In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The widely accepted position in our society today, so much so that it is taught as scientific fact even to the littlest of children in many of our tax-payer funded schools, is that the world that we live in has come into existence through a long process of transformation and change, and that you and I, if we followed our family history back far enough, could trace our origins to fish swimming in the ocean, and chimpanzees swinging from the trees. In fact, here is a quote from the popular children’s book, Grandmother Fish: “This is our grandmother fish. She lived a long, long, long, long, long time ago. She could wiggle and swim fast. Can you wiggle?... Grandmother Fish had many kinds of grandchildren.” What is being described, of course, in this text geared towards toddlers is none other than the so-called theory of evolution.

Of all the teachings which the Devil has used to lure people away from the Christian Faith, few, if any, have been as successful as this one. How many confirmands have we known who were doing so well in class, only to stop listening, or maybe even quit coming as soon as the pastor brought up the topic of creation? How many college students have gone away to some secular university, only to return home after a single semester renouncing the Bible as mythology and the Catechism as propaganda, because some liberal professor “showed them the evidence” and opened their eyes to the “data.”

Some people, even within our own church body, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, still publicly argue that we should allow space for those who hold to a different belief in this matter than the one give to us by God’s Word. Recently, I was reading a conversation on a website called “Reddit,” which is where you can solicit for advice on all kinds of questions, and the discussion between supposed members of LCMS congregations was whether or not it is necessary to hold to a literal six-day creation. The overwhelming opinion was that, at the very least, it should be an open question. In their minds, everyone should be able to decide for him or herself, and as long as you don’t force your views on someone else, that’s what really matters the most.

People talk and talk and talk about how this world came into existence, but there’s just one problem with all of their talking. None of them were there to see it actually happen. But God was. And this morning, in Church, we get to hear from Him exactly how it took place. So, on the basis of our Old Testament lesson from Genesis chapters 1 and 2 allow me to explain to you all in today’s sermon why it is absolutely necessary for our Faith that we reject the theory of evolution.

The first, and most obvious reason, why we must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the clear Word of God. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s what the Bible says. That’s what the Scriptures plainly teach us. There wasn’t some big bang. There wasn’t some giant collision that started a process where things formed together over long periods of time. Not only did God create everything that exists out of nothing, but He did all of it in six literal days.  On the first day, He created light. On the second day, He created the sky. On the third day He created the land, the seas, and the plants. On the fourth day, He created the stars. On the fifth day, He created the birds and the fish. On the sixth day, He created other animals, as well as His most important creation, humanity. And on the seventh day, when all of His work of creating was done, God rested.

Even though Genesis chapters 1 and 2 give us a very straightforward account of how this world came into existence, there are many people today who do everything that they can to try and justify why they don’t have to believe it. Obviously, non-religious individuals simply dismiss this account as a fairytale, like they do with everything else in the Bible. Even though there are many things that they cannot explain about their theories, and plenty of things that they accept as true without having seen it for themselves, they won’t accept this thing. But, within the Church there are some who try and get around what we hear in Genesis, not by saying that we should dismiss the text entirely, but that we should not read it literally. I still remember how one of my professors when I was in seminary in England told me that the beginning of Genesis was a liturgical text, not a historical one. Well, what exactly does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. It means that you don’t have to believe what it says. 

And certainly, that interpretation would make sense if other parts of the Bible taught us to do it. Obviously, there are some passages in God’s Word that we shouldn’t take literally, but the question is whether or not this is one of them. And all throughout the Scriptures we are taught that it isn’t. First off, the entire book of Genesis is recorded as literal history. This isn’t like the book of Revelation where we are told by the human author that God inspired to write it that it was a vision. Just like Noah really did build an Ark, Abraham really did have a son in old age, Jacob actually did fight with his twin brother Esau, and Joseph really did get sold into slavery, the account of creation is a historical account too. When Moses gave the 10 Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, the reason why the people weren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath day was because that’s when God rested. Moses writes, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” It sounds like Moses wants us to take the creation account literally. Or what about what Jesus Himself says in Mark chapter 10. There our Lord argues against divorce by saying, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” It sounds like Jesus wants us to take the text literally too.

