D A R E
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Higher Things
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• Spending the Riches of a Reckless Ruler • The Lord Gives and the Lord Takes Away • Given A Way Out W W W. H I G H E RT H I N G S . O R G
/ SUMMER / 2010
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Contents T A B L E
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FEATURES 4
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Spending the Riches of a Reckless Ruler
By Rev. Bruce Keseman Suppose somebody plunked ten thousand dollars down in your lap. Would you spend it? save it? donate it? hoard it? The good news is that you’ve been given things far more valuable than money—faith, the Gospel, your Baptism, the Lord’s Supper—and they are all yours in Jesus Christ!
The Lord Gives and the Lord Takes Away
By Rev. Joel Fritsche Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there so much hurt in the world? Why does God allow suffering? Pastor Fritsche wrestles with these questions and reminds us that God’s will is good and best, even when we don’t understand it.
If Salvation Were a Reality Show . . .
By Rev. Tim Pauls Welcome to Tentatio, the reality show that’s more nerve-wracking than American Idol. Here, we pit your favorite church heroes against each other. Which of our champions will survive the Platform of Salvation? Calvin? Luther? Arminius? Stay tuned to Pastor Pauls’ broadcasting from the sidelines to find out!
12 Dropping Dead
By Rev. William Cwirla Coming to grips with the death of a loved one is never easy. What happens when a person dies? What do the dead do while they await the Resurrection? What will the Last Day be like? Pastor Cwirla wants you to be comforted in your Baptism. Eternal life with Christ is yours!
14 Didomi: Given Unto Death
By Rev. George Borghardt III Everybody who knows Greek raise your right hand. Hello? Tap tap. Is this thing on? Pastor Borghardt wants to teach you the word didomi. It’s a little Greek verb that means “to give,” and the person who does the giving is our Lord, Jesus Christ.
16 For Better or Worse: God’s Gift of Marriage
By Mr. Stan Lemon For most of you, marriage seems a long way off. You have to get through high school, graduation, college, and finding a job.Who’s thinking about a wife and kids at age 14? Mr. Lemon gives some insight on how marriage works, why you can already be praying for your future spouse, and the gifts Christ gives in marriage.
18 Given a Way Out
By Rev. Mark Buetow High school and college present plenty of opportunities to do the wrong thing. Parties that get out of hand, smooth talking members of the opposite sex, parents who seem unable to understand . . . so what’s a teen to do when temptation rears its ugly head? Rev. Buetow uses a passage from 1 Corinthians to reassure you in the knowledge that Christ’s death on the cross is your way out.
Volume 10/Number 2 • Summer 2010
22 Real Belief in a Real Savior
By Mr. Matthew Cochran If you’ve heard it once when talking to a nonChristian, you’ve heard it so much that now it’s just getting annoying:“That’s just your belief.” Just my belief? What does that even mean? If you’re looking for a way to talk to your friends about Christianity using just the facts, Mr. Cochran is here to help you give an apology (or defense) for the Christian faith.
24 Ten Years of Being Given To in Higher Things
By Rev. Marcus Zill Get out your candles and party hats: Higher Things is ten years old this year! Pastor Zill gives a rundown of how Higher Things got started, what it’s about, and how it’s still going strong today.“HT, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too!”
26 He Who Has Been Forgiven Much Loves Much
By Rev. Bruce Kuhlman When was the last time your mother said,“Tell your brother you’re sorry, and say it like you mean it!”? Sin, repentance, and forgiveness are hard concepts to grasp. Nevertheless, the vastness of Jesus answering for all your rot, filth, and gunk is really amazing, and Pastor Kuhlman is here to remind you of just that.
COLUMNS
10 Feasting with Our Lord: The Feast of Booths
By Rev. Thomas Messer When was the last time your family took a day off of work or school to celebrate something big, like a birthday or a wedding? Imagine enjoying a celebration like that of epic proportions . . . but for seven days! The Israelites celebrated the Feast of Booths, which reminded them of God’s enduring presence and His gracious activities toward them. Pastor Messer says we get to do the same thing today in the Divine Service! Intrigued? Us too. Read on!
20 Given: Service
By Rev. Jonathan Bakker If you’re headed to college this fall, you’ve probably applied for a scholarship or two, and most of those scholarships probably wanted to know about your leadership qualities in debate or on the soccer field. But what about being a servant-leader in your congregation? Pastor Bakker wants you to know that more important than leadership is your service to others in the name of God, and Christ on Campus is here to help!
