In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Of all the Apostles that suffered things for the Gospel, it’s hard to image anything worse than what supposedly happened to Saint Bartholomew. According to Church tradition, Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, was that disciple of Jesus Christ who got put to death by being flayed alive. That’s why when you see Saint Bartholomew’s emblem, often times it will have a picture of knife on the front of it to symbolize the way in which he lost his life. Even though the account of Saint Bartholomew’s martyrdom is not found anywhere in the Bible, so we shouldn’t speculate about it too much, there is still a Biblical truth at the center of it which we do well to pay attention to. And that truth is that there is always a cost to being a Christian. So, what I’d like to do in this morning’s sermon as we remember and give thanks to God for the witness of this incredible and faithful man, is talk a little bit more about what that cost is and why it’s worth it.

In the first place, I think it would be worthwhile for us to simply spend some time reflecting on the fact that, no matter what, every one of us should expect to suffer something if we are going to be a Christian. We live in a time where the message of Christianity has often been diluted down to vapid cliches and happy feelings. The most explicit example of this comes from those prosperity Gospel preachers who attract thousands of people to their pulpits by telling them that when they become a real follower of Christ it will automatically result in material blessing. But there are other representations of this error too. What about all of those congregations that have turned their church services into something that looks closer to a rock concert than anything resembling historic worship? How many people complain about being bored in church nowadays as if the goal of going to church is the same thing as going to a football game? Are we here to be entertained, or are we here to have our souls fed with God’s Word and Sacraments? Have you ever noticed how it seems like every new church that pops up these days picks a name as if they are trying to compete with each other for who is going to sound the most upbeat and positive? It’s always something like “Victory Life Church” or “Abundant Praise Church.” But you don’t hear of too many places being named after Saint Bartholomew. Apparently, nobody wants to be associated with the guy who got flayed alive. But that’s a shame.

Because when the impression is given that the Christian life is always easy, all that it does is make people more likely to stop being Christians whenever they encounter something that isn’t. But sometimes being a Christian isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s actually hard. Sometimes following after Christ and being faithful to Him and His Word is difficult and requires sacrifices. In some instances, it can lead to real physical and emotional pain. Just ask Saint Bartholomew. And if you aren’t convinced by his story, then listen to what God Himself says in the Bible.

Consider for example, our Epistle lesson today from 2 Corinthians chapter 4. There Saint Paul talks about how even though we have a great treasure in the promise of the Gospel, for now, we still carry that treasure in jars of clay. What he means is that our lives don’t always look as outwardly impressive as the hope that we have within us. As Saint Paul writes, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; stuck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” That’s the real depiction of the Christian life. That’s the one that you don’t often hear advertised on TV or portrayed in the movies. But that’s the one that in some way or another all Christians should expect to face. Remember what we read in Acts chapter 14. When the Christians of Antioch and Iconium were being persecuted for their faith, Paul strengthened their souls by reminding them that it is through “many tribulations that we must enter the Kingdom of God.”

Being a Christian always costs us something. It always comes with carry a cross. That’s exactly what Jesus tells us in Luke chapter 14. He says “nobody builds a tower without first counting the cost” and “whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be my disciple.”

Maybe being a Christian will cost you money. Doesn’t Christ also tell us that a person cannot have two masters and that “you cannot serve God and money.” Is it possible that you might have to quit your job and look for another one if your boss asks you to do things that you know are against God’s Word? Perhaps you won’t even be able to take a certain job to being with because that job doesn’t ever allow you to come to Church or there isn’t even a good Lutheran Church that teaches pure doctrine nearby.  Or here’s a tough one. What if following Jesus costs you strained relationships with your family or the inability to even interact with some of them at all. What does Jesus say to us in Matthew chapter 10? He says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own house.” Sometimes confessing what God says in the Bible makes other people mad at you. Sometimes it makes them not want to talk to you anymore. Sometimes it makes them hate you. In the worst possible cases, it may even make some people want to kill you. But again, what does Jesus say? He says in Matthew chapter 16, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

These are but a few of the things that we might have to deal with if want to live as Christians in a world that is hostile to God’s Word. Only the Lord knows what kinds of trials we might have to face and we can rest assured that He also knows what they are and how long they will last. But there is no getting around the fact that each and every one of us, in some way or another, will have to face something. All of us will have to take up our own on cross and follow Jesus, because being His disciple always comes at a cost.

