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Midweek
Advent Sermons for 2003
Wednesday,
December 03, 2003
“Jesus
Christ: Our Prophet” Deuteronomy 18:15-19
“The LORD your God
will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your
brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the LORD
your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not
hear again the voice of the LORD my God, nor let me see this great
fire anymore, lest I die.’ And
the LORD said to me: ‘What they have spoken is good.
I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their
brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to
them all that I command Him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He
speaks in My name, I will require it of him.’” (Deuteronomy
18:15-19)
When we call Jesus “Christ”
we are confessing something. In
the Old Testament we find three divinely instituted offices into which a
man would be anointed: prophet, priest, and king.
The prophet would speak to the people from God.
The priest would offer up sacrifices to God on behalf of the
people and would intercede for them. The king would rule over the nation. The great prophet of the Old Testament was Moses.
The priests were from the tribe of Levi.
The great king of the Old Testament was David.
Prophets, priests, and kings were put into office by a ceremony
known as anointing. Olive
oil would be poured over the head of the one being anointed, and this
was a sign that God had chosen him for the office into which he was
being placed. While we are
not familiar with the custom of anointing with oil, it is still
practiced by Christians around the world, often in connection with Holy
Baptism. It is often called
christening. Sometimes
people refer to a baptism as a christening.
Christians confess that Jesus is
the Christ. There were many
prophets, priests, and kings who were anointed by God.
But Jesus is the Anointed One.
He is the Christ. He is the final and perfect prophet, priest, and king.
The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus into His three-fold office of
prophet, priest, and king when John baptized Him in the Jordan River.
On these Wednesday evenings
during Advent as we prepare to celebrate the coming into our world of
Jesus Christ we will consider the three-fold office of Christ: prophet,
priest, and king. This
evening we look to Jesus, our Prophet.
For most people the words
prophet and prophecy suggest predicting the future. The biblical prophets did that, but a prophet is simply
someone to whom God gives His words to speak.
A prophecy is the words the prophet speaks by God’s direction.
Listen to Jeremiah’s account of how God called him to prophesy:
“Then the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD
said to me: “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.’”
(Jeremiah 1:9) King David
was a prophet as well. His
many psalms were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Here is how he described it, “The Spirit of the LORD spoke by
me, and His word was on my tongue.” (2 Samuel 23:2)
Of course, the greatest and most famous of the Old Testament
prophets was Moses. We are
all familiar with how God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and told
him to go to the children of Israel who were suffering under the cruel
slavery imposed by Pharaoh and to lead them into freedom.
God delivered His people from
slavery. Then He gave them
His law. The order of
things is important. God
did not wait for Israel to set herself free.
She could not do so. He
freed her by many miracles, the greatest of which was the Exodus through
the Red Sea on dry land. Only
after God set His people free did He give them His law to obey.
He introduced the Ten Commandments by reminding Israel of how He
had set them free. He said,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out
of the house of bondage. You
shall have no other gods before Me.” (Exodus 20:2-3)
Israel learned the hard way that listening to false prophets
promoting false gods would send them right back into slavery again.
They were to listen to the voice of the God who loved them.
While God was giving His law to
Moses on Mount Sinai, the children of Israel were busy breaking it.
They forced Aaron to make them idols, which they worshipped.
They said that the image made by their own hands was the god who
delivered them from Pharaoh. They
denied God the first chance they got.
When Moses came down from the Mountain, he ordered the Levites to
kill those who had led the children of Israel into idolatry.
They felt the anger of God against idolatry.
They stubbornly held on to their idolatrous ways for years and
years and they kept suffering punishment from God.
When Moses spoke to God on the
Mountain, he could not look directly at God, but had to avert his eyes.
Moses was a sinner born from sinners and he couldn’t see
God’s glory and live. But still, his very proximity to God caused his face to shine
so brightly when he went down the mountain that the children of Israel
couldn’t look at him directly. Moses
had to put a veil over his face when he spoke to the people. This made an impression on the people. They could not think of God speaking to them without
remembering how they felt when they saw Moses.
Guilt, shame, and fear combined within them. God’s word exposed them for what they were.
They were ungrateful. They
were disobedient. They were
unfaithful. The word of the
prophet, Moses, condemned them.
You’ve heard the proverb,
“The guilty flees when no man pursues.”
He runs away because he knows what he’s done and he expects to
be caught. Few people
really believe that they can cover up their sins forever.
Some day they will be found out and they will have to face
responsibility for what they have done.
