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Among his fellow sailors, John Newton was known as “The Great Blasphemer.” He later referred to himself as an “infidel and libertine.” He was captain of a slave ship, transporting fellow human beings from their homes in Africa across the sea in chains to lives of servitude—if they survived the crossing. Newton was known to mock God and any who expressed their faith in God. Yet, whenever he got into a close scrape and narrowly avoided death—this happened on several occasions—he would try for a time to live a better life. This wasn’t out of any love for God; he was just trying by his own efforts to avoid damnation. But one close call was different. Moments after he had left the deck of his ship during a violent storm, the man who replaced him was washed overboard and drowned. Newton said it was then that he began to realize his own helplessness. He began to read the Bible. In time, he became a different man. He turned to Christ. He got married. He even became a minister and an active opponent of the slave trade. He also wrote these words:

Amazing grace—how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found, Was blind but now I see!

God opened John Newton’s eyes and set his heart on fire for Jesus Christ. He may have been a blasphemer and a slaver, but he was no more sinful and no blinder by nature than any other human being. Toward the end of his life, Newton wrote, “When I was young, I was sure of many things; now there are only two things of which I am sure: one is that I am a miserable sinner; and the other, that Christ is an all-sufficient Savior.”

Luke 24:31-32 “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’”

The disciples on the way to Emmaus could not “see” Jesus, even when He was right under their noses. Their faces were “downcast” when Jesus asked what they were discussing as they walked along the road (Luke 24:17). These two disciples weren’t unbelievers or ignorant. They knew who Jesus claimed to be. They even knew about the report from the women, that they had been to the tomb and it was empty. Still, they were downcast. And what does Jesus say? “He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-27).

God opened the eyes of the Emmaus disciples so that they could see Jesus and realize who had been talking to them and teaching them, and who was ready to eat with them. How did they react? They looked at each other and said, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”  They then ran seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell their friends that they had seen Jesus! It was already night, but they didn’t even wait until the next day. That’s how excited they were. God had used His Word to set their hearts on fire.

 By His grace and mercy, God has called us out of the darkness through the power of the Gospel. For the sake of the holy life and the innocent suffering and death of His Son, Jesus Christ, and sealed by Christ’s resurrection, we are God’s forgiven people. Our eyes have been opened. Our hearts should be on fire to help others have their eyes opened, too, by sharing what we know about Jesus.

This story was shared by Dr. Robert Roegner, former Executive Director of LCMS World Mission. On a summer Sunday in 2004, after he had worshiped with a Lutheran congregation in Nagercoil, India, five pastors of our Indian partner church asked him to travel with them that afternoon to a village where a new church had been started. They were going to baptize the first new believers there. It was about a two-hour drive. When they arrived, they drove up to a tent with open sides that had been pitched for the service. Worship already had begun. About 250 to 300 were at worship. About 40 of them were to be baptized and were in the first four rows, dressed in white. When it was time for the baptisms, the five pastors jumped up. One grabbed a basin of water, one took the certificates, and another had a Bible. After the first person confessed his faith and said he renounced the devil and all his works, he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to a pastor. The pastor looked at the paper and announced the persons’s name. Then another pastor baptized him in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

They went up one row and down another, baptizing those who were there. In the middle of the third row was a woman in her early 20s. She gave the pastor her paper. She had a little 4- or 5-year-old girl holding onto her. The pastor announced her name, and she was baptized. She began to cry. Then her daughter was baptized, and the woman cried even more. The pastors finished baptizing those in the third row, and she continued to cry. They finished the fourth row, and she was still crying. After the service, Roegner asked a pastor who spoke English to help him talk to this woman. They talked for a couple of minutes, then he said, “I couldn’t help but notice after baptism that you were crying—a lot. I guess those tears are because you are so happy that you were baptized and have become a child of God.”

