Congregation at Prayer

Catechesis Notes for the Week — “‘God’s Purpose’ to which we are called is faith and salvation in Christ. His ‘good and gracious will’ for those whom He has made His own in Holy Baptism is that we be preserved in His Word and faith until we die. There are many things in our lives that war against faith in Christ and tempt us to turn away from Him. God promises to work in every circumstance of our life, especially hardship, suffering, and tragedy, for our ultimate good. It is always the devil’s will to use these things to destroy our faith. It is always God’s will to work in every circumstance of our life to strengthen our reliance upon Christ.” [Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 184a]CP240414

Catechesis Notes for the Week — The Sufficiency of God’s Grace — “Every Christian “knows the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” because it is proclaimed to us in the Gospel. It is the pure, undeserved, sacrificial love of Jesus that moved Him to become one with our flesh and weakness, and to suffer and die for our sins. We know and believe in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation. It is this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that moved Him to do what He did for us—to become man, to humble Himself, to suffer, and to die for the unworthy and undeserving. Though He was ‘rich’—the holy, eternal, omnipotent Son of God who shared in the Father’s glory from eternity and through whom the Father made all things—yet for our sakes He became ‘poor.’ This is love. He set aside His power and glory as the eternal Son of God and became man, humbling Himself to the point of bearing the sin of the whole world in His own body upon the cross and dying for us that we through His poverty—the poverty of His humble conception, birth, and accursed suffering and death—might become rich, partakers of His divine life. To become rich in Christ is to share eternally in the grace of God and to become partakers with Jesus of the immortal and incorruptible life that He won for us in His humiliation, suffering, and death. This is the promise of eternal salvation for all who believe in Jesus. This grace of God is also the source of our faith and life as we await the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist edition, p. 94c]CP240407

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Christ, Our Passover Lamb — “Christ is explicitly named the Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world by the shedding of His blood upon the cross. The Old Testament Passover was a type for the slaughter of Christ upon the cross and the eating of His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. In the Lord’s Supper we feast upon the true Passover Lamb of God for the forgiveness of our sins. His blood sets us free from the bondage to sin, the condemning force of the Law, and the power of Satan. In this passage, ‘old leaven’ is a reference to sin. Sin is to be ‘purged’ by contrition and repentance that we might become ‘unleavened’ of forgiven in Christ.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 280a)CP240331

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Psalm 31: A Prayer of Thanksgiving and Comfort for the Lord’s Deliverance — “Since He is our God and Savior, since He has redeemed me from all sin, death and the power of the devil, THEN I can be confident that He hears my prayers for His deliverance and I will give thanks to Him for the assurance of His answer to my prayers!” Confidence in God’s promises of deliverance rests in what Jesus has done for us in His death and resurrection. Christ is, therefore, the One who gives certainty and confidence to our prayers! In Psalm 31 we can hear Jesus’ own prayers. He faced every challenge for us! He endured in the confidence that His Father in heaven was His refuge and strength! And the Lord heard His prayers. In His suffering, persecution, and death, Jesus confidently commended Himself to His Father in heaven: “But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hand; Deliver Me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute Me.” We pray these same prayers through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the full assurance of faith, because we are joined to Him. It is for Jesus’ sake that we commend ourselves to God: “For You are my strength. Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.”

 As Jesus prayed these words with confidence from the cross, we are enabled to pray them with confidence in Him and in His redemption.CP240324

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Psalm 43: A Prayer for the Light of God’s Word to Draw Us to Faithful Worship—Psalm 43 is a briefer version of Psalm 42. The psalmist is distraught. He is pursued by the ungodly nation and those who despise his faith. He prays for vindication, that the Lord God would fight for him with words: “plead my cause!” As he is tormented by his enemy and those whose accusations are troubling his soul, his prayer rests upon the assertion: “You are the God of my strength!” At the center of Psalm 43, the psalmist prays for the light of God’s Word of truth to be sent forth for him so that he is led to return to the holy hill of the Lord in faithful worship. Unless the light of God’s Word calls us to repentance and faith, we cannot worship God faithfully or make sense of our lives. It is God’s Word that teaches us to delight in Him and to desire Him above all things. It is God’s Word that gives us wisdom, teaches us to confess, and animates our song of praise. “Oh, send out Your light and Your truth! Let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy hill and to Your tabernacle. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy: and on the harp I will praise You, O God, my God.” The prayer resolves with the confident assertion: If we have God on our side in Christ Jesus our Lord, then we have nothing to fear.CP240317

