Romans 5:1, 2 * January 28, 2007* World Mission Festival/125^th Anniversary * WELS President Karl Gurgel

By the grace of God, I Am . . .

I. At peace with God

II. Rejoicing in the glory of God

On Monday, the 29^th of January, St Johns officially will be 125 years old. The first service was actually held on the 22^nd of January in 1882 and just a week later, on the 29^th, 24 men organized your congregation.

Growth was quick, almost too quick, taxing facilities and finances. The fledgling congregation grew. Within a year its first church was dedicated. St Johns continued to grow. A number of times, particularly to accommodate its rapidly expanding school, more facilities were needed. Each time, from a very human perspective, it seemed to happen far from ideally, when funding was scarce like during the Great Depression. And yet for St Johns there always seemed to be an inner peace which underlay each new push forward.

However, each new push forward was often sideways. That’s only because the task was often broadened to include new opportunities. Why even the first pastor happened to be in this area because he was doing mission work, meeting the spiritual needs of the Milwaukee County Institutions across the street. Years later the scope of your mission broadened again as you became instrumental in establishing Wisconsin Lutheran High School. And now you’ve added a Chinese ministry.

Throughout these past 125 years, what was it that gave you such confidence, making you so bold in seizing new opportunities? For all of us together, members of WELS, what will keep us confident to meet new opportunities and challenges? I suggest to you that it was and is nothing human. As you begin your anniversary celebration, on your world missions Sunday, I want to affirm with you that it was simply and only the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ. It was consistently knowing “By the grace of God I am…1) privately at peace with God and so publicly 2) rejoicing in the glory of God.

What personally brings you peace of mind? Is it that all the special relationships in your life are going well? Do you have peace of mind because no grandparents, mother or dad, brother or sister is seriously ill, just praying and waiting for death to come? Everything about every single special relationship in your life is just about as perfect as it can be. Is that what brings you peace of mind?

What about your future? Does thinking about it bring you peace of mind? You have no doubts about the future, you’re absolutely sure how you will serve God for the rest of your days. Is that what brings you peace of mind?

What about the world around you? Does the world’s lack of peace trouble you? Do you know someone fighting to regain peace or retain it in Iraq or Afghanistan? Do you know someone, anyone, who has suffered injury at the hands of lawless people? If you don’t, if the peace-less world around you hasn’t touched you, does that bring you peace of mind?

Is any of this even close to or does it exhaust the peace Paul is talking about in the first verse of our text for today? “Therefore, since we have been justified though faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In the very next verse of our text, Paul tells us that by faith we’re standing right in the middle of and have full access to the grace of God. It’s like having an ATM card from God. If you have a checking or savings account, it’s so handy to access it with an ATM card. All you need to remember is your access code and when you punch it in correctly, if there is any money there, it’s right there for you to use. The code accesses your money for you.

Through faith, one of God’s greatest gifts to you, God has given you an access code to the limitless grace of God. With the very first word of our text for today,” therefore”, Paul is pointing back to the divine funding for this heavenly bank account. He’s telling us what it means that we are justified; how we can have access by faith to a limitless supply of God’s grace.

In the verse right before our text, we’re reminded about the deposit made providing this rich source of grace. It’s not an especially pretty sight, Jesus being delivered over to death for our sins.

You and I have felt its burden, the weight of sin and death. There are times when we are defiant, feeling that we have a perfect right to act any wrong way we please. But more often the reverse is true. We’re overwhelmed, burdened with a guilty conscience, ashamed our sin will be discovered. We’re afraid, fearing the rightful penalty we know our wrong deeds deserve.

The holy, righteous law of God makes us feel even worse. It tells us that a guilty conscience troubling us is the least of our worries. Death, the real penalty for sin, is what we deserve. The law crushes us, leaving us nowhere to hide, nowhere within ourselves to turn for peace. “There is no peace for the wicked,” God declares.

And then comes the sweet gospel message. Jesus willingly and innocently took our place. He died for us, paying sin’s penalty in full. His perfect life made his death innocent, allowing him to pay sin’s penalty for us, the guilty. And when the Father raised his son from the dead, he was declaring the effect of Jesus’ perfect life and innocent death – our justification. The heavenly Father, for Jesus’ sake, would pardon us, lifting our burden of guilt and replacing it with the peace of sins forgiven. By this grace of God I am at peace with God through my Lord Jesus Christ.

Two months ago I returned from a two week teaching trip to our mission in India. Several times a year visiting professors assist with teaching classes in our India seminary in Guntur. From an earthly perspective life in India is hard. The most fortunate among them makes about 5000 rupees per month. Now if that sounds like a lot, it isn’t. It takes about 50 rupees to make one dollar. 5000 rupees is about $100. Somebody may give you that much or more for Christmas or your birthday.

Speaking about being born, in India who you are may depend on who your parents are. Even though the caste system in India is officially outlawed, its effects linger on. When someone becomes a Christian, they often are considered to be among the untouchables, the lowest caste of all. Opportunities for a higher education may be denied them. They may lose their jobs if they even had one to start with. There is religious persecution and yet, by the grace of God, they have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was my privilege to teach about 35 seminary students, using Romans 1-8 as our textbook. Those chapters are all about peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Inspired by God’s Spirit, Paul tells us that since by faith we have access to the grace of God, all of life’s troubles, heaped into one gigantic pile, are not worth comparing with the glory which shall be revealed to us.

A two pan balance scale is something you don’t see much anymore. It was a simple way of measuring something. You put an item to weight in one pan and weights in the other. When the two pans are equal, you have the desired weight of whatever it is you are measuring.

