Michael Edwards

“The devil doesn't want God's Word to get to you. He doesn't want it to be pure when it does reach your ears. He wants to snatch the Word of God right out of the air on its way to the ground of your heart. He attacks the church, the pastors and teachers, and he attacks the doctrine; he attacks the hearer and the hearing of the Word. He makes it hard for you to go to church. He makes it hard for the church to continue.

Have you ever wondered why Sunday mornings are so difficult? Why waking up and driving to church seems much more difficult than it ought to? Why listening to a sermon is such hard work? Or have you wondered why things are so difficult in the church, why there never seems to be peace, but there is always trouble? The Word of God is always opposed, and getting our ears and our hearts to the place where they hear God's Word is spiritual warfare.

Here's why:

The preaching and teaching of God's Word is the supply line for the Christian life.”
― Bryan Wolfmueller, A Martyr's Faith in a Faithless World

“They founded no mission society, organized no city mission, wrote no books on “dynamic evangelism.” Instead, they celebrated the Sacrament and prayed continually. “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (2:47).”
― Hermann Sasse, We Confess Anthology

“None of the words that could be interpreted as such a “sign,” such as eikōn (image), are used of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament. Nowhere is it written that Baptism is an image or a sign of regeneration. It is the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5). “We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism into death” (Rom. 6:4). “You were buried with Him in Baptism, in which you were also raised…. And you … God made alive together with Him” (Col.2:12—13). Also the word tupos in the sense of model or image is not used of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper or of their elements.”
― Hermann Sasse, We Confess Anthology

“Restless hearts and anxious minds find peace in justification. Frenetic lives of self-justification have rest in the salvation of Jesus Christ. The incessant need to prove our own worthiness and our failure to ever do so are nailed to the cross, buried in the tomb, and put to death forever.”
― Gene Edward Veith Jr., Authentic Christianity: How Lutheran Theology Speaks to a Postmodern World