Outreach in the Church: A Long-Term Mission | Acts 19 & Strategic Evangelism

Acts 19:8-20

And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. As you know, we're continuing the series in Lent on the core values our congregation selected as part of our strategic planning process called serving in God's mission. The first of the values are the active core values that we see in action. They are Christ centered worship, Christian growth, or Bible study, sometimes called catechesis, and then sanctity of life, the aspirational values we covered one last week human care. Today, we're going to talk about outreach, and next week, we're going to talk about evangelism. We'll get to find out what the difference between outreach and evangelism is important distinction. But tonight, we're going to take a look at Outreach, and the value of outreach is defined this way in the planning tool we use, we purposefully engage non church people in our community through a planned approach that guides them from a connection point to becoming active in the spiritual life of our congregation. The reason I chose Acts chapter what chapter was it acts? Chapter 19 today was because St Paul shows us how hard he worked in Ephesus. You should note the process of what it talks about. First he goes to Ephesus, and for three months he preaches in the synagogues. Then for two years, he reasons daily in the Hall of Tyrannus. Paul's outreach in Ephesus was not a speedy thing. He did not come into Ephesus say Jesus is Lord. And then the entire city fell on their knees and cried out, I have seen the light. See he knows what I'm talking about. What he did was an ongoing process of proclaiming the Word of God to person after person. Often, it would be over and over and over again to guide them into the arms of the church through faith in Jesus Christ. And I think one of the key things to understand is what it would have taken a group of magicians, sorcerers, to come to the church, to the point where they would burn their books worth 50,000 silver pieces. That's a lot of money, isn't it? Not too many people think you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to destroy my business to become a Christian, which is what they did. What would it have taken for the Holy Spirit to bring them from I'm making a ton of money being a magician and a sorcerer too. Let's burn it all. It didn't happen in one day, which is why we see Paul working over and over and over. And this makes sense, because that's the same thing that happens with us very few people come into the world a fully formed Christian. Very few people hear the Gospel for the first time, fall on their knees and are able to articulate the justification by grace through faith, on account of Christ and the doctrines contained therein. Right? That's because becoming a Christian and growing in Christ is a process. We all know that you begin with faith and you grow from there, moving from I'm not a Christian, to wow, I really want to go to church every Sunday is a process, too, and that is what this idea of outreach, it thinks about. Outreach is about how the congregation, together connects with people, to bring them step by step, from out there to in here. And so you can think about things that we do that are sometimes outreach oriented. We can think about trunk or treat, which is a wonderful event, right? We get 100 200 kids. And their families come in through our trunk or treat, and you say, why do they come here? It's for the candy. I like candy. I would come for candy. And so they come. They get their candy, they eat their hot chocolate, they bounce in the bouncy house, and they say, thank you. First Lutheran Church, you guys are really nice. And then you ask, How can we take them from candy to Christ? They want the candy. We want them to have Christ. And it is not. Oh, look, they gave us candy. Let's become a member of first Lutheran Church, right? Similar things happen in the way outreach works is that there must be repeated and ongoing contact so that the Holy Spirit can work through the Word, through the gospel, through our relationships, to draw people ever closer to Christ and to our congregation. Why don't we do that? I think that's a great question. I think many of us grew up in a world where outreach was mostly just reminding people that they should go to church, and VBS grew out of that sort of thing. A Vacation Bible School was situated in a in a culture that said everybody knows who Jesus is they're all and they are all looking for a church. Let's make sure that they know that our church is a good one. And all it took was a reminder. You should maybe come to our church, or it was focused on those, those families that had drifted away. You invite them back for an event they see everybody they love. Is that the culture we're in anymore, if you look around El Cajon, does everybody say, You know what? I should really get back to church. And here, El Cajon is far more Christian than any place I've lived. I feel like I've come into Christendom when I moved here compared to Chicago. I walk down my street and I see Muslims, and they're not going to be reminded to come to church. They're going to say, Nope, no, thanks. Mosque is down the road. And so in a in a world where we have Muslim neighbors or atheists or agnostics or even apathyists, which I think is the biggest group, the people who just don't care, how do we slowly through the gospel, gather them into the into the church, it is through a planned communal outreach approach. And so what I'd like to do is talk about a church that I've seen that does it really well as an image of what a program like that can be my very first call. I went to St James Lutheran Church in Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. They had a school with 250 kids in it, and they milked that school for every ministry opportunity they could. It was a perfectly planned, well executed outreach program because they saw their school and their congregational ministry as fully integrated in gathering people into a relationship with Christ. So what happened was people of all different kinds really didn't want to send their kids to the public schools in Chicago. I'm sure nobody in California can can see anything with that, but it was like that there. And so lots of people from various backgrounds, some Christian, some not Christian, some not caring, sent their kids to the school because it was a good education with teachers who loved their children in ways that the public school didn't. So

the pastors and the ministry staff then saw that every interaction with teachers, students and staff was a way to share the gospel with new people and gather them into the church. So what did they do? One of the ways they is that they used they used their teachers for vacation Bible school. They had so many kids in. Neighborhood that went to it, they had to do two, one for the elementary and one for the preschool, and there were like 100 kids at each it's just because of the neighborhood. It was crazy neighborhood. They paid their teachers to run the groups to be the group leaders for their vacation Bible school, which meant all the kids wanted to come, and then that led their teachers and the ministry staff to have a whole opportunity to end their year for the elementary kids with the gospel in this in this United environment where they didn't see a difference between school staff and ministry staff in the in the fall, they had their preschool VBS as an introduction to their teachers. They build it to all the new families. You get to come and hang out with your teachers for two hours before the first day of class, which meant all the preschool families put their kids in it, and they got to see the pastor and the ministry staff every, every day, hearing the gospel, leading into the school the school year. Throughout the school year, the ministry staff was fully integrated into the life of the church, so the pastor and the school offices and the pastor's offices and everything, same space, same building. Pastors and principals were at every event. They greeted people before, before school started. Every day, they made sure they had events where they were doing youth things for the school kids on a regular basis. All the major events that the school did happened in church, graduation, opening, opening ceremonies for the school, all sorts of things. It was constantly a way of gathering the parents into the worship service to hear the Word of God, so that everyone would hear and know. They also did big events where they would do get kids and parents to come in, meet the staff, meet the ministry staff, the teachers, everything else, the entire school was planned and programmed so that they could share the gospel with the parents and draw those parents into the ministry. And it took years. It was not the kind of thing that happened in preschool or in first grade. It was usually third, fourth or fifth grade before a lot of these things took place, because it takes time. The pastor at the time when I went there, he said that the philosophy of Outreach at the school was simple. He said Our job is to bump them up against the cross and hope they get splinters. And you do that over and over and over again with love and care, and that is how a planned process works. And eventually the Gospel goes out and the Holy Spirit changes hearts. Outreach takes a lot of work. It is not a single event or a thing that you can do and say, Yay, we've done it. Check that box. It's about relationships and hard work and presence and love and fully incorporating people into the life of our community through a planned and slow process, which means it's hard, and you guys said, you want to do it, so we got to do it right. And we trust that the Holy Spirit will do his work as we build these relationships and care about the people through our ministries and with the love of God in Jesus name, amen.

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The Prodigal Son & God's Radical Grace: Why Jesus Welcomes Sinners

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.…”

And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. Today in our gospel reading, we read a familiar story, the parable of the prodigal son, the son who goes off wastes his father's property and returns and is forgiven. The story most Christians know really well, because it's pretty dramatic, isn't it? It's got all the kind of drama that we would like to see. It would make actually a really good movie or TV show, wouldn't it? The kind of thing that I know I'd turn up and flip the TV on to watch.

It's a well known story, but a story that still teaches a good lesson about God and the church that we need to hear over and over again. And so I'd like to take a look at this story and talk about the forgiveness that God gives each and every one of us and what he offers to the world. The first thing that we see when we look at this is the opening introductory sentences, which are really important to understand this parable.

It says now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. We might think, well, that's weird. Why are they upset that Jesus is talking to sinners? Isn't that what Jesus is supposed to do, go out into the world and bring forgiveness to sinners.

We miss a concept from Judaism and the ancient world called Table fellowship. We don't have this concept in American culture, if we go out to lunch with someone, it doesn't express any kind of unity. And sometimes we'll even go out with strangers, right just to meet somebody. That's not what is going on in the ancient world.

When you are invited to eat with someone, you are expressing a kind of unity and approval that is something we don't quite understand. In fact, it is so serious that when Peter goes to meet with Gentiles Cornelius in the book of Acts, it's a really big deal because he is being fellowship with someone who is unclean, which would then make him unclean. And so the Pharisees are saying, this is a huge scandal, Jesus, unclean people are coming to you and you are just accepting them. They are supposed to become clean first, and then you can eat with them. Then you can be united with them.

And so Jesus tells three parables. There's the parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost sheep. And finally, the prodigal son. And the story opens with the son who goes to his father and says, divide up all your property and give me my inheritance, which is pretty brave, isn't it. Can you imagine going to your parents and say, give me my inheritance. Now, what that's not that's not how this works. But the father is weird. He says, okay, divides up his property, sells a portion of it, so that the son can have it all in cash, and the son heads out into the world and spends it on what the Bible says is reckless living.

We don't know what that means. Maybe he just likes to spend money and racked up the credit card debt. Who knows? After all, the money is gone. After every party is had, there's a famine, which means no food for anyone. Likely that if the son bought property in the foreign land, his crops didn't grow either. So he is hungry, and because of his hunger, he goes and he makes himself unclear. Mean by feeding the pigs, we think pigs are fine. In fact, I really kind of like some bacon, and I bet you do too. But for them, even feeding this unclean animal would have made him unclean, just like those sinners and tax collectors, someone who should be rejected by any good and holy Jew, he longs to eat the waste that the pigs are being fed.

Can you imagine being that hungry, so that when you look at the scraps, the pea pods, the leftovers, the waste that is only fit for these animals, and you wish you could eat it, but you have nothing. I what I love about what Jesus says is the transition happens in verse 17, when he goes but when he came to himself. What an interesting way of phrasing, that when he came to himself as if he was living in a delusion, as if he he had this, this wild idea about who he was, and all of a sudden, he just snaps out of it. His insanity is gone, his wild ideas, and he just goes, Wait a second, this is dumb. Who knows why?

Who knows why it took so long? Maybe he was proud. I can do it on my own. I made it out this far, and I can forge my own path. Maybe it was fear. There is no way my father would accept me after what I have done. Maybe it was shame. How can I face all of the people back in my hometown? I went off all proud. I had my bags on my back, my money in my pocket, and now nothing, all of those things that kept him from repenting, from turning away, the shame, the pride, the fear, or whatever it was, at last, he comes to himself, snaps out of it and remembers his father is a loving father with a good nature who simply wants his son maybe, maybe though it was too much, he would come back, not as a son, But as a servant, at least there, if I was second class, like all the other servants, I could have some food.

This is the son who starts heading back with a plan. He's going to tell his father, I'm not a son anymore. Just hire me. Make me like one of your servants. Then there's the Father. Can you imagine his broken heart when the son comes to him and says, kind of wish you were dead. And then leaves the father who sold off some of his inheritance in the Promised Land, the gift of God that had been passed down from Joshua all the way to now, if he had been doing it right. What a broken heart. He watches his son leave excited, whistling, happy, while a tear goes down his eye. He looks at the chair, the empty table every day when he and the older son get together and eat, be easy for the pain to turn to anger, the hurt to turn to rage, but that's not what the father does. You does. He simply misses his son. So when he sees the son coming back, walking down the road, he doesn't even wait for the son to come to him and. He runs.

Now, we run all the time, and I think that's because we wear pants. They didn't wear pants in the ancient world. They wore robes. And if you ever thought about running in a long flowy skirt, a heavy, long flowy skirt, you wouldn't make it very far. You'd probably end up face down on the ground, which means that the Father I'm going to step out behind here had to run like this.

See my legs. Can you imagine how awkward and weird it would be to see the old man running down the road, knees out. He doesn't care. He's not thinking about dignity, what the neighbors will think. He's not thinking about anybody. He just wants his son back. He's so excited to see the son coming back. He doesn't care what he's done, he doesn't care what he's going to say. He doesn't care what's happened. The son is coming back, and he loves him, and he welcomes him.

Then the son, he's got his script. How many times do you think the son practiced it on the way from the far away city? 100 times, 1000 times, over and over in his head, I'm going to be so nervous when I get there. I gotta have it down right, or else I won't get it out and my father might reject me. Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. He got it out, and the father ignores him, doesn't respond to what he said. He just welcomes him back. Quick, get the best robe ring on his finger. Welcome him back, kill the fatted calf. It is time for a party. My son is back, as he says, For this, my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. He

it What a joy. The son is forgiven. The Father ignores his feelings of shame or sadness or fear or whatever it is, and simply restores him. And if you think about all of this unclean stuff that we don't have in our culture, coming up and hugging his son makes the father unclean too. He's just so excited to bring the son back, and here is the beauty and the joy of the forgiveness that our Heavenly Father has for us. Because every person, every human being, is a bit like the Son rejected by God because of our sin, we needed a Savior who would die for us, who would come to us, who didn't show his humiliation by hiking up his robe and running down the street, but by being naked and nailed to a cross so you could be welcomed back into the family, so you could be a child of the father again and have eternal life that is the heart of our heavenly Father, who welcomes each and every one of us back into his family by the forgiveness that we have in Jesus Christ.

and it's a welcome that our Heavenly Father has for a world who has not yet come to itself, because we live in a world that is filled with people Who are a whole lot like that prodigal son who have taken the life that they have and said, I'm going to do it my own way. I'm going to run off and be crazy, wild and reckless living I'm. God and the Father simply waits for them to come to themselves. And I think there are lots of people who want to be welcomed back, who are feeling the weight of their their life and their choices and their reckless living, who feel the guilt of living in a world where there are no good answers, and everything that they're told to do feels wrong.

