[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Word of God that we’re going to meditate upon this morning is located in two locations in our scripture. Each one of these speaks about an open door. First of all, we read in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verses 8 and 9, where St. Paul writes, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost. Because a great door for effective work is open to me, and there are many who oppose me.”
And then we turn to Colossians chapter 4, and again we speak about an open door there in verses 3 and 4, where we read as follows, “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am enchained. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should.”
This is the word of our Lord.
Dear fellow redeemed, it is good to be with you fellow Christians of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Austin, Texas again. It was pleasurable the time I was here before and also the same thing this morning.
Now… It used to be that one of my relatives would say to me when I would go to preach at a church in Texas, “I wonder which long-lost relative whom you’ve never met before you’re going to meet this morning.” Guess what? This morning I met one at the early service. I sure did. Grew up in the same hometown I did and hadn’t seen this fellow relative for a long time. Saw her here this morning.
However, when everything is said and done, I think all of you are related to me. I believe all of you are. Why do I say that? I say it because over here to my right stands your baptismal font. And I assume that everyone present here has been baptized. Because everyone that is baptized is a relative of mine. We are brothers and sisters in Christ as a result of our baptism, aren’t we? We’re members of the world’s greatest family, the family of God. Isn’t it wonderful to belong to that family? The family of God, brothers and sisters in Christ.
Let’s think of it this way. The person you’re seated next to, I’m going to tell you something about that person in just a minute. But first I want to say this, that sometimes we wonder about these relatives. But I want to say a person you’re seated next to is a brother or sister in Christ. Just think of it. In some cases you call him mother or father, brother or sister, husband and wife. But brothers and sisters in Christ. Members of the family of God.
But you know, the way it happens sometimes in families, even children will speak about their parents as being hard-headed, even in spite of being brothers and sisters in Christ. And when new children call their parents hard-headed, when they want something and the parents say, “No,” that’s when the parents become hard-headed. That’s not hard, is it?
Now on the other hand, there are times when parents will say about their son or their daughter, “My child sure is hard-headed.” And when is that? When the child fails to do something it shouldn’t have done or does something it shouldn’t have done. It becomes hard-headed.
Now, how about our Heavenly Father? He’s also given us some things to do, hasn’t He? He calls those the Ten Commandments, isn’t it? Our Father in Heaven. Well, you know what I’d like to do this morning? I’d like to take a poll. How many of us kept all ten of them this last week? You know, how about half of them? Let’s just go for half.
Pastor, I don’t know. You’ve got some work to do. I’m going to get back to that in a minute, but Pastor, I think he’s already done his work well. I’ll tell you about that in just a moment, about having done his work rather well. You see, we had a young boy one time in our church. He was in his teens. And that boy always was hard-headed against the laws of our state. If there wasn’t a way to break it, he’d invent one. He was good at it.
Once he was in jail, and I stopped by to see his parents, and his parents kind of were broken-hearted about it. As I was leaving, the father said to me, “I’m not going to put up any more bail money for that boy. I’m just going to let him stay in that jail and rot.” You would have felt that way too, probably.
Well anyway, three days later I came by that home and guess who was standing in the yard? It was that boy! The father met me as I was walking through the house and he explained to me how that boy landed there in that front yard. He said, “Father Love, Father Love.” And dearly beloved, that’s also a picture of our Father to us, our Heavenly Father. Even though we have been hard-headed towards him a hundred million zillion times, again and again he has said, “I forgive you.” Again and again in his love he has pardoned us. Again and again he has opened the doors of heaven to us. A Father of love, of mercy.
And this morning, your pastor, in behalf of our Father in heaven, spoke about that Father love. Remember we made confession of our sins to our Lord. We said to him, “Have mercy upon us, forgive us, pardon us.” Remember all of that in the early part of the service? What did our pastor do? He came through marvelously well. He says, “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Folks, if you don’t remember anything else from this service except those words, it was worthwhile coming here this last Sunday of March. Remember those words. Remember all of your sins are included in that. “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
And then on top of that, God says to us, not once, but several times in the Scriptures, “I will remember their sins no more. I will remember their sins no more.” No wonder we went around talking to one another before church service started and said, “The peace of the Lord be with you. The peace of the Lord be with you.”
Later this morning, we’re going to come to this very altar, and we’re going to receive Jesus’ very body and very blood. For what? For the forgiveness of our sins. And that’s God opening the doors of heaven for us. God opened the door for us. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s not locked to us. It’s open.
But there’s a sadness with that. The sadness is this, that God would love to have all of his created children all over the world to hear that kind of message, to be able to read that kind of message in their own language, so that they might rejoice like we do, so that they might feel at ease with him and know he’s a God of love and not a God of wrath or anger, but one who forgives. Who pardons and he opens the door for us.
But one of the tragedies is and has been that some people have not had books in their own language that they could read about this wonderful forgiveness and peace of the Lord. Remember, when the Iron Curtain came down between us and the Soviet Union, it was discovered that there were not any books available readily available that conveyed the message that God had opened the doors of heaven for them. That Jesus was the way home to heaven. These books were not readily available for some reason during the war, World War II. And after the war, the books disappeared or whatever. And it was found necessary to do some translating work.
