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Te Deum

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Higher Things 2015 Conferences

Retrospective Issue www

. h i g h e r t h i n g s . o r g / FA L L / 2015

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t u o b a g n i k n i Th Ministr y?

Kirk di d.

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Now he’s a fo urth year stu dent at Concordia Seminar If yo u’re y. thinking abo ut m inistr y t check o u o o, t these events.

Vocatio

Taste of the Sem

(For high school guys and girls)

(For high school guys only)

June 25-30, 2016

January 16-18, 2016

Ready to register? Visit www.csl.edu or call 800-822-9545.

Contents T A B L E O F

Volume 15/Number 3 • Fall 2015

Special Features 5 On Second Thought

By Rev. Mark Buetow Higher Things addresses concerns about the summer issue article “A Bruised Reed He Will Not Break.”

14 Te Deum Photo Retrospective!

Whether you attended a conference last summer or not, you’ll get a definite flavor of what the experience was like. Can you find yourself in these pictures?

6 Law and Gospel in Worship

20 Slaying the Monster of Uncertainty

8 Just Shut Up and Die!

22 MARVEL Movies and the Creed: Defend, Guard, Protect and Avenge

By Rev. George F. Borghardt We often think worship is about what we offer to God and indeed we do have something to offer Him: our sins. In return, we receive the glorious gift of Jesus in Word, water, Body and Blood, for which, declares Rev. Borghardt, we get to respond to God with praise for the sake of our neighbor!

By Rev. Donavon L. Riley Death is a brutal reality. It is inescapable because we are slaves to the power of sin. But, as Rev. Riley reassures us, we are baptized children of God, and so we are raised daily in the waters of our Baptism. We can tell our Old Adam where to go because death is not the end.

10 Te Deum 2015: What Did It Mean?

By Monica Berndt After her inaugural experience of being a College Conference Volunteer, Monica enthusiastically takes us on a tour of how a Higher Things conference helps to strengthen faith and equip youth.

12 Apologists Every Christian Should Know, Part 5 The Masterful Mind of John Warwick Montgomery: Why You Can Know the Truth

By Rev. Mark A. Pierson Rev. Pierson explains how the arguments and writings of John Warwick Montgomery will help you stand up and fight the truth decay that is saturating our culture.

By Rev. Dr. Matthew Richard Rev. Richard offers great insight into the origin of that monster who likes to terrorize us with claims that we can’t really know we are saved and he reminds us Who the mighty Slayer of that monster is.

HigherThings

Volume 15/Number 3/Fall 2015 Bible Studies for these articles can be found at: higherthings.org/ magazine/biblestudies.html Editor

Katie Hill Art Director

Steve Blakey Editorial Associates

Rev. Greg Alms Rev. Paul Beisel Rev. Bart Day Rev. Gaven Mize Rev. Dr. Matthew Richard Copy Editor

By Rev. Ted Giese You know the Apostles’ Creed word for word, right? You might have even memorized some of the dialogue from your favorite MARVEL movie as well. Yes, there’s a connection. Movie reviewer Rev. Giese gives us a look into how the Creed can be used as a jumping off point to evaluate movies, books and art of all kinds.

Regular Features

16 CHECK OUT THE BREAD OF LIFE HIGHER THINGS 2016 SUMMER CONFERENCES! 28 Catechism:The Third Commandment

By Rev. William M. Cwirla So how is the Sabbath made holy? It’s far more than observing a day of rest from work, it’s about a person: Jesus Christ, and the rest we find in Him and in His restful Word.

30 Bible Study: Why You Can Know the Truth

Be sure to check out this sample of one of our student Bible studies which links up with Rev. Pierson’s article on P. 12.

Dana Niemi Bible Study Authors

Rev. Mark Buetow Rev. Jacob Ehrhard Rev. Samuel Schuldheisz Subscriptions Manager

Elizabeth Carlson IT Assistant

Jon Kohlmeier ___________

Board of Directors President

Rev. George Borghardt Vice-President

Rev. Dr. Carl Fickenscher Treasurer

Chris Loemker Secretary

Rev. Joel Fritsche Rev. Duane Bamsch Eric Maiwald Sue Pellegrini Matt Phillips Rev. Chris Rosebrough ___________

Executive Council Deputy Executive/Media

Rev. Mark Buetow Conference and Retreats Executive

Sandra Ostapowich Business Executive

Connie Brammeier Technology Executive

Stan Lemon

Higher Things® Magazine ISSN 1539-8455 is published quarterly by Higher Things, Inc., PO Box 156, Sheridan, WY 82801. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the executive editor of Higher Things Magazine. Copyright 2015. Higher Things® is registered trademarks of Higher Things Inc.; All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States. Postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. For subscription information and questions, call 1-888-4826630, then press 4, or e-mail subscriptions@higherthings.org. (This phone number is only used for subscription queries.) For letters to the editor, write letters@higher things.org. Writers may submit manuscripts to: submissions@ higherthings.org. Please check higherthings.org/magazine/ writers.html for writers’ guidelines and theme lists.

