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Christmas Done Right • The Sanctified Smartphone • Immanuel—God Made Small • Theology By Geology
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DO YOU WISH YOU HAD MORE COURAGE?
THAT
A B I B L E ST U DY F O R Y O U T H Do you wonder how biblical figures had the strength to H I G H E R
Find the answers in this new, six-week Bible study.
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Understand Courage
cph.org/courage
https://books.cph.org/courage-that-defies-death
Š 2020 Concordia Publishing House
stand by their faith and do seemingly impossible things?
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Contents T A B L E O F
Volume 19/Number 4 • Winter 2019
Special Features 4 Christmas Done Right
By Rev. George F. Borghardt Christmas isn’t just one day—it’s 12 days. Let’s celebrate it like we believe that! Pastor Borghardt reminds us that during Christmas we get to focus on the reality that Jesus has taken on all that we are, to redeem all that we are, so that, we would receive all that He is by faith alone.
6 The Sanctified Smartphone
By Rev. Harrison Goodman We aren’t sinners because we sin; we sin because we ARE sinners. Never is this more evident than when we cruise the internet. Pastor Goodman encourages us to fall back on our identity as baptized children of God as we seek to avoid evil and cultivate good.
10 Theology by Geology
By Rev. Samuel Schuldheisz You might never have noticed how many geological references there are in the Scriptures but Rev. Schuldheisz is here to illuminate you about their connection to the Gospel. Rock on!
12 Believe WHAT?
By Katie Hill “Believe!” You’ll find this solitary word scrawled on every kind of Christmas décor imaginable. What’s it really mean, though? Katie will help you wrap your brain around this holiday mystery.
HigherThings
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Volume 19/Number 4/Winter 2019 Bible Studies for these articles can be found as appendices to this magazine Executive Editor
Katie Hill Art Director
Steve Blakey Editorial Associates
Rev. Paul Beisel Rev. Gaven M. Mize Rev. Dr. Matthew Richard Copy Editors
Kay Maiwald Dana Niemi Bible Study Authors
16 What Is God’s Will for My Life?
By Rev. Dr. Matthew Richard Is God’s will something elusive that we can’t necessarily know? Rev. Richard explains how it isn’t as difficult as we might imagine, especially since God has already provided what we need as we consult His Word, pray, and seek out godly wisdom.
20 I Don’t Think This Verse Means What You Think It Means By Rev. Jake Sletten Philippians 4:13 and 1 Corinthians 10:13 are two Bible verses that are so often misused that Rev. Sletten wants to set the record straight, which he does in an engaging and encouraging way.
22 Thought About Being a Pastor? Terrified? Good!
By Rev. Caleb Schewe Rev. Schewe exhorts any young man investigating being a pastor to understand that the Lord blesses the preaching of His Word and the giving of His Gifts and thereby faithfully equips His pastors in many ways.
Rev. Aaron T. Fenker Rev. Joshua Ulm ___________ Board of Directors President
Rev. George F. Borghardt Vice-President
Rev. Duane Bamsch Treasurer
Mr. Kurt Winrich Secretary
Rev. Joel Fritsche Mrs. Becky Clausen Deaconess Ellie Corrow Rev. D. Carl Fickenscher Mr. Anthony Pellegrini Rev. Chris Rosebrough ___________
Executive Council Executive Director
Erica Jacoby
Dean of Theology
Rev. Aaron T. Fenker Business Executive
Regular Features 8 Theology: Immanuel—God Made Small
By Rev. Aaron T. Fenker Take joy in Rev. Fenker’s reminder that Jesus, Immanuel—“God with us”—is right where He promised us He would be: in His Word and Sacraments, for you!
24 Catechism: Liturgical Catechesis The Prayers of the Church
© 2020 Concordia Publishing House
By Rev. William M. Cwirla As Rev. Cwirla delves into another part of the Liturgy, we learn that the Prayers of the Church have a way of enlivening our own prayers because they encourage us to think outside our own circumstances.
Connie Brammeier Media Executive
Sandra Madden Conference Executive
Crysten Sanchez Marketing and Development Executive
Patrick Sturdivant
Higher Things® Magazine ISSN 1539-8455 is published quarterly by Higher Things, Inc. P.O. Box 155 Holt, MO 64048. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the executive editor of Higher Things Magazine. Copyright 2019. Higher Things® is registered trademarks of Higher Things Inc.; All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States. 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/ for writers’ guidelines and theme lists.
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Christmas Done Right By Rev. George F. Borghardt
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love Christmas. I’ve always loved it. I inherited that love from my father. When I was in sixth grade, I came home to find my dad sitting and listening to Christmas music with the tree up. It was strange because it was the middle of the summer!
The Adoration of the Shepherds (Adoracion de los Pastores) by Bartolomé-Esteban Murillo (1617-1682), oil on canvas, c.1668-9.
