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Dear friends in Christ, dear members of Jesus Deaf Lutheran Church and of St. Paul Lutheran
Church, to you dear brother pastors in Christ who have come today, to you Pastor Mitt Witte,
Pastor Heckman, and to you Brian, and Carrie, Hannah, and Andrew, and Daniel, and Isaac,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
I’d like, first of all, if I could, to extend some greetings to you. First, on behalf of
President Schlechte of the Rocky Mountain District, who greets you for the entire district
from which Pastor Wolf Mueller has come. And I’d also like to bring greetings to you from
Pastor Murphy of the Denver Southwest Circuit, on behalf of all the pastors in the circuit
from which Pastor Wolf Mueller has come. And I also have been asked, if I could, to please
extend greetings to you all from the Board of Elders at Hope Lutheran Church in Aurora,
Colorado. From Felix and Jim, from Maurice, Alex, Tim, and Joel, who greet you on behalf
of the entire church there at Hope. The Lord Jesus Christ is faithful unto His dear church,
for whom He has died, and whom He has purified with His blood, and by whom He is seated and
ascended at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, blesses His church, and arranges
and governs all things for her sake. And the people of Hope have you in their prayers as
you begin this new chapter and transition, even as they begin their own transition, and
the Lord is faithful. He will be with them. God be praised that He preserves His church
in this way, that He gives the gift of pastors. And indeed, He will give a pastor unto that
church as well. Now, for me, it is an honor to be here with
you today to preach at the installation of, I will say at the very, very least, a dear,
dear friend of mine and of my families. Pastor Wolf Mueller and I spent our years together
at the seminary, and our families agreed to know and love each other during that time.
We’ve been pastors ever since in the same city, in the Denver area, the last 13, 14
years together. That’s been a long time. And so, as St. Paul one time said of Onesimus
when he wrote to Philemon, I feel today as though I am giving over to you my own heart.
However, I know that I was not first on the list to preach today.
I was at least second on the list.
I’ve got it on decent authority that the first invitee was a man that you know very well,
and that was Pastor Knuckles, your own Pastor Knuckles.
Pastor Knuckles reports to me that he would have loved to have been here.
there. He was even thinking it over a little bit, but he thought that preaching today would
draw too much attention to himself and his own homecoming. So he declined. However, he
did ask, you know, I would like to just tell you something. I think you all probably already
know this. I just want to tell you something. You already know. You are a deeply, deeply
blessed congregation. I did not know Pastor Knuckles especially. I met him a long time
ago, just in the very, very brief time that he and I spoke over the telephone, I can relay
to you that he has loved you very dearly and already misses you very, very much.
He asked me to read this little note to you, if I could.
Greetings to you in the name of our risen and ascended Lord.
What a gift you were to me, to Carla and to my family and still are.
I rejoice with you in your new pastor who is being installed today as your shepherd.
God’s will has been done in your call to him and his acceptance of the same.
God’s kingdom will continue to come to you at this font, at this lectern and pulpit,
and at this altar where His gifts are dispensed to you.
And where you, the body of Christ gathered here, receive them by faith to strengthen
your soul and body in His service to your neighbor.
In the coming months, as I visit my family at St. Paul, I too will kneel with you to
receive His gifts and to rejoice in His work among us.
you and your new pastor have been
and will continue to be in my daily prayers, your brother in Christ
and a man used by the Lord to serve you, Pastor Knuckles.”
Now I think after that I could be done with the sermon.
I’d like though to, if you’ll permit it, make a few comments
on the epistle reading today from Galatians.
And I’d like then, after I do that, to apply that to what
that would have to do with installing a pastor into the office today, or install a pastor
in a new field here today. And then I have for you a request. But first of all, Galatians,
after spending four, you would argue four and a half whole chapters, extolling the blessed
pure teaching of the Holy Gospel, St. Paul teaches in chapter 5 what we read today, the
necessity now of rightly distinguishing between the law and the gospel. It’s a little bit
of a different thing. With regard to the gospel, we are to stand firm in the freedom for which
Christ has set us free. With regard to the law, which he now addresses in chapter 5,
midway through there, we are not to let our freedom become an opportunity for the flesh.
Now see, I want you to notice what Paul is doing something here. He is not teaching that
we need a balance of law and gospel. He’s not, for instance, teaching that we should
have more gospel than law. This is not about, like, a diet or something. But what he is
teaching is how to allocate the law and the gospel. That’s a little different than balance.
The law here, you can tell from the way that Paul talks, belongs to a certain realm, and
And the Gospel belongs to another realm, and both realms are within us, belong to us, to
the same person.
The Gospel belongs to the realm of our conscience, in our heart.
Now our conscience is the realm which tells us where we stand with God, whether He’s pleased
with us, whether He is happy with us, or not happy, whether we are acceptable in His sight.
So, that here in the realm of the conscience, we are to let nothing but the gospel enter.
Nothing but the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins.