Lutheran Heritage Foundation was organized in 1992 for the express purpose of translating books for the Soviet Union churches and the Soviet Union souls, that they might know that Jesus was the one who unlocked the doors of heaven. But soon there were others, others who heard in other lands, what was happening. And they came to Lutheran Heritage Foundation and said, “Me too. We would like to have some of that. We would like to have books.”
And so Lutheran Heritage Foundation, up to now, is involved in translating Lutheran books into over 70 different languages, so that people can know that the doors of heaven are open for them. That’s what Lutheran Heritage Foundation is all about, translating Lutheran books. Yes.
And let me tell you a few things that have happened as a result of that. Over in Sudan, for instance, there are many Christians who gather together out on the hillside for worship services. Kind of like when Jesus lived here upon this earth and the people followed him and gathered at the hillside. Also, as a result of all of these books being translated into the language of the people in Sudan, there have been many baptisms.
How many baptisms have you ever witnessed at one time in a church? I’ve had five, and I thought that was a lot. But there have been many occasions when over a hundred at a time were baptized because they received the word in their own language and they could read that God had opened the doors of heaven for them. Many books that have been translated by Lutheran Heritage Foundation have been introduced in some countries with special workshops.
Yes. Like we have, you know, on weekends sometimes, particularly LWML does this for some of their ladies, and they gather together for workshops. One lady walked from a distance of here to Giddings, 50 miles, with a two and a half year old child. This is important to the people, knowing that Jesus is our Savior, and that through Him, the doors of Heaven have been opened. And this is a vital thing.
But it hasn’t only happened overseas. Some of the books that you have supplied, and I’m thinking this morning, how many ladies are members of the LWML here? You have helped us with six different projects. One of them that I think of particularly is translating the catechism into Chinese and printing it one page Chinese and one page English.
Abilene, Texas is not too far from here. At least it’s part of the way from where I live. Well, when I preached there about two and a half years ago at our Savior Lutheran Church, two older ladies about the age I am Chinese greeted me at the door. They went to the display table like I have set up here and they picked up a book, a copy of that book, and I saw them smile.
And man, I couldn’t wait until everybody got out of church. Not that I wasn’t ready to go somewhere, but I wanted to catch those ladies to give them that book. And fortunately, they hung around long enough that I was able to give them that book. You had a hand in that, see, because you decided that this would be one of your projects that you would underwrite.
There’s another thing that I might want to mention, and that is you had as one of your projects the translation of the Catechism into Spanish and putting it together with a Spanish Bible, making this available for the people who speak the Spanish language. A lot of these have been given away here in Texas, in New Mexico, where I went to the LWML convention several years ago. You ladies had a hand in that.
And also, you members of the congregation have had a hand in many of these projects too, because in the past, you have supported Lutheran Heritage Foundation. Today, you have that opportunity again, in that special folder that is in your worship folder today. There’s a special colored one in there that has a tearaway envelope in there. It’s an offering envelope. You can use it to support the missions of Lutheran Heritage Foundation. Or if you decide not to, then I’m going to ask you to support some other Lutheran mission project, because we need to get the good news out to people that the doors of heaven have been opened for them through Jesus. Thank you.
That’s what we need to do. There’s something else we need to do, though. We need to pray. We need to pray for the translators. It’s not easy to translate. I don’t know, how many of you speak German? Any German speakers around here? It’s not easy. Gemütlichkeit. How would you do it? It’s not so easy. There are about six or seven different words that could be used. And St. Paul says, “Pray for me.” He said that in our text, “That I may make the word of God clearly known.”
So translators may, they need our prayers for that. Pastors need our prayers to proclaim the word. Remember your pastors in your prayers. Remember this old guy. I’m not too old for that yet. And I need your prayers. We need the prayers of all to bring the word of God clearly to people.
And something else. Pray for the readers of those books. Down in Conroe, Texas, where I retired as a pastor, my Sunday school teacher’s son was a member of our church, and one day he shocked our Bible class and he told us that he had found a cure for insomnia. I don’t know if anybody has trouble sleeping at night, but here’s his cure. His cure was that when he couldn’t sleep at night, he would get up and start reading the Bible. Why did he read the Bible? He said he knew the devil didn’t want him to read the Bible, so he knew the devil would put him to sleep.
So I don’t know whether it works or not, but you may want to try. But pray for those who read those books that are translated so that we may meet them someday in the kingdom of heaven. And we may meet them there for the biggest reunion of all time. How many of y’all have family reunions? Okay. Those are good times, aren’t they? Well, think of this reunion in heaven as even better.
The whole family of God, from other countries, some of them who probably have read the books translated by Lutheran Heritage Foundation. Some that have, maybe just like we have, in our confirmation classes, we had a catechism that we could understand, couldn’t we? I was one of those that just passed the time when we used to have confirmation in German. And you know, German would have been kind of tough for this guy. So it was in English, fortunately. But you see, we can get there from all different languages, all different places, because each language would proclaim Christ in its own way so that we might have a big glorious reunion, members of the family of God. Think of that, big reunion.
And now I want to close by saying this. I don’t know when, if ever, I will be back. You know, you get to that age when you begin to thinking about this. Our dean used to always tell us that we should preach to people like we were dying pastors. And one of these days, our Lord will call me from this veil of tears, but… I look forward to meeting you in the kingdom of heaven for the family reunion with all the souls and saints who have read from the various books that have been translated by Lutheran Heritage Foundation and other books. May God bless that work. Amen. And may the peace of God which exceeds all human understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ. Amen.