Catechesis Notes for the Week — “All Scripture Is Given by Inspiration of God” – “The origin of the Holy Scriptures is the Holy Spirit. He is the ‘breath of God’ by which all Scripture has been ‘inspired’ or, literally, ‘breathed by God’ into the men who wrote the sacred texts. For this reason, the Scriptures are said to be ‘inspired’ by God and, therefore, ‘inerrant’ (without error). Although this passage refers most specifically to the Old Testament Scriptures, the Apostle Paul is also catechizing the Church concerning the divine and authoritative nature of the apostolic Scriptures of the New Testament and the use of all Scripture in the Church.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 42c] CP240310

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Administering the Lord’s Supper according to Christ’s Institution — The administration of the Lord’s Supper involves more than Jesus’ Words of Institution and the earthly elements of bread and wine. It also involves catechesis and preaching which precede the administration of the Sacrament and its distribution to penitent Christians. Jesus bids us to receive His Word, so we learn it by heart. Jesus commands that the Sacrament only be given to penitent sinners who have been baptized and believe in Christ. The Apostle Paul directs the Church to proclaim the Lord’s death in sermons prior to the distribution of the Lord’s Supper, and that everyone who communes is to confess that it is His true body and blood given and shed for their forgiveness. The Apostle Paul also teaches us that when we partake at a particular altar that it is a confessional act in which we are saying that we believe, confess, and celebrate the unity of faith with that church. All this is involved in the right administration of the Sacrament of the Altar.CP240303

Catechesis Notes for the Week — I Am the Living Bread — “Jesus calls Himself ‘the living bread’ because he is the source of eternal life. To eat of Him in faith is to receive the gift of eternal life. If anyone eats of Him, he will live forever. To speak of Jesus as ‘bread’ is the language of metaphor that immediately brings to mind the notion of eating. Jesus then defines the metaphor by saying, ‘The bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.’ The Word became flesh (John 1:14). Jesus suffered and died for our salvation in the flesh. He made full atonement for our sin in the flesh, to take away our sin and to restore us to life with God. He rose from the dead in the flesh the third day. Now, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He gives us His very flesh to eat for eternal life. How can His flesh give eternal life? Because His flesh took away the sin that caused our death and separated us from God. He gave His flesh into death for the life and salvation of the whole world. Jesus’ words call everyone to believe in Him. He who believes in Him desires to be baptized, and he who is baptized desires to receive His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper precisely because of Jesus’ promise: ‘If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.’” [Excerpted from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition]CP240225

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Christ’s Body and Blood — “It is the Word of Christ that ‘blesses’ or ‘consecrates’ the bread and wine of the Supper, making of them the very body and blood of Christ. ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you… Drink of it all of you; this cup is the New Testament in My blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’ A church cannot have the Lord’s Supper without the earthly elements of bread and wine and the Lord’s Word which makes of those elements the true body and blood of Christ. The miracle of the Sacrament lies with the Word of the Lord that ‘blesses’ the bread and wine. Faith receives what the Word declares…. All that Jesus is and has done for us He shares with us in the Sacrament.” [Excerpted from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 280b] CP240218

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Though your sins are like scarlet… “Our sin is serious and pervasive. It is a thorough corruption of our nature. The Lord compares our sin to the deep scarlet or crimson color of blood to teach us that life must be offered to make atonement for sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Atonement for sin is made by the shedding of blood because life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11), but our own life is not sufficient to make the payment. That this payment is made by another (vicarious atonement) is indicated by the phrases, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Forgiveness is from the Lord alone. It is God’s transaction. He provides the pure and unblemished Lamb to make the payment which He Himself demands (Genesis 22:8). His forgiveness is full, thorough, and complete, like the pure, brilliant white of snow and like the covering of lamb’s wool. According to the Lord’s reasoning or reckoning, although our sins are great, He imputes them to Jesus who makes atonement for them by the shedding of His blood upon the cross. For Jesus’ sake, He declares us forgiven and we are justified.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 242b]CP240211