Sinners hear God speaking and the very fact that God is speaking
must mean – or so they think – that He is threatening them.
Why shouldn’t He? Why wouldn’t He? This
is why sinners are afraid of listening to the prophets. They don’t imagine that the prophets are bringing good
news.
“For the law was given Moses,
but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17) God
promised His guilty people a prophet who would be like Moses but not
like Moses. He would be
like Moses in that He would be born of the nation of Israel.
He would be an Israelite. He
would be a Jew. He would be
like His brothers.
But He would be different than
Moses. His face and His
glory could be seen without fear. St.
John writes of the Prophet promised by Moses, “And the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
There is nothing to fear from the Man who changes water into
wine, who stills the storm, who raises the dead, and who preaches the
gospel to the poor. He does
what only God can do and He reveals the glory of God because He is God.
But He doesn’t frighten sinners away.
He welcomes them. He
invites them to God. He
preaches the gospel to them and He institutes the preaching office so
that His prophetic office will continue until the end of the world.
Jesus is the Christ.
He is the prophet of prophets.
He is the fulfillment of all prophecy and He is the One who
reveals God’s Word to the world. He is the Word of God become flesh. Look at Jesus and you will see what the Bible has to say.
Everything in the Bible points to Jesus and is incomprehensible
apart from Jesus. He not
only fulfills all prophecy; He illumines every word on every page of the
Bible.
Over the years I have
emphasized, as all preachers are required to do, that God’s holy
teaching is true and may never be compromised regardless of the price we
must pay to confess it. I
have noticed that when I talk about pure doctrine many people assume
that by “doctrine” I mean law.
They hear a word that means nothing more or less than
“teaching” and they assume that the teaching under discussion is
God’s law. They assume
that emphasizing the pure doctrine is therefore another way to emphasize
how we must obey God and submit to Him.
They hear the word “doctrine” and they hear accusation.
Perhaps this is how ancient
Israel felt whenever God sent a prophet to them. “Oh, no, here is God laying down His law again and making
us feel so bad.” It is a
part of our fallen sinful nature to think that the law is the only
message God has to speak to us. This
is why we must remember that Jesus is our prophet.
Every word from God has this goal in our lives: that we may
embrace Jesus by faith and find in Him our loving God and our Savior
from sin. Jesus as the true
and final prophet means that no message will ever come from God to us
that will undo Christ’s redemption of us sinners.
The gospel message that we hear is God’s final word.
God teaches us His law only to prepare us to hear His gospel.
And then Jesus, the Word made flesh, the Prophet of prophets, has
His say. He says He has
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
He says that our sins, though they are like scarlet are white as
snow, though they are like crimson, they are like wool.
He says that the word of absolution that the pastor speaks to us
is not just a man’s word but God’s own absolution, setting us free
from our sins and presenting us before God as saints.
The pure doctrine of Christ is no burden for our souls.
It is pure peace with God as the Lamb who took away all of our
sin speaks to us to impart that forgiveness to us.
Jesus is the Prophet.
We listen to Him. Hearing His voice we are set free from the slavery of our
sins and are brought into the Promised Land.
Amen
Wednesday,
December 10, 2003
“Jesus
Christ: Our Priest” Hebrews 9:11-15
But Christ came as
High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more
perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation.
Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood
He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal
redemption. For if the
blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the
unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more
shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works
to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant,
by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the
first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of
the eternal inheritance. (Hebrews 9:11-15)
The three-fold office of Christ
is prophet, priest, and king. Last
week we saw how Jesus fulfills the prophetic office and is the final
prophet of God. This
evening we see how Christ has also fulfilled the priestly office.
In the Old Testament, the priests would office sacrifices to God
on behalf of the people and they would also intercede for the people.
This is what Jesus did and does.
At first glance it is simply
incomprehensible. The
ancient people of Israel had a form of worship that was, to put it
bluntly, very bloody. The
ritualistic slaughter of animals and the sprinkling of their blood on
the altar and on the people belongs to a world long gone.
The world in which we live is too far removed from the world of
the Old Testament church for us to understand it.
The regular, repeated, ritualistic slaughter of animals simply
has no place in the worship life of the modern Christian.
So perhaps the priestly office of Christ is irrelevant to us?
Perhaps the office of Jesus as High Priest is a topic we can
safely ignore?
No, for it is precisely because
Jesus is our High Priest that there is no more need and will never be
any more need for the offering up to God of a bloody sacrifice.
