-: This is a course about piety, and it specifically posits that piety is a good thing. And that might seem a tad odd, you know. To Christians of yesteryear it would have been a no brainer. They would not get how any Christian would think piety's a problem. But in recent years it seems that piety has fallen on hard times. I'd argue that in some circles it's become equated with its evil twin, pietism. The result has been not only a rejection of the imposter, ah, it's a rejection that's meet, right, and salutary, but even a rejection of piety itself, tossing out the baby with the bath water. At the very least, some seem to harbor a suspicion that there's something problematic about a Christian aiming for a pious life. The assumption seems to be piety is something which a Christian doesn't cultivates or aim for, it either happens or it's not real. Well, I just heartily disagree with that. What is piety and how do we distinguish it from its popular falsification as pietism? Well, in this course, I'll seek to show you that piety at its root is simply the cultivation of godly habits, habits which fit in with the household of God, the family of our heavenly father. That is, piety grows from baptism, grounded in the gracious adoption God bestowed on us in the water with the name of the blessed trinity. Piety literally flows from that adoption. Think about our earthly adoptions for just a minute. A child's legally declared to be a member of a new family. And that child, then, is a member of that family objectively. His or her behavior doesn't have anything to do with obtaining that new status. The parents rejoice and celebrate the gift of the new member in their family. But part of that family is how lives are ordered together in a certain way. Every family has patterns into which the adopted child will now begin to grow. So that's how it is with the household of faith, the family of God. There are habits that mark the children of the heavenly father and how we live in this world as we wait together for our lord's return. You will no doubt notice that these godly habits seem to share an interesting trait. Every last one of them fights the inward focus that our corrosive original sin supplies. They all fight the fatal bend in on one's self, which is the telltale sign of corruption of the human nature. I, me, mine, I feel, I think, I want, I, I, I, I, I. On the contrary, the habits we'll explore in this course, they foster a joyous freedom from this internal obsession. They train our attention outside of being preoccupied with ourselves, toward God and his promises, and toward our neighbor in love and care for her or his needs. Through these habits, the spirit of the living God, he puts his finger under our chin and lifts up our head, upward and outward, inviting us into wonder and love. Luther put it like this, a Christian lives not in himself, he lives in Christ through faith, and he lives in his neighbor through love. Now by way of contrast, the hallmark of pietism is this constant inward focus, always preoccupied with oneself, even if that means one's spiritual self. And it's characterized by this obsession to monitor carefully how one's spiritual pulse is doing and devise all kinds of metrics to measure one's spiritual health and monitoring and managing one's progress in the faith with the inevitable side glance to the neighbor to how one's stacking up against how they're doing. Pietism lives by its spiritual to-do lists and rules. It likes to stand in front of the mirror and flex a muscle or two, and admire its reflection, and then naturally expect others to be admiring those spiritual abs too. It delights in specific, measurable, attainable language of our goals in our oriented workplaces. Being, therefore, thoroughly grounded in the law, pietism lands you where all the devotees of the law always end up, either in a blind, pharisaical pride in our own achievement or, in moments when we're being honest with ourselves, in despair and doubt and fear. Now Jesus contrasted these two approaches in John eight verses 31 to 36 and there he speaks about the very nature of the freedom that he wants to give. Listen, "If you abide in my word, "you're truly my disciples, and you'll know the truth, "and the truth will set you free." But they answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham "and have never been enslaved to anyone. "How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" Jesus answered them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, "everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. "The slave does not continue in the house forever. "The son remains forever. "So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed." The mark of the slave is that he has no permanent place in the household and so fear and doubt dominate his existence. Servile fear that the day's gonna come when he or she's gonna be shown the door. Hence there is the constant checking. Have I done everything he told me to do, all that the Master requires? Will he be angry with me? Better check, better double check. My very continuation here in the safety of this household at all hangs on it. But when the son sets you free, you're free indeed. And this is the truth that the son has brought you. Through your baptism into your lord Jesus Christ, you've been clothed in Christ. He's made you a joint heir with him. You are a child with him of his father. You're a member of the household of God. He came forth from the father