Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Pocket Edition They go away again, and at the end of the year they know as little of God’s Word as at the beginning. They listen to God’s Word like it was any other trifle and only come to preaching because of custom. It is not only the people who greatly misuse and desecrate the holy day who sin against this commandment (those who neglect to hear God’s Word because of their greed or frivolity or lie in taverns and are dead drunk like swine). Writing about the Third Commandment in his Large Catechism, Martin Luther says this: Why not? To put it bluntly, our sin gets in the way. Your Servant Hearsīut we don’t always experience that, do we? Or at least, we don’t think we do. 2:13), every time he sets forth God’s Law and saving promises. This means we can expect to hear God speak-directly and specifically-in every sermon our pastor preaches (1 Thess. Still today, Jesus promises that when we hear God’s servants, we hear Him (Luke 10:16). So it is that still today God gives “some to be prophets” (Eph. Your pastor and mine stand and minister week by week in that age-old prophetic tradition, not declaring new revelation, of course, but repeating the warnings and the promises in the way God has always dealt with people. But primarily their messages focused on “forth telling,” on proclaiming God’s will for His people, His awareness of, and anger at, their sins, and His consolations of mercy and grace toward repentant, believing sinners.Īnd it’s with that view of the prophetic ministry that the New Testament speaks about the “prophets” who serve God’s people still today (Eph. True enough, prophets from Abel to Zechariah did foretell the future. Perhaps, too, we think mainly about the prophets’ “foretelling function”-the predictions the prophets of old made about God’s coming judgment or about the coming Messiah.
#Word of god speek full#
And He speaks to His people today no less clearly and truly than He did through the prophets of old.īut perhaps the word prophet conjures up images of Elijah the Tishbite (1 Kings 17:1ff)-wild hair, a full beard, a plate of fried locusts for supper, and a wardrobe borrowed from Charlton Heston and central casting. God shows up when His Word is proclaimed. (If my heart weren’t so hard, all this would bring tears to my eyes-every time!) In the Holy Supper, He nourishes us with Christ’s very body and blood at His family table. In the Absolution, He removes our sins and keeps us in that family. In Baptism, He adopts sinners into His family. In colloquial terms, “God shows up- and does stuff!” And the “stuff” He does is nothing short of miraculous. He is really present-and not simply as a disinterested observer.
Scripture makes it clear that when the communion of saints gathers, Jesus comes in all His fullness among us (Matt. But often we think and act as though we actually believe it. We would never say this out loud, of course. We can lapse into habits of thought that make what happens on Sunday morning simply a comforting memorial service for a God who used to speak, who used to act on behalf of His people a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The problem with “obvious” truths, though, is that we tend to forget them, to overlook them, to take them for granted. When God’s people gather for worship, He speaks to us. You have likely already guessed where this is going. Would you go there? Would you open both ears? Speak, Lord Imagine that He would tell you precisely what you need to hear at any given moment. Suppose you knew with certainty that God would speak-speak directly to your situation. 15:23).īut suppose there were a place where you really could hear from God Himself. Unreliable sources all-and forbidden by God in the sternest terms, we might add (see Ex. Psychics, palm readers, and fortunetellers populate cities large and small today. Ancient Israel’s first king, Saul, consulted the witch of Endor. The Greeks made the oracle of Delphi their most sacred shrine. Throughout recorded history, people have beaten a path to places where they expected to hear divine wisdom.
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