And yet, even though following Jesus always comes at a cost, what is equally true is that no matter what that cost is, in the end, God promises that it will be worth it. Again, what does Saint Paul say in our Epistle lesson today from 2 Corinthians chapter 4? How does he describe for us the thing that we have, which is the reason why we suffer? He calls it treasure. He says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay.” The treasure that Saint Paul is referring to in our text is nothing other than the free gift of salvation in Jesus. He is talking about the Gospel.

There is nothing in the whole world that is worth more than the Gospel. There is nothing that is more valuable than message of forgiveness in Christ. What other thing can save us from our sins? What other thing can assure us that we have a place in heaven and that even if we die, we will not stay dead, but we will be raised to new and eternal life? What other thing can give us a clean conscience and take away the fear that regardless of whether or not everyone else stands against us, including our own sinful flesh, God is still by our side? The only thing that can do that is the Gospel. As Saint Paul also tells us in Romans chapter 1, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

The reason why we carry in our bodies the death of Jesus, meaning we suffer things for being Christians, is so that the life of Jesus would be manifested in our bodies too. It’s so that other people would come to know the hope that we have in Christ. We don’t endure hardship and persecution in order to earn God’s grace and favor, we do it to show others that in Jesus, we already have God’s grace and favor. We take up our cross, because Christ took up His. And it was on His cross that the real price was paid. It was there that Jesus made atonement not only for our sin but for the sins of the whole world. Every debt that we owe to God, every transgression against His Holy Law that cries out to the heavens for justice, all of our lust, all of our greed, all of our anger, cowardice, and pride, our Lord made up for and suffered for when He willing endured the death of sinner even though He wasn’t one Himself.

Yes, it’s true that being a Christian is not always easy. Sometimes it comes with a cost and sometimes that cost can be very great. It’s hard to image going through something as terrible as what Saint Bartholomew went through. Where does a man get the courage to confess Jesus as his Lord even when other people are holding you down and cutting off your skin? How on earth did he have the strength to do that? There is only one explanation. He didn’t. The power to follow Christ even unto death doesn’t come from us, it comes from God. It comes by a gift of the Holy Spirit who works faith in our hearts through the preaching of the Gospel. Again, what does Saint Paul say in our reading? He writes “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

Bartholomew was able to endure in the face of immense suffering only because he knew about who suffered in His place. And, not only that, he knew about how his suffering came to an end. Bartholomew knew that besides dying for our sins on the cross, Jesus also rose from the dead three days later never to die again. And as the Bible tells us, “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like His.” If we have been joined to the death of Christ in our Baptism, and been made members of His body through faith in His blood, then one day we will share in all of His resurrected glory.

The other day I was talking about Saint Bartholomew with my little kids at the dinner table and I asked them what God was going to do for Bartholomew when Jesus came back on the Last Day. Without any hesitation, one of them said, “Jesus is going to put his skin back on his body.” “That’s right,” I said, “Jesus will make things new.” He’ll do it for Bartholomew, and He’ll do it for you too. So don’t give up. Cling to Christ. Forsake the world. Guard the treasure that is yours by faith. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is a very common teaching among certain Christians which claims that once a person comes to true saving faith in Jesus it’s impossible for him or her to fall away from it. If you’re familiar with this teaching, you’ve probably heard it expressed before through the popular phrase “once saved, always saved.” Even though there are not that many churches left that formally hold to this particular view of salvation, there is no shortage of individuals who do so on a personal level. For example, how often have we heard someone who grew up in a Lutheran Church argue that they, or someone that they love, is definitely going to heaven just because they were baptized or confirmed however many years ago, despite the fact that they no longer go to church now and they believe very few, if any, of the things that are taught in the Bible? Or what about the person who is living in unrepentant sin, like shacking up with their boyfriend or girlfriend, claiming that it’s no big deal because, after all, aren’t we all sinners anyway, and how is my sin any different from yours? Even though these individuals might not come right out and say that they believe in “once saved always saved,” that’s exactly how they’re acting. They are giving the impression that once you come to faith in Christ, it’s impossible to do anything that would cause you to fall away from it.