Because if we were to let the law enter, which is the point of the letter of Galatians,
at least the first four chapters, our conscience would go haywire.
Our conscience would be a mess.
We’d begin to either think that we’re good enough for God, we would become proud like
Pharisees were, or more than likely, ultimately, we would begin to moan and crumble before
God for how we failed Him in His law.
The Gospel, on the other hand, gives unto us Jesus in our conscience.
It gives us forgiveness.
It is given that our conscience would be free, as he said.
That is, that it would be joyful and light and carefree.
easy. It promises that our righteousness is altogether and now complete in the blood of
Jesus Christ, and we don’t have to wait for us to do any sort of good works according
to the law, and it comes even and apart from any sorts of sin that we may have committed.
Here though, Paul does teach that there is another realm, and that, I don’t have a good
name for it necessarily, but I’d say that’s the realm of our life and our obedience. That’s
the realm that includes our feet, and our hands, and our mouth, our bodies. It includes
our neighbor, and our families, and our workplace, our countries. It’s the realm when you wake
up in the morning that you ask the question, now what should I do today? In this realm,
Paul, don’t make a mistake about this. Paul says we are not free in this particular realm.
Only in the conscience are we free.
In our life and in our vocations, we’re not allowed to, we’re not to allow this freedom
of our conscience to, as Paul says, become an occasion for the flesh.
But now listen, but through love to serve one another.
Service is different than freedom.
In this realm, only God’s holy law and His commandments should have their way with us.
Now, can you imagine such an individual that they can walk around and in their conscience,
that is in their heart they have freedom and joy before God, not a worry, whilst in their
life and in their actions they are diligent, busy, determined, and disciplined according
to the law?
Well, their heart is free in Christ Jesus according to the gospel.
It’s simple.
It’s a simple thing, isn’t it?
It’s simple enough for me to say, or write down, but the trouble is here that we are
sinful and weak creatures, and so this is a very strange thing, but we will actually
sometimes desire to have the law enter into our conscience.
Okay, if we would want to stand before God on the goodness of our own merits, or if we’d
like to boast before Him or put a plume in our hat and hold our chest out before God
and make Him owe us something. We actually want that at times. And even sometimes we
would desire and want the Gospel to enter into the realm of our body and life, which
I think is because we really do like to sin according to our flesh. And it seems at times
as though the gospel will give us the freedom to indulge in pleasures that we ought not
indulge. You see how this is? Let me just give you an example. You know, Pastor Wolfmuller
and I frequently talk over examples of making sermons, and they’re usually dumb. This one’s
also dumb. I don’t think it comes from him. I’m pretty sure it comes from me, but we get
I get them all kind of tangled up sometimes.
Imagine that you are a rancher
and that you have been given the task
to divide between cattle and a herd.
So that there are cows coming your direction
and you have, I don’t know, a stick
or whatever ranchers have.
Your task is to separate out the red cows
off to this side and the black cows
off to this side over here.
It’s a simple thing.
Red, red, black, left, right.
easy enough. Seems like any amateur ought to be able to pull this off. But you know,
if you’ve ever tried it, if you’ve ever tried this, cows can take on a mind of their own.
So here now comes a clump of cows, and they’re red and black, and one, the wrong one slips
off into here, into the wrong, wrong place, so off you have to go to collect it, and bring
it out. In the meantime, the other cows are wandering and meandering into places they
should not be. And you will run. I watched my uncle do this when I was a kid. Very calm
man except when he was herding cattle. Because before too long they are jumping fences and
they are in places they ought not be. So what seemed at the beginning to be a very simple
thing turns into be a kind of a tangled mess. I’m not talking about cows. I’m talking about
the law and the gospel, so that in moments of temptation and despair there is confusion,
the devil’s got cows running all over the place. The law comes into our conscience and
afflicts it before God. We adopt the gospel to indulge freedoms we ought not indulge.
Luther says this, whoever knows well how to distinguish the gospel from the law should
give thanks to God and know that he is a real theologian. I admit, says Luther, that in
the time of temptation, I myself do not know how to do this as I should.”
Before I get to my main point, I want to say this to you. You are free, or you are to be,
in your conscience, but you are not free, Christians, to violate the Lord’s commandments.
