John 8:31-32

"If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Sermon Series - the Five-Fold Vision Statements of Dr. Barry -- Sermon #1

"Be In the Word"

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

This morning we begin our summer series of sermons. This year we will be taking a look at the Five-fold Vision Statement of Dr. Alvin Barry, President of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Shortly after he was elected to be the president of our Synod, Dr. Barry was asked for his vision, what hoped, by the grace of God, to see this church body become. Dr. Barry articulated his hopes for the Synod as five point outline of over-arching principles. They are not goals, for goals are measurable. These are principles which should focus the work of the church, and help us to set goals and direct all that we do and say as church.

There are five "visions," so to speak. Dr. Barry envisioned the Missouri Synod as becoming the kind of Church that Scriptures says that we should be. The Synod, under the grace of God, should grow into a church that is; first, in the Word; second, a church where people care for one another; third, we are to be a church where we tell the good news; fourth, we are to always remain faithful to the doctrines of the Word of God and to the teachings of the Lutheran Confessions; and finally, fifth, that we become a church whose members live in peace with one another.

Each of these emphases are thoroughly Scriptural. And we shall look at each one in its turn, this summer, with our text being the verse or verses suggested by the President of Synod. With each emphasis, there is also the Banner, which we will use each week to emphasize the vision statement of the week. Our banners are unique - the color choices being different from the professionally made banners of the Synod , but following their pattern - having been made with the materials available locally by the ladies of Zion. We thank them.

Our Vision Statement for today is that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod should grow up into a church body which is in the Word - both as a Synod, and as individual members, congregations, Pastors, and congregational members - all of us be in the Word faithfully.

Our text tells us that only those who abide in the Word are truly disciples of Jesus. Everyone else is something else. Some are hypocrites, and some are fooling themselves, and then most who do not abide in the Word of God are clearly and deliberately no part of Jesus. If we want to be the Church, we need to be in the Word.

Dr. Barry's vision was not that something strange would happen to us, but, if all goes according to the design laid out for us by God, we will be a church that abides in the Word. To accomplish that as a Synod, Congregations need to be in the Word, and to do that, the members of the Congregations need to be in the Word. We need to be in the Word, not just on Sunday mornings - or the every other Sunday morning that is our average attendance. We need to be deliberately and regularly in the Word. We need to read it for ourselves. We need to pray it. We need to speak it to one another. We need to study it. And, yes, we need to be in the Fellowship of the Saints as we gather around Word and Sacrament regularly - by which I mean every week

But this is not a law - any more than the command to eat chocolate is a law for a chocolate lover, or the instruction to watch a football game is a law to a died-in-the-wool Vikings fan. It is the way it ought to work. If you are a disciple, you will be in the Word. You will want to be in the Word. It is like eating chocolate to a choco-holic. It is what we are about.

If it sounds like I am saying that you must be in the Word to be a Christian, I am. If it sounds like there is something wrong where there is no desire for worship, for Bible Study and the like, I am. But I am not laying down a law - it is not that the disciple must be in the Word. It works in just the opposite way.

Jesus said that if you abide in His Word, then you are truly His disciple. It is the Word which makes one a disciple. It is being always and regularly in the Word which works faith in us. It is abiding in the Word - literally living in it and on the basis of it - that makes one a disciple. So, if you are not in the Word, if you are not interested in being more in the Word, then the "if . . . then" of Jesus does not apply.

And one of the most serious problems facing the Church today is the unwillingness and inability of those within the church to assess circumstances in the light of the Word of God. Thousands of people think that they are Christians when it is clear they are not. They think they are Christians, but they do not come to church. They think they are Christians but they do and say things as a matter of course that a Christian should not do or say. They think they are Christians but they bear no fruit of faith, and they do not do those things which Scripture says a Christian will do.

The frequent admonition of Scripture is "Do not be deceived!" yet many are deceiving themselves by thinking they are Christians when they are not. They believe that they are Christians because they once were, and now they remember believing. They delude themselves by thinking that feeling is all that matters - and they still feel the same. Some fool themselves by measuring their Christianity by what they do. When they hear phrases like, "doing what Scripture says that Christians will do," they associate that phrase with doing good deeds, with works of kindness or works of outward righteousness.