But is that actually the way that the Bible tells us to think about our salvation? Well, that’s what I’d like to talk more about in this morning’s sermon. On the basis of our Epistle lesson today from 1 Corinthians chapter 10, where Saint Paul addresses this exact topic, I’m going to speak to the issue of “once saved always saved” and then I’m going explain what the proper attitude towards salvation should be. 

In first place, Saint Paul reminds us in our reading that despite what some churches might teach, and how many people often act, it is not actually true that once you come to saving faith in Jesus it’s impossible to fall away from it. “Once saved, always saved” may sound nice on a bumper sticker, but it doesn’t show up anywhere in the Bible. On the contrary, as we read very clearly in verse 12 of our text, “Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Why would the Holy Spirit, through whom these words were given, tell us to be on guard against falling away from the faith, if that wasn’t even something that was possible to begin with? That wouldn’t make any sense.

Not only is it possible for a person to fall away from the faith, but there are also many real-life examples of this happening to actual people in the Bible. Just look at what happened to the people of Israel. As Saint Paul tells us right before our reading today, “For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”

There is no more explicit example of people falling away from the faith and losing their salvation than God’s chosen people in the Old Testament. The Lord had delivered them from slavery. He had fed them with Mana from heaven. He had kept them alive by miraculously giving them water from a rock. Time and time again, God had saved them. And yet, what happened to almost all the people that God once saved? Eventually they were destroyed. Eventually, they turned their backs completely on God’s Word, chose their sin over His grace, and missed out on entering the promised land.

And sadly, that was not an isolated incident. On another occasion, for example, the Bible teaches us about two men named Hymenaeus and Alexander who it says, “made shipwreck of their faith.” That’s from 1 Timothy chapter 1. These men believed in Jesus, but then, due to their persistent sin and unrepentance, they stopped believing. And remember what Jesus Himself tells us in the parable of the sower. There He talks about the seed that fell on the rocky soil and how they are the ones who, “believe for a while and in time of testing fall away.” God’s Word could not be clearer that just because a person has faith at one time in their life, that is no guarantee that they will have faith at the end of their life too.

Now sometimes you will hear it argued that when it looks like people fall away from the faith and lose their salvation that was just evidence that they never really had true faith to being with. But as those passages that we just read show us, that is not what the Bible says. And that assumption can lead to all kinds of other false assumptions too. On the one hand, it can make people who do have faith constantly worried for no reason that they might not, since apparently you can’t really tell if you have faith or not. And on the other hand, it can make people who don’t have faith even more secure in their sins, thinking that since they had faith in the past, they must still have it in the present.

But those who think that way about their salvation should listen again to the words of Saint Paul from our reading. They should think about the example of the Israelites. When the Israelites indulged in sexuality immorality, 23,000 of them fell in a single day. When God’s people in the past put Him to the test by grumbling against Him and disobeying His Word, He sent fiery serpents among them to bite them and kill them. The Bible warns us repeatedly not to take our salvation for granted. It tells us time and time again not to presume upon God’s grace and do things that we know are wrong on purpose. In fact, if we do take our salvation for granted, if we act as if there is nothing that we could possibly do to destroy our faith and miss out on eternal life, then we are already in grave danger of that exact thing happening. If we say that we are so strong of Christians that we don’t need to be in God’s house receiving His gifts every Sunday, and that sometimes we can skip church and do something else instead like go golfing, fishing, or take our kids to play travel sports, we show that we are not strong Christians at all. If we say that our faith is so mature that we can handle getting drunk sometimes or watching things on our TV’s and computers that we wouldn’t even let our own children watch, then we prove just how weak our faith really is. People who are strong in their faith know that they are actually weak in their faith. They know that there is temptation all around them, and it is only by the mercy of God that anyone remains in the faith at all. Strong Christians know that there is no such thing as “once saved, always saved.”

