Pious Lutheran

The Two Foundations , Religious Tract Society, 1880 The narrow, good, and strong way to salvation Few find and follow the narrow and hard way of Christ Listening to the good fruit of pure doctrine from the Good Tree The church founded upon Christ the Rock is strong and stands Tolerance used to be a bigger buzzword than it is today. Not because those shouting for tolerance just gave up, but because they won. By and large religious folks have acquiesced and have become far more tolerant, accepting, and embracing of beliefs inconsistent with their own. Multiculturalism and religious pluralism have blossomed in our country. A century ago a lot of religious education time was spent showing the differences between Christians church bodies, and insisting on the dangers of being exposed to those false teachings. That was then, but today we’ve become so accustomed to tolerance that many have a hard time saying Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Mormons won’t go to heaven but hell unless they repent and...

The Broad and The Narrow Way , Gawin Kirkham, 1883 Todays’ Gospel lesson is quite sobering. It’s a commonly held belief today that everyone is going to heaven, regardless of what they believe, since God is so loving that He could never send anyone to hell. That belief is called universalism. Aside from that belief being patently wrong, it’s also a misunderstanding of love.  Love doesn’t tolerate evil. Love actually hates those things which threaten the beloved object. For example, I love my wife, if my wife got cancer, I would hate the cancer and want to destroy it. It would be a terrible thing to say that I’m tolerant of the cancer since the cancer is killing her. Likewise, God loves us and what is good and hates what is evil, because the evil destroys us and the good. If God was tolerant of evil, that would mean that He doesn’t love us nor love what is good. So if God was tolerant of evil and let evil into heaven, then heaven would be no different than the earth we presently live...

Christians are altogether a different sort. On the one hand, our Lord describes us as a flock of sheep and He is our Good Shepherd. But on the other hand, we’re not supposed to be just a flock of gullible sheep, rather we’re to be wise and cunning soldiers, armed with the sword of God’s Word to be on guard against our enemy Satan. Jesus desires that His Christians would be good sheep, doing the will of His Father, and astute soldiers equipped against the wiles of the ravenous wolves. It’s a strange picture, but we’re a flock of heavily armored sheep, grazing in the pasture holding swords in our cloven hooves.  Christ paints us this illustration today towards the end of His sermon on the mount. “ Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. ” The first assumption here is that we’re sheep. This is a comparison made throughout the scriptures: we all like sheep have gone astray and the Lord is my Good Shepherd, I shall not want, He lay...

Christ cautions us, “ Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. ” From these words we come to understand that the teachings taught by different pastors really do matter. We Christians are to beware of false teachings, not just because they’re different but because false teachings lead us away from Christ, and that leads us away from life.  In the verses immediately preceding our Gospel lesson, Christ says, “ The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.” The teachings which lead to life eternal are narrow and few, not wide and broad. Christ does not command us to be open-minded and accept every different teaching, but to beware of false teachers and the broad easy road which leads to destruction. Thus, every Christian (not just pastor) has the right and obligation to judge the teachings they hear, for only the pure teaching leads us to eternal life. I know that what I’m saying is difficult to hear these days i...