But that is not what Scripture says that Christians will do. Scripture says that Christians will lay their hope in Jesus, focus their trust on His death and resurrection for them, and believe in Jesus. Scripture says that the disciple of Jesus is the one who abides in the Word of God, not the Boy Scout who helps old ladies across busy intersections, and does all manner of socially useful but spiritually empty good works. The common denominator among such people is that they are each deceiving themselves and deceived.

Jesus said that His disciples would abide in the Word and therefore would know the truth. And it is this truth which will set them free. The truth is the truth about sin - how real and deadly and pervasive it is. The truth is the truth about you - that you are a sinner and deserve no good thing from God on your good days! The truth is the truth about Jesus - who He is and what He has done, and what His death on the cross accomplished for us. The truth is the truth of grace and forgiveness, that it is purchased and won already, that it is a free gift of God poured out on all but received only by those who believe.

The truth is the truth about faith, how it is the gift of God, created by the Holy Spirit through Baptism and the Word of God, and sustained only by the Holy Spirit and only through hearing and reading the Word of God. There is nothing you can do to make yourself believe, and nothing you can do to keep yourself in the faith. There is no act, no decision, no prayer, no work of any sort which you can perform to keep yourself in the faith. It is all accomplished by the grace of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, who has revealed to us that He desires and chooses to work in us only through the Word of God. Therefore the truth is that only those who abide in the Word are truly disciples of Jesus because that is how He has chosen for this thing called faith and salvation to work.

The truth, in which we shall be kept, is sound doctrine. If you do not believe the truth, you do not possess the freedom which the truth gives. Sound doctrine is the truth. It is what the Bible teaches. Contrary to the expressed conviction of many people, how you feel about the truth is less significant than the truth itself. It is not whether you like the truth, or feel all warm and squishy about the truth that makes the difference. It is only whether you believe it. Faith, and faith alone, receives the forgiveness of sins and life and salvation. The feelings may be there - will probably come and go as life goes on, but faith is not feeling, and it is not behavior, it is the work of the Holy Spirit within those who believe, and it is a work which He accomplishes by the power of the Word of God.

And, frankly, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are what we are all about as Christians. They are not what we do, but they are what we are Christians about. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, says, "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied." This world and this life in time are precious and beautiful, and the life of faith both informs and enriches our life in this world, and it should color and beautify the world around us, but this world and this life are not what the Christian faith or the Christian Church are about, make no mistake about it! We are about resurrection from the dead and eternal life in bliss and glory in the presence of our God forevermore in heaven! That is what we are really about.

It is the truth of the marvelous gift of the grace of God which answers life's deepest and final questions and destroys the final enemy, death, that makes our faith so precious, and which gives our faith the power to comfort us in our most profound sorrows. It is the knowledge of the deep and far-reaching love of God that would send His only Son to live as one of us and die in our place that give us comfort in times of trouble, that assures us that He loves us and is with us and will never let us go or forget us. It is knowing the truth of Jesus Christ and the Cross which sets us free from our sins, which set us free from sin's power to frighten or destroy us, which set us free from fear of death and ultimate failure, which sets us free from slavery to law and into the freedom of the desire to serve God in holiness of living. It is the truth, and knowing the truth which sets us free - and we come upon that truth, and learn that truth, and believe that truth only when we abide in the Word of God, just as Jesus says in our text.

So when Dr. Barry says that his vision for the Missouri Synod is that we are a Church in the Word, he is simply saying that he envisions our Synod as a truly Christian church. Our Synod must be a church of the Word. What else is there? We can feed the dying, but we only delay the day of death for a time. We can clothe the naked, and, in Godly and Christian love for our neighbor, we ought to, but we only clothe the dying. We can do all manner of good deeds, and God's people do tremendously good deeds and rightly so, but we do those outwardly useful and desirable things in a world which is, itself, destined to perish in flames. But when we stand in the Word, we stand in the power of God for everlasting life. When we preach that life-giving Word we rescue the dying from death and from this perishing world. We must be a church in the Word to be a genuinely Christian church, for, as Peter confessed to Jesus, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Only You have the Words of eternal life."

As a Church we want to be deliberately in the Word. We want to abide in that Word. To do that as a Synod, our Congregations must each be grounded and living in the Word - in the truth of what that Word teaches us. But in order to do that, we must each, as the people of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod be in the Word, and abide in the Word. Those who abide in the Word are truly disciples of Jesus. Those who will not are not. God grant that we stand together as the people of God in the Word!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say "Amen".)

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