(Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #211, vv. 1-3)

And it is with this blessed assurance, O God of all grace, that we are assembled today to mark the first quarter century in the history of this Thy congregation. Grant us Thy Holy Spirit not only that humility of heart which is becoming in all true worship of Thee, but above all grant us the triumphant and victorious faith of those who have learned to place their trust in that Word of eternal life which shall stand when heaven and earth shall have passed away. Hear our prayer for the sake of Thy Son, Christ Jesus, our one and only Saviour! Amen.

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Text: John 6:68-69
Then Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God."

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Fellow redeemed, festival worshipers, grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is a Christian congregation which today is assembled for a special festival of thankoffering and rejoicing. And when we thus foregather we want to make certain that our celebration shall find favor not only with men, but above all with Him in whose name we are gathered and by whose grace alone we hope to be saved. And if that is to be assured us, we must beware lest we ascribe to mortal man anything which will rob our Lord and Saviour of that glory which must ever be ascribed to Him, and to Him alone. For it will be true while the earth remaineth: "I am the Lord, glory not to another." "According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth." Ps. 48:10. Where men have learned to know the true God as He hath revealed Himself in Christ, there praises will ever be accorded Him. It will ever be true, as the psalmist says: "The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous." Ps. 118:15.

But the remarkable thing about the believer's rejoicing is this: He does not rejoice overmuch in what he has been able to do for God, but he does rejoice exceedingly in God's marvelous mercy toward him. He will ever confess with the sorely-tried Jacob on the banks of the Jabbok: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant." Gen. 32:10. He will ever bear in mind the Saviour's gentle rebuke of the seventy, after they had returned rejoicing over the fact that even the spirits were subject unto them in His name: "Nothwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." Luke 10:20.

Since our salvation is not dependent upon us, but upon God's grace, yea, from beginning to end, there will never be found in the heart of the true believer a just cause for boasting. His songs of praise will ever come from a heart which has not ceased to sorrow over its sins. It is this to which a Paul refers when he says concerning himself and his faithful co-workers: "As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." 2 Cor. 6:10.

When I was to choose a text for this your 25th anniversary, the words of Peter, in one of the moments of great crisis in his life, seemed especially fitting. And why? Because they summarize every true believer's attitude toward the Christ of God and His Word of eternal life. His own poverty, yea dark despair, if Christ be taken from him; but also his unfaltering trust in the merciful Son of the living God. Let us then today, on the basis of our text and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, consider:

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1.
"Lord, to whom shall we go?" They were not the words of a man talking to the galleries. The galleries had already been emptied. For we are told in the preceding verses of this chapter that "many therefore of his disciples, when they heard this (that they would have to eat the flesh of the Son of man, and to drink his blood, if they were to have life in them) said, 'This is an hard saying; who can hear it?'" v. 60. And as the Saviour sees the thousands turn their backs on Him, the very men and women who on the preceding day, after His feeding of the 5000, were ready to acclaim Him their king, He turns to His disciples and asks: "Will ye also go away?" It has come to this, that when the multitudes are to have the Saviour sent by God, they will have none of Him. "His own received him not." John 1:11.

And that, sad to say, is still the attitude not only of the man in the street, but also of all too many who are members of the visible church. For there is nothing which dies harder in us than the old Adam, who wants at least some measure of credit for his soul's salvation. If it be nothing more, then at least this, that it is he who has chosen Christ, rather than the Scriptural truth: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." John 15:16. That soul destroying doctrine of ascribing to the natural man "a feeling of responsibility over against the acceptance of grace" is a doctrine of men, and not of God. For what does God have to say on that score? "He hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus (when? after we had come to faith?) before the world began," says Paul. 2 Tim. 1:9.

It was that false doctrine which you, members of Scarville congregation, refused to accept, and which left you in a small minority. But while you were in that insignificant minority, you were nevertheless in excellent company. Peter was with you. The truth to which Christ had given expression earlier in His ministry: "Narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. 7:14), was now being enacted before the very eyes of His followers. Only twelve left - and one of them was a traitor. But Peter, thanks to the grace of God, was not afraid of being numbered among the despised minority. There was but one thing which troubled him on that day - the thought that he might lose his Saviour.

Now, when the hour had come that he would either have to part company with Christ and go with the majority or stay with the Man of Sorrows, there wasn't a moment's hesitation on the part of poor Peter. He had gotten down into that very narrow valley where there are no defiles either to the right or to the left. And he makes confession of that truth in the words of our text: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" If Christ was to be taken from him, there was only despair before him.

And it is into this same valley that God, in His infinite wisdom, leads all of His children. He has to do that to teach us the very salutary lesson that without Christ we are lost, "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world." Eph. 2:12.