Now, the other fancy way that some people try and hold on to this text at the same time that they also hold onto the theory of evolution, is by arguing that the word “day” in Genesis doesn’t mean a literal “24-hour day,” but that it represents a different understanding of the word which means “millions and millions of years.” But not only is the Hebrew word for “day” used all throughout the Old Testament to mean a literal 24-hour period, but God apparently anticipated this objection and clarified within the creation account itself that He wanted it to be understood in the normal way. What does the Holy Spirit tell us happened at the end of each day of creation, “there was evening and there was morning.” That’s what kind of day it was. It wasn’t a symbolic day. It wasn’t a figurative day. It was a plain old regular day, just like the days we have now where the sun goes up and then the sun goes down.

If we are going to accept the theory of evolution, that means that we are going to have to throw out the Bible. It means that we would be allowed to dismiss the parts of the Bible that we don’t like, until eventually there would be barely anything left in the Bible at all. And sadly, that is exactly how it usually goes. As soon as an individual or a Church body begins to question Genesis 1 and 2, it leads them down the path of rejecting the authority of the Scriptures. And when you belittle the very thing that God uses to give us the gift of saving faith, then faith doesn’t have much of a chance to survive.

The second reason why we Christians must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the dignity of man. Besides going against the clear Word of God, evolution also gives us a totally different understanding of who we are as people. According to evolutionary theory, we humans have the same origin as other animals do. We are the result of fish changing into lizards, who changed into squirls, who changed into monkeys, who eventually changed into people. As one popular podcast host frequently says, “We’re all just a bunch of gorillas.”

But that, of course, is not the way that God teaches us to look at one another, and not the way that He teaches us to think about ourselves. God doesn’t just teach us in Genesis 1 and 2 that He made everything that there is, and carefully designed all of it, but that there is one thing that He made even more special than everything else. And that something is you and me. Unlike everything else in creation, the Bible tells us that God made the first man and woman in His own image and likeness. As our text says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” If we would continue on in Genesis, where God zooms in on the creation account giving even more details of how it happened, we would also learn how He carefully formed the man from the dust of the ground, breathed into His nostrils the breath of life, and took out one of his ribs in order to make the woman from it. 

And God didn’t just make the first man and woman special, He made all of us special too. As we read in Psalm 139, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

When you teach people that, in essence, we are just the same as animals, except we’ve evolved more than they have, it shouldn’t surprise you when they start behaving like animals and don’t apologize for it. When you tell people that they have the same moral accountability as a rat or a tiger, then obviously what’s going to stop them from taking zero responsibility for anything that they do wrong? How do you even know what’s right and wrong? If the entire universe is really built upon the premise of the “survival of the fittest,” then morality is just a myth. But we know that that isn’t true. You don’t need a science book to tell you that when a baby and dog are both trapped in a burning building, you save the baby. Human life matters more than animal life. They aren’t the same.

Isn’t it interesting that the theory of evolution argues for the gradual change of species overtime to perpetuate their existence, when there are many kinds of animals that we supposedly evolved from in the past that are still around today? If we humans came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys? And if monkeys came from frogs, then why are there still frogs? It doesn’t make any sense. What does make sense though is that each and every individual person that we meet is the unique creation of God in heaven, and that they bear special dignity, just by virtue of their existence. You and I are actually important.

And finally, the last reason why we Christians must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the goodness of God, the origin of sin, and whole work of our redemption. The only way that the theory of evolution works is if from the very beginning there was a possibility for the world to decay and change. Evolution requires death. It demands that things be able to die off, so that other, better things, can take their place. The entire premise of this theory is founded upon the idea that death is just the way that it’s supposed to be, and that death is built into the very fabric of the universe.