She said, yes, she was happy that she is a child of God, that Jesus is in her heart, that she has received God’s free grace, and that she has forgiveness for all the sin and bad things she had done in her life. This brought tears of joy to her eyes. “But,” she said, “while I have tears of joy flowing from my left eye, I have tears of sorrow flowing from my right eye.” So he asked, “Why so sad as well?” She looked him square in the eye and said, “While I have received Jesus in my heart today and His grace and forgiveness, my husband, my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles, and all of my cousins do not know God’s grace and forgiveness because they still live in the darkness of all the Hindu gods.”

Roegner shared with her 1 Peter 2:9—“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” He challenged her to not let God’s love, grace, and forgiveness be only for her and her daughter, but to go and tell her husband, her mother, her father, and her other family members about Jesus.

Roegner returned to United States, and kept her in his mind and on his prayer list for three or four months. As happens over time, other prayers came to mind and he forgot about her. In January 2005, he received an e-mail from the pastor who had done the translating for him. He was so happy to tell Roegner that he and the other pastors were returning to this same village on Easter Sunday afternoon and were going to perform at least as many baptisms as they had when he had been there with them the previous summer. He was excited to report that a majority of those Easter baptisms would be members of this woman’s family, including her husband and her mother and father.

When she realized that God had called her out of darkness so that she could be a light to others, she acted. And as a result, many in her family came to know and believe in Jesus as well.

Never stop letting your Gospel light shine for those around you to see. You never know how God will use you to show Jesus and His love to those in your life.

Jeremiah 29:10-14a This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD.

These words are part of a letter sent to the children of Israel who had been carried off to Babylon. Though they had become a great nation under God’s blessings, their repeated refusal to live as God’s people had brought them to this point. Because of their unfaithfulness, God allowed His people to be defeated by the Babylonians and removed them from the land He had promised to them. This is the situation in which Jeremiah wrote the message from God in the passage above.

God tells His people that He has not forgotten them or abandoned them. He wants them to know that this chastisement will last for seventy years, and that they will then be allowed to return to their promised land. He calls upon them to seek Him out, and He will be found. He is telling them that when they repent, He will indeed forgive them. He also promises that those who repent and seek Him will prosper.

The promise of deliverance from their bondage to the Babylonians, which God fulfilled, is a foreshadowing of the deliverance that He would provide for all men through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. This is where the message speaks to us. God has already sought us out and led us to faith that Jesus is the Savior of the world. Yet we still sin and go against what God would have us do. Therefore, we must also seek his face, going to our God in repentance and trusting that the death and resurrection of Jesus has provided for our forgiveness. Because of Jesus, God has prospered us. He has given us a hope and a future. By His grace, those who have faith in Jesus Christ are declared righteous and forgiven. Eternal life is the possession of the faithful.

Even though God has sought us out, redeemed us through the sacrifice of His Son, and called us to faith, the world in which we live is such that we will be tempted to turn away from our loving God.  There will be distractions and temptations that try to lead us away from Him. So our God encourages us to continue to seek His face.

There was a congregation in which the Pastor would dismiss the children just before the sermon to go to their Sunday School classes. They would exit past the pulpit, where the Pastor was standing. A high point for this Pastor was receiving a smile from each of the children as they walked past, and giving them a smile in return. He tried to do this with each child, but one day he apparently missed one. A curly-headed four-year-old ran out of the church and threw herself into her mother’s arms, sobbing as if her heart were broken. After the service, the Pastor sought out that mother to see what was wrong.  She said that after she had calmed down her daughter, the little one said, “I smiled at God, but He didn’t smile back at me.” That Pastor stood for God to that little girl, and she was devastated when she thought that God had overlooked her.

It would indeed be tragic if we were to seek out God only to have Him spurn us. But for those who have faith in Jesus, this will never happen. God has already sought you out and claimed you as His child. Because of Jesus, you will never be rejected or overlooked.  God accepts you and smiles at you. He looks on you with favor and gives you peace. Seek His face … always.

