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

The Truth Will Set You Free

This is what the Reformation was and still is about today—the Truth setting you free . . .

Here the temptation for us is to echo the proud proclamation of the religious Jews of our text: “We are [American Christians] and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” For us that proud proclamation usually comes in the form of proclaiming ourselves free to do whatever we please, whatever makes us happy, whether in our daily living or in our worship life. After all, as we Americans confess in the Declaration of Independence, it is a “self-evident” truth that we “are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” one of which is the “pursuit of Happiness.” And everybody knows—another one of those self-evident truths--you can worship God wherever and however you want to, right?

Hmmmmm. Let’s see. Maybe it’s time we examine these assumptions we all live under in the light of God’s Word, you know, that truth that “will set you free.”

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for Reformation Sunday, click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3496

Perfect Timing

Since the beginning of cinema, the perfect timing of the hero has been a take-it-to-the bank theme. From the damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks, to the westerns of the “golden age” of the boob tube and the silver screen, to virtually every cop show and adventure movie ever made.

They all are salvation stories of sorts. They take us through the range of emotions, take us to the brink of death, and deliver us to a happy ending.
But what is great for movies isn’t so popular in our churches. The great message of the Gospel is just such a rescue effort of our Lord according to His perfect timing. But nobody wants to wait. And while folks can’t seem to get enough death—the more graphic and the gorier the more we seem to like it--talking about sin and death in our churches is often met with derision and disdain (not to mention dismissal). We want to prevent all that suffering stuff—or at least forget about it. We want our best life now.

The trouble is, we’re just not ready for it. Why? Because our best life comes only when sin has been destroyed. And that takes death.

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, "Perfect Timing,” click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3484

Decision Theology

What false preachers say.
"Decide for Christ and dedicate your life to him already!"

 

What God's Word says.

Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

The Kingdom of Heaven

 

It is not our going to church or what we do there that saves us. Going to church means that we are going to the place where God is feeding us with the bread of life – “every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God” for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Six days a week you live in a world that is doing its best to convince you that God doesn’t exist -- or if He does that He is a God whom we have to fear and figure out a way to satisfy by doing enough good stuff so... that He isn’t angry with you anymore.

But on the seventh day, God calls you to a day of rest. And this not a day simply to rest from our earthly labors and do nothing but what is fun and entertaining and distracting from your troubles, but a day to rest in the tender loving care of your Lord and your God as He opens the kingdom of heaven to you in His holy Christian Church.

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, "The Kingdom of Heaven,” click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3477