best sum up the First Table which contains the three commandments between us and our Lord?  Christ said it this way in Matthew:  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (22:37)  That's a perfect summary given by the only person to walk perfectly though life.  We pray that we do at all times and in all places keep our hearts and minds on Christ Jesus.  Amen.


Hope Men's Ministry

Devotion 6.13.17

To be a fan of the game of baseball, do you need to actually attend the game in the ball park?  The answer is no.  First, who can afford to?  Secondly, baseball, like other sports, maps out the fan base and you find many fans in areas hundreds of miles from a ball park, which means a fan base is built on radio, television, and news.  In my childhood, most days were spent reading about the game in the newspaper and recapping every aspect in the box score in the Houston Chronicle.  Today finds me watching the game on television some, listening via the MLB app mostly, and reading and recapping the three teams I follow via the MLB app each day.  I am a fan of the game, follow three teams, and yet I rarely go to a game in person.

So, can you be a Christian and not attend worship?  In reading about the Third Commandment in the Small Catechism, and in talking to pastors from various faith backgrounds (not all Lutherans), I still like our Pastor's rules when it comes to faith:  God is God;  I'm not God; let God be God.  Yet, the unanimous viewpoint of those who study and become pastors is you need to be in worship with the Body of Christ to really be a practicing Christian (so much for the "I can be a Christian and be with God while fishing" argument I used to put forth).

Yet in our fast-paced, 24/7/365 society where kids' activities, our activities, and routines dictate schedule, we find ourselves often ignoring or looking past the Third Commandment of "keeping the Sabbath Day holy" (soccer especially took Sundays away from this family with tournaments in far away places...mainly because we let it I suppose).  Luther is clear on this though:  "God requires Christians to worship together" citing Acts 2 ("they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers") and Hebrews 10 ("not neglecting to meet together").  He also notes that God doesn't specify a day (Romans 14:5-6) since, as was noted yesterday, all days belong to Christ, but that the church observes Sunday because that is when Christ rose. 

Worship is an integral part of our faith, not because it is commanded any longer, but as a response to God's love through His Son's suffering, death, and resurrection.  It is where we pray as the body of believers, confess our sins and hear the forgiveness of those sins, sing hymns, hear God's Word, and receive the Sacraments.  While we can appreciate God's creation and be with God, we are to also be with the body of believers regularly. 

Pray that we engage in formal worship routinely and that we worship our God in those times.  Pray that we do so out of respect and in response to the love God has shown us through His Son's sacrifice for us. 

Hope Men's Ministry

Devotion 6.12.17

"Downton Abbey" was a show on PBS that became very popular in the US as viewers found themselves enthralled with an aristocratic family in late-19th, early 20th century England.  During one episode, the matriarch of the family becomes upset when one of her granddaughters  becomes engaged to a "common" man, a doctor.  The family engages in a conversation during which they talked about the fact that common people observe "weekends."  "What's a weekend?" the matriarch asks.

Such is aristocratic snobbery I suppose.  However, western cultures do observe "weekends."  The idea that a five-day work week is capped off with two days off.  We do find the roots of this idea in scripture when, at the end of creation, God rested on the seventh day. "And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation." (Genesis 2:2-3)

So to our Third Commandment when God formalized how God's people are to live with the commandments.  "Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy."  The Small Catechism written by Martin Luther examines this commandment from a various aspects, but as he writes, all laws point to Christ.  The idea of Christ fulfilling the law changes the legality of the idea of a "Sabbath" to an idea of every day being one in which we honor Christ.  Tradition moved the actual day to the day that Christ rose from the dead which puts the Christian "Sabbath" on Sunday. 

The Lutheran Study Bible uses this same frame of reference with a brief prayer after the explanatory note on God's day of rest, the Sabbath Day, after creation.  That prayer is brief but fitting for this devotion, "We praise You, O Lord, for the day of rest that our bodies need.  We exalt you, O Christ, for the eternal rest that you have won for us!  Amen."

Hope Men's Ministry

Devotion 6.8.17

Today's "Ask the Pastor," My daughter was told by another student in school that because we are Lutheran, our baptisms don't "count" because we baptize babies.  How should I respond?

Believe it or not, this is a situation that comes up frequently especially since I have moved to Lubbock, where most Christians are from Church of Christ, Baptist, and Non-Denominational backgrounds.  These backgrounds are Christian ones, but they do not acknowledge infant baptism, and most would even ask you to be re-baptized if you were to move to their church.  So, how do you respond?

I personally think teaching is the best response. Not so your child has ammunition in which to combat the next person that questions him/her, but so that he or she is secure in faith and what is believed.  Often, the parent meets this question with a reaction such as “How dare they?”  I don’t think this serves your child well.  Instead, I believe that the parent has been presented a real good opportunity.  Think about it this way, mom or dad, you now have a child who is asking you about, or at least talking to you about, his or her faith. 

Therefore, I would respond with questions and teaching. 

Ask, “What do you think about infant baptism?”  “Do you think it counts?”  “Why?”  “Why not?”

Depending on what their answer is, you will know how to proceed.

Here is one caution I will give.  You better make sure you know what we believe and why.  If you don’t, go on a discovery with your child.  I have an abundance of resources for you to use.  Here are a few thoughts to start your journey though.

In the end, we believe that baptism does something.  Disciples are made through baptizing and teaching (Matthew 28:19-20) therefore we do both for all ages as they are included in all nations.  We do believe that baptism gives God’s grace, “Baptism now saves you.” – 1 Peter 3:21.  It is not simply a symbol, but in it we find a promise.  We find the promise of Jesus’ death and resurrection (Romans 6).  Those who practice infant baptism are often accused of offering salvation outside of Jesus.  This is simply not the case.  Baptism is a means in which Jesus distributes the gift of his death and resurrection.  Similar to when Isaiah in Isaiah 6 has his sins atoned for through the angel taking a burning hot coal from the altar of the Lord and touching his lips, so we have our sins atoned for through the application of the water and the word.  God has a history or using things here on earth to interact with his people.  (Burning Bush, Jordan River, Hot Coal, A Donkey, etc… etc…)  There are many many more examples.  Did he have to use them, like does he have to use water.  No!  But he does.  Why?  I don’t know.  God is God, I am not.