Youth Days/Sermon in Rockford 11.08.2019

As we close these youth days, first, I would like to thank those who have done so much work to make this so seamless, especially your dear youth who did all that work. I know, for instance, from my own perspective, I've been caught up in the weekend and discussions. Last night, for instance, I found myself still here at about 11:00. The time just slipped away. And here you youth were here, and there were no difficulties that I could see, and everything seems to have gone smoothly. It happens because of the work that you do.

We thank you for that. Also, I wish to, on behalf of the Rockford Congregation, thank the brothers who have served here this weekend. You have lent your mouth to the spirit, and we have heard God's voice. We're thankful for that. Bring our greetings back to your home congregation with this knowledge that we are traveling on the same way of faith as you there, looking forward to the same destination, the goal of heaven.

For this closing devotion, I was trying to think of something that would encapsulate the thoughts of my mind having sat here this weekend. What came to mind was a few verses from the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, the first six verses. We'll read these words with that prayer that God would still open his word. "Oh, Lord, thou art my God. I will exalt thee.

I will praise thy name. For thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. For thou hast made of a city an heap, of a defensed city a ruin; a palace of strangers to be no city, it shall never be built. Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee. The city of the terrible nations shall fear thee, for thou hast been a strength to the poor, strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.

They shall bring down the noise of strangers as the heat in a dry place, even the heat with the shadow of a cloud. The branches of the terrible ones shall be brought low. And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees, well refined." Amen.

I've sat here this weekend watching as you dear youth have come to the hearing of God's word, you've come to these presentations and listened. Elders have come to listen, and those things that we've heard this weekend are very precious, very central core to our faith: forgiveness of sins, God's kingdom, its beauty. We've heard what it is to dwell in this house and what it is to have an endeavor of faith and what could happen on that endeavor of faith.

I thought that this part of God's word helped me think about what this weekend was about, and as many of these thoughts of this Bible portion brought those things back to mind. I don't intend to speak to each verse verse by verse or word by word, but the thoughts of these will, I'm sure, make you recall what you heard this weekend.

One of the things I heard a few times over the weekend was this thought about storms. When I combine those kinds of thoughts about being at youth days and speaking about storms, what came to mind was, again, experienced this summer at a confirmation. It was the very first day we were there, and I was speaking to a couple of the big brothers, and we were learning about each other and who we were and where we came from. I didn't know who they were.

I found something in common with one of those big brothers. He was a member of a group called SkyWarn. I thought to myself that we have similar experiences. I've, for maybe four or five years now, been a weather spotter with the National Weather Service. We started having these kinds of discussions there before camp even started about weather and storms.

And I never thought to myself how it pertains so closely to our life of faith until something interesting happened. We were just starting to go to the main lodge. The students had arrived, and the big brothers had been directing them to the dorms and showing them there. This conversation, which I had with this big brother, happened there on the grand of the dorm. We were talking about those kinds of storms and differences of where we live.

I said to him that it's fun being here in Canada, in the Prairies. When you see a storm coming, you see the whole thing. Here in Minnesota, when you're a weather watcher and you live in Buffalo, you have to look straight up into the sky to see what's there. And really, it's nothing. It's a gray cloud.

There in Canada, as we were talking about it, we started looking to the sky and we saw these clouds coming. So we had that kind of discussion about what that meant and kind of forgot about that. But as I started walking back to the main building there, I thought to myself that we had just been talking about storms and something registered with me, that the wind was blowing right towards that storm. I just got done telling this other big brother who was wondering about weather watching that if you're looking at something and you're thinking to yourself, "Is that a tornado?" If the wind is blowing at you, you know it's not a tornado. But if the wind is blowing towards that, then you can start worrying.

And when I was walking towards the lodge, I could feel the wind at my back going right towards that storm. So I wandered out to the edge of the field and stood there for a moment, and I saw this cloud and I saw some rotation and I feared and I thought to myself, "That can't be true. We just talked about this." So I went and found this my new friend, this weather watcher, and I told him, "Come and look, come look. I don't know if I'm seeing things or..." So he came to the edge of the field and he's like, "That's a wall cloud."

