The sermon for January 14 was based on John 2:1-11.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As a guest I much prefer weddings to funerals. As a Pastor though it's the other way around. When I bury a Christian I know that the one laid to rest is now safely beyond any kind of suffering or temptation. The guest of honor at a Christian funeral is triumphant and blessed beyond our experience. The only reason not to shout for joy is the grief of those yet living.

So we grieve for those who have crossed over into victory and triumph and celebrate with those who are about to enter the very thickest fight in the devil's war against God's creation. No one invites greater demonic attention than those who enter into holy matrimony. The devil hates marriage as much as He hates Christ and His bride, the Church. I don't want to speculate on Roman Catholic practices but I would much rather pray for the wed than for the dead.

The devil hates marriage because it is at the very heart of God's plan for mankind. It is integral to our existence in this world. Marriage supplies order and purpose and meaning to our lives as men and women. Marriage defines us and proscribes our behavior. Marriage tells us who we are and what we can be. God blesses marriage and holds it dear to His heart. Marriage and the family give us our place in this world. They help keep us from wandering away from our created purposes and they give us a clearly defined and unchanging environment in which to grow.

The devil's primary attack on marriage is the same old accusation he's been using since he first had his way with Eve in the garden. He wants us to believe that marriage is a prison which God uses to keep us from having something better. That's certainly the men with wandering eyes describe it. That's very definitely the way the godless and devilish feminists describe it. That's the way the same sex union crowd sees it. That's even the way its describes by pop-psychologists and social workers. An institution of oppression and denial, a curse, a burden.

The devil wants us to get rid of anything that shows us what God intends for us to be. Marriage gives one of the very clearest pictures of what our lives are to be like and of how we are to live. We live in a time when almost any other picture is preferable though. Even though we claim to hate being put in our place we're all too ready to let anyone other than God do it. We'll let the state dictate almost every facet of our conduct right down to letting it tell us outright lies. The state is on the cusp of telling us that there is no difference between men and women, and that any pairing of humans is perfectly fine. The state already insists that the little babies murdered in clinics all over this country every aren't really people and don't deserve our protection. Our country has adopted the abomination of no-fault divorce, saying, in effect that marriage is a silly voluntary little arrangement like membership in a health club, subject to change at the least little whim of a dissatisfied person. Popular opinion is no better at telling us who we are and what our proper place is. The consensus of our age is that we are all individual and completely free agents able, no entitled, to do whatever we want regardless of the consequences to those around us and certainly without any reference at all to what God wants or wills. We Christians are no better at finding and filling our place either. Left to our own devices we would go the way of the world and leave everything to the individual preference. Fallen human beings, even those with some interest in the will of God will always choose the path of least resistance and that is tyranny. Whether you are content to let the state or the media tell you how to live or whether you're the kind who wants to tell everyone else what to do, apart from the Word of God there is no freedom and outside your God-given place there can be no contentment no matter how attractively couched in the language of liberty, rejection of biblical marriage ends in death and damnation.

Many people go through life in a state of constant chaos and upheaval, at least that is how they feel about their lives. Much of that turmoil is the result of someone resisting the will of God. The man who is willing to accept God's Word and take His place within the order of creation is called humble. He may be rich and powerful or poor and lowly. He may be a king but if He submits Himself to the Word of God and tries to live accordingly he is humble. Such men do not experience the changes and chances of life as "upheaval." Their lives may be just as full of warfare and danger and change and stress as everyone else's but they are not knocked down by them. They do not expect lives of placid tranquility. They expect the conflict and trust in God.

They have every reason to trust God and so do we. Unlike the silly and superfluous voices that fill the modern world, God speaks with power and authority. If God says you are a man with manly responsibilities and manly honors He does just say so. He makes it so. He weaves the truth of His Word right into your very flesh. The state, the TV and the secular social workers can say that man and women are interchangeable all they want but the skin and bones and hearts and minds and DNA of these allegedly identical individuals irrefutably proves otherwise. We are what God made us. Some of us are men some of us are women. We are built for different purposes and put in different places. God blesses us differently and curses us differently. He honors us in different ways and He humbles us in different ways. Even beyond the basic differences of men and women, God fits us out for different work. Some are given the skills of teachers, some the skills of ministers, some have other skills. We find contentment when we use our skills for the purpose God has assigned us.

