ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN WORSHIP 2 56.LW2 Captioning provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 ******** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ******** >> Nick: As I am listening to your remarks, I�m wondering if there is any connection between this information and Luther's coat of arms. >> DR. JAMES BRAUER: I believe there's a wonderful connection. Now, I have this particular image of the coat of arms which is a window here on campus in Dr. Johnson's office, the president's office. We have a similar kind of window elsewhere, but you'll notice that this is done inside of a shield. Luther's discovery and emphasis that it's by the word of God, the word along, *sola scriptura that we know about God is expressed here in this particular image. Now, his symbol that he invented is inside of that in this blue area. But I like it that it's surrounded here with the *sola scriptura idea. So the *sola scriptura would be that if you want to please God with your worship, and you want worship to be God-pleasing, the way he looks at it, you're going to have to be using and staying with what he revealed about himself. That's the shield. If you bring your own stuff, that's your own teachings, your own thoughts, which are heresies, this is a way to dishonor and cause God to bring his wrath upon you. So it would be displeasing to him. All right, now to what Luther invented. You'll notice here that it is a circle. It has some petals. It has some leaves. It has a heart shape and a cross. Let's go to the center. The cross stands for Jesus Christ and what he did, the centerpiece of history. The heart stands for the faith that believes in what was done on the cross. Now, this brings life, salvation, forgiveness, comfort, peace, and joy. The rest of the image is expressing that like a flower that is in nature and blooms, brings beauty to the eye, and the blue sky that surrounds this are all meant to say these are the benefits of what you have in Jesus Christ. So this is like a wonderful way to summarize when you're thinking about what is going on in worship. God has provided a savior. I trust that savior Jesus Christ. From that comes a way to have peace with God, joy, comfort in every circumstance, even in the face of great tribulation. And it goes into eternity. It's as big as the sky, the blue color. A marvelous way to kind of summarize the whole thing. So when I step into Christian worship, I'm thinking of all these things, Christ at the center, faith, and all the benefits that come from him.