But I also think many of them are scared, because they think the same things the sun did, if I go back, will I be rejected if I go back? Will they look at me and make too big a deal? Will I be embarrassed or afraid, or whatever it is, somewhere along the line, the church was seen as a place for holy people to do their holy thing. And you want to know why I know that this is the case because I have talked to a whole bunch of my friends and said you should probably you should check out church sometime. And you know what they always say, I will light on fire the moment I cross those doors.

You Jesus, because they see the church not as a place of healing for sinners, a Hospital for Sick souls, but a place of judgment and fear. That is not the Father's heart. We want them to come and be loved. And I think perhaps the best way to say that is for us not to be act like we are holy people out in the world, but remember, we're really just like that prodigal son who is welcome back, no questions asked, placed the best robe on us, rings on our fever and fingers, and they killed the fattened calf to celebrate that God has called us together. Now there's another character we have, the elder son. And each and every one of us can see a little bit of ourselves in that elder son, right? Because every time the father looked over with a tear in his eye at the empty chair, the son felt it right in his heart, didn't he? My father is hurt because what my brother did, that jerk. Can you believe what he did to my father? And soon it would turn into resentment to the father too would Why are you wasting your tears on that worthless son of yours? I'm right here. I am with you every day. I am working hard. I am doing things right. How dare you, Father, wasting your heart and your emotion on someone who's far away. And then one day, he's out in the field, doing his work, by the way, and he hears music he wasn't even invited to the party. He

Yes, what's going on? Your brother's back and he's killed the fattened calf. What this kid who hurt my father day after day after day, and now he's just back. I

We all get resentment. We all get that kind of anger. But that's the problem with the Pharisees here. They thought they were actually the elder son they worked just like all of us. We're all the brother the son who's gone far away and sinned. They thought themselves righteous on their own and in no need of repentance. And that's not an attitude that we can have, because the moment we think we are righteous, well, then we stop being a church that follows the Father's heart. We want to make sure that we are a place that welcomes all that proclaims that we. Are not here to be holy and righteous perfect people, but a place of healing, a place of restoration, where the Father's love comes to us to fix us and offer it as a place for the world. And that's who Jesus is. He is a Savior who wants to gather together all of the people who lived in wild and reckless living just like us, into the Father's kingdom, to welcome every sinner with love and forgiveness in Jesus name amen.

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Human Care in the Church: Mercy, Outreach, and the Gospel Explained

Acst 2:42ff

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. We're in the middle of our series on the core values that our congregation has selected as part of our strategic planning. So far, we have looked at three of our active core values that is worship, catechesis and sanctity of life. Today, we're starting to move into the aspirational core values. The aspirational core values are those values that we want to see active in our congregation, in the funeral, and not in the funeral in the future Yeah, in the future, sorry about that.

They are human care, outreach and evangelism. Tonight, we're looking at human care. The program we're using defines human care this way, we are moved to show the mercy of Jesus in tangible ways. We share His mercy with one another through acts of compassion, and we extend God's love and mercy to people outside of our congregation through ministries of human care.

Now, unfortunately, what that does is that uses the phrase to define the phrase. It says, Through ministries of human care, hmm, so we have to define it a little bit beyond that, human care is taking care of all of the things of the body and mind that are not the gospel. Human care is taking care of the human being, the person, both in their in their sustenance and their bodies, but also their intellect and and their emotions. It is caring for the whole person.

This is why I chose the reading from Acts chapter two, because it shows the relationship in the early Christian congregation between the gospel message that they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching the breaking of the bread and the prayers that is to worship. And then they had all things in common. They shared with one another what they needed to survive, and made sure that everyone in the Christian community had enough to live on, so much so that they would sell their possessions human care extends out of the love of the gospel that Jesus Christ has given us into caring for the needs of others. It begins as for Christians inside the Christian congregation, but then extends out into the rest of the world, and we see a number of examples of human care in the Holy Scriptures, Jesus' miracles of healing, every one of those was a ministry of human care. When you heal someone of their diseases, it doesn't save their souls, but it is good to save their bodies too.

In Acts 242, we saw the distribution of food amongst the people in the congregation. Saint Paul talks about distribution amongst the churches of food for those who are in need. That is a regular incident, but perhaps the most famous of these is Jesus's parable of the sheep and the goats, where Jesus gathers all the people in front of him, one on one side, one on the other to the to the goats. He says, When I was in prison, you didn't visit me when I was hungry. You didn't clothe me when I was naked, you didn't feed me. And they went, when did we see you? And he said, when you did this, when you did not do this to the least of these, you did not do it to me and to the sheep. He says, You fed me, you clothed me. When I was in prison, you visited me. And they say, when did we do this? When you did this to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. One of the things that most people miss about that parable is the identification of who they're doing the visiting. It is the brothers and

so Matthew, in that parable, is primarily pointing to the care inside the congregation, human care, then is an overflow of that love from within the the Community of Christ, within the congregation. Conversation to the world around us. We see human care in a number of different ways that we do it in the congregation.

Now our preschool is human care. We don't just gather the children around and read them Bible verses all day. We teach them colors and letters and not to hit each other, you know, those sorts of things. These are important pieces of growing up to be a good human being and a good Christian, and are necessary. Trunk or treat is primarily human care. We invite our neighborhood into our parking lot, and we give them candy and popcorn and hot chocolate. Don't forget the hot chocolate. Oh, and we let them bounce! the the idea behind that is, is that what we're doing is we're developing community. We are gathering people into our space and building bonds of a community in a civic sense, that is human care.

We have an ESL class teaching English human care, helping the refugees and the immigrants who come to our neighborhood have the skills that they need to be able to work and survive in a country that doesn't know their language, human care.

And when you look at all those activities, you'll notice that human care is actually the job of every human being. It is not specific to the church. We call this vocation. Human care is what parents do to their children. It's what grocery store clerks do when they scan your food. It is all of the things that we do out in the world to care for each other, and in fact, in many ways, human care is best done when there's money exchanged, because Walmart does a better job of distributing clothes to the poor than most free food distributions or clothing distributions, and McDonald's feeds the hungry better than all the food banks in America can buy right, inexpensive food that they can buy.

So human care is not just limited to that, but sometimes to these, these kinds of exchanges. Now for us as a church, we are doing human care because we want to care for our neighbors. It begins with the gospel, love of Jesus Christ delivered to us as it was with those first apostles in the city of Jerusalem. As we gather around His grace and His mercy, He fills us with love and then extends to each other to make sure that we care for each other, and that overflows into our community.

What we have to remember, though, when we do that, is that human care and evangelism are different, and we should not confuse the two. When we give food to someone, it is good, but it is not sharing the gospel. When we hold a blood bank, it is good, which we're going to do pretty soon. We've got the posters in the office. You should come when we have a blood donation drive.

This is a good thing, but it is not sharing the gospel. One of the challenges American churches have had over the past several decades is believing that giving up food, painting walls, offering blood drives will bring in members, but only the gospel of Jesus Christ does that. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do human care. Human care is great, because God cares about people's bodies too. I bring this up simply to help us understand that if we want to reach out with the love of Jesus, to gather them into Christ, human care is not the way to do it. You have to share the gospel. Now that doesn't mean human care can't lead. To that, I think one of the great ways that we can see that happen are the conversations that I get reported from our ESL classes, our volunteers sit with Muslim immigrants, and they talk about all sorts of things as they're learning English, and inevitably it leads to questions about Christianity and the relationships and the gifts and the sharing leads to talking about Jesus. ESL is awesome, and we do it because we care about them, and we're overjoyed when that leads to sharing the Word of God.

We have to remember that there is a distinction between these two. So as we go and we do human care, we will remember that we also have to focus on outreach if we want to share the gospel and separating the two in our minds, understanding which is which? Because God cares about our bodies, and he cares about the bodies of the people out there, and we filled with the love of Christ as a congregation, we have chosen to make that a priority of caring for people's bodies and minds in our communities, while we also offer them the gospel of Jesus Christ in His name. Amen.

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Why Does God Allow Suffering? Jesus’ Answer to Life’s Hardest Question | Luke 13:1-9

Luke 13:1-9

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen. Times are a bit turbulent right now. We see in the news there are all sorts of tragedies happening all over the world we read in our politics, and I don't know about you, but I am nervous, and have been kind of nervous. So about, oh, six weeks or so, the news is filled with all sorts of people getting upset, all sorts of people saying all sorts of things. And on top of that, natural disasters happen everywhere, or problems all over the world. And that's forgetting all the problems that happen here in our own lives, whether we get sick or hurt or whatever, and often, when those things happen, there is one question we ask.

We ask, Why? Why does God allow fill in the blank, whether it's all the craziness that is happening in our politics, natural disasters that happen all over the world, or a fall in your own household, our gospel reading today addresses this question At least a little bit. Let's take a look.

The beginning says there were some present at that very time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. To understand what is going on here, you need to understand the scene that all of them would have understood with that sentence. So when the Galileans were offering a sacrifice, there was a group who would have gone to the temple to offer a sacrifice. There, they would have killed the animals and then the blood gets splashed all over that stuff. Aren't you glad we don't do that today? Yeah, gross. And so part of the normal worship would be, you bring an animal, you collect the blood, and it is offered in some way, often splashing it on the altar. So the situation is, Pontius Pilate. Sees a group of people he wants dead, and He sends Roman soldiers into the temple to kill them. And what happens is, in the midst of this sacrifice, they die, they are killed, and their human blood is mixed with the animal blood desecrating the sacrifice.

And then you go, Well, why? Why are they telling Jesus about this? I think there is an implicit question in this sentence, the question is, what did they do wrong that God judged them in this way? Why would that be the implicit question you may ask. Well, the Jews understood their history, and their history is filled with this kind of judgment on sinners. You can go back to the times where this kind of judgment happens around the tabernacle or the temple. Look at Aaron's sons who brought strange fire into the tabernacle and were struck dead because of it.

You can think about ELI, the high priest that young Samuels gave him a prophecy that he would die along with his two sons, because Eli would not, would not discipline them in their efforts and role as priests, and they were killed. The two sons and Eli, when he heard the news, fell backwards and died. Or what about the times when they were wandering in the wilderness and Israel sinned, and God sent punishments to turn them from their sin? It could have been snakes that came in and bit the people, or the time after Jericho, when someone took the stuff that they weren't supposed to and the ground opened it up beneath them, the Old Testament is filled with this kind of punishment.

And it would be especially significant to them that this destruction happened while they were offering a sacrifice. So they come to Jesus with this question, why did these Galileans suffer in this way. And we know the implied question is there because Jesus doesn't answer it explicitly. He declines and even mentions it a little bit in verse two, and he answered them. Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way. No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

So I think we often have similar questions, when events of the world go wrong, whether it's a natural disaster, somewhere far away or something difficult going on in our own lives, we ask the same question, why Is God punishing me for something? Is God punishing them for something? There are lots of why, questions like that. Why does a hurricane strike one city and not another? Or a tornado goes through a town and takes this house, but not that house, and leaves it completely untouched? Wouldn't we love to get answers to those questions. In fact, we have so many why questions that aren't even a big that big a deal.

In Bible study, I get a lot of whys. They say, Why is it like this? Why did God choose to do it that way. Why did he choose bread and wine? And I always respond the same way. I say, Wow, that is a great question. Maybe you should ask God, because Jesus doesn't answer our why questions, and he declines to answer their why question too. He says, Do you think that those Galileans were worse sinners than other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No.

And then he turns it on the people who are there, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. He simply declines to answer their question and turns it somewhere else. And what this helps us to understand is that there is a hidden part of God that we know nothing about, that God is so big and so vast, his hidden will is simply not given to us, and that's why we don't have answers to the why questions. In fact, we don't have answers to nearly every why question when it comes to God, Jesus, instead, he turns us to what we call the revealed will of God. Don't worry about what the what those Galileans were doing. Don't worry about their sin or their punishment. Worry about yourself. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

And isn't that what we really need to hear? We don't really need to know why someone else had something bad happen to them, why a hurricane happened, or an earthquake or sickness or disease or accidents or whatever it is. What we need to do is repent, turn to Jesus and be forgiven. What we need is a Savior who went to a cross to die for us and rise for us so that we can have eternal life. All of the why stuff, all of this knowledge, it would be nice, but it's not necessary. What Jesus wants us to do is turn repent, be forgiven, and trust in Him, and Jesus helps clarifythat point by turning to something that wouldn't be as religiously significant for the people in the next passage he goes, or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

See, what he does is he turns from the religious example to like a random example that there was a tower that fell on a bunch of people. It has nothing to do with the temple or with worship or anything like that, and so they wouldn't have attached any specific religious significance to it, these 18 people who just happened to be standing where the tower fell. Were they worse sinners than anyone? No, Jesus says, Unless you repent, you will likewise perish. And for us, when we see these things happen in the world, when there is an accident, a disaster, pain, something like that. Jesus wants to remind us that this should be a clear example of being in a broken world, a world broken by sin, so that it is filled with pain we cannot create a solution for that as human beings.

We cannot fix it or turn it away. We can't end the curse that is on all of creation. Only one person can do that, Jesus, Christ Himself, because we know the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. And so these disasters are designed to point us not to this world, but to a Savior who will make all things new. And that is why Jesus answers the question this way.

He wants us to turn to the one person who fixes the brokenness of creation, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, because He is coming to fix all this natural disasters, gone. Cancer, forever gone. Diseases, sickness, addiction, everything gone on the day that he returns, and that is our hope as we groan and hurt under the pains of this world. We look forward to a day that Christ will make all things new. The challenge for us is that so often when these disasters happen, it leads people to doubt. It leads us to look at these things and say, If God were really on my side, this wouldn't happen. Or how can a good and loving God do this to me? We need to reframe these things, because God never promised that following him would be filled with with happiness or joy. In fact, he kind of promised the opposite, that we would follow a Savior who went to a cross, the joy, the certainty comes in the resurrection and the power of our Savior on the day he returns. And so what we do is, when we see these bad things, we say, Oh no, the world is filled with sin. Who can save me? Only Jesus. Then Jesus finishes up his his analysis with a parable, the parable of a fig tree. I've got a couple of fig trees in my backyard, and I know what it's like to wait for them to fruit, and it's especially frustrating when you you watch a fig tree grow. Mine are about this tall right now, and they start to put out the figs, and you get out there and you're like, ooh, it's almost ready. Ooh, it's almost ready. And then it falls off and the ants get it.

