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In the name of Jesus.

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I bring you greetings
from President John Bruss,

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the faculty,
students, and staff

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at Concordia Theological
Seminary in Fort Wayne.

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It is wonderful to
be with you all today.

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Our text is Isaiah
50 verse 4 as follows.

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The Lord God has
given me the tongue

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of those who are taught,

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that I may know how
to sustain with a word,

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Him who is weary.

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Morning by morning He awakens.

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He awakens my ear
as those who are taught.

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Listening and speaking
go hand in hand.

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This shouldn't be any
great revelation to you all,

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for you are all both
hearers and speakers.

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No hearing, no speaking.

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If nothing goes in,
nothing should come out.

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Doesn't always work
that way of course.

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But that relationship
between learning and hearing

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and speaking goes deeper
than almost anything.

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How does a child
learn to speak?

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A child learns to
speak by listening.

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Mom and dad talking.

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Goo goo ga ga's come out.

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They talk and talk
and talk and talk.

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To the child, with the
child, near the child,

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not near the child.

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And eventually those
vocables become words.

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And once they start talking,

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it seems as though
they will never stop.

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But that's how we learn.

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Whether we're talking
about English or Chinese

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or a program or music
or honestly anything,

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we learn by receiving.

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And then it comes out.

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I'm sure that all of you have
been in that conversation

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where that kind
of back and forth,

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the giving and receiving,
the listening and the speaking

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somehow gets interrupted.

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It happens.

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You know the friends.

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The one who just,
they have a lot to say.

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And they don't really
have ears to listen.

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It happens in our
conversations.

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It even happens in class.

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Sometimes a student,
they really have a lot to say.

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And so you can kind of
imagine the uncomfortableness

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that is in the class where
everybody's kind of thinking,

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you know, I didn't
pay to hear you.

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And yet, we listen
and we speak.

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When that is interrupted,
everything is broken.

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Now, I'm not talking
about that friend of yours.

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I'm certainly not talking
about your dear professors.

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I'm talking about you and me.

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For we all become
deaf to hear.

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We all have that
point where I can't stop

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talking.

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I just want to be heard.

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Now in one way,
that is a good thing.

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Remember again the
words from the Psalm,

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I love the Lord because
He has heard my voice

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and my pleas for mercy.

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There is a sense for
every one of us when

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if I am not able to listen,

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I am not able to
speak to this person

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because I don't
know who they are.

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I don't know where they are.

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I don't know where
they're coming from.

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I don't know
where they're going.

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And for those of us
who are preachers,

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preparing to be preachers,

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or teaching and
forming those who are

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preparing to be preachers,

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we really listen in two
directions, let's say.

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We hear the word of
God that informs us,

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that shapes us, that
makes us who we are,

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that gives us a word to
speak to those who are weary.

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But we also listen to
the voice of our people.

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If I don't hear
the word of God,

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then I have
nothing good to say.

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I am empty.

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I am, if you will,
a clanging cymbal.

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But if I don't listen
to my people,

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then I don't have the
language to speak to them

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because I don't
know what they need.

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I don't know what
they must hear.

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And so, we preachers
have this constant fight

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against deafness.

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Deaf to the word of our Lord,

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deaf to the words
of the people

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whom God has entrusted to me.

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And we have to
fight that temptation

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either direction,

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for they are both utterly
destructive for a pastor.

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A pastor who only
reads and meditates

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and listens in his study

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and who doesn't read
and meditate and listen

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with his people
will lose the words.

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He will lose the words
that they need to hear,

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that voice to the
ones who are weary,

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that voice to the exiles,

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that there will be
a future for them

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and that it begins even now.

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But if I only listen
to my people,

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then I actually forget what I

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am there for in
the first place.

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That I am not just an
echo of their own voice.

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Being a pastor
is not simply an

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exercise in active listening.

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I have a word I have received

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and if I do not give
this word to them,

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then I should not be
there in the first place.

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Now when these two are there,

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as they ought to be,

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when your ears are unstopped

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to hear both God's
promises and God's people,

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then things really
start to happen.

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Then a wonder begins.

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Then those words from the
psalm echo day after day,

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I love the Lord because
he has heard my voice

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and my pleas for mercy.

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That those words are
not for someone else,

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but that when you
listen to your people,

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it is in fact God who is
listening to your people.

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And because they listen,

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they will hear as well.

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Now this allows you as the
preacher to sustain them.

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I love that word, to sustain
them when they are weary.

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To endure the fiery darts
and barbs of the devil.

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To give to them
again and again

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those words from our hymn,

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if God himself before
me I may a host defy.

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That word of
promise means that

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Christ is present
there for them.

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Because Christ is
present there for you.

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This day, as we learn and
speak and speak and learn,

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hear once again the rhythm,

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the pattern of our
lives as God's people,

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hearing what God has to give,

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and sharing that
word to the weary

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because they so
desperately need it.

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And sometimes
the weary are us.

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In Jesus' name, Amen.