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Luke 8:4-15

 

And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: "A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold." As he said these things, he called out, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

 

And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that 'seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.' Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience. (ESV)

 

 

 

 

Word of Mouth

Robert Barnes, Confessor and Martyr 

30 July 2012

Before the world descended into the decrepit and moribund state in which it presently languishes, the Word of God was preached to the patriarchs by God Himself, just as He had at the dawn of original sin (Gn 3:16), when Adam and Eve had to know that there would be a Rescuer. God preached to these titans of the primordium and their descendants simple and clear sermons of the gospel message that the woman would conceive and bear a Son, who would destroy the ancient enemy. He established the messianic line in Seth through which that Son would arise through a woman.

 

Those sermons were repeated, memorized, considered, prayed, sung, and meditated upon (Gn 12:8) as a patriarchal catechesis. The Word of God was the daily diet of the patriarchs. This was possible because of the long life spans granted to them by God their Father. Their prodigious mental aptitude gave them the power to set to memory the Word of God. They were fallen and therefore morally decayed and dying creatures, but their created abilities were not yet so fully fallen that they were incapable of having a clear Word of God set into their hearts and minds. As we can see immediately with Cain and Abel, that did not make them more morally exalted than us. But their created gifts were certainly greater than ours. God used those gifts for the continual transmission of His grace through the messianic line.

 

The patriarchs kept the Word of God pure among themselves by transmitting it with reverent care and by applying it in their families through holy absolution. Because of their mental perception, they were people who understood the depth of their loss, but to keep them from despair the great leaders, like Adam, preached the hope of ultimate redemption that was to come through their Descendant. This oral repetition sustained the Word of God in an unadulterated form among them, but it was susceptible to the ignorance that arose not from weakness but wickedness. Cain and his lot turned their back on this preaching of redemption in another Person and sought safety in legalistic pleadings with God (Gn 4:13-15), as though He could be treated like a federal judge willing to plea bargain. Despite this humiliating scene with Cain, God still preached the gospel by mouth, unwilling to abandon His creation to the talons of the law. We now take the "word of mouth" to be next thing to hearsay, but when the mouth is God's, there is nothing more certain. Speak, O Lord.

 

Martin Chemnitz

 

"From the beginning of the world, both before and after the Fall, God has come forth from His dwelling place, which is an unapproachable light, and has revealed Himself and His will to the human race by giving His sure Word and adding manifest miracles. In order that this divinely revealed doctrine might be spread by the living voice and transmitted to posterity as from hand to hand, God appointed Adam, as it were, a bishop for his time. There is no doubt that God bestowed on him the divine testimony and authority, and also gave him a very long life, in order that he, through his testimony, might safeguard the purity of the heavenly doctrine against corruptions and keep his people from makeshift, foreign opinions.

 

"But not long after this revelation Cain and his assembly departed from the purity of the Word of God. After the death of Adam, however, not only the descendents of Cain and also the sons of God, who had accepted the traditions of the heavenly doctrine, corrupted their ways, among which corruptions the foremost was without doubt the adulteration of the Word of God. For God says: 'my Spirit shall not strive in man forever' (Gn 6:3), and he adds the reason: 'Because they are flesh, and the imagination of the human heart is evil' (Gn 6:5). Thus the heavenly doctrine of the first world is transmitted by a living voice, unwritten, as it were from hand to hand. But because the imagination of the human heart is evil, the purity of the Word was finally not preserved faithfully by traditions of the living voice but corrupted and adulterated. Yes, in the end it was completely lost. For God says: 'My Spirit shall not strive in man forever, etc.'

 

"At that time God gave special revelations to Noah, accompanied by stupendous miracles in the Flood, and restored the fallen purity of the doctrine, preserved it, and added a fuller explanation of the same, both before and after the Flood. By these miracles He confirmed Noah as 'a herald of righteousness' (2Pt 2:5), that he should be a guardian of the purity of the doctrine and transmit it to his descendents by means of the living voice." 

Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent

 

Prayer

Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed. Make it a word of power and peace to convert those not yet Your own and to strengthen those who have been received into the saving faith. May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lips to the life that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 

 

For Anastasia Murray, who is traveling to take up her post as a teacher at Immanuel Lutheran School, Alexandria, Virginia

 

For Pastor Steven and Stephanie Cholak, who are moving to St. Louis, that the Lord would be with them in their transition to a new home

 

For Bernard Theilen, who is suffering from encephalitis, that the Lord Jesus would grant him strength and healing

Art: D�RER, Albrecht  The Adoration of the Trinity (1511)

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