I’ve always looked forward to Christmas year round. The saddest part of the day for me, though, was Christmas afternoon. After the presents were opened, family dinner was eaten, and the tree was by the curb, I realized the next Christmas was another 365 days away! I still loved Christmas even after I fell away from the faith in high school. The colors, the stories, the myths, and the family traditions—I loved them all! Only after I became Lutheran in college did I learn to appreciate any deeper meaning of Christmas. The songs, the carols, and the symbols all pointed to the greatest kneedropping truth of the universe: God was born on Christmas for me. Unto us—for me—a child was born. For me a Son was given (Isaiah 9:6). The Virgin conceived and bore a Son and His name was Immanuel, God with us. God for me! My Roman Catholic upbringing taught me that Mary was a virgin and that Christ was God. But the Gospel that God was born FOR ME to die on a cross for my sins? I had never heard that before! The Gospel that God is FOR ME showed me how wrong I was about the entire business of Christmas! My timing was all off! I was doing holidays like the world does holidays. They bounce from one holiday to the next. In the fall, the Halloween decorations come out, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas and the New Year, then President’s Day, then Valentine’s Day, then Easter, then Memorial Day, then July 4th, then Labor Day, then start over again. Holidays are about a day or two off of work or school; we decorate, visit family, eat, repeat. That’s the world’s way. I was putting the cart before the horse just like the world does! What I thought was the Christmas season was really a season called “Advent.” I also had thought the Christmas season ended on Christmas Day, when it really is just beginning then! What great news! Christmas isn’t just a day that ends after presents are opened and dinner is eaten, but a whole a 12-day season just like the song says! Amazing! Advent, from the Latin word adventus (He comes), is the season which begins four Sundays before Christmas and continues until Christmas Day. Advent is not Christmas, it’s the pre-game of Christmas. It’s the Lord’s getting us ready for Christmas! Consider this! The world’s “Christmas” isn’t even Christmas at all! The world is done with Christmas when the Church is just getting started with it! “The Lord is coming.” That’s the theme of Advent! Jesus is coming in the manger on Christmas. He’s coming again to judge the living and the dead. He’s coming in His Gifts: the Word, the water, and His Body and Blood. All for you and for me. Advent is a preparatory season. Like Lent, the traditional color is penitential violet. The Lord is preparing us for His coming by straightening up our lives, by repenting us. The mountains of pride and arrogance in our lives He lays low. The valleys of our sins—the evils we do daily and much—He fills with repentance and faith. He adds to our life more devotion. He bids us to be watchful and to fast in preparation for the arrival of the Savior of the world on Christmas. Advent is a watchful season of hopeful expectation.
Advent prepares us for the big deal: Christmas! Christmas isn’t the end of the celebration, it’s the beginning! It’s the Mass of Christ! Christmas is the Divine Service where we celebrate the incarnation, the becoming flesh, of God. God has taken on all that we are, to redeem all that we are, so that we would receive all that He is by faith alone. Jesus is God with us, God for us, God one of us! In the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, God is born to save His people from all their sins. Keeping Christ as the center of Christmas means keeping the “Mass” in Christmas. You’ll only find this ornament, this “Mass,” in the Church! The One who was born for us, who took on our flesh, gives His Body and Blood for us to eat and drink. The Divine Service is the delivery of Christmas to you. The Lord’s Supper is the delivery of Jesus’ Christmas FOR YOU. On the sixth day of Christmas, New Year’s Eve, we learn how much God is for us. He receives the name Jesus, which means “the Lord saves.” On New Year’s Day, He first sheds His blood for us at His circumcision. We also learn of suffering and pain in the 12 days of Christmas. The day after Christmas, we hear about the Church’s first martyr, St. Stephen. He confesses and dies for His faith. The world hated Stephen because it hated Jesus first. We who are in Christ can expect the world to move on from us as well. The Lord reminds us of this on the Feast of Holy Innocents, December 28th, when the false King Herod destroys all the little babies of Bethlehem. Jesus has to flee Bethlehem to save us. What joy! Christmas isn’t just a day. It’s 12 days! It takes 12 days to unpack all that the Lord’s birth means for you! The Christmas season begins on Christmas Day and lasts until the Epiphany of our Lord when the wise men arrive on January 6th. Twelve days to sing carols, to wish people a Merry Christmas, to sit in front of your Christmas tree, and to keep your decorations out. Twelve days to celebrate that our Lord was born to die, to save us! I love Advent and Christmas! I love them more today than I ever did when I was a child. Now, before I can get sad that Christmas is over, the wise men show me how this Baby is even for us Gentiles. I live season to season with my eyes fixed on Jesus. You might consider doing the same! Start with Advent. Let the Lord unpack the gift. Let Him prepare you for Christmas and the coming of His Son. What’s after that? Epiphany, then Pre-Lent, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter! These aren’t just days to bounce through, but whole seasons which tell us more about Jesus and how He is FOR US. Each season is its own unique delivery of the Lord’s salvation to you. Each is its own present! But first, Advent. The Lord is coming! Make ready! Repent! May the Lord grant you a watchful Advent as He prepares you for His coming to you on Christmas! Rev. George F. Borghardt is the pastor at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Bossier City, Louisiana and serves as the President of Higher Things.