a single son, but when he goes back to the father, he brings a family of brothers and sisters with him. Baptized into Jesus, you're no longer a slave. You are an heir, you are a beloved child. In the comfort of that truth, piety is born and it learns to breathe deeply the bracing air of freedom. How utterly free is the man or the woman who knows that he or she is loved by God with a love that is amazing and vast and rock solid. In that freedom, the Christian starts to see the dignity that has been bestowed through baptism into Christ. Because of our baptism, we can even dare to pray with Jesus, our father. In Christ, we are free to have the eager eyes of children watching our older brother and our dear father and learning to do what they do, to follow the patterns that they teach us, and thus to allow the habits of godliness to form us and shape us. Throughout this course, you're gonna no doubt observe an extensive use of Martin Luther's Small Catechism. I'm convinced that Luther's little handbook has been grossly misused among us. We've isolated it from life. We've attempted to extract doctrine from it. And then to force feed that doctrine as mere information. We've ignored the vital context which the book explicitly describes over and over again. The Small Catechism was not written for and was never meant to live in a classroom. Confining it there results in its true genius being ignored, or even worse, subverted. The heading of each of the chief parts that Luther wrote teach us where the catechism lives. As the head of the family should teach it in a simple way to his household. So let's face it, we have made a serious blunder when we forgot that the catechism was not prepared for pastors to indoctrinate young catechumens. It was prepared for pastors to teach parents, and particularly dads, how they can teach and live the faith in their homes. This was an essential part of nourishing the members of God's household through the habits of godliness. The Small Catechism is a primer for the household to learn the joys of life together in God's family. In other words, it's first and foremost a little book of piety, of training in Godly habits. And that's why when you actually look at it, you'll see prayer breaking out all over, even in the middle of the starkest doctrinal explanations. Help us to do this, dear father in heaven! Protect us from this, heavenly father, First Petition. And that's why you'll find in it instructions about standing or kneeling, and about how to reverently fold your hands at the table when you ask grace or return thanks, about signing yourself with the holy cross, and so on. You'll certainly learn a lotta doctrine, too, because every Godly habit of true piety, it's always grounded in the truth of God's love for you in Jesus Christ. But the focus of Luther's Chief Parts is to invigorate joy in your adoption as children of the heavenly father, as the spirit trains you to live in the energizing freedom of that adoption. As you read the book while going through this course, you will note quite a bit of Luther's Large Catechism, too. There, Luther teaches us the mystery, not of moving beyond, but of moving deeper into the truths of the faith, truths which can never be finally or fully exhausted in this life. And yes of course, we're gonna be using quite a bit from the Christian Book of Concord. You'll also find that to be a trusty road map as we explore how to properly hear in the Scriptures the voice of our heavenly father summoning us to the joy and freedom of living and growing as his beloved children through Jesus Christ. My prayer is that this little book and course will provide some solid encouragement and direction for the people of God so that they might know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth as they seek to live self-controlled, upright, Godly lives in the present age, waiting for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Now before we dive into hymn study, I want you to take some time to fill out your individual planning guide. And whether you're doing this study with a group or all by your own alone self, you can use this guide to keep you on track. For each of the sessions, fill out the date, location, time, and when will I read sections. Of all of these, the most important section is the when will I read. Setting apart some time each week to go through the required reading will be helpful as you embark on this study. My advice for you, you find a time that you're gonna be able to keep. Ah, maybe you're a morning person and you'll be able to read it over a cup of coffee, sounds good to me. Or maybe you're one of those weird night owls who has a stack of books by your nightstand. Well, it doesn't matter. In any sense, find a time that's gonna work for you and then stick to it. Now that you know your task, spend the next five minutes filling out your planning guide. (gentle music) Let us pray, almighty and ever-living God, you make us both to will and to do those things that are good and acceptable in your sight. Let your fatherly hand ever guide us and your holy spirit ever direct us in the knowledge and obedience of your word that we may obtain everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, our lord, amen. Now since you've just been given your book and filled out your individual planning guide, let's spend some time looking at a hymn that introduces the whole concept of this book. Renew Me, O Eternal Light. This is written by a Lutheran