And yet, strong Christians also know that just because it is possible to fall away from the faith and lose your salvation, that doesn’t mean that we should have no confidence in our salvation at all. Yes, it’s wrong to tell people that they will go to heaven no matter what so long as they had faith at one time in their life. But it is just as wrong to tell them that they should go through their entire life constantly doubting whether or not it will end in eternal life, even if they have do have faith now. Does Jesus ever tell us that we can never be sure if we are saved? Does the Bible ever teach us to not have any confidence in our salvation at all? Of course, not. In Mark chapter 16 Jesus literally says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” In Romans chapter 10, we read, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” When the Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas in Acts chapter 16, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They didn’t tell him, “Well, nothing, because no one can be sure of their salvation anyway.” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

We can be sure of our salvation when we are looking to the things that God tells us to look to. God does not tell us to look to ourselves and to our own striving and efforts when it comes to whether or not we will be saved. He does not tell us to rely on made up teachings like “once save, always saved.” He tells us to trust in Christ. He tells us to have confidence in what God has done for us in Jesus and not in what we do for Him. As Saint Paul tells us in our reading today, “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” Notice that when Saint Paul talks about how a person endures to the end, he doesn’t talk about our faithfulness to God, he talks about His faithfulness to us.

Of course, we should doubt ourselves. Of course, we should not have confidence in our own abilities. Of course, we should not think too highly of ourselves or even of our own faith. But that doesn’t mean that we should doubt God and His promises. We can be sure that God will do what He says. We can be sure that Jesus actually did die for all of our sins on the cross. We can sure that Baptism really does wash those sins away and that the Lord’s Supper truly does forgive them. We can be sure that He who began a good work in us, will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. We can be sure of those things, because that is what God says in His Word.

God has given us all of the tools necessary to remain faithful to Him to the end. He has provided us with everything that we need to not lose our salvation. Through His Word and the Sacraments, He gives us a way to escape temptation and endure it. By the reading the Bible and coming to Church to get Communion, He promises through His Holy Spirit to be active in our hearts to keep us trusting in Jesus for salvation. Through listening to the preaching of the Law and the Gospel, He teaches us about sin and grace that we can learn to repent of our wrongdoing and know where to go to receive forgiveness when we fail. Through these humble means, God strengthens our faith so that we don’t fall away from it. 

God is faithful. That is what we hold onto in the face of our guilt and shame. That is what we cling to when we know that we have failed God’s test and given into temptation. We don’t rely on ourselves. We don’t rely on made up slogans like “once saved, always saved.” We rely on Christ. And when we are relying on Him, then our salvation is secure and nothing can snatch us out of His hand. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When God made the heavens and the earth, He did it in a very orderly way. He didn’t just speak all of creation into existence at once. No, over the course of six literal days, step by step, part by part, He created one thing after another, and put everything into its proper place. When Jesus, who is God in the flesh, multiplied the fish and the loaves and fed four thousand people at once, He did that in a very orderly way too. Jesus didn’t just cause a meal to appear in front of the crowd or zap away their hunger in a moment. No, He made them sit down together in groups on the grass, and then with the help of His disciples, He distributed the food to them and made sure that there was more than enough for everyone.

While these two texts that we have in front of us today from Genesis chapter 2, where we hear more about creation, and Mark chapter 8, where Jesus feeds the four-thousand, both have many unique things to teach us, such as the providence of God, and the divinity of Christ, they are also excellent texts to remind us of the simple but often neglected point that our God is a God of order. As Saint Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, “For our God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”

So, in this morning’s sermon, as we consider this simple but essential truth found in both of our readings, that our God is a God of order, let us unpack it together by answering the following questions: What is the order of creation, and why is upholding that order so vitally important for us to do?

We’ll start by explaining a little bit more about what the order of creation actually is. Again, the order of the creation is simply the teaching from God’s Word that our Father in heaven has designed His creation to work in a very specific way, where each part of it has its own unique role and purpose. While we see this being taught all over the place in the Scriptures, it is especially obvious when we read Genesis chapters 1 and 2. As we heard in our Old Testament lesson today, God carefully and deliberately made a mature and livable world, and then when He was done with that, He formed the first man, Adam, and put him in the middle of the garden of Eden in order to take care of it. The garden, we learn, wasn’t haphazardly thrown together, but carefully designed. It had a river which flowed through the center of it to water the ground, and it had multiple trees placed at different locations, some of which were for eating food, and one of which was so that Adam could exercise his faith in God by being obedient to His Word and staying away from it. If we continued on in Genesis chapter 2, we would also hear about the creation of Eve, and how God eventually made a helper for Adam, because there was no one in the world that was capable of complimenting him as a suitable spouse.