But this gardener, he's got a. Big tree that's been grown for three years, no fruit at all. And what do you do with a tree in a garden that doesn't produce? You pull it out and you put in a tree that will in this situation, this parable, the lesson is very simple. Time is short, just like it's short for the fig tree. He's got one extra year, and if it doesn't produce, it's gone. And Jesus is reminding us that time is always short for all of us any moment, any second, could be our last. Now is the time to repent. Now is the time to turn to Christ and ask for forgiveness. And it's the same for the people you know, time is short, any moment could be their last, and it is our time to help them turn and repent so they can be saved, because that is what Jesus wants for each and every one of us, for every single human Being in the entire world, salvation and eternal life, and we can help them see that when these terrible things happen by saying, I have the answer. It's not fixing the problem resurrection from the dead in Jesus Christ, because he came to be in our suffering, he came to be filled with the pain of death that we too face by going to the cross and suffering that brutal, terrible, horrible death, and he did it so we could be with him in his resurrection. And people are looking for an answer a reason. We can give it to them. We can give them that hope. When the world seems random and horrible and terrible, they can hold on to Christ and nobody else can offer that. That's the gift that we have. Jesus says, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. And he wants us to turn to Him for that forgiveness so we can have life with Him in His name. Amen

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"Sanctity of Life: Why Every Human Matters in God’s Eyes | Lenten Sermon 2025"

Genesis 1:26-31

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen. This Lenten season, we have been talking about the core values that our congregation decided on for our strategic plan, which we are using a program called serving in God's mission. These core values are divided into two groups. There's the active core values and the aspirational core values. We have three active core values, which are values that we see in action in in our church. The first one was Christ centered worship, when we gather together to receive the gifts of Word and Sacrament, and God delivers his grace to us to confirm us in the faith and sustain us in our Christian walk. The second is Christian growth, or catechesis, the various ways that we hear God's word and learn it to better understand it, so that we can know God's will in our lives. The third active core value, and final one, is sanctity of life. That's the one we'll be talking about today. Our aspirational core values. The first one is human care, the second one is outreach, and the third one is evangelism.

We'll get to talk about each of those when we get to our our services the next few times so but today we're talking about the sanctity of life, and the program we're using defines it this way. It says we recognize the inherent value of human life, from conception to natural death. We support efforts to preserve and protect the lives of all human beings, including the pre born, disabled, aged and infirmed, because they are all created in the image of God.

This idea of the sanctity of life being a value derives from two different ideas in Scripture. The first one is the created order. This is what I read from from Genesis, where it talks about creating male and female and in the image of God. Is that every human being is created in the image of God and given the task of caring for God's creation. Each and every one of us has this image that God has given all of human beings. So we are all created in this image, which means we are therefore valuable. We have value each and every one of us simply because God has created us that way.

The image of God means that there is no human being that has no value every person, no matter who they are, no matter what they've done, no matter how great or terrible is created in the image of God, and that is why we support all forms of preserving human life. Now, when most people think about this, when we say sanctity of life, we use the word abortion, and that's pretty much what everybody talks about, but you'll notice that the description talked about all forms of life, and so sanctity of human life is not simply about one political topic or one particular idea or supporting maternity homes. The sanctity of life covers every single human being, each has value. Each is valuable in the eyes of God and for us. And it's interesting to me, the number of ways that we try to determine a human being's value in society that are different from the ways that God does. We have come up with many different moral systems to rate the value of a human life, to decide whether it should continue or not.

One of those is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a value that says human beings are valuable for what they contribute to the world. And while you say that, I mean we all should have some sort of contribution for the good of others, the utilitarian value doesn't do a good job of measuring actual value, because they rate some things up here and some things down here. And when you follow a. Utilitarian world view. Things are only valuable for their usefulness. You get eugenics, and that is what our country has done using that utilitarian world view. It is also the kind of world view that we get when we look at other human beings as if they are tools for our own personal happiness, whether it is children or work or the people you serve in your jobs, spouses, we are not valuing them as a human being if we only rate them on their usefulness to us, they are not a means, but an end.

Another way that people rate human life is by judging the quality of that life. We take what we would prefer and we put it on them, and we say that life may continue or not. Is a good life or not, depending on how I might feel if I were in their shoes, which allows all sorts of people to make all sorts of justifications to do all sorts of terrible things to other people because we don't think that they are valuable.

Another way is a life is only valuable if it contributes to my happiness. And that is the way that we talk about children these days. Children are a thing that you do if it will fulfill your life purpose, if it makes you flower like a blossom in a meadow. And if we do that, it again turns children not into an end, but a means. They become a tool for our own personal fulfillment, rather than a human being created in the image of God for us to serve.

This Genesis passage is behind much of the rights and freedoms that we actually experience as Americans. If you've read any of John Locke, you know that much of his treatise on government is a systematic theology of creation, focusing on Genesis, chapter one and two, and the idea that we are all created valuable in the image of God, means that we are each the same, no one above another in value or means.

The second thing that makes us think see life as valuable is not just creation, but also redemption, the redemption that we have in Jesus, Christ proves that every single human life is valuable. Why? Because Jesus died for every single human life. Jesus died to take away the sins of the whole world, whether they believe in him or not, whether they will enter into eternal life or not, whether we whatever the person he died for, that person and the redemption that Christ is going to bring to the entire universe is a piece of our respect for every single human life, which is great, because that includes you, right?

That includes Jesus dying for you so that your life can be saved. So because we, who are in Christ, are all one, whether we are young or old, sick or healthy, dying or happy, the resurrection of Jesus, Christ and His redemption for the world means that we cannot discard any person, whether they are a frozen embryo or having a terminal illness. You Yes. So while we often talk about abortion as the the primary implication of this, there are a couple of other places where this implication becomes important.

And one of those, I think, is is children in our society, because the United States, our culture generally, has created a society where children are mostly not welcome. Think about the last time you got on a plane and you saw a child on the plane. How did you feel?

You get nervous. You. You go, oh no, they're going to be running all over the place. What are children doing here? Can you believe that mom brought their kid on the plane? That is not a culture of life. Is it? If we have a society where children are not welcome, you are not creating a culture of life. You are creating a culture where moms and dads are not allowed to go anywhere, where the price of children is too high, that's one of the things that I love.

When the empty table of 2911, when they are here is because we get a chance to experience a life filled worship service. It's a little noisy. It's often got a little blonde kid running around, but that's what a community filled with life looks like, because we don't discard the children, just because they're loud or noisy or distracting, they are members of the Body of Christ, one with us in Him and created in the image of God.

We don't shove them off into a corner and tell them, wait until you're older to be one of us. You and if we want as as a church and as a people to have a culture of life, we need to have a culture that welcomes children into every aspect of community. Otherwise, we will we will not have any and a church without children is a dying church.

This culture of life is also one of the reasons that our churches are opposed to things like racism. Actually, it's not racism. I think that Christians should be opposed to but the idea of race itself, because if you look at the story of Adam and Eve, which race Do you think they were? I mean, if you want to use these fun American racial categories, we can. We've got only a few, and they don't make any sense. I mean, we've got black, white, Hispanic and Asian. How crazy is Asian as a category? It covers Japanese Indians, Arabs, Chinese Russians, Mongolians, everybody from Asia. And I bet if you ask person from India, you're exactly the same as person from Japan, both people would be angry at you. Even the categories, if you accept the idea of race, doesn't make sense. But Adam and Eve were not a box on a form. They were just humans. Our concept of race was created by the slavers who brought black slaves to America.

There are no black people in the Bible because it didn't exist, and as long as we play by those rules, we will have their outcomes. I think the Bible, in its created order, says that race is a concept that should not exist, but even more in the redeemed order, it explicitly tells us that there are no distinctions Galatians chapter three, no Jew or Greek slave or free, male or female. We are all one in Christ.

The implications of the sanctity of life scatter throughout the entirety of our lives as Christians, not just when life begins, but as we help to raise new life at the end of life, in our interactions with others and everywhere between because we know that we are all created in the image of God, and that Jesus loved every individual so much that He died for them. Every person has value. That's what it means, sanctity of life in Jesus name, Amen.

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Jesus Weeps Over Jerusalem

Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. Today, I am paging through this old hymnal. This is the you may some of you may recognize it if you were Lutherans from long ago. This is the 1942 hymnal from the synagogue conference called the Lutheran hymnal. And I'm doing it because one of the one of the hymns that I love for today didn't make it into our new hymnal. And it is number 419 it is the hymn called O’er Jerusalem, Thou Weepest. Now you know it's the 1942 hymnal because it uses the word o’er instead of over and thou weepest. Pretty great, right? I love this hymn because it was written by an American Lutheran named Anna Hoppe. She wrote a number of hymns in this hymnal. She was around 1919. She was born, and so she wrote a number of hymns specifically that would go into the Lutheran hymnal. And she wrote this to the tune of comfort, comfort ye my people. For those of you who don't know comfort, comfort ye my people, is comfort, comfort ye my people, Speak ye peace, Thus saith our God.

We've got a updated version in our new hymnal, but it quotes Isaiah, who is predicting that after the destruction of Jerusalem, God will bring comfort to the city by returning the people there from exile, and even better, that he will bring comfort to Jerusalem and all of Israel and all of God's people everywhere, through a Savior who would come after that exile. And Anna Hoppe wrote a companion, something that points to Our reading today, and it goes, or Jerusalem the weepest in compassion, dearest Lord, because the comfort was there looking out over the city of Jerusalem, the Messiah himself, Jesus the Christ, and he looks at a city that he had come to bring peace to he had come to bring salvation and love and eternal life, and they wanted to kill him. They rejected him. And so she writes this, this great hymn, using that tune to show exactly what happens when comfort comes to the city that God's peace was brought to them and they rejected it, which is perfect for the city of Jerusalem, because it It shows both what the city was supposed to mean and what it actually did.

The city of Jerusalem is the historic symbol and place for God and His people, and it became that because of King David, ever since David conquered the city of Jerusalem and made it his city, the tabernacle dwelled there, where the Ark of the Covenant was, and then David's son, Solomon, built a temple there, a permanent building for God's presence and The Ark of the Covenant, that was both the symbol and the dwelling of God in that place. It stayed there, and so Jerusalem was the symbol for Israel. The kings were there who were supposed to be the shepherd of God's people, the priests were there, who were the ones who would deliver the means of grace, the forgiveness and love of God to His people, who would offer the sacrifices and the worship of God towards him as well. The prophets would gather there who were supposed to proclaim the message of God to His people.

Jerusalem might as well have been the nation and very often, the prophets and the Bible speak of Jerusalem as if it's all of Israel. Just like the news might say Washington, when they mean America. God had chosen that place to be the place he would call home, where he would rule his nation through the kings and speak to all his people, and yet it became the place that symbolized rebellion and failure, because that's where it was, a place filled with false worship. If you read the story of Kings and Chronicles. It talks about what had happened with the temple when little Josiah became king. Josiah became King when he was eight years old, and when he heard the book of the law, he decided to have the temple renovated, and to do that. What did they do? They took out all of the false gods that were in the temple standing right before the God who said, You shall have no other gods before me.

The kings were the ones who did that. And instead of leading God's people in righteousness and peace and worship, they led them away from him. They led them into sacrificing to the false gods and the prophets. Well, you know what happens when a king has power? A whole bunch of people gather around him and tell him what he wants to hear. It's never changed. It's the same today, and those prophets did exactly that. Oh, King, you're so smart for worshiping all these false gods. Your kingdom is going to last forever, and that's exactly what happened when Jeremiah came to the temple in our Old Testament, reading and proclaimed the Word of God. They got really mad, the Kings, the priests and the prophets, they turned away.

In the beginning of Isaiah, Isaiah tells a song of a vineyard where God had come, and He planted a vineyard, and he fertilized it, and he protected it, and he planted the best vines, and he did everything that he could. He he tilled the soil, he made it just right, and he made it grow. And then he got there, and after years of work. He got there and he looked for grapes, and he found wild grapes, and so he destroyed his vineyard.

This is what Jesus sees when he looks out at Jerusalem, a city that kills the prophets, a city that destroys the worship of the true God, that rejects their savior, Jesus Christ, and he mourns, he says, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not behold your house is forsaken. Jesus mourns, he cries, he weeps.

It seems to me that Jesus loves the people who are lost. He looks out at Jerusalem, the people who would reject and kill him, and he says, I love you. To me, it looks like a parent who is struggling with a teenager in addiction, you do everything you can, you provide every support, every help. You do the rehab, you go to meetings, and they just can't seem to break out of it, and all they can do is cry.

Jesus loves the lost, even if they reject Him, even if they kill him. And he shows that love when he's nailed it to a tree and says, Father, forgive them. And they don't know what they're doing. He always wants people to come to Him no matter what, and that's why I read this passage with sadness in my voice instead of anger, because I think you could do that. Couldn't you? You could read, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets. But I don't think Jesus was doing he wanted them to repent. And I think what's amazing and confusing about this is that when we look at Jesus and we think about his ministry, is that it was adorned with power everywhere, everywhere Jesus went, he went about curing people and doing amazing things, and that's what he's saying earlier. He says, I cast out demons and perform cures today, tomorrow and the third day I finish my course.

