Pastor Mark’s first class of 2014 lays it out.
Sure, many won’t like it. What else is new?
But some of us love it!
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Thank you, Pastor Mark.
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Thanks also to flickr and ce_barbato, for the photo.
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Filed under: Baptism, Free will, Freedom, Our Lutheran Theology, Pastor Mark Anderson, Pastor's class, The Lord's Supper | 7 Comments »
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Don’t be afraid. Don’t get scared and run back into yourself trying to find the assurance of your salvation.
Many have sent me quotations from their confessions that say that we need to look inward for our assurance. I say, “bunk”. What assurance could anyone possibly have by looking at themselves to see evidence that they really are a Christian and are of ‘the elect’?
Abandon that project of ‘the self’ and look to the external Word and sacraments…alone. Don’t put your trust in anything but the finished work of Christ on the Cross for real sinners.
Faith in your faith won’t do it. Faith in your church won’t do it. Faith in your “decision for Christ” or your “evidence” won’t do it.
But faith in God will do it (give you assurance and freedom). Faith in God and trusting in what He has done for you, in real time, in your own personal history, will do it.
He came to you, He comes to you in your Baptism. A concrete act of crucifixion and resurrection in your own life. Actually DONE TO YOU.
He comes to you in His Supper. Applying the Cross to you, yet again. Actually putting His body inside of your body and doing His forgiveness to you, yet again. Giving you His very essence. His very life. You can trust in these real, tangible events that happen to you in real time and space.
He comes to you in your hearing of His preached Word. Real sound waves that carry His Word of law and of promise…hitting your ears and going right into your heart and head.
Don’t go mucking around in the etherial spiritualities of …up there …somewhere. Don’t go foraging around in the dumpsters of your obedience to the law or evidences that you think you see to verify that you really are His. And don’t waste your time with the religious hucksters that will not offer you the assurance and the freedom that Christ so dearly won for you on that bloody Cross, but who instead send you back inside of yourself for evidence.
Go to the font. Go to His table. Listen to His Living Word…actually DONE to you…in your ears and on your skin, and on your tongue.
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You ARE a child of the Living God. You CAN KNOW that you ARE SAVED…totally APART from anything that ‘YOU DO’, or anything that YOU SAY, or anything that YOU FEEL, or anything that YOU THINK.
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You truly ARE “FREE IN CHRIST”!
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Thanks to flickr and Samara May Knight, for the photo.
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Filed under: and so-called "Non-Denoms", Assurance, Freedom, The External Word | 4 Comments »
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The Founders of our country were fighting for a particular kind of freedom. Different than the kind of freedom that our Lord has won for us, but the same in the respect that both types of freedom are for something…and not for our willfulness.
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Pastor Mark’s sermon explains how Christ’s freedom, won for us, is from something…and yet is for something:
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Thank you, Pastor Mark.
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And thanks to flickr and libertyclick, for the photo.
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Filed under: 4th of July, Freedom, Pastor Mark Anderson, Sermon | 2 Comments »
Freedom from all of that inward stuff…and then free to love and live life outward.
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Thanks, Pastor Mark.
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And thanks to flickr and lindes, for the photo.
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Filed under: Freedom, Pastor Mark Anderson, Sermon | Leave a comment »
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Many do.
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If you do, there’s probably not a lot to sway you from that course. At least for the time being.
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But if you see yourself starting to despair a bit because you just can’t quite cut the mustard in keeping up with all that you should be doing, and or you are still doing those things that you know you shouldn’t be doing…or you are starting to notice (in your most honest moments and reflections) that you might be becoming a bit prideful, because you delude yourself into believing that you really aren’t doing so badly at all this ‘Christian progression/self-sanctification’ stuff….then maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
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If you’re in the latter category (see world’s 2nd longest sentence above) then this might mean something to you:
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Thanks, Pastor Mark.
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And thanks to flickr and chawayipiran, for the photo.
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Filed under: Free will, Freedom, Pastor Mark Anderson, Sacraments, Sermon | 3 Comments »
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“I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.“
– John 8
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Ask most Americans what they value most and the response will probably be ‘freedom’. Ask them to define freedom and the answers will have something to do with being able to do as we please. Interestingly, the founders of this country defined freedom as being able to do as we ought, not necessarily as we please.
Freedom is actually defined by its choices as reflected in this classic definition;
“Freedom is the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.”
The implications are obvious. Authentic freedom only belongs to those who always and in every thought, word, and deed choose the right and the good. A simple inventory of our own life’s timeline of thoughts, words and deeds, will reveal that we are anything but free. For our choices of thoughts, words, and deeds often reflect not the absence but the presence of “necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” And that which is present in us driving these things is sin.
We don’t like hearing this of course. ‘What do you mean I’m not free? Of course I am! I have free will, don’t I?” Actually, there is a no better witness against us than our so-called free will. It is our ample backlog of free willed thoughts, words and deeds that contain the record of the countless ways we have chosen the bad instead of the good. This is the truth. And unless we know and hear the truth about ourselves, we will continue to live the lie, calling bondage freedom. But the implications are even more serious.
True freedom belongs belongs to God alone. Only God is free because only God’s willing always, and in every sense results in the good. This why to claim freedom for yourself – including free will – is, in fact, blasphemy against God. For such a claim shows contempt for God , wittingly or not, by claiming for yourself something that belongs to God alone.
Jesus was speaking to a fundamental truth; if you sin you are slave to sin. You are not free. And because of sin we have no permanent place with God. For the wages of sin is death. But to this ominous and sobering reality our Lord added an even greater truth; “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
In Jesus God has done some free will choosing of His own. And God’s choosing is not polluted with the taint of self interest. Out His great love for us – we who are bound in our free-will pretensions – He has chosen to extend grace and mercy.