But, again, when we look at Genesis chapters 1 and 2, we see something completely different. We learn that death was not a part of God’s original design for the world. What was God’s attitude toward every single thing that He made? At the end of each day, our text tells us that He saw that it was good. And how did God feel about all of creation when He was finally done making it? At the conclusion of the sixth day, “God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” That’s what creation was like in the very beginning. It wasn’t just okay. It wasn’t just pretty good. It was very good. Things didn’t need to evolve to get better. Things we’re just right the way that they were. Who can look at something like death and say that it’s a good thing? Who can watch a loved one die, and say that it’s very good? That’s insane. But that’s what evolution requires.

Those who claim that God could have used something like evolution to bring creation into existence, end up blaming God for evil without knowing it. If God always worked through evolution, which requires death, then He would be responsible for death. God would be the very reason why death exists. But God is not the reason why death exists. Death exists because of sin. As the Bible tells us elsewhere, “death is the wages of sin.” The reason why people die, is not because death is natural, but because we bring death upon ourselves through our sin. Adam and Eve brought death into the world when they disobeyed God, and we keep the death right on going when we join them in disobey Him too.

Evolution is not just one false teaching that we can put into a corner and leave all by itself. Eventually that teaching will spread into every other part of Christian doctrine. Why would we need a Savior from sin, if there is no such thing as sin, because sin is just a social construct? Why would we need God to deliver us from death, if He is the cause of death, and death is just another part of life? Why would we need Jesus to heal this world of its brokenness, if it’s not broken, and this is the way that it’s always worked? Evolution takes away our hope. It robs us of our dignity and it undercuts our need for Christ. It makes the cross of Jesus into just another random and meaningless act, which is part of a long, long line of other random and meaningless acts.

No Christian in good conscience can accept the theory of evolution without completely undermining the Gospel. Yes, there are some questions which can be asked in good faith, some of them we can use our sanctified reason to answer, and others we may have to simply be content with the knowledge that God has given us. For example, I’ve often heard the comment from well-meaning Christians, “If the world isn’t as old as the scientists say, then why does it appear so old when we look at?” Certainly, we can recognize that God made a mature earth. He made a livable earth. Even in the creation account we hear about God making trees fully grown and rivers already flowing. When we look at the mountains and the canyons, we are seeing things that God may have made exactly that way from the beginning. Another question has to do with fossils and the existence of certain animals that we don’t see walking around anymore. As for the fossils, perhaps they could have arrived at their unique destination buried under layers of rock through some kind of catastrophic event. One time in the Bible, God flooded the entire world for 150 days. He opened up the vaults of heaven and allowed water to burst forth from the deep places of the earth. My guess is that something like that event probably led to some animals dying and being buried in some strange places. As for the animals that no longer exist, such as the so-called dinosaurs, there are plenty of animals that don’t exist anymore, some of which have died off even in our own lifetime. I heard a statistic the other day that there are more tigers in captivity in the state of Texas, then currently alive in the wild. Certain kinds of animals not being around anymore should bother us in the slightest.

These are reasonable responses to some of the questions that we might get asked as Christians who believe in Genesis 1 and 2. And yet, we should not be so naïve as to think that they will satisfy our opponents. Not matter what we say, some people are still going to think that we are simpletons and idiots for believing what the Bible says. We need to be okay with that. As Saint Paul says in Romans 3, “Let God be true though everyone were a liar.” What do we care about what other people say? We know what God’s says, and that’s all that matters. On the other hand, I don’t think that we should so quickly give into the accusation that what we believe about creation is unreasonable. What’s easy to believe, that we humans came from apes or that we are the unique creation of a loving God? If you were driving down the street and you saw an abandoned house on the side of the road, how would you assume that it got there? Is it more probable that it just popped up spontaneously, or that it morphed into a house from a tree? Or does it make more sense that someone built it? It’s the same when we look at creation. When we behold this beautiful and intricate world that we live in, how could we not believe that somebody made it?

