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The following reading from the CONCORDIA edition of the Book of Concord is for the LSB Old Testament Isaiah 60:1-6 for the Epiphany, January 6, 2008. It is from Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article II, paragraphs 9-10, pages 521-522. Isaiah had us in mind when he wrote that the Lord would arise upon us, nations who live in think darkness, that we might come to the light and see the Lord's glory. Click here for the reading formatted for the back of a standard CPH bulletin. Pastor Doug May
Mankind's reason or natural intellect does still have a dim spark of the knowledge that there is a God. It also knows about the doctrine of the Law. Yet it is so ignorant, blind, and perverted that even when the most ingenious and learned people on earth read or hear the Gospel of God's Son and the promise of eternal salvation, they cannot by their own powers perceive, apprehend, understand, or believe and regard it as true. They want to understand these spiritual things with their reason. But the more diligently and seriously they try, the less they understand or believe. Before they become enlightened and are taught by the Holy Spirit, they regard all this only as foolishness or fictions. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. (1 Corinthians 2:14) You must no longer walk as the Gentiles [that is, those not born again of God's Spirit] do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. (Ephesians 4:17-18) The Scriptures flatly call natural man in spiritual and divine things darkness (Ephesians 5:8: Acts 26:18). John 1:5 says, "The light shines in the darkness" (that is, in the dark, blind world, which does not know or regard God), "and the darkness has not overcome it." (paragraphs 9-11)
These are excerpts from the Book of Concord.
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