pastor. We have lots of hymns in our books written by Lutheran pastors. Johann Friedrich Ruopp was a pastor who used to serve in the area near Strassburg. And like many people at the time, he was deeply concerned with the disconnect that had come to take place between the faith as something that you hold in your head and how it shaped your life. In other words, he was very much concerned about inculcating piety among his people, and the hymn was written as a prayer toward that end. Now it's true that sometimes concern for piety, eh, crosses over into pietism. It was widespread in German Lutheranism in those days, and frankly, it was growing in strength, but they recognized a problem. It's always a problem. When we're Christian in name and not being Christian in life so he invited people to actually pray to God, and notice that, so many of the hymns in our hymnal are proclamations, they're out there to say, like dear Christians, one and all, rejoice or salvation unto us has come. This one is prayer, the entire hymn is a prayer to God for his mercy and his grace and for renewal in our lives. And the author of this hymn, he did not live a really long time, he was born in 1672 and died already in 1708. He was just 36 years old. But he wanted people to know how to live and how to die through faith in Christ. We don't know who wrote the tune that's associated with this. You'll recognize it, though, it's a popular tune in our hymnal, it's associated with the catechism hymn, lord help us ever to retain. We're gonna look at the words now to each of the stanzas and think our way through what they teach us. Stanza one. Renew me, o eternal light, and let my heart and soul be bright, illumined with the light of grace that issues from your holy face. Notice that this hymn is addressed to you are lord, Jesus Christ. And we all confess together in the Nicene Creed, all Christians of all times and places, that he is God of God, light of light. Very God of very God. If you remember, in John 8:12, Jesus calls himself the light of the world. And, again Jesus spoke to them saying, "I am the light of the world. "Whoever follows me, he's not gonna walk in darkness, "but will have the light of life." The opposite of the light, well that's sadly the darkness in which all humanity is born by nature. John 12:46 Jesus says, "I came into the world as light, "so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness." In other words, we're in darkness when we come into this world. Only in Christ do we get put into light. Or as Paul would say it in Ephesians chapter five, verse eight, at one time you were darkness. I like that, he doesn't just say you were in darkness, he said, you were darkness. And in contrast, but now you are light in the lord. Walk as children of the light. Which is another way of saying, be who you are, be whom you have been made to be in christ Jesus and we turn this into a prayer. Lord, make me be whom you have declared me to be. But the prayer begins with the word renew. That is, make me new. Do you remember Revelation 21 verse five? He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." Note he did not say I'm making new things. I'm making all things new. And he said, "Write this down, "for these words are trustworthy and true." Renew me, o eternal light and make my heart and soul be bright. Stop for a moment and realize the brightness, the light doesn't come from inside of us in our native powers. It has to come to us as a gift from the spirit of God. If you will, we get possession of the promised land only by God's action on our behalf, and above all, his regarding us in his favor when he lifts up the light of his countenance upon us. That's what lightens up our lives. Psalm 44 verse three nails it. Not by our own sword did they win possession of the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm, and the light of your face, for you delighted at them. And think about the light from the face of God that shines in the words you're so used to hearing at the divine service, the conclusion, over and over again, the words from Numbers six, verses 24 to 26. The lord bless you and keep you, the lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you, the lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Peace comes from God himself regarding you in favor, looking upon you with his mercy and love. When God smiles at you in Jesus Christ, that is where the brightness and light can shine into our hearts and souls. And we know ourselves to have been beloved by the father in heaven, in his son. Saint Paul reflects on this whole light image when he talks about it in 2 Corinthians three verse 18. He says and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the lord, that's the glory of the lord Jesus, we're being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the lord who is the spirit. A few verses later, 2 Corinthians four verse six, for God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Stop for a second there, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, if you ever doubted that Paul was Hebrew, there you have it, all those genitives strung together like that, in the face of Jesus Christ. You get the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, the one who hangs upon the cross for you, this is where God shines his favor upon you. This is where your life becomes bright with the light of the favor of God. When you know that your sins have been completely answered for by the gift