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Law and Gospel in Worship: It’s All About

God’s Gifts By Rev. George F. Borghardt

There is a direction to Lutheran worship.

It moves from God to you. It starts with God and goes to you. It’s the German word, “Gottesdienst” or Divine Service. God serves you! The Lord Himself does the acting, working and giving. He does the doing. He does the giving.

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The Lord begins worship in His Name—the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Divine Service is all about Him delivering His love to you, and you soaking up the Father’s love for you in the giving up of His Son. His sacrifice on the Cross does you no good without its delivery to you today! The Divine Service is where the Spirit gives to you all that the Son did for you. Faith flows from the Spirit’s gifts! Faith receives them and it opens your ears to hear the Words of Christ. Faith is watered in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And faith tastes forgiveness in Christ’s Body and Blood in your mouth in the Sacrament. God does the doing; faith does the receiving. You are saved. Faith saves because it receives Jesus’ cross and resurrection. That’s how God wants to be worshiped—by faith alone. “Surely,” you think, “I have something to offer to God. I certainly do something. I praise Him. I feel it. I experience it. That makes it real for me.” That’s the divine service of the Law! It starts with you. It also ends with you. You offer God your works, your thoughts, your feelings. You think these things matter to you. I do, too.

So they must matter to God too, right? They must hold some weight with Him as well. Our hands are filled only with what we have done—our sins. We have done what we shouldn’t do and failed to do what we should have done. That’s what we have to bring to God. We bring to God our sins! The worship of the Law ends with us. It stops there. It’s centered on what we do. And it’s as incomplete and flawed as we are. It may be the worship we think we need and what feels the most effective for us…but it’s not the worship that pleases God. Faith alone pleases God. He gives you salvation and He wants you to receive it. He delivers forgiveness, emptying your hands of all your sins. That absolution was achieved by Jesus’ holy life and bitter sufferings and death, and it is delivered to you in this time and space in His gifts. The one called by God, your pastor, has been sent to you and he doesn’t just forgive some of your sins, He forgives all of them. You are made at peace with God. But isn’t the receiving something I do? Well, does the person who is brought back to life by a doctor say, “I’m alive today because I decided to live.”? Does the baby make a choice

to be born? The action is done from outside ourselves. We receive the action being done upon us. The Word is the external, saving gift. Faith is how we receive the Lord’s Word in water, Word, and bread and wine. You have been raised from the dead. You have been born from above. You now live in Christ. Faith responds with an, “Amen.” That’s an enlivened, born-from-above, raised-from-thedead Word. You say, “Amen,” meaning “Yes, yes, it shall be so.” Amen and faith go together. Where we have Jesus’ words, there we have the “Amen” of faith. But your Amen isn’t just for you. No, having been given to, having been enlivened, having been raised from the dead and given the words to say by Jesus, faith then repeats what it has been given for others. You respond to God with what He says by repeating it for your neighbor! You sing to God for others. You praise Him for others. You confess Him for others. You say the Creed so that others can be lifted up. You don’t live for yourself anymore. You don’t even serve yourself when you are worshiping God. Now, when you sing, praise, pray, you do

these things as enlivened children of God for the sake of others. Don’t you sing for yourself because it feels good to sing? Don’t you praise God because God wants you to praise God? Sure, you might do these things for those reasons. But the Lord gave you words to sing and praise— whether it feels good or not—so that others might be saved through the words He’s given you. He wants to save others like He’s saved you! Worship in the way of the Law offers to God what we do: work, praise, sing in order to merit favor with God. God wants to be worshiped by faith. He desires for you to be saved and to receive from Him all the good that He has done for you in the Cross of your Lord Jesus Christ. He wants to shower on you His love and forgiveness and mercy. He wants to do that for others, too! True faith, living faith, active faith, receives from God what He did for us. It’s passive first. It’s like an empty hand that the Lord fills with goodies. Faith is then active for others— serving them with the forgiveness and love that God has given to us in Christ. Rev. George F. Borghardt is the Senior Pastor at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in McHenry, Illinios. He also serves as the president of Higher Things.

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Death hurts. Sometimes it burns like a wildfire: Pancreatic cancer devours a body. Sometimes death flickers like a candle flame: the slow suicide of one enslaved to addiction. At other times it is a dull glow: heartache and shame. Hurt and pain, heartbreak and rage are smoke signals that death is about to overtake us. And when death comes, our one desire is to make an escape. We become liked frightened animals. We want safety, comfort, and certainty.

