DEVOTIONS

It is such a scary thought: that there are SO MANY in the world that we live in who go through this life without EVER having a thought, or a conversation, or an inquiry; about ANYTHING eternally important or significant. We are, instead, a people who live only day to day, moment to moment, stimuli response; stimuli response. And continue to do so, right into the arms of the grave; and for so many in our world who are without Christ, right into the arms of destruction.

Does THAT thought unnerve you? Does THAT unsettle you? Does THAT make you uncomfortable; that we are surrounded by people who do not know Jesus, and DO NOT EVEN KNOW that they are in peril without him? Does it BOTHER you; does it keep you up at night; to think of those whose only source of truth are their televisions and the random thoughts that run through their ever unchallenged and unquestioning minds? Is THAT enough to make you, in a word, sad?

Well GOOD. It SHOULD. And that feeling of discontent should then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, drive us into ACTION. We SHOULD and MUST realize the immediacy of the situation. For Jesus IS FOR ALL; he loves all, he died for all, he desires all, and he FREELY GIVES TO ALL!

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

As WE are Christians, and so WE role with Jesus, so we do not dismiss what he says, nor do we scoff at things that HE HIMSELF thought carried weight. Instead, we return to our question, the lines and boundaries clearly drawn: “What do the SCRIPTURES; and what does JESUS say; about a theology that says ‘everyone is saved’.”

To be continued in the Sunday Devotion…

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

You see, as we are Christians, what is ultimately authoritative is Jesus Christ. HE is the one who dictates what is truth and what is not. And HIS Word is what gives THIS testimony its validity. And so our epistemology; and “how we know what we know” as it pertains to God and his plan of salvation, is that we seek answers in the Word of God; and in his proclamations by the power of the Holy Spirit.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

This season, as we are peppered with the busyness of the year, and as we are peppered with people who are here to have their annual taste of just “what it is that’s going on here” and “just what it is we get out of this”, as they sit here, with us, but often apart, let us make sure that as we invite them to become part of the Kingdom, that we say WHY it is so important.

I ask you for a final time, CHRISTIANS;

What did you come out to see?

We came to see Jesus.

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

Difficult times are going to come. It doesn’t mean God isn’t here. And there will be times when we ask for things in prayer and God says “no”. And that’s okay. God knows better than we do, and he loves us, and we trust his judgment. But NONE of that means that God isn’t there, and NONE of it means that God isn’t going to fulfill his promises. But we have to remember to keep our focuses on those promises, and to remember that the most IMPORTANT promises are the BIG ones: life, salvation, forgiveness, and the kingdom of God to come. It’s eternity! Not a Ferrari.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

Concordia Theology » Hauerwas and Disability

concordiatheology.orgThere was quite a little contingent from Concordia listening to Stanely Hauerwas at Fontbonne University this past Monday evening. Travis Scholl did a nice job summarizing the main thrust of the lecture in an earlier …

Let love be genuine;  hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor.  Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.   Romans 12: 9 - 11

“Faith and love are so intimately related that any line of division between them is bound to be a fluid one.  Love is to be genuine, not hypocritical.  Even within the church there is, tragically enough, much that passes for love and yet is but a sorry substitute for genuine love.  It is often sentimental, weak, and therefore basically selfish;  it may make the lover “feel good all over,” but it does not really help those to whom love is shown.  The mark of love is therefore an abhorrence of evil coupled with a holding fast to the good…

Where there is genuine love, there the church as the family of God is a reality.  There all the brothers of the firstborn Son love one another and care for one another…

Such love cannot remain a sentiment;  it becomes an action, to be carried out with a zeal that never flags.  This must be “love of the Spirit” (15:30).  The Spirit is the source and power of this love;  the energies of our humane goodwill do not suffice for it.  It is a service rendered, through the other man, to the Lord Himself.”

-  Martin H. Franzmann, Romans

Before beginning today, I want to make something very clear, because I know a lot of people like her a lot. And sometimes if you say something about someone that people like a lot then people can get hung up on it if you say something negative about them, and then that’s all they hear you say for the entirety of the sermon. And so to avoid that, let me just start off today with this disclaimer:

The point of the message today is NOT that you can’t watch Oprah Winfrey. It’s not that you can’t listen to Oprah. It’s not that you can’t read the books Oprah tells you to read… (though I would ask you to think about THAT on a book by book basis.)