And yet, all this power, all of this might, couldn't sway the people of Jerusalem. I mean, Jesus could have done some other things, right? He could have been like Paul out on Damascus, like hovering over the city of Jerusalem and saying, Why are you rejecting me? But he didn't, and it's a great mystery why Jesus doesn't do that in the lives of people today, we don't understand exactly why he works the way he does. We don't understand why he didn't do something like that in Jerusalem as well, but we know that's not what he does, that even Jesus, Christ Himself, looked at a people he wanted to save, and they rejected him. And I think Jesus's mourning is a lot, a lot like the mourning that many of us do when we look at our family or our friends who've turned away from the Christian faith, especially you parents who raised your children in the church, who guided them, who did everything you could, who brought them to Sunday school, who brought them through confirmation, members of the Church did everything you absolutely Could, and then they just decided it wasn't for them.

And I bet it breaks your heart, just like it broke Jesus's heart when he looked out over Jerusalem. And it's important to know that Jesus is there with you in that too. He looked at a city that he loved and wept. Wept because all his best efforts, all his power, all his might, and they still rejected him. He wanted them to be saved. He wanted them to receive His love, and yet they would not. And Jesus was there with you in the full experience of your morning, just as he felt our sicknesses and our diseases, just as he experienced death with us on the cross so that he would rise to give us life. You are not alone in your morning. Jesus is with you. Jesus, He loves the lost, and I think that should teach us not to feel guilty in these circumstances, because every parent looks on that and wonders, what could I have done? Could I have done something different? Could I have maybe done this day? Maybe that was it. Maybe, maybe I was cranky before church, and that did it, or I complained at the wrong time.

Or, you know, you could think all like that, but you can't even be Jesus, can you? And even Jesus looked at Jerusalem and said, What are you doing? Why are you rejecting me, the man who cast out demons and performed cures and did signs and wonders and rose from the dead and still they rejected him. And that's just how the Christian. In faith. First, the power of God is there for everyone who wants it. When the word goes out and the Holy Spirit is there to claim them, to say, receive my love, receive my healing and my forgiveness, sometimes people just say, No, we don't know why. Even Jesus, the same thing happened for all of the prophets. Do you think we're better than Isaiah, who saw the Lord in the temple with the seraphim above him, or Ezekiel or Elijah or Samuel, or all the guys in the Old Testament, the entire history of Israel, was rejection of the message.

It's just what happens you I also want to leave you with some hope, because Jesus looked out at Jerusalem before his death and resurrection, He cried over the people who would shout, Crucify Him, crucify Him and deliver him up to Pontius Pilate, but only a few days after that, on the day of Pentecost, Peter would stand up and say to the crowd that shouted, Crucify Him. This Jesus, whom you crucified, God has made Lord and Christ. And they cried out, what shall we do? And the people who shouted crucified Him, called him Lord, and were baptized that day, 5000 because there is always hope. The Gospel is always open. The invitation is always there. The message of the Word of God can always change a heart. The work that you did as parents was not futile.

The seeds that you planted and watered and sowed are still there, the Holy Spirit can still do his work. Don't give up. Don't count it as lost. Continue in your prayers, because we have a Savior who is gracious and merciful and calls all people to be saved, who wants nothing more to give them than to give them his love and mercy and peace so that we can be raised from the dead on the last day with them. We can offer that love. We can look out with hope even as we mourn the current situation, because the invitation is always open, God's mercy is always available in Jesus name amen.

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Jesus Rejects Temptation: The Power of Faith Over Shortcuts | Luke's Gospel

Luke 4:1-11

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,

and him only shall you serve.’”

And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,

to guard you,’

and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,

lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcript, formatted for internet publication with added punctuation, style adjustments, and paragraphs for clarity. I’ve kept it as close to the original transcript as possible, only editing for readability and not rewriting the content.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The story of the temptation of Jesus is familiar to many of us. We read it just about every year during the season of Lent. Though people are most often familiar with the version from Matthew, this one tells it in a little different order than Matthew does. The second and third temptations are switched in the Gospel of Matthew. So, in Matthew, it goes: bread, temple, kingdom. And in Luke, it goes: bread, kingdom, temple—just a fun fact, in case you were wondering. But today, we’re taking a look at the story from Luke.

I find it interesting that each of these temptations is not random, but they are temptations that actually ask Jesus to take a shortcut. The temptations themselves are not bread or power or being the Messiah on the temple, but shortcuts to those different things. Let’s take a look at the first temptation.

So, the devil goes to Jesus, and he says, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” On its own, that doesn’t sound like all that much of a temptation, right? If Jesus has the power to turn a stone into bread—bread isn’t bad. Turning the stone into bread isn’t evil on its own. But what is Jesus doing? What is this temptation?

I think the temptation here is for Jesus to begin using His power to make His life easier. He is stuck in the wilderness. He has been there for 40 days, much like Israel in the wilderness for 40 years. And rather than trusting in God’s power to provide and waiting for His Father, the devil tells Him, “Now, just turn the stones into bread. It’s no big deal. You can do it.” But that would be a kind of compromise in His power, because if you look at the story of Jesus, when Jesus does miracles, does He do them for Himself? Does He walk along and take the loaf of bread and turn it into lots of loaves of bread for His own personal consumption? No, it’s for the 5,000. When He does healing, does He heal Himself? No, He heals the crowds that come to Him.

Jesus always uses His power for the good of others, to rescue, because, as He says, “The Son of Man came to serve and not to be served.” And what Jesus is doing is He is proving faithful to His Father’s will and trusting that God the Father will provide for Him.

I think the contrast with humanity is really interesting. You see, you have Jesus out in the wilderness. There’s nothing good around Him. He has no food. He is just simply there, trusting. And if you look back all the way to the beginning, Adam was just about the opposite. He was in a perfect garden. There was food everywhere. Everything he could possibly want was wonderful and there for him. There was no hunger, no pain, no badness at all. And yet he couldn’t handle it. Adam ate from the forbidden fruit. He wanted more. He wanted to be more. And Jesus, instead, He lives the perfect life.

Jesus triumphs where Adam failed by simply trusting, even in this terrible circumstance when you haven’t eaten for 40 days. He was hungry. So, He refused to use His almighty power to help Himself, to turn the stones into bread. Instead, He says, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” He is faithful for us, because we cannot be.

I think this temptation helps us to see the problem with small compromises, because small compromises are always that first step to big ones. You do one little thing—I mean, it can’t be that bad, right? But then you make a compromise and a compromise, and pretty soon it’s a big deal. And this little temptation of bread—would Jesus have eventually gone around and done the Thanos snap every time the Pharisees bothered Him? He could have, but no, He succeeds for us and lives in His Father’s will in a way that we could not, so that He could save us.

The second temptation is one that’s a little confusing too, because it seems weird to tempt Jesus by giving Him power. Jesus is the almighty, all-powerful Son of God. Isn’t Satan offering Jesus something He has anyway? It’s like, “Look, all of the world,” and you go, “Didn’t He make this? Doesn’t He uphold it and sustain it with His almighty power? Isn’t He the Word made flesh?” But there’s another side to Jesus as well—not just the Son of God from eternity past, but also the human being, the Son of David, who is going to be raised to the throne of God forever.

The promise that God gave Israel to say, “David, you will have a son in this kingdom, a human king,” and He has a human mission to fulfill: to be raised as the King of all creation, to take the throne of His father David, to rule over God’s people forever. And we know that’s where He is now, because after He died on the cross, He ascended into heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand.

The temptation here is to cut the corner of the cross to reach where He is supposed to be. Satan wants Jesus to just skip the cross and go straight to the ruling, sitting at the right hand of the Father, just by the devil’s power. And wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be nice to not have to die on a cross, to skip the whippings and the beatings and the rejection and the crown of thorns and the dying? All that sounds bad to me. That’s what the devil wanted—short-circuit it all, cut the corner, get around all that suffering, rejection, and death, and He would be right where He’s supposed to be.

But Jesus says no. He won’t skip the pain. He won’t skip the suffering. He will follow His Father’s will and drink the Father’s wrath. He would be rejected and die on the cross, be buried in a tomb for you and for me, because the mission wasn’t actually about His glory, was it? It was about you and your salvation. The entire reason He came to this world was so that all God’s people could have eternal life and live forever with Him. Being raised to the right hand of the Father didn’t make any sense unless it went through the cross, so you could have life. He wasn’t here for power or glory or riches or comfort. He was here to save you.

And His temptation reminds us that we don’t chase after glory either. Our Savior didn’t go after the power of the world, and perhaps then we shouldn’t use glory—glory and power and success—as a sign of His presence in our life. It certainly wasn’t a sign of the absence of God’s presence in Jesus’s life. The mission went straight through the cross with pain and hurt and suffering, with the promise that on the other side, there would be resurrection, power, and glory.

And very often, the same is true for us. We look at our lives and we say, “If I follow God, shouldn’t I be a success? Shouldn’t everything be good? What’s all this pain I see?” And if God did that with His Son, why would it not be like that with us? It’s on the other side of death that the resurrection is. It’s on the other side that there is glory, that there is inheritance with Christ, the earth made perfect, and that is what we look to. We follow a Christ who embraced the shame of the cross and the pain of this world for the glory on the other side. We follow a Christ who leads that way for us.

The third temptation is the temptation of being the Messiah. So, the devil takes Him all the way up to the top of the temple. And I want you to imagine what would happen if Jesus did what the devil said. He’s standing on the top of the temple, and He jumps off, and then the angels catch Him, and He floats down slowly. And if they’re real angels, they’d be bright and glorious, right? You’re like, “Wow.” And then the people in the temple—what would they do? They would look up and they’d see Him, and all of a sudden Jesus is coming down with these angels who are bearing Him up, and He lands like a superhero, maybe in a three-point stance too, in the middle of the temple. Maybe that’s just Marvel movies.

What would happen to Jesus’s reputation if He did that in the middle of the temple? Do you think the Pharisees would be able to figure out how to crucify Him after He did that? Do you think the Sadducees would go and say, “Oh, that guy. He’s just a jerk”? No way. “He’s the Messiah, of course not.” It would be this perfect sign to say, “That’s the guy we’ve got to follow. Everyone should get behind Him.” And then what would happen to us again? No cross, no rejection, no path through the tomb, no salvation for you and for me.

The devil wanted Him to cut the corner of the cross and get to being the Messiah without following the Father’s will, to chase the approval of others instead of following the path of the Savior. And that’s the hard thing: to simply stick to the Father’s will so that you and I can be saved, to not chase after approval, to not chase the power and the glory and all of those things, but stick to the mission.

And sometimes it’s tempting for churches to do the same—to get rid of the depths of God’s Word, the call to follow Christ who gives up and suffers, and search for glory and look for power and look good to the rest of the world. But that doesn’t make the world more Christian. It makes the church more like the world.

Jesus said no to this perfect reputation, to being immediately recognized as the Messiah, because He knew He needed to save you, to go through the cross. And we too say no to the glory of the world, because the power of salvation is in the Word, in the promise of Jesus Christ, in turning away from glory and focusing on service and Christ—denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Him.

You see, the temptations that the devil gave to Jesus weren’t random or weird. The devil wanted Jesus to cut corners, to avoid the cross, to do the mission without the suffering, death, and the resurrection. And it’s a good thing Jesus didn’t, because without it, none of us would be saved in His name. Amen.

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Christ-Centered Worship: God’s Grace in Action | Ash Wednesday Sermon 2025

Joel 2:12-16

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
    and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
    and he relents over disaster.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
    and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
    for the Lord your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
    consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
    gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
    assemble the elders;
gather the children,
    even nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
    and the bride her chamber.

Amen, Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, tonight, we are gathered here this Ash Wednesday to think about the the season upcoming and the life of our church. And you may have noticed that the sermon titled today is titled our values, Christ centered worship. And today begins a series that talks about the values that we as a congregation have selected to guide our next several years as we think about and plan for what's in our future, and it's pretty great. I think that one of those is Christ centered worship, because it matches up really well for me to be able to preach on it on Ash Wednesday. That's really why you selected it to make my sermon writing easier, right? Well, perhaps not. We have a number of core values that we've selected, some that are active in our congregation, some that we hope to include in our congregation in the in the future. The active core values are the ones that we see at work in our congregation, and those are Christ centered worship, Christian catechesis, or that is like Bible study and learning about the scriptures and the sanctity of life. We also have three values that we want to include in our congregation called aspirational values. The first is outreach, the next one is evangelism, and the final one is human care. It's pretty nice that we have six Wednesdays in Lent, one for each of them, so we are going to look at each of these and see how they play out in the life of the church and what they might help us do as a congregation. And tonight, we're focusing on Christ centered worship as we gather here in this place to hear the word of Christ and to receive His grace. So what I thought I'd do tonight is offer up a short definition for Christ centered worship that can help guide the sermon today. And there are three parts. God gives His grace to his gathered people who respond with prayer and praise. God gives His grace to his gathered people who respond in prayer and praise. So let's start with each piece. The first one is God gives His grace. And it leads me to think of a question about the heart of theology of worship. Who is the one who is acting in worship? When a congregation gathers together, we come into a place and we gather to hear the word or sing or whatever it is, who is the one doing the action? Is it mostly the you, or is it mostly God? This is influenced by our English word worship, which comes from a different background than the Lutheran theology of worship, if you look it up, which, of course, I did, you get a definition the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity. So the English word actually assumes, when you do worship, it's you guys who are doing the work. It is a feeling of adoration or reverence for a deity. But that is not how Lutherans view worship. We believe that God is the one who is doing the work when we gather together in this place, and the point for us is to come here and receive from Him the gifts he wants to give. And Ash Wednesday is the perfect day to think about that, because it helps to remind us we really need a lot from him. You all came forward and received the cross on your forehead, and I said to you, from dust, you have come to dust. You shall return. It is a reminder that our sin all the way back from the garden. Garden of Eden leads to death, no matter whether you are 101 or like the newborn infants who received the cross tonight, it's a reminder that each of us needs to be rescued from death. Each of us needs the salvation of God, which is why St Paul tells us to be reconciled to Him. Why Joel says, return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and he relents over disaster. We believe that worship is here not because God needs something from us, but because we need something from him. God doesn't need our prayers. He is fine all on his own. God doesn't need our praises. He is not a vain Tiktok star. God doesn't need our offerings. He doesn't need our singing. He doesn't need anything from us at all. The beautiful thing about our God is that He wants to give us a gift. That's why He sent Jesus. That's why this whole season of Lent leads up to the cross, where he dies for us and rises for us to get eternal life, because God wants to give us a gift, the forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil and eternal salvation. And this is why our worship is designed around the ways that God promises to give us those gifts which we call the means of grace through the words proclaimed to you and the sacraments we receive through the forgiveness of sins in the absolution God has given us in this church the most amazing gifts he could give anyone and everything about our worship is designed to deliver them to you, because God is a giver of gifts. God wants you to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God wants you to receive His grace and be filled with His love, and that is what worship is all about. That is what we receive when we gather here in this place. God is the one at work. God is giving us His grace, which is why the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has called what we do the divine service, rather than calling it worship, because God is coming here to serve us. So God is the one who is active giving His grace, and he does it to his gathered people. This is sometimes a thing that we forget about the divine service, is that it's all about us coming together and how important that piece is. The overlooked piece of the divine service is that it's meant to be a communal experience, not because God likes a happy family or something like that, but because the people next to you need you. We need each other. When we gather together and receive Holy Communion, we're bound together in Christ's Body and Blood, in the unity that we have in Him, and we can express that unity simply by seeing each other in church. I don't know about you, but when I see you in church, it makes me happy, and I feel better about our congregation and about our life, and I get more excited to be here when you are here. And I bet the people you sit next to, if you're missing, they go. I wonder where that person is, what's been, what's been going on with them. I feel a little sadder without them, right? We underestimate how important it is to be encouraging one another through our attendance in the divine service. Because maybe you don't feel like you need to be here on Sunday or maybe a Wednesday night. You.

