So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)
golter's musings september 2018
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#BEGINNINGOFTHEWORLD
September 6, 2018God’s Book records how God’s creation began. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” (Gen. 1:1). God wants you to know what and how creation began. Since you weren’t there, He tells you.
This beginning story reveals His activity then and also now. God reveals His heart by what He does.
Some pointers about which we can take great delight:
+ God gives Himself His own stamp of approval of how He made everything. “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good,” (Gen. 31). Therefore, you and I rejoice how God made and continues to make His creation, even us. My 5-foot-7 frame as well as His packaging of Golter—aptitude, brain design, personality—is His marvelous creation. The same is for you.
+ God goes after Adam and Eve in the Garden (Genesis 3:1 f.), sending Jesus to preach to them. Jesus pronounced a curse upon the Devil but blessing and forgiveness to His first couple. God’s first and ongoing inclination is to rescue and forgive sinners. The same is for you.
+ From this first history God tells us how death and sin came about. Death is His punishment for sin upon sinners (Genesis 2:17; cf. Rom. 6:23). Death is not natural, but God’s ongoing consequence and judgment for rebellion against Him. God, however, preaches right away judgment upon the Devil and blessing upon Adam and Eve. All payment for sin was already secured in the Offspring of the woman, as preached by God (Genesis 3:15). Now you know why you die but also why you will live forever.
+ Creation’s beginning shows God’s chosen paradigm for marriage, between one man and one woman. He co-works with a husband and wife and produces children. This is God’s ongoing creation pattern of populating the earth. God asserts His goodness to and through a man and a woman to children. God loves children, the more the better. Parents bring children to the Baptismal Font, and God baptizes them into His life, a marvelous cooperative work. Through parents, God feeds children both in body and soul, with meat and vegetables and with God’s Word. This is the pattern.
+ God’s original pattern is heterosexual love within proper marital boundaries; only this design by God produces children and is God-pleasing. As intense, sincere and powerful as homosexual love may be, it cannot produce children. God didn’t set it up that way. Any deviance from God’s pattern is rebellion against the Creator and, “suppress(es) the truth,” (Romans 1:18).
+ God created humans as sexual beings, male and female; this is very good. His original pattern for human sexuality remains the final word and ongoing critique for all practice after Creation.
“Pastor, what’s your opinion of same-sex marriage and homosexuals?”
“Pastor, what is God’s first and ongoing opinion of me? I’m such a sinner.”
“Pastor, didn’t the world just come about by itself, perhaps by a big bang?”
“These are excellent questions, thank you! Let’s go back to Creation, to what God says.”
#Beginning of the World.
Pastor Golter is the Senior Pastor at Trinity Lutheran
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Do we realLy need lutheran schools?
september 13, 2018
Yes, we do. Here’s why.
God gives Lutheran teachers two tools to teach children: The word of knowledge and the word of Holy Scripture.
From the word of knowledge, they learn how glaciers cause erosion of the earth’s surface. They learn of a bird’s instinct to sing, and marvel over God’s creation. And, they learn to solve Word Problems. “Adam counted 8 legs in the doghouse. How many dogs are there?” This is all good. This is all very good.
Knowledge and facts of God’s world expands, educates, and sharpens the mind, preparing these little ones for their future vocation to serve their neighbors. God created people to love Him and to serve others within His creation.
Knowledge of God’s world does not, however, help a dirty, sinful heart. Even school rules—don’t run, don’t yell, don’t hit—have no power to clean a guilty conscience. They do help control external behavior. Good behavior, though, does not get one to heaven.
The Lutheran school teacher’s other tool does this, teaches God’s Word. The Word targets the heart, or conscience as the Hebrews’ writer states (9:14). And, the Word draws little hearts to their heavenly Father through Jesus (see John 6:44).
An important passage is from Jesus’ own preaching in John 6:63. “The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” Jesus means that all of His preaching is the revealing of His life, death and resurrection for sinners. This story of Jesus’ own life, death and resurrection—the whole Bible--pulsates with life, actually giving life.
Children here at Trinity love to go to chapel.
Why?
Happy hearts come from clean and pure hearts, cleansed by Jesus’ Word. “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’” (Ps. 122:1). The children merely follow in line with King David’s words.
The Holy Spirit Himself works through the Word to give this life. This is the inherent power of God’s Word. It penetrates the very heart of a person, converts, regenerates, and saves. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit…discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart,” (Heb. 4:12).
The Holy Spirit calls the Word a hammer (Jer. 23:29) and shepherd’s staff (Ps. 23:4). He also calls it a fire (Jer. 23:29), gentle rain and showers (Deut. 32:2), and a lamp giving light (Ps. 119:105).
Connecting the Word to water, the Holy Spirit describes His work through Baptism not as a cleansing of dirt from the skin, “but an appeal to God for a good conscience,” (1 Peter 3:21). How can a child have a clean conscience through Baptism? It’s God’s work of cleansing from sin.
Do we REALLY need Lutheran schools?
No comment is needed.
Pastor Golter is the Senior Pastor at Trinity Lutheran
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Do you take things personally?
Septmeber 27, 2018
Oh, I bet you think I mean accusation. I do, but there’s another side.
Do you take flattery, also personally? Both are equally dangerous. Accusation or flattery, if taken personally, sets you up for a fall, a roller-coaster life.
Why?
Because you have set aside faith in Christ. What Christ says about you is the final, ongoing and refreshing word. The Gospel is not only a past event—when the Holy Spirit converted you—but an ongoing refreshing steam of life-giving water to your soul (see Psalm 1:3). Your God-given faith is sustained solely by the Good News of Christ as Savior from all sin. God designed faith this way, as needing the external power source of the Gospel.
Paul argues this persuasively. “I have been crucified with Christ (a baptismal reference). It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me,’ (Gal. 2:20).
What Jesus did to you matters; He connected you through baptismal splashing to His Cross and Resurrection (Rom. 6:3-4).
Christ can’t be put aside; your eyes must be fixed solely on Jesus, for self-esteem. Turn your ears daily to the Father’s Word of blessing.
Criticism may indeed have merit, causing a self-reflection and often a needed repentance. Flattery should be taken as an opportunity to praise the One who works all good through His believers (Phil. 2:12-13). Criticism or flattery is not the final word for your worth.
Any goodness goes as credit to the Holy Spirit who’s worked it through the Word and the Sacraments. Any sin is yours and mine, and both are owned by Jesus. “But He was pierced for our transgressions…” (Is. 53:5).
The above was one of the many topics I learned last week at Doxology, a training to make me a better pastor.
Oh, one more thing I learned of the above: The Devil will use others to accuse you; it’s his game plan. God, however, uses these slanderous schemes to keep you humble, and trusting only in Jesus.
So, hear a brother’s or sister’s words; consider them kindly, not defensively. Consider them only as one daily immersed in the blood of Christ.