In Genesis chapters 1 and 2 we get God’s own account of how He did it. There is so much meaning for our lives packed into these few verses. We aren’t governed by chance and everything isn’t simply utilitarian. Our existence actually matters. You and I aren’t just a clump of cells, which when broken down are no different than any other clump of cells. We have value. We have purpose. We are precious in the sight of God our Creator.

God proved how important we are to Him not only in the way that He made us, but also in the way that He redeemed us. When the second person of the Trinity entered into our world, He didn’t take on the form of a butterfly or a tree. He became a Man. The author of creation, stepped into His creation in order to heal it of its brokenness. He took on our flesh, to make up for our failures. He was born, lived, suffered, and died, to forgive us of our sins and put us back together. 

That’s how much God cares about this world. That’s how much He is involved in this world. That’s how much He loves it. And that’s how much He loves you. He made you. It didn’t happen by accident. He redeemed you. That didn’t happen by accident either. So don’t let yourself be troubled by demonic and dumb teachings like evolution. Trust in God’s Word. It isn’t just right. It’s better. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On All Saints’ Day we remember our loved ones who have died in the faith and are now in heaven with Jesus. For many of us, this is one of our favorite days of the Church Year. Even though there are many things about it that make us sad, nothing gives us more joy than to think about what Christ has promised to those who love Him. I think it is fair to say that on All Saints’ Day we get to sing some of the best hymns that have ever been written. Hymns like “Lord Thee I Love with All My Heart,” or “Behold A Host Arrayed in White,” and my own personal favorite, “For All the Saints.” On top of that, there are also these magnificent readings. Jesus’ words from Matthew chapter 5 about how despite their suffering, God’s people are truly blessed in Christ no matter what they experience in this life. Or the words of Saint John from his first epistle, and how we are God’s children now, and even though we don’t know everything about what our life will be like in eternity, we know that will be like Jesus, because we will see Him as He is. And, of course, who can forget the beautiful picture of heaven from Revelation chapter 7? The saints of God from every time and place gathered around the throne of the Lamb, free from sorrow, free from sin, free from sickness and suffering, singing praises to the Lord forever and ever.

The entire service today reminds us of what a good Lutheran funeral should be all about. It shouldn’t be about how great the person was who died, or all the things that they liked to do while they were still living. What does it matter what our favorite football team was or how many mountains we climbed when we are lying in a casket and our family and friends are standing next to us wondering what to do next? Memories, however powerful they might be, do not have the power to bring our loved ones back from the dead. And that is why they should not be the main focus of the service. Rather, a good Lutheran funeral should be about Christ. It should be about the comfort that is found only in the Word of God, and what the death and resurrection of Jesus means for those who put their trust in Him.

And so, that is what I would like to talk more about in today’s sermon. As we sing these wonderful hymns, and hear these wonderful readings, and think about the wonderful things that Christ has done for us and those we love, let us consider together the true comfort of All Saints’ Day.

The first comfort of All Saints’ Day is that everyone who has died in the faith is not truly dead, but is even now alive and with the Lord Jesus in heaven. Again, that is what we see taking place in our first reading from Revelation chapter seven. As Saint John writes, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” Who is it that Saint John is talking about in this passage? He tells us just a few verses later, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

What Saint John saw was a vision of what we call the Church Triumphant. We are the Church Militant, those Christians who are still fighting the good fight of faith in this world. The Church Triumphant are the people of God in heaven. They the baptized children of God who are now at rest from their labors. They are the saints of Jesus Christ, who were made holy not by their own strength, merit, or works, but by the precious blood of Christ. They are those who put their trust in Jesus in this life and are now with Him in eternal life.