But sometimes your neighbor needs you to be here. Sometimes the person who normally sits next to you needs a smiling face to encourage you to sing and joy and love. Sometimes they need someone to talk to someone to listen to someone to maybe hold a baby in the back you This is one of the things that we do as we gather together, because we are not Christians all by ourselves. We're a congregation, a community, a family in God, bound together in Christ's body. We need each other, and when God brings us together in this place, he uses us to encourage each other. This is one of the great things about what we do here in worship. So part one is God is the one at work. God gives us His grace to his gathered people who respond with prayer and praise. So once God has gathered us together and given us this grace, we then respond with the prayer and praise that we have in our liturgy. And what I like about the way we do that is that we respond to God using his word. So God gives us these amazing gifts. He delivers the word written in the Holy Scriptures as we read them. We get to hear this sermon, and then what do we do? We sing about him and the stuff he's already done, and God gives us the language to form our prayer and praises. And then at a certain point, we're going to stand up and tell each other and God everything he's done for us in the Nicene Creed. And what we do is God speaks to us, and then we say back to him the amazing things he does. And over and over again in our worship, God gives us something, and we reply, rejoicing in the grace that He has given us, telling each other about the beauty of what God does and giving thanks for him, and then responding by asking him to do all the things that he has promised. This is the other half of worship. God comes down to us to give us His grace, and then he even fills our mouths with prayer and praise, with the words that he very much gives us. This is the magic of what happens when we come together in worship. Christ centered worship is what happens when God gives His grace to his gathered people who then respond in prayer and praise, and it's the joy and center of our life together in Jesus name Amen.

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The Transfiguration: Why This Glorious Moment Changes Everything

Luke 9:28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

And Peace be to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, at the age of 78 and after one and a half years of my seminary studies at Fort Wayne, I often find myself thinking about how God has shown his glory in my life, having been on Earth for many years and married to my dear wife, Kay for 56 years, raising her two children and experiencing the joys and trials of life, I have come to see God's hand in both the extraordinary and the ordinary, I confess, as I am getting older and after my head injury a few years ago, I struggle with my memory.

This is a reminder to me that God works through every resource he provides when our human frailties make it hard to remember, even to remember all the blessings He has given us. Have you ever wished you could see God's power at work in your life? Maybe you've prayed for a sign, a direction, perhaps a miracle, a booming voice from heaven, or a vision of God's glory. Wouldn't that be incredible? Throughout history, people have desired to see God's power shown in a visible way.

In today's Gospel reading, we consider one of these moments when Christ's divine nature, nature was revealed before the eyes of his three disciples. The transfiguration was not just a simple dramatic event, but a moment that pointed to Jesus, true mission, his suffering, death and resurrection. This is the bedrock of our faith, the assurance that Christ is indeed the fulfillment of God's promises. Jesus took Peter, James and John up on a mountain, as he often did, looking for solitude to pray. In this moment, the disciples may have thought that this was another time for prayer. However, Jesus appearance changed. His face shown. His clothing became dazzling white. I wonder if this was a gradual change or a sudden flash.

He then joined. It was joined by Moses and Elijah. I suppose the disciples were completely blown away. I know I would have been the presence of Moses and Elijah with Jesus is important. Moses represents the law given at Mount Sinai, and Elijah represents the prophets. Jesus is fulfillment of both the law and the prophets. Their discussion they had was about Jesus departure. In Greek, the word is Exodus, a term that connects to God's great act of deliverance in the Old Testament. Just as Moses led Israel out of Egypt during the Exodus, Jesus was preparing to accomplish the ultimate deliverance through his suffering, death and resurrection, His Exodus would lead his people out of sin and death into eternal life. This event was a confirmation that Jesus is the promised Savior.

But did the disciples understand what they were seeing? Peter, always eager to act, suggested building three shelters, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. His intention may have been sincere, but he did not understand what was going on. Peter's response connects to the Jewish festival of Tabernacles, a time when Israelites would dwell in temporary shelters to remember God's provision. Us in the past, Peter may have been thinking of the promised messianic kingdom, wanting to prolong the divine moment rather than accept Jesus impending suffering. But Jesus purpose was not to remain in divine radiance on the mountain. He was preparing to walk the path toward the cross, to suffer, to die and to His resurrection. Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah about this coming sacrifice for our sins. A cloud covered them, And God's voice spoke, saying, This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him.

Peter, James and John were overwhelmed and fearful when they witnessed Jesus glory and heard the voice of God, Matthew, chapter 17, verses six and seven, says, quote, When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified, but Jesus came and touched them. Get up, he said, Don't be afraid. The glory of Christ isn't just in this dazzling moment, it's in his mission, His suffering, His death and resurrection, and that's what changes everything for us. Just as at Jesus baptism, where God declared his son, the father affirms Jesus mission.

This commanded, command is clear. We are called not only merely to observe Jesus, but to listen to him, to heed His words, trust in his mission, and do what he says. For many of us, at first, Lutheran faith has been a lifelong journey. At my age, I can look back and see how the years have shaped my faith. There have been moments of sorrow, moments of worry, times of happiness, assurance and quite quiet perseverance for the very young among us, those who are being brought to church by faithful parents and grandparents, the knowledge received in worship Bible class and Sunday School is the foundation upon which they can build a life of faith.

What does listening to Jesus look like? That means actively engaging in His Word, praying daily, applying his teachings to our relationships, decisions and struggles. It means trusting Him, even when life feels ordinary and uneventful, we are not called to chase after dramatic experiences, but to listen to Christ daily in his word to trust in Him and to remain steadfast in faith, even in the ordinary days of life when the vision on the mountain ended, Moses and Elijah were gone, and only Jesus remain. The law and prophets have prepared the way, but now our focus is on Jesus. Only Jesus alone is a foundation of our faith, and we are sustained by His abiding presence. We do not require miraculous signs to confirm our faith. We have Jesus His Word and His promises through baptism, we have been brought into His family through Holy Communion. We are nourished by his body and blood, through His Word, we are strengthened to persist in faith. As we grow older, our faith deepens, not in excitement, but in trust.

Our hope is not temporary joys, but the promise. Sense of eternal life. The transfiguration gives us a glimpse of that future, the glory that awaits us in Christ. In summary, the transform configuration was not simply a moment of brilliance, what a confirmation of who Christ is and what he came to accomplish. It points us beyond this life to the promise of resurrection and eternal life. For those who have walked with Christ for decades, this is our anchor. As I look back on my 56 years of marriage decay, raising our children, I can see how Christ's faithfulness has been my rock, no matter our age, whether five or 95 the command remains the same. Listen to Jesus, trust Him, follow Him. Even when life is not dazzling, even when we are uncertain, the voice from the cloud still speaks. This is my son. Listen to Him. Jesus. Gospel message is one of love redemption and the call to follow him wholeheartedly. May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding guard our hearts and minds in Christ. Jesus, amen.

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Love Your Enemies: Four Stories of Jesus' Love In Action

Luke 6:27-38

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ amen. Today we are looking at one of the more famous pieces of Jesus' sermons, similar to the one recorded in Matthew, but this one in Luke where Jesus says some difficult things. He says, Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you, to the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also and from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic, either. He continues with difficult sayings about being generous and loving to everybody, but especially to the people who hate us. And I thought today, rather than going out and giving you examples of what you should do and talking about these things and explaining them, these words are relatively straightforward in their meaning, instead, what I would do is tell you four stories about God's love in action, where someone loved their enemies and what happened. So I've got four stories I'm going to tell you today. The first is the most important one, where Jesus himself loved his enemies. Then we're going to talk about Joseph and then Polycarp and finally, one from our era, Reverend Henry geragh key. So let's get started with the most important person who loved his enemies, our Savior, Jesus Christ, because Jesus really is someone who loved his enemies, because his whole life was about that he came down to love people who had turned away from him. That's all of us from the very beginning, Adam and Eve became enemies of God by their sin, and so Jesus left his throne to become one of us.

We think about the cross as the great sacrifice of Jesus, but can you imagine what it would be like to go from being solely spiritual and all powerful and like having no pain or discomfort in any way, to being a baby and your diaper gets full and you can't do anything about it. And your God. His whole life was like that, being one of us and not using his almighty power to make his life just a little bit easier. He didn't turn the stones into bread when he was hungry. He didn't feed his disciples by doing miracles. He only did that with the crowds. It doesn't record laying hands on himself when he got a cold. He only did that for others. Jesus came down not to be a judge, but to be a servant and to live amongst us and take on our pains and hurts and problems, and then at the end, he loved us by going to the cross, and what a way of love that is, so we could even forget about all the miracles and all the healings and the feeding of the 5000s and the rescuing the disciples from the storm and casting out demons, and all the stuff he did to Help people just the cross alone, what a way to love the entire world, to die on the cross for our sins, and to establish a way to be connected to our Father in heaven that we could gain Eternal life. What a way Jesus loved us when he gave his body and his blood to the disciples, who only moments later, would betray Him and abandon him and claim that they never even knew him, what a love he had for them. He.

And then he sat in front of the priests and the soldiers at the Sanhedrin who told him he was a blasphemer who lied about him, and he did nothing, no lightning from heaven, no fireballs. He or when he was before Pontius Pilate, and they accused him of being an armed rebel against the Caesar, and he refused to defend himself, all it would have taken was saying, No, I didn't do that. And Pilate would have let him off, but he didn't. He allowed them to beat him with him, put the crown of thorns on his head and nail Him to the cross. And when the people teased him, he told them, do you not know that I could call 12 legions of angels to come down, and yet he didn't. In fact, he prayed for them. He said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. And then there's a thief right next to him, someone who, moments earlier, had just made fun of him, and he the thief, turns him and says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he doesn't sneer. He says, today you will be with Me in Paradise. What great love, what great mercy, and he did it for you.

St Paul tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You were once his enemy. You were once about to be judged, but he came to die, to forgive your sins and mine. Christ is the great one who loved his enemies, who prayed for those who persecuted, who who gave up his whole life in a way that we could never pay him back. Isn't that an amazing kind of love that Christ gives to us when we were once enemies of him, set to be judged and cast into hell forever? He died for you to give you the love that you need, so that when he returns, you will be raised from the dead to live forever with him as a brother and sister, to inherit the great glory that He now has with His resurrected body. How amazing is Christ's love for his enemies and some of those Pharisees who judged him and and hated him and teased him and insulted him became Christians after Pentecost, brothers and sisters with us. How many times has that happened that God's love has gone out to enemies and made them one with us, just as it came to you and to me. Jesus is the one who loved his enemies and showed us the power of that love going to people who don't expect it.

Our Old Testament story, the story of Joseph, shows a foreshadowing of that love, too, the love that Joseph showed his enemies, his brothers. Is an amazing kind of love, too. Only the love of Christ can do something like that. You may know the Joseph story. You may not, but it's pretty cool. Joseph, one of 12 brothers, was the favorite of his father, and so the other brothers decided that they wanted to teach him a lesson, and they did it in a pretty dramatic way.

They beat him up, threw him down a well, and sold him as a slave. That makes a civil any sibling rivalry we know of now to seem like nothing. Then they took his bloody coat and brought it back to their father and said, Joseph is dead. If that weren't bad enough, Joseph ends up working in Egypt, where he is falsely accused. Rape, then he goes to jail, and he's in the deep, dark dungeons of Pharaoh. And I can imagine our prison system is not awesome, but you can imagine that Pharaoh's was much, much worse. There he is stuck in prison, and God grants him the gift of being able to interpret dreams, and that gift then pulls him out of prison and makes him second in command in Egypt.

I don't know about you, but as I was being trundled off to Egypt, I would be thinking about my brothers a lot. As I was sitting in chains in a wet dungeon, I would probably be thinking about my brothers a lot, and when they finally came in front of me, and I am wearing Pharaoh's regalia, in charge of all of Egypt, and they stepped in front of me, I might remember all of that thinking that I had done, but not Joseph.