This is not a freedom which is extended to you. That’s not what Paul’s talking about
in the first verse there. Therefore, take care to honor the Lord in your body and in
your life, and to earnestly make repentance for your sins where you have been engaging
in them carelessly, as I’m afraid some may be doing. Do not use, says St. Paul, your
freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. The Gospel is not granted unto that. And on the
other hand, if of late you have been distressed and worried about many things, if your guilt
has been discouraging to you, and you have felt yourself to be unspiritual or unholy
before God, unworthy to stand before Him, if you felt as though God was clicking His
tongue at you? I want to suggest, perhaps, that you’ve made the mistake of permitting
the law and entrance into your conscience where it does not belong. It’s common enough,
and it even seems for certain people to be a spiritual sort of thing. Oh, me, look at
me, I’m so sinful. But you ought not do it. Christ has not died for you so that you could
wallow in sadness. He was not wasting his time. He knew what he was doing when he died
for you upon the cross, when he shed his blood for you. It was to purify you, to perfect you
in himself, to declare you righteous, that you would no longer grovel in the dust, but
that you would lift your head in joy to him who smiles upon you in mercy. So you take
courage. The gospel is for you. Now, I say this on a day like today to make
what I think is a simple point. This is our task as Christians, to be separating out the
law and the gospel appropriately, to allocate the law and the gospel. But so also it is
the highest and the most noble task of a pastor to rightly distinguish between the law and
the gospel in his sermons and his teachings. And that is to work to direct the gospel to
the conscience alone, and to work also to direct the law to life and vocation and service
of neighbors, and this is a high skill, and it requires great wisdom. I’ve known a few
pastors, just a few, not many, here and there, who have thought that this task was an easy
thing and they have endeavored, I think, to leave it behind in a certain way, in their
hearts at least. You can tell this from the things that they read or what they talk about,
and left that field on into more and higher, nobler tasks.
Growing the church big,
tinkering with the daily administration of the church, perfecting the liturgy
of the divine services, and so forth. All of it could be fine, all these things are
good in themselves, but if they become a distraction under the pastor, if it’s a
thing that he’s…
if it’s a thing he’s come to in order to leave behind the
distinction in preaching of the law and the gospel, then I think it’s dangerous.
And I’ve got a request for you, for both of your congregations, and then I’ll close here.
I don’t know of a pastor in all the world, and I don’t say this because he’s such a friend
of mine, I do not know of a pastor in the world who cares more about what I’m talking
about and what I’ve said and executing this than Pastor Wolf Miller.
I simply do not.
I can recall this fairly clearly, the summer that our families came back from vicarage.
Now, Pastor and I and some other guys were out in front of the house of Luke Madsen.
And I don’t know, I think we were working on a trailer or something, I can’t remember
what it was.
We were busy doing something, probably something we needed to concentrate on.
Pastor Wolfmuller began to speak and speak and speak of a great discovery he’d made while
he was on Vicarage.
And he explained to us while we were doing whatever work we were doing,
how he’d come to the conclusion that the Book of Concord’s chief purpose,
you know the Book of Concord, our entire doctrine, that the Book’s entire purpose
is to deliver unto terrified consciences full comfort
and to give all glory and honor to Jesus.
And he was advancing there with us.
It’s a remarkable assertion.
We thought it all kind of a little bit oversimplistic, but you know, after we’ve looked at that and
read it again and again, I believe that he was right about this.
And in fact, I don’t know that Pastor Wolf Mueller has stopped talking about this.
Whether it’s in books or conferences or trips or radio shows or preaching and teaching,
whatever it might be, you may have, if you know anything about Pastor Wolfmuller, you
may have an impression that he does a lot of things. He does not do a lot of things.
He just does this one thing in a lot of different ways. In fact, I’m not so sure that that’s
not part of the reason that he’s somewhat clumsy. Because he’s, because he should be
concentrating on something and he’s talking about law and gospel or something that he’s
thinking over in his mind related to law and gospel. I just got word that he dropped the
TV on his toe, and I wouldn’t, I don’t know if this is the case, but it wouldn’t surprise
me if it’s because he’s too busy talking about law and gospel when he should have been concentrating
on a TV. You get my idea here. Now that lesson, this is what I want you to know, and I’m getting
to my request. That didn’t happen in the classroom at the seminary. That happened on vicarage
for him. Happened when he first began to sit with people at their deathbed, when he began
to visit people in their homes, first began to preach and teach, answer questions from
college kids, teach confirmation class, all these sorts of things, even before he was
a pastor. And you know it’s been that way ever since. I’ve watched it. At Hope Lutheran
Church in Aurora, he’s done his most profound thinking and work when he has been, listen,
and when he’s been caring for the souls of ordinary folks
like you.
So don’t, please, don’t withdraw from him
because you think that he’s busy.
He’s not busy.
When you come to him for counsel and aid
or for confession or for advice or to grieve,
do not begin to imagine that you are an impediment
it to some other more important work. You are not an impediment. You are the occasion
for His work. You are His real work. If you withdrew yourself from Him in this way, you’d
do the rest of the Lord’s Church a disservice. So know Him, then, simply, and call Him Pastor.
Right? Not church leader, not worship leader, not author or radio personality or blog poster
person, know Him as your
pastor. This is Christ’s
gift to you today. And you,
in fact, are Christ’s gift
to Him. Now, I’ve gone too
long. So God be praised in
heaven and on earth for
gathering a small group
here at Jesus Def and St.
Paul’s Lutheran Church to
hear the gospel. And God be
praised for continuing to
permit this gospel to sound
forth into the consciences
of sinners for their freedom and joy, and from the voice of a pastor.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
