LESSON: ROMANS 10:14-17

“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” Luke 10:16

Christ enters our hearts and takes His stand there through the office of the ministry. Since God has given orders that His Word should be preached, we should never in any manner despise the mortal man in whose mouth that Word has been placed, so that we do not form the opinion that each individual must wait for a special sermon from heaven which God Himself preaches to him verbally.

Therefore, if God grants faith to anyone, He employs the regular means which He has appointed for this purpose. He accomplishes His end through the preaching of men, through an external, human word.

He enters through a closed door when He enters a human heart by means of the Word without smashing or disturbing anything. When God’s Word comes, it does not injure the conscience, disturb the understanding of the heart, or upset the external senses as those false teachers do who smash all doors and windows, break in like thieves and leave nothing whole and undisturbed, and bring it to pass that the whole of life, conscience, understanding, and the senses become completely unhinged and lose all rhyme or reason. Christ does not do this.

God’s Word proclaimed by men converts sinners. There are two factors involved: preaching and faith. His coming to us is the preaching or proclamation. His standing in our hearts is faith. It is not enough for Him to stand simply before our eyes and ears; He must stand in our midst, in our hearts, with His gift of peace.

SL 11:726 (4)

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, awaken and increase in us a true reverence for Your saving Word proclaimed to us by the ministers of Your Word, so that, in this manner, Christ our Savior may take His stand in our hearts with His message of peace and joy as a result of His glorious resurrection from the dead. Amen.

Editor’s note: No American Edition (AE) equivalent for today’s sermon excerpt exists at the time of this publication. For an alternate English translation of this sermon, see Lenker, Church Postil—Gospels, 2:352-63.

LESSON: JOHN 20:19-31

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” John 20:19

As Christians, we must apply the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ to ourselves individually. It is not enough simply to believe that He rose from the dead, for such a faith in itself will not mean peace and joy for us, nor power and might. You must also believe that He rose for your sake and for your benefit. He was not raised into glory for His own sake alone but that He might help you and all who believe in Him and that through His resurrection He might overcome sin, death, and hell.

This is also indicated by the way in which Christ enters through the locked doors and steps forth and stands in the midst of His disciples. The manner in which He stood here in the midst of the disciples resembles that manner in which He also stands in our hearts. In this way, He is also in our midst, just as He was standing there among the disciples.

When He stands in our hearts in this manner, we hear His loving voice speaking to our conscience, “Be at your ease: there is no need at all for any anxiety. Your sins are forgiven you and removed from you and nothing can henceforth harm you.”

SL 11:725 (2-3)

PRAYER: Lord God, heavenly Father, in Your great love for us, You gave Your Son to suffer and die for our sins. By His glorious resurrection from the dead, You have demonstrated that the sacrifice of Your Son has been accepted and that now all is well with us in time and eternity, in and through our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Editor’s note: No American Edition (AE) equivalent for today’s sermon excerpt exists at the time of this publication. For an alternate English translation of this sermon, see Lenker, Church Postil—Gospels, 2:352-63.

LESSON: MATTHEW 27:1-14

In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

You must learn to look right through the sufferings of Christ and see His friendly heart, how it is filled with love for you, and how it moved Him to assume the heavy load which your conscience and sins laid on Him. In this way, your heart will be warmed towards Him, and your confidence and faith will be strengthened. Thereupon you should mount even higher through Christ’s heart to God’s heart and see that Christ would never have manifested His love for you if God in His eternal love had not willed it. Christ rendered obedience to God’s love in His love for you.

In this way, you will discover the fatherly heart of God in its wonderful goodness, and, as Christ Himself declares, you will be drawn to the Father through Him. Then you will also understand Christ’s saying that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

To come to a true knowledge of God, we must not try to find Him simply in His power of wisdom, which can be bewildering, but we must grasp Him in His goodness and love. In this respect, faith and confidence have something to cling to, and man becomes truly born anew in God.

SL 11:581 (14)
AE 76:431

PRAYER: Make it ever more clear and certain for us, heavenly Father, that in all that Christ our Savior bore and suffered for us sinners, love was operating and that in this manifestation of love You have clearly revealed our inner and true nature to us, for Christ’s sake. Amen.