How crazy is that? How crazy is it that when they step foot in front of him, he remembers that he is not the judge, only God is, and he sees that God has used him to preserve Abraham's family, to keep the promise he made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, that he would be with that family, so that during the seven years of famine, Jacob and his kids would be provided for, so that they too could Then leave for the promised land and take it over in the book of Exodus and what follows. And so Joseph forgives the brothers. He loves them with only the kind of love that can be there for people connected with Jesus, Christ and Joseph becomes a beautiful foreshadowing of the love that we receive in Christ, and he helps us to see the way that love functions when we live it up, when we forgive the people who hurt us, just as we have been forgiven in Christ.

Another great show of the love we can See in Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp was alive in the first and second century. It said that he was a disciple of the apostle John, and he was killed when he was 86 years old. Pretty old guy in the ancient world. We're not exactly sure what date that was. People suggest somewhere around 156 ad or 162 AD. The story goes that the people get all excited about the Christians. They hated us because we wouldn't worship the false gods of the Roman Empire, and what they really wanted us to do was to offer up a little bit of incense on the altar to the Caesar and say a simple phrase, Caesar is Lord, but we know that Jesus is Lord and the false gods, we cannot worship them. And so they called us atheists, and they would get all excited, because we did not worship the gods that protected the Roman Empire. And every once in a while, that would break out into a riot or a persecution, and that what was, what was going on with Polycarp.

And so the martyrdom of Polycarp records this it says the Mounted Police and horsemen set out armed with their usual weapons, as though chasing after an armed rebel and closing in on him. Late in the evening, they found him in bed in an upstairs room in a small cottage, and though he still could have escaped from there to another place, he refused, saying, may God's will be done. So when he heard that they had arrived, he went and talked with them, while those who were present marveled at his age and his. Composure and wondered why there was so much eagerness for the arrest of an old man like him. Then he immediately ordered that a table be set for them to eat and drink as much as they wished in that hour, and he asked them to grant him an hour or so that he might pray undisturbed. When they consented, he stood and prayed so full of the grace of God that for two hours he was unable to stop speaking. Those who heard Him were amazed, and many regretted that they had come after such a godly old man.

Now that's not what I would do if someone broke into my house with sword and shield and spear and said, Come with me, old man. Would you set up a table and be like, Oh, eat, eat, eat like an Eastern European grandmother, right? You haven't had enough food. There's more wine, if I can go get some if you want. What kind of crazy love is that for the soldiers that are going to drag him off to be killed in the arena? It's the kind of love that would make a soldier wonder what's going on here, the kind of love that would make a soldier think I shouldn't be doing this. This is a good man.

and as St Paul says, he burning coals on their head, and maybe even the kind of love that might plant a seed or so to wonder what makes this guy different from the ones who would fight, what kind of love is That that would make them marvel at this generosity. How many wondered at the grace of God seen in Polycarp when he loved his enemies? How many seeds were planted for the growth of the church through this man's love for his enemies?

The last story I want to tell is the story of Henry Gerecke. He's relatively famous. You may know him, but you may not also, because he's not really famous. Henry geragh was a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and a chaplain in the military during World War Two. He was chosen because, like many of our pastors, he could speak German, and so they sent him to Nuremberg during the trials. Now, those you've heard of where all the Nazi war criminals were gathered together to be tried, many of them executed. These men were bad, right? We all know how bad they are. They were responsible for the deaths of millions of people, civilians, massacred, holocausts committed the Can you imagine what it be like for Pastor Gerecke going into that prison, not only did he know the statistics and the war crimes and all the things that were in the News, as a military chaplain, he would have known individuals who were killed because of these, men, friends, compatriots, people from his home, church, nearly everybody knew someone who had died in World War Two. Can you imagine walking into that prison and wondering whether their evil would just sort of ooze off of them onto you?

If anyone deserved judgment, if anyone deserved to be outside of God's love, it was these men, if anyone could be called an enemy, it was these men. And the amazing thing is that despite his reservations and his disgust, he ministered to them faithfully, he showed them God's love. Because the amazing thing about God's love is that no one is outside of it. Every enemy can become a friend in Christ, even. Those guys, and through his work, several of them ended up taking communion, receiving absolution before they were executed. And Henry Gerecke will get up on the last day and see the Nazi war criminals rise with him as brothers in Christ. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you, to the one who strikes you on the cheek. Offer the other also and from the one who takes away your cloak. Do not withhold your tunic, either in Jesus name Amen. You. Amen.

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Are You #Blessed? Jesus Says Something Shocking!

Luke 6:17-26

And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, Amen, today we are looking at the Gospel of Luke, and it's a little different than the message that Jesus well, that we're used to from him. Each year, we read the Sermon on the Mount come from the Gospel of Matthew and we get the Beatitudes. We read that usually on All Saints Day, and this one's, well, it's a little different. Sometimes I wonder how many times Jesus preached the same sermons as he went from place to place? Did he have a stump speech that he used on a regular basis? So you've got the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and then in a different place, Luke records this one. Maybe even the disciples would hear him begin with the Blessed are you who are poor, and they go this one again. I've heard this about 50 times, but it gets a little different about halfway through, when he starts to say this, but woe to you who are rich, maybe at this moment they go, what? And I think it maybe does the same thing for us. Jesus gives assignment blessing to things that we don't usually associate with, blessing and woe to things we don't usually associate with. Woe. Blessing is for the the poor, the hungry, those who weep and the persecuted. Woe is for the rich, the full, those who laugh and people with good reputation, doesn't that seem a little backwards? I think this raises a question, according to Jesus, what is blessing? And I'd like to suggest a definition. Blessing is the gift of eternal life by grace, through faith, on account of Christ. And this changes the way we see blessing, different from the rest of the world. How does the world define blessing, it's actually pretty easy. All you do is go onto Instagram and search Hashtag blessed, and you will see lots of things. You'll see giant kitchens with Instagram influencers standing in the middle. You will see mansions, cars, family gathered all around you, laughing, enjoying themselves, vacations to cool parts of the world. That's what we call blessing, and we thank God for the blessings that He gives us when he gives us these things, but Jesus calls those woes Woe to you who are rich, Woe to you who are full, Woe to you who laugh now. And the crazy thing about this is that would apply to each one of us, because compared to every Israel citizen in Jesus's day, we're a whole lot richer, fuller and happier. Jesus is defining blessing, I think, based not on our external circumstances, but based on his presence and the gift of eternal life, and these woes and blessings are there to blow up the concepts of blessing in the hearers of Jesus's day, the same way they do it for us, because they would have heard this and said, Wait a second, Jesus, the Old Testament says the opposite. If you go to Deuteronomy and the blessings and the curses about the covenant, Moses tells them that if Israel follows the covenant, their vineyards will be full. They will have lots of children. They will have bread and money and everything will be great. And he tells them, if they break the covenant and worship other gods, their vineyards will be empty, their ovens empty, and everything will be terrible. And. Now that applied to the nation as a whole, but in Jesus's day, they applied it to individuals. So rich people were seen as having the blessing of God. Happy people were seen as having the blessing of God. But the poor, the sick, the infirm, they were under God's curse. Jesus is defining blessing differently. He wants us to see that it is about the gift of life that He gives us, and not about our external circumstance, and if you look at the Old Testament, you can see how that plays out in a number of different ways, especially when you look at the blessing that God gives for the persecuted, where he says, blessing are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man, rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven, for so their fathers did to the prophets. Let's take a look at some of those great prophets, how they had blessing of God despite terrible circumstances. Think about David, one of the greatest and most glorious kings of the Old Testament. His life was terrible. A lot of the time when Saul was King, David never knew whether he was on the good side or about to have a spear thrown at him. In fact, there were times when David had to run away and flee, hide out from Saul, who would chase him with armies. He would hide in caves in the wilderness. One time it was so bad, he pretended to be crazy and let snot and drool roll down all over his face so he could get away from Saul. That doesn't sound Hashtag blessed, does it? But he still had the promise of God. He still had a promise that God was with him. Let's think about the prophet Elijah. At one point, he was the last prophet of God in all of Israel, because the rest of them had been killed off by the king and queen. He was so upset, so depressed, that he went out into the wilderness all by himself and prayed for God to kill him. Hashtag, blessed. But he had God's grace. He had God's promise with him. God was with him the whole time, and it had nothing to do with what they were saying about him, what they were trying to do to him. God was with him. Let's think about Joseph, son of Jacob. His brothers came out and sold him as a slave. He went off to Egypt and served there, where he was falsely accused and thrown in jail. What a great life. Nobody would look at him and say he was blessed, but God was still with him. God protected him. He had the promise of life in the New Testament. We've got some of them too. Stephen, the very first martyr of the Christian church. He was blessed. He stood in front of the apostle Paul and was stoned to death, and he looked up into heaven and said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. All of these people suffered pain and hurt and loss and terrible things, and yet they are blessed. And what this reminds us is that our external circumstances, whatever is going on in your life, they are not symbols about your blessing. Whether you are rich or poor, healthy or sick, persecuted or a good reputation, these things do not define your blessings. We receive the gift of eternal life by grace, through faith, on account of Christ.

And the great thing is, is if you are going through something like those prophets, if you are in the midst of the poverty Jesus is talking about, or the woe, or the pain, or. Or the hurt, or whatever it is, God has given you a sign and seal that you are blessed. We call it Holy Communion. That's what our Book of Concord. It defines the sacraments as a signs and seals of a good conscience before God, and we gather here to receive them, because when you have them and you take them in, it is God saying, I choose you. No matter what's going on out there. I bless you. I love you. I save you. I And we're daily attacked by the temptations of the world to try to define our blessing as coming to us through something else. We are daily attacked when we say, my good fortune is the reason God is blessing me. That's how I know I'm good, or when terrible things happen, that's how I know I am blessed. But the only way to know that you are blessed is when God comes to you by His grace, and here you get an external sign, something put in your hand and put in your mouth, so you know you are blessed no matter what. But I think the best example of the blessing that you can have despite your circumstances is Jesus himself. He was hungry, out in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. He wept as he was being tortured. He was hated when people told all sorts of false things about him. At his trial, they accused him over and over and over again and lied about the evils they said he had done. He was whipped and beaten and tortured, and they nailed Him to a cross. And anybody who looked up at the guy nailed to a cross and naked, they wouldn't have said, Wow, that guy's blessed, but he was, he's the son of God, and God proved the blessing that he gives each and every one of us when he raised Jesus from the dead and he ascended into heaven to reign over All things. See, that's a blessing that we have in Christ, the external circumstances don't matter in Christ, what matters is the gift of grace given to you, and no pain or hurt or loss can ever take that away. In Jesus name amen.

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How To Be Confident Reaching Out: Confident Castors or Fearful Fishermen