One of the most evil messages of the world is that some of the places God has created for His people are insignificant and unimportant. This is what modern people say about the places of husband and wives. This is what feminists say about motherhood and the place of the wife. This is what liberated people say of marital fidelity. According to the wicked and devilish ways of the world, cooking and cleaning and tending to housework is unimportant, it is nothing but drudgery and beneath the dignity of a free woman. Patriarchy is an evil to be abhorred and ridiculed. God says otherwise. When the Son of God chose to be incarnate He chose as His mother a simple housewife, selected for her humility, her willingness to be put in her place and her expectation of being blessed there and of thriving in it. But Jesus did not choose His mother without any thought as to who her husband would be. He chose a woman who was bound to a man who took marital fidelity seriously and was as concerned for his own integrity as for that of his beloved. Christ disdained to be born to a king and queen or to the selfish worldling. He came into this world in the shelter of a marriage that was in line with His ancient and benevolent design.

Christ has come to put us in our place. If we have lost sight of who we are and where we belong He has come to correct our vision. If we have become puffed up and selfish, believing that we are free to do as we wish, without regard to those appointed over us, we will be humbled. If we have forgotten to exercise the gifts given to us and become despondent and lifeless, Christ will excite us and re-energize us according to His purposes. If at first He must break us down and make us low it is only so that He may eventually elevate us and lift us up to our proper place.

This is the great truth that the world cannot stand to hear. No matter how lofty and grandiose the place offered to you by the Godless world, no matter how glorious the so-called freedom extended to you by the unbelievers, the place God has in mind for you is vastly superior to anything else. What the world calls oppression and imprisonment, the Lord calls home. We must believe what God says not only about Himself but also about us. But we can only trust what He says about us if we first believe what He says about Himself.

All of the evils that assault us as individuals and families originate in the sordid company of those who have reject Christ as He has revealed Himself to is Holy Scripture. Those who reject the Bible as the inspired and inerrant Word of God are the source of the evils that we've been talking about today. Down through the ages, wherever the Word of God has been accepted as such the family has been strong and vigorous. Wherever the Word is neglected or rejected the family will crumble. We cannot believe in ourselves or in one another unless we believe in God.

And we are not allowed to believe in some vague ill defined God either. We must believe in the Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We must believe that Jesus is everything He says about Himself. That He is true God and true man, that He died to forgive our sins, that He rose to create a unique place for each of us in the company of our Father, that He comes to us through His means of Grace and that He will return one day to divide the believers from the unbelievers, setting the believers in the place He has created for them and sending the unbelievers to the place they have chosen for themselves.

The faith we need is freely given in Word and Sacrament. As I proclaim the Word of God the Holy Ghost is working among and within you to strengthen faith when and where and in whom He pleases. The Lord's Supper will forgive your sins and strengthen your faith. You have been baptized into the faith and the faith has been baptized into you, so to speak.

If you can believe that Christ is who He says He is and has done what He says He's done, you can believe that the place in which He has put you is the right one. It is not by accident that Jesus works His first miracle at a wedding. It is not by accident that He attaches His promise and blessing to the 4th Commandment and the relationships within the family. It is not by accident that world hates nothing more than the Christian family. Of all the institutions in this world God is fondest of the family. States rise and fall, schools come and go. But Christ and His Bride, the Church, are vigilant for the welfare of the Christian home. From Eden to the end, God has promised to bless our marriages and our families with His Word and presence. They are His families even more than they are our own and no matter how difficult it may be to believe, they are among His most precious gifts. Jesus saves the best for last and He causes what's best to last. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes . . .

Last Updated: 7/15/2008