Church Newsletter July 2012

Beloved in the Lord, I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. (Revelation 2:19)

Please allow me to first say that I can’t begin to tell you how thankful and overjoyed I am for all of the effort, support and leadership that I have witnessed in our congregation.  God calls forth volunteers to serve and you have answered that call in multitudes. Thank you so much for your willingness to aid Bethel when needs arise; your commitment to the spread of the Gospel and the growth of Christ’s Beloved, the Church, is apparent in your words and deeds.

“I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:14 ESV)  As we press on toward the goal we will be in need of further volunteers.  It is my goal to increase the pool of Sunday school and Wednesday evening teachers, ushers, coffee hour volunteers, etc... to and unprecedented number.  Many hands make light work.  If, for example, we have 24-50 Sunday school teachers then the commitment to teach will not be as great and overwhelming to each individual; if we have over 52 coffee hour volunteers then a family will only have to host one week a year.  Please consider where the Lord might be able to use your particular set of gifts and talents as we go forward. 

July can be a crazy month.  In Holdrege we have baseball, softball, the fair, our First Annual Bethel Faith Fun Family Festival, vacations, Boy Scout camps, BCW Garden Tours, and other activities too numerous to name.  It is my prayer that each of us will approach these activities with a joyful heart thanking the Lord for the gifts of vocation and recreation all the while keeping your relationship to the Lord and His command for evangelism foremost in your priorities.  Please consider each event as an opportunity to reflect Christ’s love to our community as well as an opportunity to minister to our friends and relatives with the promise of hope in Jesus Christ and an invitation to “come and see” what we are up to at Bethel. 

The hour has come and the time is now for us to be a beacon of light to the lost and a Word of hope to the broken.  Every person we come into contact with in a day is an opportunity to invite someone to church or an opportunity to start a relationship through which you can invite them.  I intend to lead by example and humbly ask that you keep me accountable to my own teachingJ.

I know that I know that I know that the Holy Spirit has gone ahead of us in all of our endeavors.  It is with joyful anticipation that we look to July for the leading of the Lord within our church and community. 

May Christ bless you and bring you peace daily through scripture and prayer,

Pastor Jamie Strickler

June 2012 Church Newsletter Article

Beloved in the Lord,

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of God our Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen (Galatians 1:3-4)

At the core of Christian thought is the question, “How am I judged or accounted as righteous before God?”  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther screamed the question, “What do you want from me?!!!” to a God whom he thought was asking for the impossible from him. In His mind God asking for both faith and complete obedience to His commands. Concerning this matter of justification and the Christian life we confess five solas (Latin for alone): Sola Scriptura, Sola Deo Gloria, Solo Chirsto, Sola Gratia, and Sola Fide.  Scripture alone in our final authority, to God alone is the glory; we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. 

Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is a faith that is given to us by grace as a gift through the power of the Holy Spirit for the Glory of God alone communicated by the scripture or proclaimed Word of God and the correct administration of the sacraments.  For Luther this was a foreign idea, the complete passivity of the human will in the eternal life giving event of Word and Sacrament puzzled him and begged the question, “Then what about God’s commandments and my works?” The church, in Luther’s time, was teaching that baptism saves you from original sin but after that it is up to you through the work of the priest in the “mass” and through confession, penance, and absolution to gain and keep your salvation.  In contrast the idea of “works” accounting as nothing and “faith” accounting as everything is what the scriptures clearly teach:        

“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

(Romans 3:28 ESV)

“yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”            (Galatians 2:16 ESV)

“I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”(Galatians 2:21 ESV)

A little considered fact is that most of the priests of Luther’s day and almost all of the lay people could not read and even if they could only the “cultural elite” were allowed to read and interpret scripture.  The cultural elite telling the “lower uneducated” folks how they should live is a purely Aristotelian thought resurrected by St. Thomas Aquinas in about 1000A.D.  Not the thought of the first century Christians or of the apostles at all.

When Luther discovered that we are in fact “simmul eustis et peccator” (simultaneously sinner and saint) and that God thus speaks to us through two words not one, he “broke through.”  When someone sings monotone it is almost unbearable to hear.  Thus your Lord speaks or sings to you in two tones not one.  Law and gospel; if one sings only law then they are legalists and believe that God will save them through their works, if one sings only gospel then they believe that they can continue to indulge the desires of the flesh (“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” Galatians 5:19-21 ESV) and still be saved.

The Law can be defined as those things that are required of us.  The law exists for two purposes: 1.to regulate society and 2. to make us aware that we are sinners in need of a Savior.  Works of the law do not save:

“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”(Romans 3:20 ESV)

The law of God exists to make us aware that we are in fact sinners separated from the grace of God and in desperate need of a Savior, thus sending us running from where God does not desire to be found (His wrath) to where He does desires to be found (the foot of the cross or the gospel).  God is just as present in a bar with a drunkard as He is in church on Sunday morning; the difference is that in the bar God is present against the drunkard and on Sunday morning in church God is present for that person.  Jesus Christ on the cross is God poured out FOR YOU!!!!! 

The law is NOT God’s final Word.  Jesus was put to death as consequence for the sins (lawlessness) of God’s people.  Satan, the world, and the sinful self-righteous thought that they had delivered the knockout blow to the Savior on Good Friday but the Lord was not done speaking, He had one more Word to proclaim on Easter Sunday, the gospel!!!

