# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 01 22_S81
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall never pass away."
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 6.  St. Louis, Mo., January 22, 1850.  No. 11.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents. Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Mission Sermon, Delivered on the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ, 1850, at St. Louis, Mo.*)

*) If we did not decline, as we have declined other such requests, the request of our dear hearers that this sermon also be communicated to the readers of the "Lutheraner," it was by no means because we considered this sermon worthy, above others, of wider circulation through print, but because our dear hearers hoped from it a furtherance of the cause of missions, and, if this sermon could serve as a widow's mite for that cause, we did not dare to withhold it from this holy work.

J. N. J.

LORD JESUS Christ, we praise Thee, we extol Thee, we worship Thee, that when our fathers, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God, sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, Thou didst arise upon them as a bright morning star, which still shines upon us, their children's children.

But behold! darkness still covers a great part of the earth, and gross darkness many peoples: O break forth soon upon these also, as the Sun of grace and truth, that they too may walk in Thy light, and their kings in the brightness of Thy rising. Bless to this end the labor of Thy servants in all lands, and raise up ever more who say to Thee: "Lord, here am I; send me." Grant also that on this day many hearts may be awakened to take part in the blessed work of the conversion of Thy redeemed world, still far from Thee. LORD JESUS, to whom the heathen are given for an inheritance and the ends of the earth for a possession, hear us for Thy glorious name's sake. Amen! Amen!

Beloved brethren and sisters in Christ JESUS!

If one considers the government of God, with respect to the distribution of His means of grace among the nations, only superficially, one may easily come to the thought that God, from of old, has been willing to let His grace come to the portion of individual nations only. This thought once dominated, and to this hour dominates, the Jewish people, with few exceptions. For they imagined that they alone were appointed by God unto salvation, while they accounted the whole heathen world as forever rejected by God. But this was a grievous error, wholly contrary to the honor of God.

The contrary is assured to us by the divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures, of the Old and New Testament, in the first place already by this, that it presents to us the grace of God as a universal grace, extending over all men. In the second book of the Chronicles, in the 19th chapter, it is testified to us, "there is no respect of persons with the LORD our God," and Peter and Paul repeat this saying in the New Testament in the same words. But it is said still more plainly, among other places, in the prophet Ezekiel, in the 33rd chapter: "As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live." Paul declares the same, 1 Tim. 2, in the words: "(God) will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth"; and Peter in his 2nd Epistle, chap. 3: "(God) is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." From this it is manifest that God wills the death of no heathen either; that He wills not that even one heathen should be lost, but rather that every one among them also should be saved, and every one among them also should come to the knowledge of the truth, which maketh blessed.

But God has not let it rest with such testimonies of the universality of His grace; He has also from the beginning declared in express words that the Redeemer promised in Paradise concerns all peoples, and therefore all the heathen. It is said already in the first promise of Him that He, as the seed of the woman, should bruise the serpent's head; by which first description of the work of redemption every doubt is cut off whether there be men who are to have no part in the redemption; for if the power has been taken by Christ from him himself, into whose power men had fallen, there can no longer be any question whether this one and that one also has been redeemed from his power or not. Precisely to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, from whom the chosen people of God descended, the LORD therefore spoke, that through the One of their descendants not only their people and race, but all the nations and families of the earth should be blessed. Hence not only does Jacob, upon his deathbed, call the Redeemer who was to be expected "the hero," to whom "the peoples would cleave" (Gen. 49, 10.), but the whole long line of the holy prophets, from Moses down to Malachi, the last of them, call as with one mouth upon all the heathen also to wait for the Messiah, as for "the Desire of all nations" (Hagg. 2, 8.), to hope, and to comfort and rejoice themselves in Him. And as soon as the forerunner of the Saviour was born, God opened the mouth of Zacharias, that he rejoiced aloud that the dayspring from on high had visited the Jewish people: "to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."

But as God promised the Redeemer not for the Jewish people alone, but for all men, for all the heathen also, and sent Him into the world, so He has also, at three repeated times and at different seasons, caused this His counsel of grace to be proclaimed to all men without exception, and all of them to be called into His kingdom of grace. The first time, namely, the Gospel was proclaimed to all men in Paradise through Adam, the root and head of the whole human race; the second time through Noah, the second forefather of all mankind living after him; and the third time through the holy Apostles, who had the commission, and fulfilled it, to go forth into all the world, to teach all nations, to preach the Gospel to every creature. These are the three different points of time at which God has let His call of grace go forth to all peoples and families of the earth, to all the heathen also.