The ringing note of this glorious grace so struck the Apostle Paul that he could sum up the whole Christian life in one, simple declaration, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” This is the authentic paradigm of the Christian life and faith. For we are not the free ones who simply misuse our freedom, and must be coerced into choosing rightly. We are the bound ones, enslaved in sin, who must be set free, and have been, “by The Man of God’s own choosing”, Jesus Christ our Lord.
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– Pastor Mark Anderson
>>>>>>>>>>> Lutheran Church of the Master Corona del Mar, CA
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From Pastor Mark Anderson’s Daily Devotional blog site
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Thank you, Pastor Mark.
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Filed under: "For Freedom Christ has set us free", Free will, Freedom, Pastor Mark Anderson | 5 Comments »
From Pastor Mark’s blog http://www.lightofthemaster.net/apps/blog/t
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by Pastor Mark Anderson
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Filed under: Freedom, Gerhard Forde, Pastor Mark Anderson's blog | 4 Comments »
Have you ever tried to discuss the gospel with another Christian and all you get in return is a bunch of bunch of “yeah buts”?
Many of us have.
Sometimes, I believe you just have to leave it (them) alone. Sometimes they are just really into the religious Christian project… climbing steadily, improving their Christian lives, and there’s no stopping them. In such a case I would suggest that you just let them go ahead with their project. And then look for others to share the gospel with. Look for those beaten and battered by life, or their own religious projects. It is here that the law has done it’s job and it is here that the gospel may have the best chance of being heard and freeing the person from the law (what ‘they do’).
Every person and situation is different and I do not advocate a formula. But I think the general principle is fairly steady.
What do you think?
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Filed under: Freedom, Law and Gospel | 11 Comments »
Freedom just scares the hell out of people. It might even scare the hell into them.
To be truly free in Christ, without any shackles of “literal bibles”, “3rd uses of the law” “Christian do-goodism projects”, or “Christian self-improvement projects”…just scares people to death.
Professor and theologian, James Nestingen always says, “The gospel is always in a fight. And that fight always revolves around freedom.”
“They really don’t care if someone’s doctrine doesn’t line up just right before they will share Christ’s Supper with them.”
Yes, we do care. And yes, we will share…even before we are SURE they understand everything exactly as we do. We care enough to baptize them first and to tell them exactly what they are receiving. Who’s Supper is it, anyway? Who is it that is capable of making someone into the kind of person that He wants them to be, anyway?
Well, it’s always about the freedom, isn’t it? And who’s freedom?
God’s freedom. God’s freedom to love and forgive real sinners. God’s freedom to take real people who just can’t quite cut it, and probably never will ‘cut it’ in this pride-soaked world, and say to them, “I love you. I baptized you. And you are mine. Begining of story.”
And then it’s about our freedom. The gift of freedom from our Lord, Christ Jesus, who has freed us by His death and resurrection. Who has freed us by declaring us forgiven and righteous, even though we know not what we do.
Just who is it that we are talking about here? Can this God really make something out of nothing? Or is he just itching for us to get it all lined up perfectly BEFORE He acts…for us?
Nope. Our God is free. Scary free to many. Wonderfully free to some.
The door is open. You have been freed.
“But the Bible says such and such about such and such!”
Heeere we go again…
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Filed under: Freedom | 6 Comments »
Well, isn’t that what is happening in so many churches?
You’ve got someone who is starving to death (spiritually) and you lay out for them your favorite recipe on just how they can get what they need?
Then you add another ingredient to the recipe each week, so there’s no way this much needed, life giving meal will ever come out of the oven and be finished, and enjoyed. It becomes impossible to ever ‘arrive’.
I’m here to say that that is a terrible way to “help” people.
Hand Him over!
Give them the True Bread which comes down from Heaven, which is the meal that is completely finished for you and ready to “take and eat”.
‘How to’, ‘instructional Christianity’, just throws gasoline on the fire. It keeps alive the Old Adam and Old Eve. It creates phonies and Pharisees. It drives people to despair. God is not interested in cleaning up the Old Adam and Old Eve in us. He wants to kill them off! He will create in their places, the New Man and New Woman, and He does this through the announcement of the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake. And He does this in His Holy Supper which He lovingly prepares for you with His Body and Blood that was nailed to a bloody cross in your place. And He does this when we speak of Him and the great things He has done for us, one to another. And when we comfort each other in His Name.
This is what people need. They don’t need a ‘program’ that puts them on the fast track, slowtrack, or any other track, to greater obedience or greater spirituality.
If the non-denoms, or the Baptists, or the Roman Catholics, or the Calvinists, or the Mormons even, would hand over this bread that comes down from Heaven for broken sinners, and not put any conditions on it, then I would say “AMEN! Thanks be to God! We are in agreement!”
To the extent that they do not hand Him over without strings attached, I will always be critical… never judgemental. Their final destination is not my business. The Lord is after the heart and knows each heart individually. He is certainly capable of making someone His own apart from any particular denomination, or church, or institution.
But we want the light of the gospel and the freedom that Christ gives to burn ever more brightly…don’t we?
So we continually place Christ at the center of it all towards that end so that some will hear and be freed from the religious project and the propping up of the self.
Don’t hand them picked-over recipes, that feature ‘what they ought be doing’.
Hand over the One true and everlasting food that is Jesus Christ Himself and His forgiveness of sins for sinners in need of new life. And keep handing Him over, again and again, and again…in the face of all those who object that that is just not enough.
He, and He alone…is enough. He is enough.
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You got a problem wit dat?
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Filed under: Freedom, Jesus only, The Gospel | 13 Comments »
The Old Adam Lives! 