Paul says you should put in the one pan everything negative you have experienced or even can imagine. To our human eyes, more times than we want to admit, it seems like an oppressive weight, burdening us, weighing us down. But wait, says Paul. By faith put in the other pan the full weight of the glory God has secured for us, promised to us by faith. Why, says, Paul, it’s not even a fair comparison. What is still waiting for our eyes to see, but what our faith already knows, is that our present troubles are not even worth comparing with our future glory.

That’s why Paul was also inspired to write this familiar verse: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Just like a little child, like the child still inside all of us, who sometimes doubts the love of our parents for us when they say no to us, denying us something we want so badly, we, as the children of God, do not always recognize the good in something seemingly not so good that God allows in our lives. But, as Paul reminds us, a God who for our eternal good did not even spare his son’s life, giving him into death for us, will he not also, give us only and always what is best for us for our temporal good?

That’s our peace of mind. It all starts with our access by faith to the forgiving grace of God. There is no greater peace of mind than to know that, because of Jesus, we’re forgiven. But God’s grace continues to fill our hearts and lives. The eternal weight of glory awaiting us far outweighs any earthly difficulty we could ever imagine. For, in all things, God is at work, making them work out for our good.

And all of this is because, by the grace of God I am at peace with God. By faith you and I have been given the access code, unlocking for us the rich treasures of God’s grace. That access code, as you very well know, is the trust and confidence in who Jesus Christ is and what he has done for us. And through that same gift of faith, even as we look back and see our sin’s guilt removed and sin’s penalty, death, taken away, we look forward confidently in faith to the hope, the certainty of the glory in store for us for all eternity. Paul says we are to rejoice in this certain hope of our future enjoyment of God’s glory.

Privately, by faith, I am at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Publicly, by faith, I can rejoice in this hope of future glory. And this public rejoicing, I believe, is what has ever been behind the bold initiatives taken by your congregation, the latest of which is Chinese outreach. I pray also that this being at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ is behind all of the world mission activities of the Wisconsin Ev. Lutheran Synod.

The word translated rejoicing in our text quite literally means to boast. Elsewhere Paul would be inspired to write, “May I never boast except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.” It was no good in me, no good coming out of me that was the reason for my gaining access to the grace of God. God’s grace is God’s undeserved love for us in Christ Jesus, the sole reason for our being at peace with God. And so when we rejoice, when we boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s not self-glorification, not proud boasting of our own accomplishments. It’s the confident boast of what, in Christ Jesus, God has done for us and promises to give us.

It’s a little bit like the proud boasting of Bears and Colts fans awaiting the Super Bowl. Few of these avid fans would believe that if they personally had been playing on the field last Sunday, their teams would be in a position to gain all the glory, a world championship. Rather, they hope to be able to boast about the glory in which they will share only if their team is victorious on February 4^th. It’s their team for which they are making such proud boasts, looking toward Super Bowl glory.

It’s not even a fair comparison. One is decidedly earthly while the other is distinctively heavenly. We do not boast either in our final glory as if we had earned it or deserve it. We know we did not. There was only one player on the field, our Lord Jesus Christ, when this great victory was won. But we boast in the one, the Lord Jesus Christ, who won it for us. And what we know privately by faith is what publicly, with our voices, we rejoice over as we boast of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is this rejoicing we want others to hear from us.

This, I believe, is what has been behind nearly every action of St Johns for 125 years. In every bold move you made, in every opportunity you seized, it was not for self-praise. It was because, in faith, privately you believed you were at peace with God. It was because, by faith, as you rejoiced publicly over God’s grace, you wanted others by faith to be aware of that same confidence. You wanted others by faith to be able to say, “By the grace of God I am at peace with God.

That’s what I saw in the seminary students in India. Their private peace was nothing outward. Outwardly many of them had hardly anything of earthly value. But inside, by faith in the grace of God, they were at peace with God. And motivated by this inner peace, outwardly they rejoiced to be able to share God’s access code into the limitless grace of God with the temporally poor people of India all around them.

I pray it will be the same way for all of us as members of WELS. May our continuing confidence always be because by faith, privately, we know that we are the children of God. May that faith always inspire us to publicly rejoice, sharing with others the certain hope in the glory of God they too can share with us.

Over the last few years you may be well aware that WELS has been experiencing some financial pressures. This has resulted in recalling a number of world missionaries. And yet, just look at what God’s grace has done, finding yet another way to extend his kingdom worldwide!

The number of world missionaries is 53 but the number of pastors serving in world fields is more than 3 times that number – 173. The reason is that God has blessed our international seminaries so that we now have 120 national pastors, 183 national evangelists and a large number training to become pastors in the future. All 23 world mission fields are still being served in some way.

In addition, in countries where American missionaries are not welcome, through Christian literature God’s presence is felt. In Pakistan and Nepal there are over 4,000 adults involved in Christian leadership training thanks to materials supplied by WELS.

This is cause for rejoicing, boasting, not in us but rather in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through the private knowledge by faith in what the Lord Jesus has gained for us, justification, full and free forgiveness, we’re inspired to rejoice, to proclaim worldwide, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

May the private knowledge of knowing you and I are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ fill our hearts and lips with rejoicing so that many others may share in these lavish gifts of God’s grace with us. May the confidence faith gives you here at St Johns inspire other members of the Wisconsin Ev. Lutheran Synod to more publicly rejoice, to share God’s grace with others. Thank God that you and I are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is cause, as we are doing today, for public rejoicing!