Last week we saw how Jesus is
the final prophet, the Prophet of prophets.
His words of grace, forgiveness, and eternal life are the final
words of God to us. They
are words that carry to us what they say.
When God says we are set free from the guilt of our sins this
very saying of God sets us free. When
God speaks His absolution to us that very speaking of God gives us the
forgiveness of our sins. It
is as God said in the beginning: “Let there be light!”
God saying it made it so. There
was light. When God speaks
His prophetic word and tells us He is merciful and that He forgives us
our sins, that very speaking brings to us the forgiveness of our sins.
But here is where we face a
serious theological problem. The
problem is this. How can
God tell guilty people that they are not guilty?
How can God tell sinful people that their sins are forgiven?
How can a holy God say to sinful people that they are holy?
Surely He cannot say anything that is not true?
If God were to lie He would no longer be holy.
We speak of the great blessing we have when God forgives us by
speaking words of forgiveness to us.
But stop and consider! Can
God do this? Can God tell
sinful people that they are justified?
We read in Proverbs 17:15, “He who justifies the wicked, and he
who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the
LORD.” How, then, can the
LORD justify the wicked? How
can He do what is an abomination to Him? And doesn’t even the most elementary sense of justice tell
us that every wrong that is done must be righted?
If nature teaches us that for every action there is a necessary
reaction, doesn’t the nature of God’s justice demand no less?
The prophetic office of Christ is a beautiful treasure, but how
are we supposed to believe that God can say to sinners who daily sin and
who don’t stop their sinning that they are nevertheless righteous
saints?
We need more than the prophetic
office of Christ. We need
His priestly office. Without
it, the prophetic office would have nothing to give to us. Apart from what Jesus did for us as our own High Priest and
what Jesus continually does for us as our own High Priest the words of
Jesus would be hollow and empty. The
prophetic office of Christ is grounded in His priestly office.
Our text tells us how it is that
Christ can tell us that we are God’s own saints.
But Christ came as
High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more
perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation.
Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood
He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal
redemption.
The Most Holy Place is where the
High Priest would go once a year to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat.
Below the mercy seat was God’s law and at either end was an
angel witnessing the sprinkling of blood.
The mercy seat was that place where the holy God met sinful
humanity and pronounced the sinner to be righteous.
But it is not an abomination.
It is not a miscarriage of justice. There where God sees all
sinners in the nakedness of their own guilt with their crimes crying out
to Him for vengeance, Jesus the High Priest enters.
He enters by shedding His blood.
This is no mere ritual. An
animal has no guilt of his own and cannot in actual fact bear anyone
else’s guilt, either. But Jesus is no animal.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is true God from eternity and the perfect man.
He enters into the Holy of Holies and He sheds His blood.
He does what endless ritual slaughters could only typify.
He obtains eternal redemption.
He met the demands of justice.
He purchased the absolution on which our faith rests.
He won the right to forgive sinners whose sins still cling to
them as mud clings to the wheel. If
the offering of clean animals achieved a ritual cleanliness, how much
more does Jesus bring us spiritual purity?
As we read, “how much more shall the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse
your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
Notice how our Triune God is
revealed here at the focal point of all history, at that point where the
justice of God and the mercy we sinners need come together?
The Son who was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary
offers Himself to the Father “through the eternal Spirit.”
He offers a spotless life. He
offers this, not for Himself, for He has all He needs.
He offers this spotless life for us.
He offers Himself.
The life is in the blood.
When Jesus sheds His blood, He gives His life.
He gives His life into death but He doesn’t remain dead.
The very same life He gives into death He takes up again because
death could not hold Him. Instead,
He destroys death.
Now we have a life to live.
When Jesus, in His prophetic office, tells us that we are
forgiven, holy, and righteous saints our consciences are set at rest.
Everything that made us guilty and everything that made us feel
guilty and everything that made us live as people who are guilty has
been purged away forever. Jesus
offered Himself as the one and final bloody sacrifice to end all bloody
sacrifices. All of the
anger of God that we feel inside when our guilty consciences accused us
of sin is now gone. Our
consciences can no longer accuse us.
We not only have the word of Christ for it; we have the blood of
Christ shed once and for all to blot out all of our sins.
We have the justice of God answered.
Our consciences are at rest.
There is no more blame, no more guilt, no more running away, and
no more wondering if God is truly pleased with us.
There is pure and lasting peace with the holy God.
