Peace Lutheran Church Sussex, Wisconsin

Congregation at Prayer

Catechism: What the Hearers Owe Their Pastors (second half)

March 24, 2024

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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

Catechism: The Table of Duties—What the Hearers Owe Their Pastors

March 17, 2024

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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

Catechism: To Bishops, Pastors, and Preachers

March 10, 2024

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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

Catechism: The Sacrament of the Altar—Review and Who receives this sacrament worthily?

March 3, 2024

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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

Catechism: The Sacrament of the Altar—Where is this written? What is the benefit…? How can bodily eating…?

February 25, 2024

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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

Catechism: What is the Sacrament of the Altar? Where is this written?

February 18, 2024

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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

Catechism: Confession and the Office of the Keys

February 11, 2024

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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

The Catechism: Confession and the Office of the Keys

February 4, 2024

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Catechesis Notes for the Week — Who Could Stand before the Lord if He Kept a Record of Sins? — “If the Lord held us accountable for our sins and kept a record of them, we would all be condemned and have no hope of salvation. But in Christ there is forgiveness for all sin that we might ‘fear, love, and trust in Him.’ The broken and contrite heart does not rely upon anything that it does for salvation but trusts only in Christ’s Word. To ‘wait for the Lord’ is to believe in Jesus and to look nowhere else for comfort for our troubled consciences or for the certainty of salvation but in His Word of forgiveness. Faith holds on to His Word of forgiveness, and from His Word alone it receives the blessed hope of salvation.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Editon, p. 242a]CP240204

The Catechism: The Sacrament of Holy Baptism—Part IV

January 28, 2024

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Catechesis Notes for the Week — Let Him Deny Himself — This week’s verse is Jesus’ call to the baptismal life: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). “Self-denial is central to faith in Christ, and such self-denial is the denial that a person’s own good works can in any way save him. It is God who works ‘daily contrition and repentance’ in us through His Word of Law and Gospel, so that we deny ourselves and our own righteousness and cling by faith to Christ alone for salvation. ‘Daily contrition and repentance’ is painful to us because it involves the killing of the flesh with all the appetites and desires of the Old Adam. As Christ suffered and died for our sin, so we who are joined to Christ by Baptism into His death die daily to self that we might walk in the new life of faith in Christ. The Law continually kills—crushing all our religious hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and pride; and the Gospel continually makes us alive—reviving repentant faith, comforting the troubled conscience, and giving us the strength to live in the freedom and joy of Christ’s forgiveness.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 230b]CP240128

The Catechism: The Sacrament of Holy Baptism—Part III

January 21, 2024

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Catechesis Notes for the Week — Baptism Places Us in Christ – “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation…” Holy Baptism places us IN Christ! This means that we are joined to Him. His death for sin has become our death for sin. His atonement for sin is our atonement. His righteousness covers our sin. His resurrection has become our own. By His forgiveness, life, and salvation we are a NEW creation. The old life of sin and death has passed away. In Christ we are a NEW creation. This means that you are a new man or woman, holy and righteous. God looks upon you and you are spotless, without sin! Christ has taken it all away and declared you righteous. It means that you are a new man and a new woman, a new husband and a new wife, a new father and a new mother because the old things have passed away with all their frailty, sin, and corruption, and all things have become new! You are a new creation in Christ! This is the gift of our Baptism and what it means to be “IN Christ!”

CP240121