The Word of God tells us that when a Christian dies and their soul is separated from their body, immediately, they are transported to the nearer presence of Christ and experience unending fellowship with Him and the whole company of heaven. In fact, that is what heaven is. Heaven is unending fellowship with God. It is communion with Jesus and all His saints that never comes to an end. Remember what Saint Paul says in Philippians chapter 1, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” and “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” Remember also what happened to poor Lazarus, and how the Bible tells us that when he died the angels came and carried his soul to Abraham’s side. And remember, of course, what Jesus once said to the thief on the cross, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” 

Nowadays, when people talk about heaven, they usually describe it in terms of whatever they like to do the most here on earth, especially while skipping church. “So and so” is having a great time working on their car in heaven. Or “so and so” is have a blast fishing and playing cards in heaven. But that is not what heaven is like according to the Bible. According to the Bible, heaven is unending worship. As Saint John also tells us in his vision, “Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple.” Heaven is a Church Service that lasts forever. The only difference is that unlike how things can be for us now because of our sinful nature, heaven is the kind of Church service that we won’t ever want to come to an end. 

There are a lot of questions that we Christians still have about eternal life in heaven. Will my dog be there? Will that person be there who I desperately want to be there, and if they aren’t there, will I even be aware of it? Even though God does not give us all of the answers about heaven in His Word, He does give us the one answer that we need. As Saint John writes, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Whatever heaven is like, there is nothing about it that will cause us grief. Regardless of who is there, or what is there, we will be there with Jesus, and Jesus will be enough, because Jesus is always enough. Again, that is the first comfort of All Saints’ Day. It is that everyone who has died in the faith is not truly dead, but is even now alive and with the Lord Jesus in heaven.

The second comfort of All Saints’ Day is that our loved ones who have died in faith will one day rise again from the dead and we will join them in the resurrection on the Last Day.  Sometimes people forget that heaven, or that “in between time,” when our souls are with the Lord while our bodies are buried in the ground, is not actually our final destination as Christians. As we confess every Sunday in the Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” Eternal life is not complete until we are complete. It is not truly begun until Jesus returns in glory and brings us back together as we were made to be in the first place.

Listen to how Saint Paul describes it for us in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them.” And remember what Job said in the middle of his terrible suffering, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!”

We live in a time where people have a very low view of the body, and that especially comes out when a person dies. Sometimes when a person died the body is ground up into dust and scattered into the wind as if it were being reunited with the earth like the pagans teach. Sometimes even well-meaning Christians will try and comfort others at funerals by saying that it is not really their loved one who is lying there in the casket. But if that isn’t our loved one, then who exactly is it, and why are we so sad about it? We are sad, because we know deep down that it is them. We know that our bodies are just as much a part of who we are as our souls, and that without our body, something would always be missing. We don’t just want to be with our loved ones someday spiritually. We want to be with them physically. We want to talk with them again. We want them to open their eyes and hug us with their arms. We want to hear the sound of their voice and we want to see the smile on their face.

And the Bible tells us that for those who endure in the faith until the end, we will. Again, as Saint John writes in his first epistle, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that we he appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” No, we do not know exactly what our bodies will be like in eternal life, but we do know that they will be our bodies. They will be the same bodies that we had in this life except they will be free from all of the things that made them wrong in this life. They will be free from sin. Just like Jesus is free from sin, we will be free from sin too. Just like Jesus has a body, and it is the same body that died and rose, except now it is a body that has been glorified so that is incapable of ever dying again, that is how it will be for our bodies. If there is something that is not right with our body now, it will be made right in eternity. If there something that we don’t like about our body, even if it is not something that needs to change, what will change is how we see our body. We will see it for the gift that it truly is. 

