This week's sermon from Luther is about prayer.
He says that the first requisite for true prayer is faith in the promise of God. He wants us to pray and he promises to answer. How have you struggled in your life with this basic idea of faith that God will indeed answer? How has that made your prayer life wax and wane?
Sermon Fifth Sunday after Easter: John 16 (for the full text email me at pramylittle@gmail.com)
1. In this Gospel we have a promise and Christ does not only promise, but
he even swears that our prayers shall be heard; but through himself as
mediator and high priest.
2. We should pray that we may have peace through faith, which St. Paul says, is a true and perfect peace.
3. When Christ says: “These things have I spoken unto you in parables (dark sayings), it is as much as to say, hitherto you have been unable to understand my Word, it all appears to you dark and hidden; but the time will come, when I send the Holy Spirit, that I shall speak plainly by my Spirit, that is, publicly in your hearts, of the things that belong to my father. So the sum and substance is, that without the Spirit one does not understand the Word.
2. We should pray that we may have peace through faith, which St. Paul says, is a true and perfect peace.
3. When Christ says: “These things have I spoken unto you in parables (dark sayings), it is as much as to say, hitherto you have been unable to understand my Word, it all appears to you dark and hidden; but the time will come, when I send the Holy Spirit, that I shall speak plainly by my Spirit, that is, publicly in your hearts, of the things that belong to my father. So the sum and substance is, that without the Spirit one does not understand the Word.
Monday: We have hitherto resorted to many ways of preparing ourselves to pray — ways with which the books are filled; but if you wish to be well prepared, take the promise and lay hold of God with it. Then your courage and desire to pray will soon grow, which courage you will never otherwise get. For “those who pray without God’s promise, imagine in themselves how angry God is, whom they wish to propitiate by means of their prayers. Without faith in the promise, there is then, neither courage nor desire to pray, but mere uncertain delusion and a melancholy spirit; there is, therefore, no hearing of prayers, and both prayer and labor are lost.
ReplyDeleteHow is courage to pray putting faith in God's will to answer our prayers?
Tuesday: Try it, now, and pray thus. Then you will taste the sweetness of God’s promise. What courage and consolation of heart it awakens to pray for all things! It matters not how great and high the petitions may be. Elijah was a man of like passions with ourselves; yet when he prayed, it did not rain for three years and six months, and when he again prayed it rained. 1 Kings, 17:1; 18:45. Notice, here you see a single man prays and by his prayer he is lord of the clouds, of heaven and earth. So God lets us see what power and influence a true prayer has, namely, that nothing is impossible for it to do.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever stopped praying for something out of discouragement? What do Luther's words stir inside of you when it comes to not giving up on the prayers of your heart?
Wednesday: We continue with Luther's sermon from the Fifth Sunday after Easter. . . Luther writes:
ReplyDeleteThat is, what I now speak to you, while in the body, and my parables ye understand not, which I will thoroughly explain to you through the Holy Spirit. I will plainly speak of my Father, that you may then understand who the Father is and what my going to the Father means. You will clearly see how I ascend through suffering into the Father’s life and into his kingdom; that I sit at his right hand and represent you and am your mediator; that all this is done for your sake, that you may likewise come to the Father. “I shall tell you plainly of the Father” is not to be understood to mean that he will tell us much about God’s divine nature, as the sophists fancy; for that is unnecessary and the divine nature of God is incomprehensible. But Christ will tell us how he goes to the Father, how he takes upon himself the kingdom and government of the Father; as a king’s son returns to his father and assumes the government of the kingdom.
Why is Luther making a point of preaching that Christ is our mediator, the one who goes to the Father for us?
What does it mean to you that Christ "represents" you to the Father?
My guess is Luther is making a point about Christ being our mediator in response to the practice of indulgences (payment for forgiveness of sin) by the Roman Catholic Church. It means everything that Jesus is our High Priest! We are free to call on his name anytime, anywhere...we don't need a "saint" nor a priest to make intercessions for us. We can go straight to God, through our redeemer, Jesus the Christ.
ReplyDelete