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again and arms are strong
Alleluia! Alleluia!
(The Lutheran Hymnal #463, stanza 5)

One more day of reflecting on “the distant triumph song” mentioned in this stanza of “For All The Saints.” Yesterday I referenced the Armor of God that Paul describes in Ephesians 6. Here is the passage again.

Ephesians 6:10-18  Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the whole armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled around you waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the Gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Paul admonishes us to put on this armor “so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” After a battle, the one who is still standing is the one who is still alive. That will be those who have put their faith in Jesus. You and I are alive in Christ because of His death and resurrection from the dead. His death paid for your sins, allowing you to escape the punishment you deserved. His victory assures you of eternal life. He emerged from the battle as the one who was still standing, since Satan, sin and death have been defeated. Being alive in Christ, we put on the whole armor of God and attack the enemy with the Word. Being the followers of Christ, we prepare ourselves for the dark times Satan wants to bring to this world. Believers share the pure Gospel of God’s righteousness given to us by Jesus Christ. That is our battle plan. It is how we keep the distant triumph song alive in our hearts, and to make that song ever louder and louder in the day to day lives of men.

In the midst of our daily battles with Satan, you need to hear the lyrics of the triumph song. When the devil slings his arrows, when he would have us forget that Christ has won the victory, when Satan would drown out the song, the armor of God’s strength will renew you for conquest. There will be times that you stumble and fall, you will stray from the path God would have you take. But rather than becoming discouraged, listen again to the triumph song of Christ, who is far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given.

 Can you hear it? John wrote some of the lyrics of the triumph song of the saints who have laid down their arms and sing with the angels: Worthy is the lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! That’s part of the triumph song, proclaiming the victory Jesus won and gives to us. Put on God’s armor. Be strong in the Lord. The song will become clearer and clearer every day. Not only will you hear it, but you will be singing along with it.

Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory – the triumph – through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

“The Distant Triumph Song.” My previous devotion used that phrase from “For All the Saints” to speak about how distant the triumph of Jesus can seem in our day to day living. And I promised to share a solution God offers to help us continue to hear that song in our lives. Paul shared it in Ephesians 6.

Ephesians 6:10-18  Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the whole armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled around you waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the Gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

St. Paul says “be strong in the LORD and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the devil’s schemes.”  As I wrote yesterday, Satan does not want you to hear that triumph song. Because you are involved in a battle, Paul is telling you to arm yourselves. With what? With the latest self-help book? With a financial advisor? With better medical and physical resources? No! Paul says that God is your strength for battle. Be strong in the lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God. He details the pieces of armor our gracious God provides to keep the triumph song alive in your life!

• God’s truth is the belt around your waist, not the wisdom of this world.
• Your heart is protected by the breastplate of righteousness, the righteousness that Christ won for you on Calvary. Let Satan try to condemn you for your sins.
• Your feet are ready with the Gospel of peace. You go from battle to battle with the peace that comes from Christ’s triumph song.
• In your daily battles you have the shield of faith to deflect whatever Satan hurls your way.
• You have the glorious helmet of salvation, salvation today and forever with the triumphant Christ. This protects your mind from Satan’s assaults.

But you have more than just protective armor. You also have a sword, God’s Word. That is your daily weapon of offense. Paul does not describe the Christian as one who sits back and waits for the enemy to attack. Instead, you are on the offensive. With God’s Word you can unleash the power of the conquering Christ on the daily problems that Satan would like to use to work for your destruction. Listen to the full verse of Luther’s Reformation hymn that I used in part yesterday:

Though devils all the world should fill, all eager to devour us,
We tremble not, we fear no ill, they shall no overpower us.
This world’s prince may still scowl fierce as he will,
He can harm us none, he’s judged; the deed is done;
One little word can fell him.
(The Lutheran Hymnal #262 stanza 3)

That “one little word” is Jesus! And these are the lyrics of a triumph song! They instill in you the courage to be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. They give you to motivation to put on the full armor of God.

I’ll wrap this up with a few more thoughts on “the distant triumph song” tomorrow.