From these little details, God intends to remind us that everything in creation, including us, has its own purpose and function which Him Himself has assigned. Besides there being order in the world in general, where the stars stay in the sky, the water collects in the oceans, and the plants produce their own kinds of fruit, there is also order among God’s most important creation too. There is order within humanity. Not only did God create men and women separately and uniquely, literally giving them different body parts and abilities, but even among men and women, God makes even more distinctions. If you remember from Confirmation class, this is what we learn about in that often-forgotten part of the Catechism called the “Table of Duties.” That’s the place where Martin Luther just lists off all the Bible passages that deal with who should do what depending on what their vocation is. As Luther reminds us, there are three separate estates in which all people exist at once. There is the nation, the church, and the home. All of us live under a government. All of us belong to a family. And all of us through faith in Christ are part of the Church. And within these three separate estates, everybody has something different to do and to contribute.

For example, in the state God tells rulers and bosses to carry out their oversight with justice and fairness, and He tells those under their authority to be obedient to them and respect them. That’s Romans chapter 13, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” Likewise, in the home God tells parents to raise up their children in the faith, and kids to honor their mom and dad and do what they say. That’s the Fourth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.” God also tells husbands to protect and provide for their wives and families, and for wives to be submissive to their husbands and let them do the leading. That’s Ephesians chapter 5, “Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church, and wives submit to your husbands.” And finally, in the Church, God tells pastors to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments, and for those in the congregation to listen to them and support them while they do it. That’s Galatians chapter 6, “Anyone who receives instruction in the Word must share all good things with his instructor.”

It's impossible to read the Bible as the literal Word of God, which it is, and not recognize that God always does things in an orderly way. From the very beginning of creation, even to how His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ carried out His miracles, there is order and intentionality to everything. That’s what the Biblical doctrine of the order of creation is all about. It about recognizing that God has designed people and things in certain ways, for certain purposes, and that we all have our own unique responsibilities and duties.

So, in the next place then, why is upholding this particular truth so vitally important for us to do? The first and most obvious reason why it’s so important for us to uphold God’s created order, and be intentional about trying to live according to His design for the world, is because God’s created order is under attack. Of all the teachings in the Bible that people in our time do not want to listen to, what God’s Word says about the order of creation has to be at the very top of the list.

And to prove that point I’m simply going to read some passages from the Bible that are about the order of creation and I want you to think about how they make you feel when you hear them. Here’s one is from Ephesians chapters 6, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, as if you were serving the Lord, not people.” Or how about this one from 1 Timothy chapter 2, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Or what about this one from Titus chapter 2, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanders or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, submissive to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled.”

These are just a few of the passages from God’s Word where the Holy Spirit gives us very clear instructions about how we are to live within God’s created order. Some of these verses are literally in the Small Catechism. And yet, how are many of these verses often received by those who hear them? We know how they are received by those in the world around us, but how are they received by you? Does what the Bible says in these places make you angry? Does it embarrass you or make you feel ashamed? Before you make up your mind, remember what Jesus in Luke chapter 9. He says, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My Words, of Him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory.” God’s Word should never embarrass us. It should never make us ashamed. And if it does, then we should repent. We should ask God to forgive us for caring more about what the world thinks than what He thinks, and we should ask for His help to do better at honoring His ways in the future.

Besides the fact that God’s created order is under attack, another reason why it’s so vitally important for us to defend it is because whenever we disregard it, it never leads to anything good. Whenever we ignore it, people always get hurt. Just look at what happened with Adam and Eve. When Adam stepped outside of God’s created order and relinquished his role as the teacher of the home to Eve by listening to her voice instead of God’s, he brought sin into the world, and plunged all of creation into ruin and destruction. That’s what happened the first time that God’s order was rejected, and that’s what happens every time God’s order is rejected today too. The sin keeps on going.