of the son. Your light, your life begins to shine. Ready to move to stanza two. Remove the pow'r of sin from me and cleanse all my impurity that I may have the strength and the will temptations of the flesh to still. Sin, it makes slaves of us. Jesus made it clear. John 8:34, Jesus answer them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, "everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin." And the way that sin enslaves us is not just that it has us inside us that the more you fight against it, the more entangled you get. The more we try to fight it, the more we end up being enslaved to it. You've probably tried it yourself. Have you ever said at the beginning of the day, today I'm going to be completely patient and humble? Let me know how it went. You see the problem is, we're sinners by the course of nature. And we can't but sin when we're left to ourselves. Paul was really blunt on this, Ephesians two verses one to three, listen to these words. Take this to heart. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature, there it is, by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. So we plead in this stanza that God would do for us that which we cannot do, and that is remove sin's power, to cleanse all our impurity and give us the strength and the will to put down the temptations of the flesh. Will is the key. What's broken in us above all is our will. I like to call our wanter, what we desire, what we want. And it's the case for all of us by nature. Jesus is really blunt in John eight verse 44. He says, "You're of your father "the devil, and your will "is to do your father's desires. "He was a murderer from the beginning, "and he doesn't stand in the truth. "There's no truth in him. "When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, "for he is a liar and the father of lies." Also, this is the case even after we are brought to faith. Saint Paul describes an ongoing battle, Galatians five verse 17. He says that the desires of the flesh, which we still carry with us, are against the desires of the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the desires of the flesh. These two are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. By very definition, a Christian is a conflicted personality. You got something going on inside where you have I want and yet I want. The one I want, the will of the devil, I want what I want when I want it and you better give it to me or I'm gonna make your life miserable. On the other hand, I want, father, that your will be done. And this is the Christian life, the battle between these two. What are we gonna do? We turn to God in prayer and we ask, like in Philippians 2:13, it is God who works in you, both, notice this, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So then, we ask the great gift from God. Stanza three. Create in me a new heart, lord, that gladly I obey your word. Let what you will be my desire, and with new life my soul inspire. Now we sing these words of the divine services all the time so obviously Psalm 51 is very much in the background. You remember, create in me a clean heart, Oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from they presence and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with a free spirit. Create in me a new heart, a clean heart, oh God. God draws, he draws him in such a way that his darkened understanding is turned into an enlightened one and his perverse will into an obedient one. That's what the scriptures call creating a clean heart, Psalm 51:10. But you notice the hymn didn't just say, clean heart. It said a new heart. And I think that points clearly to two wonderful portions of prophecy from the Old Testament. First, Ezekiel chapter 36 verses 25 through 27. This incredible prophecy about baptism. Listen to this, God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. The salient point here is that the new heart is a heart of flesh, and that's a positive use of the term flesh in the Bible. It emphasizes that what's wrong us is that we're not even the human beings God intended us to be from the very beginning. Also, though, note the connection to baptism. It's via this sprinkling of the clean water that God cleanses us from all the uncleanness and the idolatry and in effect, he does a heart transplant. He puts this new heart inside of us. Now it's Jeremiah 31 that unpacks a little bit about the nature of this new heart. You remember these beautiful words. Behold, the days are coming, declares the lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Via the gift of forgiveness that the New Testament delivers God does something with his law. He writes it on their hearts. Now in Hebrew, your heart, that's not the center of your emotions, it's the center of your will. To write the law on the heart means that God promises to cause us to desire its fulfillment. Let what you will be my desire. That's praying for the fulfillment of the promise from Jeremiah 31. This new desire, it's the very heart of sanctification. And let's face it folks, it's totally a work of God to place that desire inside of us, but then the desires aren't merely passive inside of us, they're active, and so the the Formula of Concord, again gives us some great light. After God, through the holy spirit in baptism, has kindled and caused a beginning of the true knowledge of God and faith, we should pray to him without ceasing. We should ask that through the same spirit and his grace, by means of the daily