28 Sinners Who Know They Are Saints
Rev. David Petersen A saint is not someone who is holy, someone declared to be holy. You can’t be a saint unless you are a sinner. You can’t be forgiven and declared holy unless you have something for which to be forgiven. Pastor Petersen breaks down what it means to be a saint, what it means to be a sinner, and why salvation is yours in Jesus Christ.
HigherThings
®
Volume 10/Number 2/Summer 2010
Bible Studies for these articles can be found at: http://higherthings.org/magazine/biblestudies.html Editor REV. TIM
PAULS
Managing Editor ADRIANE DORR Art Director
STEVE BLAKEY Editorial Associates
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STAN LEMON ___________ Board of Directors President
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REV. BRENT KUHLMAN REV. JOEL FRITSCHE REV. BRUCE KESEMAN REV. DAVID KIND SUE PELLEGRINI JEFF SCHWARZ ___________ Executive Council Deputy Executive REV. GEORGE BORGHARDT Business Executive CONNIE BRAMMEIER Internet Services
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SANDRA OSTAPOWICH Higher Things® Magazine ISSN 1539-8455 is published quarterly by Higher Things, Inc., PO Box 156, Sheridan, WY 82801. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the executive editor of Higher Things Magazine. Copyright 2010. Higher Things® and Christ on Campus® are registered trademarks of Higher Things Inc.; All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States. Postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. For subscription information and questions, call 1-888448-2359 or e-mail subscriptions@higherthings.org. (This phone number is only used for subscription queries.) For letters to the editor, write letters@higher things.org. Writers may submit manuscripts to: submissions@higherthings.org. Please check http://higherthings.org/magazine/writers.html for writers’ guidelines and theme lists.
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DROPPING DEAD “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27) By Rev. William Cwirla H I G H E R
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What happens when we die?
And what is this judgment that comes after death? The end of life is as mysterious as our life’s beginning.We believe that life begins at conception, but we don’t know much, if anything, about how that comes to be, and we know even less about life’s end.The doctors may pronounce us legally dead at some point in time, but what does this actually mean spiritually? In the Bible, to be alive is to have body and breath. God breathed life into Adam’s lifeless body, and he became a living being (Genesis 2:7). We often speak in terms of body and soul. Breath is not simply air, but an invisible so-called life force that animates the body. By definition, a body without breath is dead (James 2:26).The Book of Ecclesiastes indicates that at death the body returns to the dust and the breath goes back to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Here’s an analogy from the computer world. A computer’s hardware is to its software as the body is to its soul. Hardware without software is dead, a bunch of lifeless circuits. Software can be stored apart from hardware and even installed into new hardware, just as the soul can exist apart from the body in the Lord, awaiting the resurrection.You might say that in death, the hardware returns to the earth and the software returns to God for safekeeping until the day of resurrection. Now don’t push that analogy too far! This is not reincarnation. Reincarnation would try to install the old software into a completely different piece of hardware. Resurrection puts the software back into a renewed piece of hardware that has a concrete connection to the old hardware that came before it. In the resurrection, we get new spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15:44), but they have a hard connection to our old bodies. Remember, Jesus still had the wounds of His crucifixion in His resurrected body (John 20:20, 27). So, how is it with the dead? The Scripture speaks of the condition of the dead in two ways.They are asleep (1 Thessalonians 4:13–14), and they are with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). With respect to the body, they are asleep. In fact, a dead body looks rather like it’s asleep. And with respect to the soul, they are with the Lord, that is, they are in the Lord’s immediate presence. This appears to be a conscious presence. Both the rich man and Lazarus are quite aware of their surroundings, the rich man painfully so (Luke 16:19ff).The souls of the martyrs are actively engaged in prayer (Revelation 6:9–10).Yet there is a sense of something more to come, a now and a not yet. We confess in the Creed that we believe “in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting” in that order.We believe in eternal life in a resurrected body where body and breath are once again united forever.This takes place on the Last Day when Christ appears in glory (1 Thessalonians 4:13ff). The time in between now and Resurrection Day is enshrouded in mystery. Part of the problem is that space and time are not relevant to heaven and eternity. Heaven is not a place in space, and eternity is beyond time. In heaven, everything is now, an eternal present.There are no clocks in
