Good morning,
This Tuesday all of the local high schools will be back in session. Sports teams will soon be playing under the lights, teachers will be correcting the mounds of homework they assign, and the cool kids will soon be separating themselves from those they deem not cool. Whether it’s for class, study hall, or lunch; if you put enough high school students in a room together, it seems inevitable that this separation will take place.
In your days of high school or maybe even today at the office have you found yourself clearly on one side of this line? Have you ever ached to be included with the people who couldn’t help but be popular? Have you ever felt the pain of being left out? Well if you have, then rejoice with me. For our God is not one to sit in His Righteousness and exclude all others. Instead, our God calls out to all the world through His Word because He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Tim. 2:4)
There are no qualifications you have to achieve before God reaches into your heart to start faith. There are no restrictions on who is to be called to repentance. The fountain of forgiveness is offered to all. The Lord seeks even those who are spiritually poor, maimed, lame and blind. He brings them to His house and welcomes them in.
He knows how far lost we and all sinners are and yet He calls to us to bring us all to repentance. He wants us to believe in His forgiveness of sins and enjoy His righteousness with Him. So with faith in our hearts, we can then gladly say, “How great is our God, in that He turned away from His wrath over our sinful state and instead, has shown us, who were once outside of His kingdom, patience, mercy, and love by bringing us into His family.”
We’re no longer outside of God’s righteousness. Instead we’re clothed with it. As we stand before God in the white robes of Christ’s good works we can be confident that God has called us to eternal life with Him. Not only that, we can also continue to spread that call to the spiritually dead in our lives so that the Holy Spirit can work through His Word in their hearts.
I urge you to take some time today to consider how the Lord doesn’t need us to be one of the cool kids or to have any other attribute in order to call us to repentance. He sees that we’re sinners who are hearing His Word, so He calls and He causes our faith to begin and to grow.
In our sermon text this Sunday (Isaiah 56:1, 6-8) we’ll take a closer look at who the Lord calls into His kingdom and what He promises to them.
The Lord’s Supper will be celebrated at both services, which are still on the summer schedule times of 8:00 and 9:30 AM.
In Christ,
Vicar Naumann