Luke 5:1-11

On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, today's story is a familiar one. It's one of the ones that they often do in Sunday school, right? It's because it's so dramatic. You get the disciples and the boat and right after Jesus is done teaching, they do this miraculous catch of fish, and then we get that line that we all know, I will make you fishers of men, though that's from a different gospel. In this one, it says, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men, fortunately, not with a hook right now, Jesus does this with Peter, James and John, three of his first disciples later to be called apostles and the first leaders and pastors of the church. And every year, you will often get a sermon that is all about the church's job to go out and catch people. We go out as with the gospel, with the Word of God, to share the message of Jesus Christ, and to gather people into his church. And today, you're going to get one of those again, but this time, what I would like to do today is be encouraging and help you take the pressure off, because the job of catching fish or catching men in this story is not Peters, James or John, but Jesus's he's the one who does it. And I think many of us, when we talk about outreach or evangelism, we feel a lot of pressure. The pastor stands up in front of you and says, it is your job to go out and share the gospel and bring people into the church. They'll say things like, Go and make disciples of all nations, and you gotta do it. And I bet you feel some pressure because of that. You get worried about it. You think to yourself, I need to do this right, or else the people in my life will not follow Jesus. You think things like, what if I mess it up? What if I don't know the right words to say? What if my church just isn't the perfect church to invite them to, maybe they will. They will come in contact with me, and it will be so bad They'll never believe in Jesus again, and it will be all my fault. Ever felt that way? I bet you have, because sometimes preachers make it sound like it's all on you. So today I'd like to ask, what does it take to be a fearful fisherman or a confident caster like that fearful fisherman or confident caster. The fearful fishermen think that the work of evangelism and outreach is all on us. The Confident caster believes in the promise that Jesus does the work, that he's the one who grows the church and gathers people into the faith. And there are three areas where this is important. So we're going to get started with the first question, Who is the one we depend on to get this work done, who does the work for the fearful fishermen? We say it is all on me. In our story, we see Peter and James and John and their workers. They go out and they fish all night. They tell Jesus, and they catch nothing. These people are doing their business. This is not going out on a Sunday afternoon saying I'm going to go fish and cast my rod out. Haven't been fishing in months, but I'm going to just so go see what happens. Maybe bring a book, and if I catch a fish, that's nice. They've been doing this. This is their business. They know what they're doing, and they go out and they catch nothing. All of their hard work, all of their skill, all of their effort, doesn't mean anything. You. But as soon as Jesus says his word, the nets are filled, so much so that the boats start to sink, not just one, but two, and the reaction of the fearful fishermen is, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. See, Peter knows that he's in the presence of Christ, and what does he worry about? He worries about himself. He says, I'm not good enough to be around you. I'm not good enough for this leave me, or your judgment will come down on me. And I think this is sometimes what we think about when we are brought into into the world of evangelism, we think about ourselves. I'm not good enough. I might mess it up. I'm not like the pastor. He knows the whole Bible, right? He can quote every single verse no matter what you ask him a question. He's got it all down. He should be the one who's doing it. I can't do it. And then, you know what? The pastor thinks, I can't do it. I just don't know enough like I can't go into every situation, especially here, where there are all of these people who speak different languages and different backgrounds, and there's Muslims and all sorts of different things I've never dealt with before. I might get it wrong. I might not say it right. I might not have the right thing for the right moment that will get that person. We feel we fear failure. We become fearful fishermen, but we are confident casters when we realize that it's not about us. We're actually not the ones doing the work Jesus is in our story. The thing that changes the empty nets to the full nets is not Peter's skill or his ability. It's Christ's word. Peter says, Master, we have toiled all night and took nothing but at your word, I will let down the net. The thing that changes everything is the command that Jesus gives the message of His Word. Jesus speaks and the nets are filled. It has nothing to do with Peter, nothing to do with his skill, nothing to do with his holiness or his planning or his activity or saying the right words over the waters or anything like that. It is only what Jesus does His power and His Word, and even when Peter says, Get away. I'm not good enough for this. Jesus, you're the Lord and I'm a sinful man. Jesus kind of ignores that. He doesn't go to Peter and say, Peter, you're better than you think. Just be confident, go out there and do it right. He doesn't say, you're a great speaker, Peter. I see it in you. You know, all we need is a little training, three years of of Jesus school, and you're going to be an amazing evangelist. He says, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. That's it. Just don't be afraid. And why can Peter be a confident pastor, because he's not doing the work. The Word of Christ is what gathers guides and leads the church. It's the same thing that brings you here, the working of the Holy Spirit. Through the word of Christ, you don't come here because your pastor is perfect. You don't come here because your church is perfect. You come here because the word of God goes to you and fills you with the Holy Spirit, which means we can take a breath, right? What a relief. It's not about you. It's not your perfection or your skill. Jesus does the work the Holy Spirit works through His word to bring people to the Gospel. And when we speak God's word, no matter how skilled. Fully or not, the results are not on you. The results. That's Jesus' job, and he promises always to work through the power of His word, no matter what the second question. I'd like to look at is the question, how do we gather? First, we said, who does the work? Now we're going to talk about how, for the fearful fishermen, we focus on ourselves and on their church. We say programs are the things that bring people in. That is we have to be so shiny and perfect and wonderful that when there is a program, everybody's going to love it so much that they will want to come back the disciples were good at their jobs, Peter, James and John. They made their living catching fish, and yet, when Jesus went out to go preach, they had caught nothing all night long. That's when you catch fish, not in the middle of the day after Jesus has been teaching all day long, they'd done the human skill thing. They were at the top of their game, but with all their strategies, all their know how it failed and many churches we think, like to think that it is all on our program. If we don't have the most amazing whatever, people will not come. If our youth group isn't the most amazing youth group in the area, no way. If we don't have the best food at our soup and suppers, we do actually have great food, but if it's not the best, nobody's going to come. If our programming isn't just outstanding and amazing. Simply, everyone will look at us and be like, there is nothing good here, kind of what we think right? And what that means is we end up doing nothing. We sit and think, if I can't do it exactly right, maybe I won't try it all, and then we're afraid of experimenting, afraid of failing. But that's thinking about us as the ones who do the work. Confident casters realize that God's word is what changes hearts and not our program, our efforts and plans, everything that we do is all about getting the message of the gospel into the ears of anybody who needs to hear it. And as long as the word is at work, God is doing his thing as long as the gospel is being spoken to people who need to hear it, Christ is at work in their hearts. And then it's not on us, it's on him, because that was the difference. The word went out, and then the nets became full. They enclosed a large number of fish, so much, so much that two boats began to sink. Now we can't take this, this this miracle, and say every time we speak the word of God, someone's going to fall down on their knees and be like, Yay, Jesus. We know it's not that's not how it works. But we know it wasn't about the skill of the fishermen or the most amazing marketing plan that caught the fish. It was about Christ. So we don't need to compete with the rest of the world. We don't need to compete with the Super Bowl. We don't need to compete with the church down the street. What we're doing is sharing the Word of God, and as long as that is going out, it means God is working through us. But I think even more importantly, what it means is that we have the freedom to try something that might crash and burn, and if it does, that's okay. You. We don't have to worry about failure, because really, the one who succeeds is Christ. We can get out and just do stuff, because Christ, through His word, is the one who gathers people. Think about it, when Peter tossed the net into the water and caught the miraculous fish. Was it? Because the net was amazing? Did he add sparkles to it? Make the best net ever, like neon lights, all that stuff? Nope. It was the same net he threw in and caught nothing. Was it the boat that was extra special? I mean, did he glam it up? Maybe put some nice speakers on it, get the bass thumping? And that's what got the fish in. Of course, not what really got it going. It was at your word I will throw in the next. We trust in Christ and we know that His Word works. The third question I'd like to ask is, what do we call people to when we are fearful fishermen or confident casters? What are we asking them to do? Fearful fishermen again, focus on ourselves. We say, join our organization, because we have an amazing org chart, and our vision statement is out of this world. Hey, we might have a great org chart. We might have an interesting mission statement, which we are working on, but that's not what we call them to. When Jesus came to Peter, he didn't ask him to join a vision or a mission. He said, Follow me, and that's what they did. Fearful fishermen focus in on making sure that we are worth joining. And sometimes what that means is, when a church is growing, then all of a sudden, the congregation thinks we have the special sauce even better than that, secret sauce on the Big Mac, way better than that. And if everybody just did it like us, every church would grow everywhere and they think it's all about how they plan and work and do but even worse, even more difficult, is when the congregation that isn't growing, that's maybe struggling a little bit, and they think it must be because we're not good enough. We're just not doing the right program. We're just not doing the right thing, all we need to do is find that one simple trick that you see on every article, clickbait article on the internet, that one simple trick to switch our congregation into a good one, and then people will Join and a church that focuses on institutional growth, a church that focuses on our organization, is a church that's calling peoples to something other than the gospel, other than to Christ. Confident casters say not join us. They say, follow Jesus. This is what Jesus does with Peter. He says, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. And what do they do? They don't go off to school, they say. And when they had brought their boat to land, they left everything and followed him. We in the church call people follow Christ. That is always our goal, and the power of that means that it can be better than our organization, because there will always be flaws. The power of Christ means that it's more than our plans and our purpose and our mission statement and all of these things. It's focusing on following our Savior, because we're not building our empire. We're building the kingdom of Christ by His power. And our goal is not to grow the offering or to build up the number our attendance number, but to create faithful Christians through the word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit for the rest of their lives. I'm going to close out with a bit of a story we've been. Doing a number of new things that we've been trying in our congregation. And I think one of the ones that is most like what we're doing, what I've been talking about, is what Kathleen has been doing in the park lately. You go into your bulletin, you can see afternoon blast. What she's been doing is she's been going out to a couple of different parks and basically doing like a Sunday School in the park. It's pretty cool, I think. And she goes out there and anybody who's around, she invites them over to hear the Word of God. And what happens every time, sorry, we can't we're Muslims. She goes, Okay, that's fine. And she goes over and plays games. And they're like, ooh, games. Now, if we were worried about it, and we were, we were fearful fishermen, we might say, Oh, they're Muslims. They're not they're never going to listen. They're never going to we, we're going to go try something else. But because we trust the word of God, does it. They come on over, they play the games, and she reads them a story about Jesus, and then we let him do the work. We don't need to see immediate results. We don't need to see children falling on their knees and saying, now I'm a Christian. We trust the Holy Spirit, which means this amazing outreach that she is doing, and the volunteers who are working with her, we can just trust that the word is doing its thing, and we can keep at it. And as the numbers grow which they are in the afternoon blast, we can think the word of God is doing its work, because it's not about us, about our power. It's about Christ, and that is the difference between being fearful fishermen and confident casters. Fearful fishermen think it's all on us. Confident casters think Jesus does the way in His name. Amen.

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Dedicated and Consecrated for Ministry: Jeremiah 1

Jeremiah 1:4-

Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”

Good morning, Grace, mercy and peace. Be to you, from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Today we'll see God, God called Jeremiah For His divine purpose, to be a prophet. The closest thing we have today is the office of a pastor. I feel a whole lot like Jeremiah right now, and I think reflecting on Jeremiah's experience being called, and my own experience preparing to be a pastor can help us better understand the pastoral office. In Jeremiah, we read in verses four and five, we learn of God's call quote before I formed you in the womb, I knew you God intimately. Knew Jeremiah before he was born and before he called him to be a prophet. There's a big difference between my personal experience of aspiring to be a pastor, and Jeremiah's direct personal verbal call from God. God specifically chose him before he was even born, seeing him, setting him apart for his own purposes, Jeremiah received a direct and undeniable command from God. My journey toward pastoral ministry has been a process of discernment, prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit's guidance. In my journey, I have felt the weight of this discernment, experiencing times of doubt and hesitation, much like Jeremiah, the pastoral office is not about personal ability or achievement, But about God's faithfulness and equipping those he calls. The process of evaluating a pastoral call involves many years of theological education, training and formal approval, ensuring those who serve are equipped for the task. There is no quote call to the office of the ministry until the person received call documents from a congregation. Jeremiah is afraid and has excuses and says, quote, I do not know how to speak. I am only a youth. Jeremiah was worried that he was too young and could not speak well. I have had similar thoughts even today, as I stand here, I'm too old, whether it be better just to go back to retirement, whether I didn't have to study hours each day, only God will get me through this. God says, Don't be afraid, for I am with you. I can't learn and remember like I could 2520 years ago, my call of recall of Scripture and theology is low, slow. I can't speak or think like Pastor huenk or other pastors, they can quote any scripture, book, chapter and verse from the entire Bible, then immediately worked this into a discussion. Only God will get me through this. God says, Don't be afraid, for I am with you. I have struggled with God for years about becoming a pastor. For more than a year in 2020, and 2021, every three weeks I would want to apply to the seminary. Three weeks later I would say, No way. I can't do that. I don't want to. Wouldn't have been better, unless uncertain. Have got if God had said to me, Roland, you will be a pastor in September, I will have a theological interview. This is where three seminary professors question you and determine if you are qualified to become a pastor. Only God. Will get me through this. God says, Don't be afraid, for I am with you. It's reassuring thought knowing that I am not relying solely on my own strength. God is at work to carry us all through his what we need to do. There's comfort in knowing that we are part of something bigger, the church, and we don't carry everything alone. I keep telling myself, if anything is going to happen, God must be the one who does it. Think of Moses, who said to God, I'm too old, I can't talk. Don't make me do it. But who was with him? God. Moses, hesitation in Exodus three and four demonstrated human frailty and fear. He claimed he is, quote, slow of speech and tongue, and ask God to send someone else. God reassures Moses, saying, I will be with you. God's presence is a key to success in any calling. Martin Luther wrote a lengthy prayer for pastors to pray in the sacristy before giving the sermon. It starts off with acknowledging unworthiness to be a pastor. Quote, oh Lord God, Dear Father in heaven, I am indeed unworthy of the office and ministry in which I am to make known your glory and to nurture and serve this congregation. God gives assurance and helps Jeremiah. The Lord touched Jeremiah's mouth, giving him divine help and equipping him to do the work. God gives him the word, I would love it if God wrote my sermons. Jeremiah gets visions, not me. God may not give me visions. That doesn't mean he is silent or distant in my preaching, preparation, God's guidance often, often comes through prayer, meditation and study. It is not to be a dramatic and receiving direct vision, but the process of wrestling with scriptures, seeking wisdom and allowing the spirit to shape our understanding in its own form is its own form of divine inspiration. God works through His Word, whether there is a good sermon or a terrible sermon. In conclusion, there is a difference between Jeremiah's divine calling as a prophet and the personal discernment process aspiring to the pastoral ministry. Unlike Jeremiah, who received a direct and verbal call from God before birth, my journey has been marked by prayer, discernment, reliance on the Holy Spirit. The Pastoral office is not about personal achievement, but about God's faithfulness and equipping those he calls. Becoming a pastor involves extensive theological education, training and formal approval with no official call to the ministry until one receives call documents from a congregation, I talked about self doubt and struggle with feeling feeling unqualified for personal ministry, Pastor, pastoral ministry, comparing myself to Jeremiah and Moses, who felt inadequate also, I find reassurance in God's promises to be with me. I know that reliance on God is needed instead of personal strength. I recognize that success in ministry comes from God's work alone. God equipped Jeremiah with divine help by touching his mouth and giving him his word while I don't receive visions like Jeremiah, God is not silent or distant in my sermon preparation, i.

Instead, God's guidance to me comes through prayer, study and meditation. Ultimately, God works through His Word, regardless of whether a sermon is good or bad. Be encouraged. God does not call you and me to take on task and then leave us to struggle alone. He walks with us, strengthening us, and provides for us, just as God was with Jeremiah Moses and countless others who have gone before us, he has purpose for your life, whether in your family, workplace, church or community, God has uniquely placed you to be his hands and feet. Lean on Him, trust in His promises and meet and move forward in faith. Take time this week to reflect on whether God is calling you to step out in trust. Pray for his guidance, knowing that he who calls you is faithful and will equip you for every good work. First Thessalonians, five verse 24 says, He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it, just as God was with Jeremiah Moses and countless others who have gone before. He has a purpose for our lives. You and I need to lean on Him, trust in His promises and move forward in faith. May the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ, Jesus, amen.

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The Rejected Prophet: Jesus in Nazareth

Luke 4:16-30

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen. Today, Jesus is going home, at least where he was brought up. I think everyone who was raised in a hometown and has a home high school has the experience of going back and being weirded out. If you've gone back for a five year, 10 year, 40 year reunion, it seems weird, right? You see the same people, but they're all different. You see the same halls, but they're not what you remember, and everything just feels a little off, not because it's actually different, though many places, they build all the cool stuff after you leave, but you're different. You have a memory of the place that doesn't fit anymore. And so Jesus goes back to his hometown of Nazareth, as it says, where he had brought up, been brought up, and he does what is normal for him. He goes to the synagogue. And then he gets to stand up and read. He reads a passage from Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. What an amazing proclamation of grace. Jesus has come to proclaim good news to everyone who is oppressed, but you're going to can imagine what it would be like to see the son of a congregation stand up and say that this is just a normal reading, like reading from Nehemiah about the temple and the law being read like reading from First Corinthians, chapter 12. So Jesus rolls up the scroll, and he sits down, and we get something kind of interesting, Luke says, And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Now I want you to imagine what that would be like. A reader from the pews comes forward, gets up, does the reading, goes back into the congregation, and the pastor doesn't get up to speak. They just sort of turn and they look at him, and they go, we're waiting. I wonder how long the pause was. He waited as all the eyes were sitting there, and Jesus is maybe he is a looking at the ceiling, whittling his thumbs, and he looks up and goes, what were they waiting for? Well, it was normal for important guests to sometimes talk about the reading, so maybe that's what they were waiting for. But their reaction doesn't seem to be that way. It seems like they had heard about what Jesus was doing, miracles and power, though Luke doesn't actually record that right before this passage, he says, And Jesus returned, and the power of the Spirit to Galilee and a report About him went out through all the surrounding country, and he taught in their synagogues being glorified by all I think perhaps there is an assumption that the report includes not just his sermons, but mostly it's about all the healings he was doing. And we see the healings start after this, but there's an expectation. Hey, Jesus, our sick are lined up outside. Are you going to get started hospital? Jesus needs to get moving now.