You can’t disrupt the way that God made the world to work and expect it not to lead to suffering. Just like you can’t take a fish out of the water and put in on the land, and expect it not to die, or throw an elephant in the middle of the ocean, and expect it not to drown, you can’t confuse the roles of men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents, pastors and parishioners without it having negative consequences. You can’t take a mother away from her new born baby on purpose without it harming the baby. You can’t put a woman in the pulpit, where the Word of God is authoritatively taught, or in the lectern, where the Word of God is authoritatively read, without it hurting the faith of those who hear God’s Word. You can’t have men refuse to lead and provide for their families without it destroying a civilization. Even unbelievers can sometimes recognize that confusing God’s created order, can have disastrous effects on society. When a man pretends to be a girl so that he can enter into a boxing match against a young lady with half his strength and speed, what do you think is going to happen? Be we shouldn’t just care about our precious sports. We should care about our families, our country, and our congregations. We should care about people’s souls. 

Do you what the statistics say happens when a father abandons his God given role as the head of the household and refuses to take his kids to church? When only mom goes to church with her kids, and thanks be to God when she does that, still, the likelihood of the children remaining in the pew when they are adults goes down to 15 percent. But when dads bring the family, it goes up to 85. There are studies upon studies that show us that little children in their formative years are far better off being taken care of by their mothers at home than being pawed off to someone else so that they can immediately go back to work and climb the corporate ladder. Think about what has taken place in every one of those church bodies that have disregarded God’s clear Word and embraced such things as women’s ordination. Now all of them openly support all kinds of activities and lifestyles that the Bible calls sinful. That is because there is an intimate connection between each and every doctrine taught in the Scriptures and none of them stand in isolation to one another.

In the end, the ultimate reason why we should strive to uphold God’s created order and defend every passage that teaches us how men and women, husbands and wives, parents, children, and workers are supposed to live is because everything in God’s Word points us to Christ. That’s what the order is all about. The order of creation serves the order of redemption. It reminds us of the saving work of Jesus, and it gives us a picture of the Gospel. Remember, for example, what Saint Paul tells us about marriage and why husbands should love their wives and wives should submit to their husbands. He says in Ephesians chapter 5, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.” And what about our Epistle reading today from Roman chapter 6? There the Holy Spirit reminds us how not even being a slave is something to despair over because we are first and foremost salves to God. No matter who we serve in this life, we already have a kind and good master who always takes care of us and always give us exactly what we need. We know that because He has given us the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In John chapter 5, Jesus tells us, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have enteral life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” That’s what the Bible does. That’s what every text of sacred Scripture in some way or another is intended to do. God gave it to us to lead us to Jesus. God made the world the way that He did, and explained it for us in the Bible, so that we when our eyes are opened by the Holy Spirit through faith, we can see the love of Jesus and His work everywhere that we look. 

Defending what God’s Word says about government, marriage, family, and the roles of men and women, is not just about defending those things, it is about defending the main thing too. When what the Bible says about creation is rejected, eventually what it says about salvation will be rejected too. When people learn, for example, that being submissive is a bad thing, and that you should never submit yourself to anyone, eventually they won’t even want to submit themselves to Jesus either. But submitting to Jesus is the most wonderful thing that there is. Submitting to Him means receiving from Him the forgiveness of your sins.

The reason why we don’t have women pastors in our Church is not because men are better than women. It’s because Jesus is not a woman. Jesus is a man. And when the called and ordained servant of Christ speaks on His behalf to the congregation, when He represents Christ in the Office of the Ministry, God doesn’t want us to be thinking about anyone but Christ. He wants us to be thinking about the Head of the Church, the Bridegroom of the Bride, who laid down His life to redeem us.

Dear brother and sisters in Christ, our God is a God of order. He designed the world to work in a very orderly way. Just like he put the stars in the sky, the fish in the sea, and the birds in air, he has set all of us in different places too. Some of us are fathers. Some of us are mothers. Some of us are children. Some of us are husbands, wives, workers, pastors, and parishioners. Jesus gives us our different stations in life not in order to serve ourselves, but in order to serve our neighbor. He calls upon us to embrace our God-given roles so that the Word of God itself would not be despised, but so that others, including ourselves, would be led all the more to Him. Just like Jesus had the crowds sit down on the grass and wait their turn to eat the bread and fish that only He could give, our Lord promises to bless us, take care of us, and forgiven us whenever we wait upon Him and His Word.

So, let us pray: “Order my footsteps by Thy Word and make my heart sincere; let sin have no dominion, Lord. But keep my conscience clear.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.