And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song
(The Lutheran Hymnal #463, stanza 5)

The hymn entitled “For All The Saints” has that phrase describing “The distant triumph song.” The word `distant’ is where I would like to begin today. Doesn’t the victorious message of Christ often seem distant to you during the week? The triumph of our Lord Jesus, the mighty conqueror who ascended above all rule and authority, above all power and dominion, can seem so far away. The triumph of the saints, you and I who have been given the promise of things that “eye hath not seen nor ear heard,” that triumph can seem so distant from our lives.

• It seems so distant when a husband or wife storms out of the house, slamming the door on the way out.
• How distant the triumph of Christ seems when you hear a conversation laced with profanity.
• When a person fancies himself as a good church member, but friends and family regard him (or her) as a busybody and a gossip, how distant the triumph song becomes.
• How distant it is when your body is wracked with physical pain that modern medicine cannot alleviate.
• How distant when your outlook on life is soured by bills that cannot be paid.

The triumph song of Jesus and his saints seem far away when we hear our Savior say: for from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man `unclean.'” (Mark 7:21-22)

 Satan wants the triumph song of Christ to become so distant from your daily life that it becomes inaudible. He doesn’t want you to hear it at all. He stands behind all of the battles we find ourselves in. Paul reminds us of this by saying:

“our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:11)

There is more facing you than an occasional problem here and there. Satan is your ultimate enemy. He stands at the head of a powerful, invisible army of evil spirits who are intent upon your eternal destruction. Luther refers to this in his hymn of the Reformation, “A Mighty Fortress”:

Though devils all the world should fill, all eager to devour us.
(The Lutheran Hymnal #262 stanza 3)

The enemy is not just that quarrelsome person you can’t get along with. It is not just improper conduct and conversation. We are not just struggling against our bodily ailments and financial woes. Those are just the front men that Satan uses to pull you away from God. If the triumph song of Christ and the saints seems distant at times, it is because the devil is trying to take them completely from your heart and life. And you know that at times, he is successful–he takes your focus away from Christ.

Followers of Jesus need to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus, the one who has already triumphed over the devil and death and the grave for us. Tomorrow I will start sharing a solution Jesus gives to help us continue hear that distant triumph song.

Acts 2:11  …we hear them declaring the wonders of God …

The first disciples were thoroughly convinced of the message they proclaimed. They had been with Jesus. They had seen and heard Him. They could testify that He had performed miracles and signs and wonders. They watched Him fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. They had seen Him betrayed, tortured and crucified. Then they saw Him alive again. With the Spirit’s power, they understood these wonders, wonders performed by a loving God. They knew that God was reaching out to save the souls of all who would repent and believe in Jesus as their Savior. So they shared this with those that they met. It was a one-on-one approach.

In the early church, this one-on-one system worked well. It got results. The book of Acts tells you that. History tells us that by the year 300, this one-on-one system had worked so well that it appeared that the entire civilized world would be converted by 500 A.D. This “one-on-one” system worked so well because the Holy Spirit used plain ordinary folk, caring people, to share the wonders of God’s love. However, this system all but stopped when the Emperor Constantine decreed that everyone in his empire was already Christian. After that, people developed the opinion that declaring God’s love was the job of the church, not individuals. Since that time, the church has become larger, and perhaps better organized. But without this one-on-one system–people sharing the wonder and love of God with each other–the church has suffered.

There is still hope because there is still the Holy Spirit. He can renew the church and individuals so that they can once again know the wonder and power of God’s love. As those who have experienced this renewal and have come to faith in Jesus Christ, we want to be His instruments. We are those who have been with Jesus because of our faith in Him. We need to exhibit the zeal of those first disciples. We need to declare the wonders of God!