heaven, nor is there sun or moon (Revelation 21:23).There is only endless day in the light of Christ.Time, as we experience it, is irrelevant in eternity. We who are still alive are confined to space and time; the dead in Christ are beyond space and time.They are with the Lord in eternity.“Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).There probably is no sense of waiting in the same way that we wait for something in the future. Luther speculated that rising from the dead would be similar to falling asleep in one’s easy chair and then suddenly being awakened without any sense of the passage of time. One moment you are asleep; the next moment you are awake. What about those who claim to have returned from the dead? There are plenty of books and testimonials out there. Hebrews is clear; we die once.Yes, Jesus revived three people from the dead: Jairus’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, and Lazarus. And there was a kind of resurrection at the time of Jesus’ resurrection (Matthew 27:53), though we know nothing about that in any detail. Curiously, there are no reports from any of these people as to what the revival from death experience was like. Lazarus never wrote a book or appeared on television. Since death remains a mystery beyond the probings of science, we would do well to approach reports of returns from the dead with healthy skepticism and stay with the Word of God.These are more than likely near death experiences.“It is appointed for man to die once and then the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). What about that judgment after death? Aren’t we already justified in Jesus? The Bible is clear. All will rise to appear for judgment on the Last Day (Revelation 20:12; 2 Corinthians 5:10).The good news for the baptized believer is that you have already been judged in the death of Jesus (John 5:24). Your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life.Yes, your works will be judged, but you will not be judged on the basis of your works. Instead, you are judged on the basis of Christ’s work that justifies you before God. Good news indeed! One final thought. Don’t spend too much time worrying over or speculating about death. Death is not God’s last word to you. Life is. As a baptized believer in Jesus, you are destined to resurrection and eternal life. Death and the grave are simply a temporary rest stop along the way.The destination is eternal life with God in Christ. All thanks to Jesus! Rev.William M. Cwirla is the pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, California, and the President of Higher Things. He can be reached at wcwirla@gmail.com.
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Didomi: Given unto Death By Rev. George Borghardt III
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Didomi. It’s a little Greek verb that means “to give.”
It’s a simple little word. One person presents something to someone else without requiring any repayment. Freely, a gift is given. Freely, a gift is received by the one to whom the gift is given. We withhold giving ourselves and our things to others and put ourselves first instead.Yet we expect others to give, to sacrifice what they want, for us. Putting our needs and desires before anyone else’s: that’s sin, isn’t it? You give yourself for me.If it helps me, I’ll give myself for you, but only if it also serves my interests, my needs, my plans. We push ourselves forward at the expense of everything including God Himself. So He gives us what we want; His judgment is life without Him. And we receive what we earn with our selfishness, an eternity separated from the God who gave us life. How will we make up for what we’ve done? How will we fix this? Hell isn’t what we wanted! Well, it is, but it isn’t. We need to be rescued. We need to pay for what we have done. But we can’t. We can’t pay what our sins owe, and we can’t make up for what we’ve done. If we can’t repay, what do we do? We do nothing. He rescues us. He saves us. He gives it all to us. Didomi: that little Greek verb. Jesus gives Himself for us as a ransom. He is given for you, given to suffer for all the times when you don’t give to others, when you withhold, when you insist on getting for yourself and won’t be given to by God. Jesus bears it all on the cross and dies, giving His own life for yours. Strangely enough, this is precisely how the Father loves His creation! He would not sit back and see His creation damned, separated from Him for eternity. No, He gives up His own Son as a ransom, as payment, for our sins. And He did this not only for your sins but for the sins of the whole world too! Didomi. Giving begins with God who gives us life in His Son’s death.The suffering, the pain, the mocking, the hell that you deserve for your sin is all given to Jesus. He is given over by Judas, betrayed into the hands of sinners, rejected by the chief priests and teachers of the Law, condemned and
crucified as a criminal for you, for me, for all. He is given to die so that each one of us would have life in His Name. We are given to die too . . . in Him. We are given to die to our sins, die to our selfishness, die to our way of doing things, and to be given to solely by Him. Being on the receiving end of Jesus’ giving up His life for us on the Cross . . . that’s faith! In Baptism, faith receives our death to sin and our burial with Him, and even fallen sinners like us are saved. And living that new life in Christ, we are given to give as He has, by giving our lives for others, serving them, putting their needs before our own, their wants before ours. We die daily to ourselves and live in His love for them. It is that love that suffered all, even death itself, to rescue His creation. Didomi. Jesus does the giving; we do the receiving (being given to).“For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and didomi—to give—His life as a random for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus gives His life as a ransom for many. He is given for our sins. He is raised for our justification. And we are given for others as He was given for us, freely, without cost or desire for repayment, always mindful that what is given was first given by Him. Jesus for us. We for others.That’s the way of Jesus who was given to die for us. Rev. George Borghardt III is the Associate/ Youth Pastor at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Conroe,Texas. He also serves as the Deputy Executive for Higher Things and can be reached at revborghardt@higherthings.org
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