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THE SANCTIFIED SMARTPHONE
Sitthiphong iStockphoto.com
By Rev. Harrison Goodman
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hristians tend to talk about technology in predictable ways, especially to youth. All the talks I hear sound the same. They speak of warnings and horror stories. Part of me understands. If the internet were a person, would he be allowed in your house? If he spoke and behaved like what’s out there, would you want him in front of your folks at dinner?
It’s easier to characterize the internet as evil and give no thought to the people using it. It’s easier to blame the tool than the people who use it. Yes, parts of the internet are evil. Malicious. Sinful. Intentionally so. There’s more to it, though, because people were sinners before the internet. The internet just connects sinners across greater distances. Good or evil never rest on the thing itself, but rather on how it is employed in light of God’s will. It isn’t the internet; it’s the sin. That said, a medium, or a tool, is not neutral. The book is better than the movie. That’s because the director made something different from the way I imagined it. The various forms of media look like the people behind them. When I was little, I liked video games. My parents got me a game called Math Blaster. They figured they could make math fun if it was a game. It would be easier than fighting with me about doing multiplication tables. Really, I only learned that math was so terrible that kids had to be tricked into learning it. The reason tools aren’t neutral is because sinners use them for sinful things, like shirking teaching your kids math. Old Adam sins more efficiently with tools. Just ask Cain about his rock. The solution is not simply to “behave,” online or off. The Law cannot save you. The Law can’t make you holy. It can point out the problem, but it can’t fix it. The Gospel does that. The Gospel makes you holy. It sanctifies you. That’s what sanctified means: made holy.“And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). This is who you are now. Holy. Worthy of love by God. Baptized. A child of God. This is your identity. A product of the Gospel. That doesn’t mean the Law is bad. You should try to follow the Law. Sin breaks stuff, online and off. The Law shows you your sin. Always. If you can look at the Law and not feel like a sinner, you’re either not really looking at the
Law or not really looking at yourself. That doesn’t mean you can’t be good. It means you can’t be good enough. That is the problem most of us have online. Look at my seven likes. I took 50 selfies to find the right one. I wrote for hours. We tried our best. Seven likes. It’s not enough. The Law shows where we don’t measure up. The biggest problem is we figure that’s our real identity. Those likes must be what we amount to. They must sum up who we are. The internet says you are what you post. You are the sum of your content. That’s a religion of death. Our greatest aim is to be viral, a word that has to do with sickness and death. But…you know…in a spectacular fashion. That’s what it takes to break through the noise. There’s so much content online that only the exceptional stands out. Nobody gets 10k shares for their average rendition of Taylor Swift sung in the bathroom. It has to be spectacular…or a disaster. That’s the baseline. The normal. We see only the exceptional and try to be exceptional, too. We try to live by works. It ends poorly. The Law rarely cuts deeper than reminders about your posts from “five years ago this day.” Again, the problem isn’t the internet. The problem is where you’re looking for comfort. Do you want comfort from your neighbor’s being impressed? By works of the Law? Comfort isn’t found in recognition by man, but in identity in God. And that’s what your Baptism gives you: an identity in and through Christ. If you live by content, you’ll die by it. But Christ died for you. Rose for you. You’re baptized into Him. So your content isn’t you. The Law does not define you, the Gospel does. Your value isn’t found in accolades from strangers or from your trying to form a new tribe, because the community God gave you offline is full of sinners you don’t like. Identity isn’t measured in heart emojis and shares that turn faceless by the time you get as many as you covet. Rather it’s found in water and Word from the incarnate Jesus.
To look to a thousand likes for comfort is to look to something that is by nature non-specific. When you remove the specifics from vocation it always turns toxic. Parents discipline children, but yelling at other people’s kids in Walmart doesn’t go well. Masculinity without service to someone specific turns toxic. Even pastoring without a real tie to a congregation turns into a cult of personality. Vocation connects you to someone. Ties you to them. The internet can help, but it has to connect to a real person. A real identity. We have to be intentional about how we use social media. Your use of the internet should lean into vocation, not away from it—to serve specific people in specific ways. Does this tool help you be a better son or daughter? A better hearer of God’s Word? A better student? A better citizen? There are parts of the internet you just shouldn’t be on. If the foundation and purpose for that site is breaking a commandment, stay away. This isn’t just the elephant in the room named porn. It’s also the sites dedicated to covetousness. To theft. To slander. It’s the sites that go against the Fourth Commandment from your parents. There is nothing good to be found here and nobody to serve either. And God gave you a neighbor as a gift. You have real people in your life, so you can’t have a life that’s lived entirely online. The internet can aid your life, but it can’t replace it. That’s good. Your real life is rooted in your Baptism. You shouldn’t want to replace that. Wherever you go, online or not, you go baptized. Holy, but not because you perfectly avoided something unclean, but because He cleanses you from all sin. You don’t measure up by content, but by Christ. You are holy in Him. Rev. Harrison Goodman is the pastor of Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in San Antonio, Texas.
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