Tomorrow May 26th, 2013 Holy Trinity Sunday at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine
Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ,
“Our Baptized Lives To The Father, In The Son, and By The Holy Spirit”
Rev. Dr. Alfonso O. Espinosa
- Live TO the Father (think Lord’s Prayer).
- Live IN the Son (think “I’m Forgiven!”).
- Live BY the Holy Spirit (think Word and Sacrament).
This Sunday May 19th, 2013 at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine: Pentecost Sunday!
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Secondly, the actual explanation. Notice the powerful teaching on the Holy Spirit:
What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.
Sunday May 12th, 2013 at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine: “The Right To The Tree Of Life (Revelation 22:2 & 14).”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We must face and confess our sin: we treat the Word of Christ as less than vital. We pay more attention to the evening news than we do to the 66 books of the sacred canon. We thirst and yearn for so many other things. We prefer things that bring worry and even worse, death, instead of seeking and longing for the Word and the Sacrament. We embrace the world’s priorities, loves, fears, and worries and when we do we begin to emulate the world…we start to become like the world…like wandering and thirsty dogs that are running around lost from their masters who can only devour the trash in the world…we become desperate and before we know it, we can begin to participate in the rebellion and immorality that is all around us. Such a soul forsakes faith and forsakes God. This should make us very concerned, because our sin proves that we practice idolatry -- loving other things more than God -- and that we do not belong to this picture of the heavenly paradise.
What is there to do? By the grace of God through His Word alone, we must change our thinking or better said pray that The Lord changes our thinking through the Word and Sacrament which give us Jesus. Our way of approaching everything must be changed. We must repent. The great Lutheran systematician Francis Pieper wrote in his essay “What is Christianity?”
“[The devil] endeavors to mislead man either utterly to despise the atonement of Christ or to attempt to establish his own righteousness, as a result of which Christ’s reconciliation is forfeited. The consequence is that God must punish the world with dreadful plagues, wars, floods, earthquakes, and other frightful calamities to remind man for what purpose the earth still stands, namely, that he might repent and by faith accept the reconciliation of God which Christ has effected.” (What Is Christianity? And Other Essays, CPH 1997 Reprint, 49)
The great irony which occurs when someone complains about the tumult while insinuating that God is not in control is that they are complaining about the very sign that proves that God is in control (as we witness the fulfillment of His prophetic prediction, Jn 16:33, 2nd Tim 3:1ff, et. al.).
Tomorrow Sunday May 5th, 2013 at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine: “Its Lamp Is The Lamb” (Revelation 21:22-27)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
2. Bruce & Debbie Dannemeyer transferring from Abiding Savior Lutheran Church, Lake Forest, CA (LCMS).
3. Loren Kellogg being confirmed and also becoming a new member of The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
And on May 12th:
4. Nikki Atanasova being confirmed and also becoming a new member of The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
5. Melanie Junge being confirmed and also becoming a new member of The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Melanie is joining with her two baptized children, Alyssa (finishing 5th grade) and Darren (finishing 2ndgrade).
6. Dr. Shannon Gallina being confirmed and also becoming a new member of The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Shannon’s family members are friends of the congregation including her husband Todd and their children Logan and Leah.
7. Steve Fischer transferring from Abiding Savior Lutheran Church, Lake Forest, CA (LCMS).
Here is an excerpt from tomorrow's sermon:
“Its Lamp Is The Lamb” (Revelation 21:22-27)
Rev. Dr. Alfonso O. Espinosa
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us not forget that we are still in the holy season of Easter, today being the Sixth Sunday of Easter!
Pastor: Alleluia! Christ is risen!
People: He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, John the holy apostle in the Gospel of John, in his epistles like 1st John, and here again in the book of Revelation -- all written by the Apostle John -- is always talking about light and darkness. Light and darkness for him and for us might be the most important metaphors in the Bible that teach us about the way of life that knows God and walks with God as distinct from and contrasted against the way of death that rejects and rebels against God.
And if there was ever a time that we need these rich metaphors to help us live, it is now. We seem inundated with our own sin, the evil in the world, and from the devil and his demonic forces to do one of two things:
EITHER
(1) Reject God’s light altogether.
OR
(2) Try to change God’s light to allow darkness into it. It doesn’t work. This “second option” is really nothing but getting back to the first option; it is just another way of rejecting God’s light.
I mention it, however, because experientially this is what the devil tries to make us do:
EITHER
(1) Reject the faith clearly and in an outright fashion (often expressed in forms of atheism, or even through agnosticism or “none-ism” (being a “none,” as opposed to a Roman Catholic “nun,” means that one has no religion, belongs to none, including the Christian faith of course).
OR
(2) Continuing to claim to be a Christian, while trying to make a so-called “faith” accommodate the things of darkness. This is when a so-called “Christian” wants to have their cake and to eat it too.
If we do either, then Satan becomes our master. Never forget this Christian: everyone is religious or to put it simply, everyone has an ultimate allegiance and serves a higher power, everyone has a faith, and everyone has a master or a god. There is no such thing as ultimate fence-straddling. If a person says they don’t believe in God, then that is their faith: they have faith that God does not exist and when one considers the evidence for God, then indeed to not believe requires faith. If a person rejects Jesus Christ, they are still very religious and they very much follow a god who is not the True God.
I don’t think we consider these matters often enough. Our sinful flesh doesn’t want us to. But if we are not aware of the threat, how can we possibly defend against the darkness which is constantly and daily trying to pervade our souls?
Now we have to be careful here. Precisely because the metaphors are so powerful, we need to be as precise as possible in trying to understand them. For example, light is not always necessarily a good thing and darkness is not always necessarily a bad thing. Too much light directly above you at mid-day in the desert can represent that which saps your life and kills you by dehydration or heat stroke. There are times when married couples welcome the darkness to hold each other, to get away from the rest of the world and in darkness, their love is celebrated and cemented again. Some forms of light are bad and some forms of darkness are good.
I know for example one of the forms of darkness that is bad is when I have to get up in the middle of the night and I stub my toe into a piece of furniture that I could not see. Darkness is definitely bad in these instances! On the other hand, when I want to scare my kids, darkness is fun! You get the picture.
But in God’s Word, this is what we need to know about the categories of light and darkness:
Light Darkness
1. Shows the power 1. Represents the powers
and presence of God. that oppose God.
2. Light shows or reveals 2. Darkness = Physical &
Life, esp. Eternal Life. Spiritual Death.
3.
- Light means knowing 3. Darkness = ignorance
God through faith in & unbelief.
Christ.
(Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel, 143-144)
With this basic introduction to light and darkness, we are in a better position to approach Revelation chapter 21.
May the Lord continue to bless you and keep you in His saving light!
Pastor Espinosa