Yet, You Do

You Know Neither the day nor the hour, Yet, You Do. For the day and the hour is at hand. It has been at hand for you ever since you first heard the precious Word of God that your sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus.

The day and hour has cer...tainly been at hand ever since the water was poured over your head in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit however many years ago. For in that hour God opened the kingdom of heaven to you as He gave you His name and declared you to be His forgiven child.

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for the Last Sunday of the Church Year, "Yet, You Do," click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3532

A Gathering of Eagles

Dear Baptized Believers in Christ Jesus,

Welcome to a gathering of eagles! You are among the elect of whom Jesus is speaking and to whom He is giving a heads-up lest you be led astray and trade your eternal heritage for the rotting spoils of this world. . . .

. . . The world, and those who deny the bodily presence of Christ at His altars, see us who take Christ’s apostle Paul at His word as vultures gathered around a corpse. . . .

But what the world sees in the negative..., we rejoice in as the most positive of positives. For what others see as vultures gathered around a corpse is actually a gathering of eagles. of which the prophet Isaiah writes:

Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:30-31

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity, "A Gathering of Eagles," click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3526See More

I Will Be Healed

Having been brought to faith, the temptation to think too highly of ourselves remains, and can even be heightened as we experience those good works Christ is doing through us--perhaps even having family and friends looking to us as examples of faith. That is all well and good, that others look to us. But woe to us if we look unto ourselves and brag on ourselves, even if it is our faith of which we are bragging.

. . . Christianity, the faith that saves, is all about Christ—first, last, and always--what He has done for us in His suffering and death; and what He continues to do for us by His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father whence He sends His Holy Spirit to deliver you into the faith by which you too, with the suffering woman can say, “I will be made well.”

Jesus tells the woman, “your faith has made you well.” But if you were to ask Jairus, or the woman, or Jairus’s little daughter they would tell you it was Jesus who made them well, because their faith was in Jesus to do what He does—save.

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3517

A Prayer for Humility

Truly God is proclaiming to you in the All Saints’ Day Scripture readings for today that you are His children that you are among those who are blessed. And to be among those who are blessed is to be a saint, to be sanctified—that is, made holy. Blessed are all saints, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

• God has given you new birth and marked you as one of all those saints in Holy Baptism;
• God is proclaiming you to be one of all those saints in the Word I am preaching to you now and wherever the Word of God is preached and taught for the forgiveness of the poor in spirit;
• God enfleshes you with Himself and all those saints when He gives you the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion;
• and God sends you forth into the world as one of all those saints carrying the benediction of His name-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

You who believe these things are indeed all children of our Father in heaven--saints who are blessed because in these things Jesus comes to you and you are made one with Him—the blessed One of whom the beatitudes of Matthew’s Gospel today speak.

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for All Saints Sunday, click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3508