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by Rev. Donavon L. Riley

We seek rescue from the threat, not just the reality of death. Whatever promises to keep us safe from death we will worship it, subscribe to it, swallow it, and empty our bank account for it. Why wouldn’t we? Who enjoys pain and hurt? Who gets excited to buy a cemetery plot? Who hopes to bury her baby’s body, say goodbye to the woman he’s lain next to in bed for 46 years, or place a lily on the coffin of the father who preached the resurrection to her? When death stalks us what are we to do? First, we need to admit that we deserve it. We serve sin. Sin curves us in on ourselves. It turns us away from God. Sin is why we die. “The wages of sin is death,” writes St. Paul (Romans 6:23). Is there anyone who doesn’t die? So we are all slaves to sin. We are all preoccupied with ourselves and ignorant of God. We have turned our back on the source of our life. We deserve to die. This points to the bigger picture, too. Death isn’t a dumb beast, blinded by hunger, who drags down and tears apart anyone he catches. He is a servant of God. God’s furious anger toward the power of sin is poured out through death. Death comes to devour sin—to kill it. When death comes and sees that we are under the power of sin, and that sin rules in our bodies, he consumes us to put an end to sin. We are seduced by sin’s false promise: that we can be spared from pain and hurt and death, if we just… Maybe we ought to take Job’s wife’s advice, to “curse God and die.” What hope is there for us against a power that can be seen, smelled, tasted, and touched, but cannot be stopped? The simple answer is that there is no hope for us. We are ruined. There is no escape for us from heartache and shame, heartbreak and rage. We are slaves to a power we don’t even understand: the power of sin. Worst of all, God, it seems, has turned a deaf ear to our cries for help. Is it any wonder that so many choose to kill themselves rather than suffer one more day of pain? When even God is silent, what hope of relief is there for anyone? None that is permanent. We are slaves to sin. Trapped inside ourselves. Incurable. There is no future for us, except to just shut up and die. Its grim stuff. Harsh. Vulgar even. That is the truth about us. Even Christians are not spared this grief. Christians have bodies. Sin rules in our bodies. As a consequence of sin, Christians die. Christians are buried. But Christians are buried with Christ. We are also resurrected with Christ. As St. Paul proclaims, “We were therefore buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too may walk in the newness of life” (Romans 6:4). For Christians, physical death is the little “d” death of the body. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the death of death. He is our Life. Baptized into Christ, we die and are raised. This we call the “new creation,”“regeneration,” and “spiritual birth.” There is an actual death of sinners and an actual resurrection of new creations. “Behold, I am making all things new,” Jesus says in Revelation 21. And He does it to us in the waters of Baptism.

So daily we die like all sinners. But daily we are raised by God to new life in Christ with all Christians. We are reborn every day in Christ. This is the Christian’s sure consolation when pain and hurt, heartache and shame threaten to overcome us. Now, instead of staring at ourselves, at our sin and guilt, wondering when death will overtake us, we stare at Christ crucified for us. On Him hangs all our sin. He suffers the furious anger of God toward sin. He dies, forsaken by God in our place. Death comes to devour us, but He offers His body to it instead. What He’s done for us frees us from sin and death and gives us His righteousness and life as our own. That’s the blessed exchange that happens when a sinner is baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When a drunk driver kills our son, baptism is our refuge. When a loveless marriage disintegrates, baptism draws husband and wife outside themselves to God’s baptismal promises. God’s Word and the water bathe the unsettled mind of a mentally ill woman with peace and comfort. Restless hearts full of pain and troubled minds and diseased flesh are embraced from the font to the grave by Baptism. This is where Christians may find rest in all our troubles, even when death overtakes us. As Martin Luther writes in one of his pastoral letters, “Jesus Christ… will never waver or fail us, nor allow us to sink and perish, because he is the Savior and he is called the Savior of all poor sinners, of all who face tribulation and death, of all who rely on him and call on his name.” To be baptized means we are washed in the blood of Christ. Christ comes not only in the water but with water and blood. He is, Luther writes, “always wanting to mingle his blood in the baptism in order that we may see in it the innocent, rosy-red blood of Christ.” To be baptized then is to be washed and made new by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are baptized into His atoning death. This is our consolation and sure hope. Baptism forgives our sins, rescues us from spiritual death, and makes us sure that God is pleased with us. Now when death comes we trust that sin is put to death, that we are put to death, but that in death we are sunk into our Baptism. When death rages like a wildfire we trust that the waters of Baptism will quench its fury. When death hurts and pains us we look to the Cross of Jesus. The pain and hurt are His, which He gladly suffers for us. And there on the Cross we see revealed to us that until we are dead and buried in the ground, until we turn to dust, the dying and drowning of sin is not yet complete. It will be then when we are ready to be resurrected by God’s Spirit to eternal life—whole and complete in Christ. Rev. Donavon L. Riley is the pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Webster, Minnesota. He is also the online content manager for Higher Things. You can contact him at elleon713@gmail.com.

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