We dare not declare a watered-down version of God’s Word. The message we proclaim is that which is found in the Bible, that which has been handed down to us and which we have taken to heart. The Scripture tells us that all men have sinned and deserve to be damned, separated eternally from God and His love. That is what we have earned by our actions. But God does not leave us in that state of despair with no hope. He reached out to us in love made flesh, sending His dearly loved Son into the world. Jesus Christ was born as a man in order to take the sins of all men on Himself. He could do that because He had lived a perfect life. Paul wrote about that:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

He took our sins and paid the penalty for them through His death on the cross. That is why we display the cross so prominently–as a reminder of what Jesus did for us there.

But that is not all of the message. After our Lord took the sins of all men on Himself and paid the price for them by dying in our place, He rose again to live eternally. He proclaimed His victory over sin and death, and offers His righteousness to all who believe in Him. Through faith in Jesus Christ, God sees you as being without sin, since the righteousness of Jesus gives you a covering. Even though you continue to sin, God does not hold your sins against you if we trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior. And this forgiveness is open to any and everyone. All you must do is believe that Jesus Christ lived, suffered, died and rose again for you, and you will be forgiven, redeemed, and restored.

It’s simple. It’s free. It is God’s promise. It is the message that we will continue to proclaim. God has shared this wonderful blessing with us, and we want others to share in it, so that they will be among the faithful in the joy of eternal life with our God. So we will continue to declare the wonders of our God.

ACTS 2:1-12  When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.  Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.  When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.  Utterly amazed, they asked:  “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans?  Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?  Parthians, Medes and Elamites;  residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya near Cyrene;  visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism);  Cretans and Arabs–we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”  Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Years ago, a Lutheran Pastor entered a tavern in his town. There was a man there who wanted to embarrass the Pastor, so he stood up and shouted, “Es gibt keinen Gott!”  For those of you whose German is rusty, that means “There is no God.” Upon hearing this, the Pastor went calmly over to the man, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, “My friend, what you have just said is not at all new. The Bible said, ‘There is no God’ over 2000 years ago.” The skeptic was taken aback and said, “I didn’t know the Bible said that!” The Pastor continued, “Psalm 14:1 tells us, ‘The fool says in His heart THERE IS NO GOD. However, there is a great difference between that fool and you. The fool in the Psalm was quite modest–he only said it in his heart. He didn’t show what a big fool he was by going around and yelling it in a tavern.”

We live in a world of fools. And it is not just the drunks in a tavern who say “There is no God.” People both inside and outside of the church have no problem these days loudly asserting “There is no God!” And having made that assertion, they then declare that there really is no such thing as sin, and they criticize the church for condemning sin and sinful  behavior.

People deny their sinfulness because that allows them to deny their need for a Savior. They reject the truth of God’s Word and deprive themselves of its promises. They do not experience God’s love and cannot respond to it. And this problem I am describing is not just outside the Church, but in many denominations and congregations. The end result is that much of the church has become cold and lifeless–a dramatic contrast to the vibrancy of life in the early church.

In our lives as God’s people, we should be His instruments in bringing warmth and life into what might otherwise be a cold and lifeless church. Through the ministry of Word and Sacraments, through the proper use of our gifts, we have learned that God does indeed equip us to be his caring people. It is our mission to reach out and touch others with the message of the wonders of God.

The passage above is describing the first Christian Pentecost. That day started with believers gathered together, and then the Spirit manifested himself in an extraordinary manner. Wind and fire were the visual signs that something beyond the normal was happening. A crowd gathered to investigate. The promise of Jesus to send the Holy Spirit was fulfilled. The disciples were enabled to speak in foreign languages, and they did so in order to share the Good News of Jesus. They spoke of the Spirit’s power given to them. They declared the wonders of God’s love, the truth that Jesus Christ, crucified by sinful men, has been raised again to life by the power of God. They revealed that He was not just a man from Nazareth, but the Son of God and the Savior of all men. They spoke of how He took the sins of all men on Himself. They told the people that all who would repent and be baptized would be saved. They declared the wonders of God: Jesus Christ, and salvation only through His Name. Forgiveness not because of our deeds, but by the grace of God.

To be continued…