One of the things that always get asked when this topic comes up in Bible class is, “Will I be able to recognize my loved one in heaven?” While there are many questions about heaven that we do not have the answer to, that is a question that I actually think that we do. And the answer is a resounding, “yes.” When Saint John saw a vision of the Church Triumphant, he recognized people for who they were. He saw a multitude from every nation, from every tribe people and language. John saw all of our distinctiveness and everything that makes each one of us unique. John could tell who was who. On top of that, we also have the witness of Saint Peter from the mount of Transfiguration. Even though Peter had never met Moses and Elijah before in his life, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was still able to identify them by their appearance. How could we be in perfect fellowship with God and all His saints if we didn’t even know their names? No, as the Bible says, “We shall know fully, even as we are fully known.”

Again, that is the second comfort of All Saints’ Day. It is that our loved ones who have died in faith will one day rise again from the dead and we will join them in the resurrection on the Last Day.

And the last comfort of All Saints’ Day is that our loved ones who have died in the faith are with us now in the Means of Grace. Yes, the souls of our loved ones are in heaven with Jesus. And yes, the souls of our loved ones will be reunited with their bodies at the return of Jesus in glory. But let us not forget that Jesus is still with us. As Jesus promised in Matthew chapter 28, “Behold I am with you always, to very end of the age.” And because Jesus is still with us, we know that our loved ones who are with Jesus, are with us too whenever we are with Him. 

The place where we Christians have fellowship with Jesus is always in God’s Word and Sacraments. The Bible tells us that when we are baptized into Christ we put on Christ. It tells us that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ Name there He is among them. And it tells us that whenever we eat and drink the bread and wine of Communion, we are consuming the true Body and Blood of Christ. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 Saint Paul writes, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one Body for we all partake of the one bread.” I don’t know if you have ever thought about what those words means for you when you take the Lord’s Supper, but I know when I first started to think about it myself. As some of you know, my parents are both already with the Lord in heaven. When my dad died, I was very young. I don’t remember everything that happened, but I do remember what my mom told me and my brothers the first week back to church after his funeral. She said to us, “Your dad was there with us at the altar.”

Mom was right. And it was not just wishful thinking on her part. It was what the Bible teaches and what the Church has always confessed in the Liturgy. As the author of Hebrews tells us, “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” And as the pastor says right before we sing the Sanctus, it is “with angels, and archangels, and the whole company of heaven that we laud and magnify God’s glorious name.”

If you want to be close to your loved ones who have died in the faith, go to where Jesus promises to be close to you. Jesus doesn’t tell you that you get closer to Him by taking a walk in the woods or playing eighteen holes of golf. He doesn’t tell you to search for His presence hidden in your feelings or bound up to your emotions. He doesn’t tell you to look for Him in bird signs, in sunsets, or reincarnated in the form of cat. And that is not where we find our loved ones either. If they were Christians, we find them in the place where all Christians are found. We find them in Church. Again, that is the last comfort of All Saints’ Day. It is that our loved ones who have died in the faith are with us now in the Means of Grace.

There are many things about today that make us sad. But in the midst of all of that, we Christians still have comfort. We have the only comfort that matters and the only comfort that lasts. We have the comfort that comes from Christ. It is the comfort that is ours because of His death and resurrection which paid for all our sins and promises eternal life to all believers. As we remember our loved ones who have died in the faith today, let us also remember what the Word of God teaches us about them. They are with the Lord in bliss. Jesus will raise them up on the Last Day. And until then, we are united with them every time we take Communion. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Reformation Day, we Lutherans give special thanks to God for His servant Martin Luther, who boldly stood up for the truth of the Scriptures even in the face of grave personal danger. When we hear about Luther’s speech at the Diet of Worms in 1521, and how he refused to compromise on God’s Word despite the threat of his own death, famously saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other,” it sends chills down the back of every good Lutheran’s spine. But not everybody, of course, feels the same way that we do. Not everyone views Luther as a hero. In fact, many people, still to this day think of him as the villain. “Luther is the one,” they say, “who destroyed the Church.” “If it wasn’t for Martin Luther,” some argue, “then there wouldn’t be so much fighting among Christians today and so many different denominations.” “It’s Luther,” they maintain, “who was the real problem.” Many people in our time see Luther’s insistence on fighting for the truth of the Scriptures down to the very last teaching not as admirable, but as arrogant and misguided. They say that about him, and they also say that about us too.