Further, the point today is NOT that you can’t LIKE Oprah. It’s not that you can’t like her “softball question” interviews to people like Tom Cruise and the guy who landed the plane in the Hudson River. It’s not that you can’t like that she gives cars away to the people who come to her shows. It’s not that you can’t like her as an actress in films like The Color Purple, or her magazine: “O”; or her television production studio “Harpo”, which is, of course, Oprah spelled backwards.

None of the things are the point that we’re making today. But I DO want to say something about Oprah, and what I want to say about her is this: you can LIKE her, you can watch her, you can listen to her when she tells you what books to read; but if you are a Christian, you CANNOT believe that the world and the universe, and all that is in it, functions the way that Oprah thinks that it functions. In other words, no matter what you think of her, and her entertainment value in whatever medium you consumer her, you CANNOT have Oprah’s theology. At least, not if you are a follower of Jesus.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

It is NOT by being a good person that we are righteous before God. There is no virtuous pagan who can stand on his own merit in the Scriptures to whom God proclaims, “Oh, well. You have been good enough! You do not need my forgiveness! In fact, if it was just YOU here, and not these lousy people I have, I wouldn’t have had to send my son to die at all!” THAT doesn’t happen.

And in fact, it is THAT which Jesus is arguing against in the Gospels ALL THE TIME. The Pharisees keep pointing to “other stuff” to show Jesus that they don’t need him. They point to how they uphold the law. They point to their lineage: “Hey Jesus! Abraham is my father! Keep your Christianity off me! I don’t need it! I’ve got Moses!” They point to the fact that they are “learned”; they know the stuff, they’ve heard the stories, they’re read the books.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

We are redeemed, and forgiven, and we have salvation and eternal life

BY THE GRACE of Jesus Christ

THROUGH FAITH.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

You all know it: the bottom line is that church is often times NOT very entertaining. And, especially if the message and the readings have a lot of LAW in them, it may not always make you feel good. And, if you’re coming to make someone else happy, then you will come just enough to appease them.

But the good thing is that THOSE AREN’T THE REASONS WE ARE THE CHURCH. Those aren’t the reasons at all. And when other people sit in among us and think that they are, then THEY DON’T GET IT. “I don’t think this is fun. This isn’t my type of thing. This must not be my subculture. It must be for someone else. Or it was for me when I was a kid. But I grew out of it. I’m different now. I got my own things; my own groups. I don’t need this one.”

When the world looks at us and sees just another group; just another option among many; just another thing to fill up a Sunday morning; another pill to take to make us feel better, then we MUST show the distinction! We must KEEP the focus where it belongs. And when we look at the priorities in our life, and we ask ourselves if we can make it out to worship, we should remember WHY it is that we come out! WE COME TO SEE JESUS.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

Now because of WHEN the Augsburg Confessions were written a lot of people may think, (at least, the small number of people who actually think about them,) that they are now irrelevant. After all, they were written in 1529, and that’s like; what (2010 minus 1529…) I don’t know. It’s a really long time ago! Further, they were written within a specific context; that is to say, their original motivation was to distinguish what they believed to be the TRUE Christian faith from the traditions and manipulations which had entered into the theology of their time.

If that seems boring, (and I know history lessons can be,) then I encourage you to look into the history of the Reformation. Because it is anything BUT boring. And like I said; these writings were such that DEATH was a very real possibility for all who stood up for their teachings.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor

The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod - The Lutheran Witness witness.lcms.org
‎”It is always a sign of a deep spiritual sickness when a church forgets its fathers” (Hermann Sasse). Why? Because the life of the Church on this earth is always a forward trajectoryinformed by, pushed forward by, anchored by the past. Life, and especially the Christian’s life of repentance and fait…

From the Augsburg Confession, the 4^th article: “It is taught that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God through our merit, work, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God…

…out of grace… for Christ’s sake… through faith…

When we believe that Christ has suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal life are given to us. For God will regard and reckon this faith as righteousness in his sight.

This is most certainly true.

I ask you to focus on what we have to say today, because it is truly the HEART of the Gospel.

You probably don’t recognize the text I just read. It’s not in the Bible. It is a biblical teaching, to be sure, but those words are not verbatim in the Scriptures. They come, as I mentioned, from the Augsburg Confessions.

Now the Augsburg Confessions may not be something that you are familiar with. But they’re very important. And I’m not going to give you a big huge history lesson on them, (at least, I’m not going to do that right NOW;) but suffice it to say that the people who wrote it were, in fact, defending the Gospel. And they stood up for truth of the Gospel even though it meant that they might be killed for it.

-Aj Neugebauer LCMS pastor