exercise of reading and doing God's word, he would preserve us in faith and his heavenly gifts, and strengthen us from day to day, and keep us to the end. For unless God himself is our schoolmaster, we can study and learn nothing that's acceptable to him and helpful to ourselves and to others. Furthermore, when a person has been converted, and is thus enlightened, and his will is renewed, then a person wants to do what is good as far as he is regenerate or a new man. Then that person will delight in the law of God, in his inner being, Romans seven. And from that time forward, he does good to such an extent and as long as he's moved by God's spirit, like Paul says in Romans 8:14, for all who are led by the spirit are sons of God. This moving by the holy spirit is not a coercion. Let me say that again, the moving by the holy spirit is not something that is forced. The converted person does good spontaneously, as David says in Psalm 110. Your people will offer themselves freely or willingly on the day of your power. Nevertheless, the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, it remains in the regenerate. Saint Paul wrote about this in Romans seven. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. Galatians 5:17 From this evidence the following is certain. As soon as the holy spirit has begun his work of regeneration and renewal in us through the word and holy sacraments, we can and should, oh, stop and hear this, we can and should cooperate through his power, although still in great weakness. This cooperation does not come from our fleshly natural powers, but from the new powers and gifts that the holy spirit has begun in us in conversion. I apologize for the long quote from the book of Concord but it was so central to what we were want to understand from this book that although the cooperation in our life always comes only from the new powers God gives us by the holy spirit, we still really do cooperate that all the works of grace, that's why piety is something that we seek. It is something that we want to shape our lives, these Godly habits, but we know, since it's not coming from us, we turn to God in prayer that he would inspire the heart with the new life. And this suggests that the freedom and joy from the new desires, they're always going to be springing in your life as gifts to you from the holy spirit. Ready to look at stanza four? Grant that I only you may love and seek those things which are above 'till I behold you face to face, Oh Light eternal, through Your grace. Now the prayer to love God only doesn't mean that you're excluding loving your neighbor. It embraces that, you remember in the small catechism how each of the explanation to the commandments begins we should fear and love God so that we, even stuff to our neighbor. The New Testament joins the commandments to love at the hip, 1 John 4:21. And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. To love, that's above all to desire think about the beautiful words from Psalms 73. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on Earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. To desire God is also then to seek the things above. Clear reference here to Saint Paul's lingo in Colossians three, reflecting on the gift of baptism. Remember these words? If you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on Earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. The beatific vision, seeing the lord Jesus face to face, is the final and great desire and that's the desire that runs through all other godly desires for the Christian. Think of how Psalms 27 can put it. Hear, oh lord, when I cry aloud. Be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, seek my face and my heart says to you, your face, lord, do I seek. I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the lord in the land of the living! Or in 1 John three, beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. This is wholly and completely a gift of God's grace, nothing of our deserving, as all the scriptures make abundantly clear in so many places. Think about Acts 15, but we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the lord Jesus Christ, just as they will. Romans 6:21, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace might also reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ. And, of course, our favorite Lutheran passage. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. So when When exhorted the Christians in Philippi to work out their own salvation, note, not to work their salvation, but to work out their salvation, they were to do that in fear and trembling, that is putting no confidence in their own abilities. Instead, they were to know, hear the big words, it is God who works in you, both to will and to work, or do, for his good pleasure. Thus this beautiful hymn that we've been studying appeals to Christ, our eternal light, to work the good in us, to renew us, to fill us with his radiance, basking in his favor, removing sin's power, cleansing our impurities, giving us new strength new desires, creating in us the new heart, that is his own heart, which is aligned to the father's will, and loving him above all and in all. Now before you close with prayer and take off, pull out your individual planning guide and look at when you said you would read for session two. Next week you're gonna be looking at chapters one, two, and three. Go in peace people loved by God. Your sins are forgiven and you are free.