Oh, the wretchedness of those who have not learned that lesson! Those who want to be saved, but who are afraid of the suffering it entails. They want to be crucified with Christ, yes, but they don't want to feel the torture of the pierced hands and feet. They want to walk on the road to heaven, but it mustn't be made too narrow. And so they often find fault with the heavenly Father because He places them in the same tight spot where Peter found himself when the confession was forced from his lips: "Lord to whom shall we go?"

Have you, dear hearer, been tempted to fault God because He has made your path just as narrow as was that into which Peter and his fellow apostles had beeen led? Then I would counsel you to chase that temptation from the door of your heart back to hell where it sprang, and to thank God on bended knee because He has deemed you worthy to suffer for righteousness' sake. For God has something very definite to say just on that score. What is it? "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." Heb. 12:6-8. No, confess with the pious Olearius:

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2.
But as poor as Peter felt when he contemplated the future without that Saviour as his Lord and Master, just as sure was he of infinite riches with Him. For he continues his confession: "Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Oh, marvelous confession, than which there can be none nobler.

Let us analyze it a little more closely. What is there in this confession of Peter's which makes it so remarkable? Not only has he learned to know Christ as His Saviour, but he has learned to know the power of Christ's Word. In fact, that is his very first confession: "Thou hast the words of eternal life."

Peter is no visionary. He builds on the firm foundation of God's never-failing Word. It was the Word which had overpowered him as Christ preached that morning on the shores of Gennesaret, yea, from Peter's very fishing smack, and when he said: "Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net." Luke 5:5. It is that same divine Word to which he now points in his dilemna. It is the same saving Word to which he directs us in his last epistle, after he has told us of his having been with Christ in the holy mount, and when we might have expected him to go into ecstasy over the wondrous revelation there granted him. But what does Peter do? No sooner has he mentioned the bare fact that he was with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration than he adds: "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Pet. 1:19-21.

Peter is straight on fundamentals. He doesn't confuse issues. When he has the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, he has that which is able to make him wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 2 Tim. 3:15. No wonder then that he insists in his first epistle: "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God." 1 Pet. 4:11.

For what is that Word? It is not only something which shall serve him for the few brief years he is to spend on his pilgrimage here below. No, he realizes that it is something which stretches beyond the borders of time and lays hold of eternity itself. It casts its anchor within the veil. Heb. 6:19. "Thou hast the words of eternal life." Oh, the depth, the surety, the comfort of those seven words of Peter's humble confession!

Tell me, you parents, whose boys are now out on the far-flung battle fronts, what can be more comforting for you and for your boys than this, that there is a word of everlasting life? That you can assure them in the very name of the Saviour whom they have learned to confess of His precious promise: "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." John 11:25-26. Shall you, can you, give yourselves over to dark despair with such a word of everlasting life as your possession? To do so would be to deny the very truth with which Peter closes his confession: "We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God." You possess riches beyond compare.

To Peter God is not a dead and distant deity. No, He is, as He was to a David, "a very present help in trouble." Ps. 46:1. Peter knows and confesses that if we but grow in the knowledge of that Saviour and have our hearts established by His grace, then all shall be well with us. It is for that very reason that we have these final words from his inspired pen: "But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen." 2 Pet. 3:18.

Now it is this unchangeable Word which you, Scarville congregation, have retained in your midst pure and unadulterated since that day when so many of your former brethren in the faith forsook the sure foundation in search of a "more reasonable theology." Have you ever had occasion to regret your firm confession? Peter never had occasion to regret his. Whatever regrets came to him after that day, came as a result of his forgetting for the time being to follow that Word in all its saving direction. Had he but remembered Christ's words, there would not have been need of that bitter weeping outside the courtyard of the high priest. Had he but remembered the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, there would have been no dissembling in the congregation at Antioch, and when Paul found it necessary to rebuke him in the presence of the entire congregation. But Peter does not resent that rebuke. He has learned to humble himself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt him in due time. The finest testimony we have to the truthfulness of all that Paul has written comes from the pen of Peter. "Hard to understand?" Some of it, yes. But God's Word nevertheless, since it comes from God's chosen apostle. And would to God that some of the higher critics of our day would follow in the honest Peter's footsteps. Not to seek to get away from a word because it appears difficult, but to accept it in humble faith.

And your exceeding comfort, dear Christian congregation, is this: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but this Word of everlasting life shall not pass away. It shall be there to correct you, as it so often corrected Peter when he erred. But it shall be there to comfort and console every heart which has been touched by godly sorrow over sin. Make it your one and only foundation for all that you believe and confess, and you shall never have to indulge in vain regrets when the shadows lengthen and you also shall have to enter into the valley of the shadow. For, in the words of our precious Confession, the Smalcald Articles: "The Word of God shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel." Concordia Triglotta p. 467, para. 15. Make Luther's prayer your own, teach it to your children, live by it adoring it with a godly life, die by it, and yours shall be that everlasting life concerning which Peter is above all concerned.