His anger is no more.
Only free people are free to do
what is actually good. When
you live under compulsion you aren’t free to do anything virtuous at
all. Only when Christ gives
you the pure conscience by entering into the Most Holy Place and
offering Himself to God in your place can you now serve God with living
works. Because you are alive. You’re
not heading for death. You’re
heading for eternal life. Christ
Himself who won this life for you by offering His own life is the One
who intercedes for you.
He is the Mediator of
the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the
transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may
receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
The priestly work of Christ was
finished on the cross. Yet
it continues to the end of time. The
offering by which our sins were washed away and God’s anger was
stilled was offered up on the cross once and for all.
No other offering for sins can be offered.
But Christ continues to act.
He acts as our Mediator. He
pleads our case for us. We
all intercede for one another as Christians. We pray for each other.
But only Jesus is the Mediator. He is the only One who can plead our case for us because our
case is quite literally His own obedience and suffering for us.
It is the foundation on which our case rests.
When we pray in Jesus’ name we do so with confidence that Jesus
cannot lose our case. He
pleads His own life offered in our place, and with that life our
heavenly Father can see no wrong. The
life of Jesus brings our Father in heaven pure joy.
“This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
Did not the Father say this of His holy Son?
And this is what he says about
us, too, when Jesus is our Mediator.
When we do whatever we do as children, as mothers and fathers, as
employees, as students, as farmers, or in whatever vocation God has
placed us we are doing what brings God pleasure.
We aren’t offering him dead works that he cares nothing for.
We are Christians! We are offering Him what He treasures and even rewards, not
because we deserve it, but because of the merits and mediation of
Christ, our Priest, who has made us acceptable to God.
Amen
Wednesday,
December 17, 2003
“Jesus
Christ: Our King” St. John 1:43-51
The following day Jesus
wanted to go to Galilee, and He found Philip and said to him, “Follow
Me.” Now Philip was from
Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of
whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote; Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Joseph.” And
Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him,
“Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!”
Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?”
Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when
you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of
God! You are the King of Israel!”
Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you, ‘I
saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater
things than these.” And
He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see
heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son
of Man.” (St. John 1:43-51)
Since Simon Peter is more
popular than Nathanael is it is a common claim that it was Peter who
first confessed that Jesus was the Christ.
Or perhaps this claim is made to emphasize the primacy of Peter
over the other disciples and so promote the doctrine that he was the
first pope. At any rate, it
was not Peter who first confessed Jesus as the Christ.
It was Nathanael. Nathanael
made this confession as soon as he met Jesus and saw that Jesus had
divine powers. Since Jesus
saw Nathanael sitting under a fig tree that was nowhere near where Jesus
was at the time, Nathanael discerned that Jesus was the promised Savior
and exclaimed, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of
Israel!” Of course, these
go together. The Son of God
is the King of Israel. He
whose real goings forth are from of old, from everlasting, as God said
through Micah, the prophet, is the same one who joined the human race
and took over the kingdom of David, the great king of Israel.
How much Nathanael understood
about Jesus, we are not told, but we do see that Jesus immediately began
to teach him. Rabbis teach.
Jesus is the teacher sent from heaven.
His teaching is therefore a heavenly teaching.
It cannot be forced to conform to earthy standards.
Attempts to do so replace the Spirit with flesh.
Only the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
can open our hearts and minds to receive the instruction Rabbi Jesus
provides.
Nathanael had asked Philip,
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip replied, “Come and see.”
That’s what Nathanael did.
He came to see Jesus. Things
haven’t changed much since then.
When folks ask questions about Jesus we, like Philip, invite them
to come and see. Jesus
exercises His prophetic office through the gospel that is preached.
We are joined to Him in Holy Baptism.
He offers us His own body and blood to eat and to drink in the
Lord’s Supper. This Jesus
is present with His church wherever and whenever these precious means of
grace are given out. We can
say, with Philip, “Come and see.”
Bringing people to where Christ’s gospel is preached is
bringing people to Christ. He is the head of the church, His body, and there is no body
without the head and no head without the body.
So we invite people to church and in this way we invite them to
meet Jesus.
When Jesus displayed His divine
omniscience, Nathanael was so impressed that he confessed that Jesus was
the Son of God and the King of Israel.
How does Jesus exercise the authority of His kingdom?
Jesus tells us how in his response to Nathaniel’s confession.
Jesus said,
“Because I said to
you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see
greater things than these.” And
He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall
see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon
the Son of Man.”