So, in today’s sermon, as we celebrate once again the great Reformation of the Church, allow me to explain to you all on the basis of our Gospel lesson from John chapter 8, why we must never give up fighting for the truth of the Scriptures.

The first reason why we must never give up this fight, regardless of how difficult it might be, or what kind of things we might have to go through on account of it, is because there is only One truth that exists, and it is not our possession but God’s. As Jesus told the Jews so clearly in our text this morning, “If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth.” Here our Lord reminds us plainly that when we are defending the things that are taught in the Bible, we are not defending our own ideas, but the very Word of God. 

Yes, it would be one thing for us to fight over what we think, or about what we believe, but it is another matter entirely when it comes to fighting for what God says. And the content of the Bible does not consist in the thoughts or opinions of any mere man. It is the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Everything that we learn from the Scriptures, down to the smallest of details, is an accurate and reliable account of God’s very own truth. As we read in 2 Timothy chapter 3, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”

The truth of the Scriptures, therefore, is not our property or possession that we can simply give away or give up if it is too inconvenient or too burdensome for us to hold on to. It is God’s property, which we are called as His servants and stewards to protect and administer faithfully. Even though it may be easier to ignore certain teachings of the Bible, so as to avoid conflict, we would do so at the peril of our own souls and the souls of others. We would do so at the cost of losing out on the fullness of the truth, and turning it in to half-truths, or partial truths, which are really no truths at all.

There is no such thing as an unimportant or unnecessary teaching of God’s Word. There is no such thing as something that God tells to us in the Bible that doesn’t really matter. Those individuals in our day who maintain that we should only talk about the basics, so as to avoid conflict in the Church, may have good intentions, but they are still wrong. Who gets to determine what the basics of the Bible are in the first place? Which one of us has permission from the Lord to stand over the Scriptures and pick and choose which doctrines are essential and which ones aren’t? Where in Old or New Testament does God ever tells us to minimize anything that the Holy Spirit has chosen to reveal to us? He doesn’t tell us that anywhere. In fact, one of the very last things that God says to us in the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is this, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city.”

Saying that we Christians should stop fighting about the things in the Bible that we have trouble agreeing on is just another tool of the devil to get us to stop studying God’s Word and suppress His truth in the process. And for those who argue that the full truth of the Scriptures can never really be known, and that striving for pure doctrine is a naïve and impossible pursuit, that is not what the Bible says either. Again, as Jesus tells us in our text today, “If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth.” Through the humble study of God’s Word, where we allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, and interpret themselves for us, we can come to the knowledge of the truth. We can understand exactly what God wants us to believe.

And again, that is the first reason why we must never give up fighting for the truth of the Scriptures. Because it is not our truth, but God’s.

The next reason why we shouldn’t give up this fight is because the loss of the truth of the Scriptures would be something far worse than all of the strife that we experience now on account of defending it. According to Jesus, not only is the Bible God’s very own truth, but it is also the instrument that He uses to set us free from our sins and save us. As He says in our text, “If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” God uses everything that is written in sacred Scripture to guide us to eternal life. Through the various teachings of the Bible, we learn what we need to know in order to be saved. We learn about what God wants from us in our lives, and how we have failed to do it. We learn about what Jesus Christ has done in our place to make satisfaction for our sins. And we learn about how we receive God’s forgiveness through faith alone.

Every single false doctrine that exists is an attack not only on Divine truth, but on our faith in Jesus. It is an attack on our salvation. Since all of the teachings of the Bible are intended to lead us to Christ, every time that something from the Bible is ignored or contradicted, it leads us away from Him instead. Even the smallest of errors, over time, can corrode our trust in Jesus and cause a person to fall away from the faith. Remember what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 16. He says, “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees.” And what does Saint Paul write in Galatians 5, “A little bit of leaven, leavens the whole lump.”