When a person’s conscience is in despair they are in need of hearing God’s final Word on the matter, “You are forgiven on account of Christ!”  St. Paul says that the letter kills but the Spirit gives live.  The letter of the law puts to death the sinful flesh but the promise of the gospel brings to life the new creation in Christ.  Luther says that we preach the law to secure sinners and the gospel to broken ones.  This is also how one is to approach scripture.  When encountering scripture we are to ask, “What is God requiring of me?” (law) as well as, “What is God promising to me?” (gospel) 

 You see as long as the flesh exists the law is needed to subdue it and force it to comply for the sake of the neighbor.  But as the new creation comes into being it needs to hear the gospel so that it does not despair and fall away from faith.  If you have done the reading that I asked of you this last month then you will see that law and gospel are not Luther’s terms at all, rather they are the terms used by those God called to write His Holy Scripture.

So in answer to the question, “What does God want from me?” we can now answer first and foremost, faith for the sake of salvation and then obedience to His commands for the sake of our neighbors.

On a less theological note: Zanny, the kids, and I would like to humbly and gratefully thank each of you for your welcoming hearts, thoughts, and prayers.  We are settled in and I am ready to fulfill my call to preach the Word and correctly administer the sacraments.  I challenge each of you to continue with me in reading scripture this next month asking the questions, “What is God promising me and what is God requiring of me?”

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever, Amen. (Jude 24-25)

Pastor Jamie Strickler

May Church News Letter Article

Beloved in the Lord:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  I thank God through Jesus Christ for each of you as your faith and perseverance through these recent times of disparity has not only been a witness to me but has also been a witness to all congregations and leaders in the LCMC.  Your faith and courage has allowed the building up of hope within their hearts for the preserving of the true teaching of Christ’s Church for future generations.  May God richly bless each of you as we join together to bring Christ’s Kingdom further into completion on this earth.

If there is one thing this post enlightenment society hates it is an absolute.  When human reason is elevated above the sovereignty of God all truths become relative.  Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Truth is not a collection of philosophical beliefs relevant only in the contexts in which they dwell.  On the contrary truth IS JESUS CHRIST!  For those who have a mathematical mind let me put it this way Jesus=Truth.  There is no truth outside of Jesus Christ no matter how much our human reason seeks it.  The truth is salvation is found in Christ (the Word of God) alone.  But God’s word as truth has never been enough for humans; it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve.

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17 ESV)  God said!  And that should have been enough for humankind.  In reality it was until faith in the Word of God was tested by the great deceiver.  Satan’s question to Eve was, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1 ESV)  “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5 ESV)  In other words “perhaps you didn’t hear correctly or maybe God was lying and there are better words than these.”  Ever since then humans have sought to look beyond God’s Words to find some “deeper truth” or some “absconded reality” that God is keeping from us.  Let me put an end to that search; God does not lie and He has poured Himself out for you giving to you all of Himself holding back nothing.  This took place on the cross over 2000 years ago.

Adam and Eve were then removed from the garden, not as an act of punishment rather as an act of grace.  “Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” (Genesis 3:22 ESV)  If Adam and Eve would have eaten from the tree of life and become eternal they would be eternally in their sinful state and there would be no hope of redemption.  In Baptism we die to the old self and are born again of the Spirit.  This new creation reconciled to the Father through the sacrifice of the Son is what lives on forever. 

As you can see the sinful desire to look beyond the Word of God for “better” or “deeper” truths is the desire not of the new creation in its perfect obedience quite to the contrary; it is the desire of the sinful flesh seeking ways to justify its sinful desires.  A child is content eating glue and dirt however as a parent we must teach them not to indulge their desire for such things.  We give them meals consisting of the four food groups balancing their diet for the sake of their health.  This is how the Father sees us.  We are lost children seeking to gratify our every impulsive desire and then justify it by our reason and human intellect.  Human reason and intellect are wonderful gifts from God and are fantastic as long as they do not contradict His Word. 

Today the temptation of the great deceiver has reared its ugly head once again.  Satan comes to humans asking, “Did God really say?”  As well as declaring “Surely God didn’t mean…”  One of the reasons that Satan has been so successful lately is because we live in an extremely biblically illiterate society.  If one doesn’t know the scriptures than one is easily lead astray.  God is calling each of you into a relationship with Him through His Word Jesus Christ.  How many of you have relationships where you do all the talking?  Or how intimate are the relationships in which you talk to or hear from the other person once a week or once a month? 

St. Paul teaches us that we are to die to the old and become born anew daily.  This dying and rising is not something we do, it is something that is done to us through the encounter with God’s Word.  The law puts to death the old and the proclamation of the gospel raises us anew.  (Next month I will speak more in depth about law and gospel and how to approach God’s Word.)  I encourage and pray that each of you, if you don’t already, will come alongside me in a daily reading of scripture.  Don’t worry at first if you do not comprehend what you are reading.  Simply ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the scriptures to you, read your selected reading, and pray that the Lord will use what you read to make you more like Christ this day.  I look forward to hearing testimonies of how this simply concept has changed your life.

Beloved we are in a battle for our very souls and for the souls of those in our community.  Rest in the promise that salvation is the work of Christ and sanctification is the work of the Spirit but know also that God invites us to come alongside of Him in His Divine Rescue Mission.  God created man and woman and then invited them to become co-creators with Him as he commanded, “Be fruitful and multiply.”  God is still inviting us to be co-creators with Him in our modern age.  We are to be the proclaimers of the Word in our thoughts, words, and deeds; thus calling others to His mercy and grace.  Let us labor together standing on the truth of the Word of God! Amen!