And what I've learned about storms is this: that we want to be in a certain position to watch it, to be able to help others, and there are certain places in a storm where you don't want to be. We were in the wrong spot. Where we were taught to go to or where we were taught to avoid was exactly where the camp was. So I raced to the main lodge. I'm still thinking to myself, "This can't be true."

This is totally surreal. And anyhow, I thought to myself, "Where would I put all these kids? I don't even know this building very well." And anyhow, with this my new friend, we looked in the building and we found the only place that felt safe was the hallway. So we put that behind our ear, but we went outside and the kids were all on the other side of the building.

They had seen the storm coming because it was thundering and then the hail started falling, small little chunks. I still didn't believe what I had been taught. The hail began to get bigger and bigger, and then storm watchers got scared, began to holler, "Everybody in, everybody in!" And they listened. I couldn't believe it.

The children quickly, one after another, came into the building and were gathered there in the main area. In my mind, I was thinking, "Well, maybe I overreacted. I feel like a fool for just hollering like that." And then the wind started blowing and it got worse. I thought to myself, "Well, this is straight line winds. It's just a thunderstorm. It will blow by." And then it switched directions, it started to come from the other direction, then it came from the other direction, and the hail was loud. I don't know if you know Prairie Short Camp, it has a metal roof. We have hail that's over a quarter size or better, very, very loud, very fearsome. We began to holler and we could hardly hear ourselves think, but the children heard and they listened to our orders. They went into the hallway.

And then when the winds began to buffet from every single side, we hollered again at everybody down. We thought to ourselves, this was a tornado. This was it. I could hear the big brothers and sisters counting off names. Are we all here?

Come to the safety of this hallway. We found a sure foundation, these bricks. Then the storm blew by. We don't know how close we came. Rain and the hail was so heavy that we couldn't see to the dorm.

As weather watchers, we knew that a tornado could have been in the middle of that, wrapped in rain, and we couldn't have seen it. We saw the damage later the next day. From down the road, there were a few sheds that had blown over, quite a few trees in the resort next door had some down this way and some that way. The town just across the lake, I heard there were 200 to 300 cars damaged by hail. It wasn't a little thing.

And I kind of thought to myself, isn't that how we live in God's kingdom, how things just can sometimes just appear out of nowhere and we wonder what in the world is just happening. I had an evening devotion that night and was still very stuck in my mind what had happened. And I told those kids that, you know, there are storms in this life that are not temporal. They're spiritual. And, you know, there's going to be someone who hollers out and warns you.

Our task is to listen. Will you listen? Or will you stand out there and watch as the hail falls? You know, those storms can be smaller. It doesn't have to be something that affects all of Zion.

It can be a little thing. I kind of thought to myself, I was thinking about a discussion I had with someone I know very well when I was a teenager, as soon as there's so many teenagers here, and I kind of pictured this as I don't know if you know from the comic books, there's a character by the name of Pigpen. He's a little guy who walks around. He's got this little dust cloud always over his head.

Nothing seems to go right. This person I knew felt like he was that way. He blundered from thing to thing. In those days, it was underage smoking or chewing. It was the movies.

It was this. It was that. Today it could be something different or it has morphed into things that seem more innocent or no one can tell. It wasn't easy to fool mom and dad back then with smoking, because they could smell you. It was really obvious.

You couldn't, you could try. I know I guess I ashamedly would have to admit that there's been more than once I've walked into the house with heavy man sprayed by my sibling with cologne trying to cover up cigarette smoke. I've never used cologne. It was a nice smell, I guess, but it only meant that I was trying to cover something. But in this day and age, the temptations have changed and I don't even know how to think about that because even things like smoking when they placed them in the context of today's world with vaping and things like that, you can't smell, you can't see.