What happens when you teach that salvation doesn’t come by grace alone, but that our own good works need to contribute to it too? Eventually, people will trust in themselves instead of Jesus, or they will despair that that they haven’t done enough to be saved. What happens when you claim that conversion is not entirely the merciful work of God but an act of our own free will? Either people will rely on their own decision to follow Christ, as if their decision is what saved them, or they will doubt that they were sincere enough when they supposedly made it. What happens when you deny that Baptism saves, or that the Lord’s Supper is the true Body and Blood of Christ, despite the clear passages from the Bible that say so? You take away the comfort of the Gospel and you deprive people of the certainty of God’s love when they are burdened by their sins. And what happens when you declare that the earth evolved over billions and billions of years, that marriage isn’t the life-long union between one man and one woman, and that life doesn’t begin at conception? You contradict the plain witness of Scriptures, cause people to have a low view of the Bible, and sometimes even make them reject the forgiveness from Jesus that they so desperately need.

Even though all of these examples are different false teachings, if left un-checked, or embraced, the result of every single one of them has the potential to be the same. All of them can enslave us. All of them can put us back in bondage to our sin and rob us of the freedom that we have in Christ. All of them can lead us away from Jesus. It's not that a person is saved by knowing every teaching of God’s Word perfectly, but God uses every teaching in His Word to save us. He uses all of it to build up our faith in Christ. And that is why, we should never stop fighting for any of it, regardless of how unimportant or trivial it might seem to others.

And the last reason why we must never give up the fight for the truth of the Scriptures is because defending that truth is commanded by God Himself, and has His blessing. Jesus tells us in John chapter 8 to “abide in His Word.” To abide in something means to stay as close to it as possible and never leave it. Obviously, if fighting for the truth of the Scriptures and defending the pure doctrine of God’s Word was an activity that we came up with on our own, it wouldn’t be necessary. But who would ever say the same thing about something that God Himself tells us to do? Who would be so bold as to reject the clear command of our Lord and Savior?

Jesus tells us to abide in His Word. He tells us to stay close to the Scriptures and not to depart from anything that they teach us. This is not just something that God’s Word tells us in one passage but in many other passages too. In 1 Timothy chapter 4, we read, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers.” And as Saint Jude tells us, “Contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.”

We do not have a promise that things will be easy for us if we hold fast to God’s Word and refuse to compromise on the truth of the Scriptures. But we do have the promise that God will bless us. God always blesses those who do His will. Even if they should suffer for doing the right thing, He promises to use their suffering for good, and strengthen their faith in the midst of it.

Many times today we hear people argue that the reason why our church, or even our own congregation, is shrinking is because of what we teach. They say that if we only would stay away for those topics that make people uncomfortable, churches like ours would be bursting at the seams. And perhaps they are right. But that wouldn’t mean that they are in the right. Just because a lot of people go to a certain church doesn’t mean that the things that it teaches are true. Just because a lot a people agree on something, doesn’t mean that what they agree on is correct. Truth comes from God. And He reveals that truth to us in the Bible. Therefore, the mark of a good church is not how many people attend it, but whether or not it is faithful to the Bible. 

When you are the faithful to the Bible you can expect to suffer for it. You can expect people to call you names and not understand why, in their mind, you are being so arrogant and stubborn. But it is not arrogant to submit yourself to the Word of God and confess it boldly no matter what anyone else says. It is not arrogant to fight for the truth of the Scriptures and reject everything that contradicts them. In fact, that is what every true disciple of Jesus does. We do it is because the truth is not ours but God’s. We do it because losing out on other things isn’t as bad as what we would lose out on if we lost the truth. And we do it because God tells us to. 

So, may the Lord bless us as we do it. May He strengthen us to be faithful unto death and never give up the struggle of fighting for the truth of the Scriptures. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.