This was a powerful statement
and a wonderful claim. Nathanael
was a true Israelite, familiar with the Scriptures.
He knew the history of the patriarchs.
When Jesus told him that he would see heaven open and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man there is no way that
Nathanael could have missed the reference to Jacob’s dream at Bethel.
Jacob was running away from his brother, Esau, who wanted to kill
him. Here is how Moses
describes what happened in Genesis 28:11-17.
So he came to a certain
place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took
one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down
in that place to sleep. Then
he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top
reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and
descending on it. And behold, the LORD stood above it and said: “I am the
LORD God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which
you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also
your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread
abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you
and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and
will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have
done what I have spoken to you.”
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is
in this place, and I did not know it.”
And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is
none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”
(Genesis
28:11-17)
At the bottom of the ladder
lay Jacob. At the top of
the ladder stood the LORD. Ascending
and descending on the ladder were the angels of God. God spoke to Jacob and promised that He would multiply his
descendants and that in his seed all the families of the earth would
be blessed. Afterward,
Jacob called the place the house of God and the gate of heaven.
It was a picture of the
Incarnation of God. God at
the top of the ladder would be born from the seed of Jacob at the bottom
of the ladder. The holy God
and sinful man would be reconciled.
The ladder does not symbolize the ascent of man to God by means
of his spiritual struggles and efforts.
The ladder rather symbolizes the descent of God to man.
When Jesus told Nathanael that he would see heaven opened and
angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, Jesus was claiming to
be the Incarnate God-man and the One who would bring God together with
men. Jacob’s ladder was a promise.
Jesus was the fulfillment of that promise. And in fulfilling that promise Jesus would reign as King.
As our Prophet, Jesus speaks His
saving word to us and imparts salvation to us through that word.
As our Priest, Jesus shed His blood for us to wash away our sins
and He is our one and only Mediator with God.
As our King, Jesus rules over us.
He governs our lives.
I am reading a book these days
entitled, “The Sword of the Prophet.”
It is a book about Islam, and it chronicles the bloody history of
Islam throughout the ages as various caliphs and sultans have imposed
the religion of Muhammad on people from Europe to India to Africa. The Muslim religion has claimed many millions of lives as the
sword of Muhammad has been wielded throughout the world in one bloody
conquest after another. Islam
is an Arabic word that corresponds to the Hebrew word Shalom.
Islam is usually translated submission.
Shalom is translated peace.
The God-inspired Hebrew Bible promises peace.
The manmade Muslim Koran demands submission. But the religion that requires submission cannot change the
heart. It can only strike
fear in those who might refuse to submit.
The religion that threatens death on those who will not submit is
finally a religion that can only kill.
While claiming to honor God, it dishonors Him by denying His
grace. Nothing is more
offensive to the Muslim than the doctrine that Jesus suffered and died
for sinners on the cross.
And yet this is the glory of
every Christian. St. Paul
writes, “But God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to
the world.” (Galatians 6:14) Jesus
does not rule over us by threats or force.
He does not govern us by frightening us into submission.
Even as He told Peter to put his sword away and confessed before
Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world, Jesus rules over us
without having to appeal to any force at all.
Consider the authority to which Jesus laid claim.
He claimed the authority on earth to forgive sins.
When the religious legalists of His day objected, He proved His
authority to forgive sins by healing the man suffering for paralysis.
But He did more than that.
He, by going to the cross, gained the authority to forgive all
sinners all of their sins and He gave this authority to His holy
Christian Church on earth. This church is the very kingdom of God. Here Jesus rules. He
wins our devotion to Him by bearing in Himself all of our sins.
On the cross the kingdom is won.
That kingdom comes to us here on earth wherever Christ our
Prophet and our Priest comes to us in His gospel and sacraments and
conquers our hearts. It is
not a battle of violence against our will, but it is rather the changing
of our hearts. He sends His
Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who makes us who were unwilling into
willing children of God who desire what Jesus alone can give.
He doesn’t bully us. He
doesn’t threaten us. He
doesn’t shove us around. He
doesn’t lay burdens on us. He
does the very opposite. He
takes all of our burdens off of us.
He rules over us by his grace alone.
He, who saw in Nathanael an Israelite in whom there was no guile,
sends the Holy Spirit into our hearts that we may in sincerity and truth
receive Him as our King. His
government provides pure and eternal freedom and rest for our souls.
Amen.
Rev. Rolf D. Preus
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