The dangers are that much greater. I could go to the store and buy cigarettes, tobacco, but today in today's world, you can buy those types of things that you not only can have nicotine, but the effects of marijuana in the same instrument. The dangers are that much greater and your parents won't be able to tell by smell. It's odorless, it's vapor, it goes into the air. So it's kind of like going to those storms, those little temptations or big temptations, it's kind of like hail that hits and our task is to get away from that storm and especially when there is someone who is warning us that there is danger there.

It's time to move to safety. It's time to find those kinds of foundations that last, that are sure. We find those in God's Word and in the gospel. I remember that person that I know very well, he explained it in this way that sometimes those storms come so close that he very well knew what a songwriter meant when he sang, "I walked in blindness. My soul was dying."

The prince of darkness held me in his power. But then he also knew. He felt, along with the writer, when he continued in pain, I turned to my father crying. He broke my chains and saved me in that hour. Isn't that what we've learned about here this weekend?

The beauty of God's kingdom is not in this that we're perfect people. The beauty is this, that a sinner like me is known as a child of God. A sinner like you has permission to believe just as you are. The storms will come. Even great cities will disappear as our text says.

This is always made of a city in Heek. God can make those kinds of things happen because the city ends up to be like a rubble pile, a defense city, something that the people that live in that city would try to defend and say no, this is right. Even in spiritual sense, we can build those kinds of cities or try to and we can try to defend it with our own logic and understanding. Palace of strangers to be no city, it just disappears from the face of the earth when God destroys it. It will never be built again.

But then he says that there fear shall a strong people glorify the city of a terrible nature shall fear thee. Reminds me of our Bible class the other week when we talked about Jonah, about the city of Nineveh. That was one of those kinds of cities, a terrible nation. They were a cruel people. They tortured people, even the believers, the Jews.

And that was one of the reasons why Jonah didn't want to go there to preach. It was a very difficult place to go. But God is able to turn them. What is most remarkable about this though is that God has been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat. God is our refuge from the storm.

Let us place our trust in him, not in our own logic, our own endeavor, our own attempts. So then the last part of this verse or this text, which we read, talks about a feast that God makes for those people who dwell in that city that he has built. And it's a description of a very wonderful meal. It's for everyone. It's under all people.

He has created this meal. And I thought about this weekend that isn't that what it is to live in God's kingdom, to have an endeavor of faith to put sin away. Sure, if we're talking about a race, for instance, and it's a long race, the Apostle talks about our endeavor of faith as being a race that we run. When we run, we're using our legs. It's in the running that we make it to the end, right?

That's faith. We're saved by faith. But in a really, really long run, that takes days, perhaps even weeks, some of those Old Testament people, they had to travel for months sometimes to get to the next place. It was a race in that sense, an endeavor. You can't get there simply by running.

You stop and you eat and you run again. God has made such a meal that is perfect. Unfortunately, there's perhaps some who might say that we don't have a need for that food. That's not how we get to the destination. Our endeavor is by going forward, by keeping safe.

We don't need to stop to eat. But nevertheless, that's how God has said it. We do eat on the way. And that eating and drinking is found in the gospel of the forgiveness of sins. It helps us, gives us strength for our journey so that we are able to run, so we're able to keep faith.

So dear brothers and sisters, this afternoon, that's what I've learned being here this weekend that isn't it simply enough to believe, to believe sins forgiven? Been my joy to be here and my joy to hear that message, and it's still my joy to tell each of you this afternoon: A dear brother, dear sister, you can remain believing all of your sins and doubts of the journey forgiven. In Jesus' name and precious blood. In Jesus' name and blood. In Jesus' name and blood.

We want the peace and freedom in Jesus' name and blood. We want the peace and freedom and joy in Jesus' name. In Jesus' name. We've all since forgiven in Jesus' name in precious atonement blood, and I believe my sins forgiven. I want to believe together with you.

Dear brothers and sisters, we continue our endeavor. It's not a long journey anymore. It could be as short as one more day, but it will be successful when we live by faith. In Jesus' name, amen. Let us close in benediction.

The Lord bless us and keep us. The Lord make His face shine upon us and be gracious unto us. The Lord lift up His countenance upon us and give us peace. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.