But then he doesn't do any of that. He has a message, and he began to say to them today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, and that's it. Now we know how cool that is. This. Is the promise. Jesus says everything in the Old Testament is now coming true. And if they had understood that, How amazing would that be? The hope of Abraham, when he first got the vision from God, get up and go to the land I will show you, is now coming true. The hope of Isaac and Jacob Moses, the judges, Saul, Samuel, David Solomon, the prophet, Elijah and Elisha, everyone in the history of the Old Testament, Jesus is saying, Now is the time. How cool, but they couldn't know it because they didn't know what he would do next. They couldn't know because they didn't know that he would go to Jerusalem, be rejected, suffer and die and rise from the dead to pave the way through death to give us eternal life. This is the beginning of this journey, and so all they get is speech today. This Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing and they go, what now? Here comes the confusing part in the story, as it says, And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And the next sentence says, and they said, Is not this Joseph's son. And those two sentences seem contradictory, don't they like they're all going, Wow, these are amazing words. They're so gracious and awesome, and we love it. And then they go, and they said, You we saw him grow up. I helped change his diapers. Who does he think he is? So I decided to take a look at the words behind this, and you can choose to translate this in a couple of ways. One way is like this. There's a whole lot of options, but what you can translate it positively, whereas like and they marveled about and everybody said great things, but you can also translate it negatively, which would be something like this, and everybody was talking about him, and they were stunned at the words about grace he was speaking, which seems to make a little more sense, the word that they use for Marvel could also be were astonished by or were stunned by, and the word that they use for spoke well of him, could also be talked about him. And I think that's likely to be the case. Jesus says this, and then they did what a congregation sometimes does when there's news, they all started to whisper and they go, who does this guy think he is? Is not this Joseph's son. So the first time I went back to my home congregation to preach. It was an interesting experience. My pastor taught me as I was growing up, he had went into surgery, and so I was coming back for Christmas. I'm a seminary student who's never preached more than one sermon in a row without like, four weeks to write, and I get Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Sunday. It was awesome. So I come in, I'm filling in for the pastor for for holidays. I preach my sermon, and everybody loves it. Why? Because I was the I was the kid coming back, and they're just like, oh, we remember you. Isn't it so great? Let's see how you grew up. Of course, then I go out into the congregation, and they do the thing. They say, Oh, it's so great to see you preaching a sermon. I remember when you used to sit in the front row and then you would fall asleep in the middle of the sermon every single Sunday. Thanks for bringing that up. I love it, yeah, yeah. And then my Sunday School teacher came up and said, I remember when you used to run around my Sunday school class. Nobody could control you. You were such a fidgeter. Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up too. I really that's a great memory. And I think that the key is they loved it, because I was there just once, preaching, just a couple of times, and then I was going to leave. But could you imagine what it would be like if I had to give them a hard word of God's law, and all of a sudden they're saying you used to fall asleep every single Sunday, and now you're talking like that, I changed your diaper while your mom was playing the organ. And now you're talking like that. It's kind of what Jesus is going through, right? Who do you think you are? You've been doing miracles everywhere else, and now you're going to come here and not do anything. You're just going to say You're the Messiah. So what he says is, truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. This is the heart of the story. Luke is setting Jesus up to be the rejected prophet. That's the image of Jesus that is central to what the story that Luke tells is that this message of the gospel proclaiming the grace of God to everyone, to the lowly, the broken, the outsider, to the widow and Zarephath and Naaman, the foreigner. This is the message that will get him rejected, the people, they didn't care about what he had to say. They wanted miracles, just like he did at Capernaum, but the mission was not about those things. It was simple, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. He came to preach the gospel to them, just as He sends it to us that we are free from sin and death, that by His death and resurrection, none of these conditions matter anymore, because he will raise us from the dead on the last day to live forever with Him. This is the message that is rejected. We see Jesus, the prophet, in Luke 13, reminding us of this, where he says, Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. Jesus was not rejected for his miracles. He was rejected for his message. And when he goes to Jerusalem, he follows the path of the prophets who were before him, the many, many, many prophets who came to the capital city of the people of God and were rejected or killed by the people there. And he did it for us, so that we could be saved. And his father vindicated him as the great announcer of God's grace by raising Him from the dead for you and for me to continue to proclaim this message to the whole world, the grace of God is here. It now is the time of the year of the Lord's favor for you because of Jesus, and I think that is the rejection that still continues today. Because when people look at the church, what they want is not God's grace or His mercy, resurrection from the dead, forgiveness of sins. They want results. They want things that matter to them. They want power, might action good things. They want us to be what they expect, rather

than what Jesus delivered, that the primary purpose of His teaching was to announce the kingdom of God is here, resurrection is coming, and that he leads us into eternal life. And that should be enough, shouldn't it? Because. Wow, that's cool, but people want more. People think the church should primarily be a place of charity, that our job should mostly be feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, and doing all of those sorts of things. And those are good things, but they're nothing. When the church abandons the announcement of God's grace for the forgiveness of sins, that's a real job, isn't it, proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ to the world. There's lots of people who could do good things, but we have the gospel that saves other people say the church should be a place of miracles, that when God's people gather together, we should receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues and and our bodies should be healed. And God has prepared an amazing gift of prosperity for you. And it's just like the people of Nazareth who say the church did miracles in Jesus's day, it should be doing miracles. Now we have the gospel, the greatest miracle of all. How could you not want that? How could you turn from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to focus on speaking in tongues? Who cares healing the body, just to die, who cares not when we have the resurrection? People look at the church, and they see us as a political entity. The church's job is to create a moral people so that we can have a moral nation and succeed in our politics. My Church has never been about that. We're not here to push some sort of conservative agenda for our political policy. We're about the resurrection. We're about Jesus, Christ His death on the cross for us. We're here to take sinners and give them eternal life. But the world doesn't want a prophet. They don't want the announcement of God's grace. They want results that matter to them, but we know better. We do not want to reject the most precious gift that the church has, the announcement of God's grace, this amazing gift of salvation that Jesus has given us when he says the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now is that time? Now is the time for that message, and that is who we are. We follow the rejected prophet who announces God's grace to all of us in His Name, Amen.

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The Wedding at Cana: The New Age Is Here!

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. The story that we're looking at today is the story of the wedding at Cana. It is, I think, one of the strangest stories in all of the gospel lessons. If you look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and the rest of John, it doesn't seem to fit the pattern of the kinds of stories that we see with Jesus. There is no one to heal. Nearly every other miracle is about something, saving somebody, maybe there's casting out a demon, healing someone who is sick, even when Jesus walks on water or calms the storm or feeds 5000 people, he's solving this huge problem. Nothing like that. It's mostly saving somebody from a little embarrassment of having run out of wine. We're also at a wedding, which is a little weird. Jesus gets invited to a lot of dinners, and those dinners, especially in the Gospel of Luke always involve a Pharisee or somebody else that Jesus is teaching talking to. And that happens a lot, but we don't get anything like that. There's no dialog about what Jesus is saying. He's not teaching them about the kingdom of God. There are no parables. There is no confrontation. We actually don't get to see anything about the wedding at all. It's just the setting for this thing. And then, of course, we get turning water into wine, which drives the teetotalers crazy. Jesus takes water and makes it into wine. That's a little weird. But there's also the interaction between his mother, and we look at that and we she's like, Hey, Jesus, there's no wine. And then walks away. And he makes the obvious question, like, what am I supposed to do about that? I'm just a guest here. She goes to the servants and says, yeah, just whatever. He says, do it. It's like there's this unspoken thing. She knows what's going to happen, and she just sort of like, says, Hey, Jesus, you can take care of this, right? All of it is really not well explained. And then it ends with the sign where it says this the first of his signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested His glory, and his disciples believed in him. But even the sign, the miracle the water turned into wine, is only known to the disciples and the servants. Nobody else knows the master of the feast. He gets the wine, and he's like, Why have you been saving this until now? This is really tasty, and that's all he's got. What a weird story the thing that does make sense is the idea that this is a sign, and I think we can all see power of Christ at work changing water to wine. I've had a guest show up unexpectedly, and wish that I could do that, but there's more going on here. There's a reason John decided to show this story about a wedding and wine and not tell a story of a miracle or a healing or something like all of the other gospels as the first miracle, the one that shows the disciples who Jesus is. The symbols of weddings and a miraculous supply of wine are commonly used throughout the Old and New Testament. If you look at especially in the book of Isaiah, there are a couple of places where we see the miraculous sign of wine being given as a symbol of the new age of the Messiah God's power. And rain have come, and one of them comes from my favorite funeral verse in Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 25 where it reads, on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wine, of rich food, full of marrow, of aged wine, well refined. And He will swallow up on this mountain, the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, the provision of God's Almighty and Eternal Kingdom that Isaiah promises looking forward to the resurrection of the dead includes a festival and a feast filled with not just regular wine, but the best wine, so good that he has to say it twice, well aged wine and then again of aged wine. Well refined, I'm in that sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? Isaiah 55 has something similar, where it says, Come everyone who thirsts come to the waters and he who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk Without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourself in rich food. Again, this amazing provision of food and wine and goodness in the ultimate kingdom of God. Amos talks about this as well. In Amos chapter nine, when he says, I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. This idea of vineyards and wine and the provision of God was part of his entire gift of the promised land that they could go there and have their fruit and be filled and satisfied. And now the amazing gift of wine comes through a miracle out of the purification jars of the Jewish people comes this overflowing gift of wine, so amazing and so great that nobody knows where it comes from. The new age of the Messiah is here the gift of God, this power of God in the New Kingdom that everybody was looking forward to in the Old Testament, John announces it is here, through Jesus Christ, there's an overflowing of The gift of grace, six stone jars filled with 20 or 30 gallons of wine. That's a party, and the party extends to us with the overflowing grace of God. But John isn't finished. The idea of a wedding is symbolic, too, throughout the Old Testament and in many places, God sees the relationship between Israel and him as a wedding, as a wife and a husband. Prophets were sometimes told to marry prostitutes as a symbol of the challenged relationship between Israel and God. And we see in Isaiah, Our reading today, God promising that no longer will she be divorced and desolate, as it says, You shall no more be termed forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed desolate, for you shall be called My delight is in her, and your land married. For the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your god rejoice in you. And in this wedding, we see the beginning of the celebration. Of the marriage feast of Christ coming to his people.

John knows this because he writes about it in Revelation as well. He points to the day when their marriage feast of the Lamb is the thing that we celebrate. Revelation 19 hallelujah for the Lord, our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give Him the glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted to to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure and in Revelation, chapter 21 and I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And a few verses later, God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Our gospel reading is announcing the beginning of the New Age. The bridegroom has come to the bride. Christ has come to establish His church, and there is a celebration, and the grace of God is coming to make this bride no longer stained by sin, no longer desolate and alone, but the blood of Christ will wash her clean and give her a beautiful garment. This messianic age is being announced by John, but the grace of God is here. The kingdom of God has come in Christ, and that is the message for us today. The Messianic age is here. Christ established it when he walked on this earth, and the overflowing grace of God is here for you, just as the wine poured out without end, just as the groom came to the wedding, Christ comes to us with his overflowing grace and His Peace, and we can see it in no better place than the gift, where Christ gives us a special gift in wine upon the altar when we eat his body and drink his blood. The wine of the wedding feast is given to us so that Christ can be not just in heaven, but in us, among us, inside us, to cleanse us and give us eternal life. This is the marriage feast of the Lamb, as he comes to us to give us his overflowing and overpowering grace. And John tells us this story, to do the same thing that he did for the disciples, to believe it, to say, Jesus has come. The New Age is here. The Messiah has established His kingdom. Believe in Him, and it was just for the disciples, not for the crowd who came to celebrate, who got the wine at the feast. The disciples and the servants were the ones who knew, and it is we who believe too. John has announced it for all of us who have heard the word of God and know about his grace, this age is here. Our Savior has come and has established a new kingdom on this earth to fill us with His grace forevermore, in Jesus. Name, Amen. Amen.

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Baptism of Jesus: News That Matters

Luke 3:15-22

As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Mercy and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen.

I don't know about you, but I feel like I am constantly overwhelmed with news. Do you ever feel that way? There is always news coming in, especially since my hip seems to be connected to all the news of the world through my phone. Of course,

it seems like there is just a stream of things that well, actually, most of the time they don't really matter.

Lots of the news I get doesn't matter.

Many of the things that I see are variations of this headline. Can you believe what blank politician says about blank I am so outraged.

I don't know what I can do with that. Think it's mostly designed to get me mad at nothing

until I get mad about that thing, a different thing tomorrow.

Just recently, we heard that the Assad regime fell in Syria. And you know how I reacted to that one? I

didn't know they were still fighting.

It's news that really doesn't matter to me.

There's all sorts of news like that, right? You hear about it, you might think, Oh, this is interesting. You might think, Oh, this is shocking. You might even think it's kind of like political, politics or a little bit like football. Find out whether your team is winning, how many points they have scored, but it doesn't actually affect you.

Doesn't change your life. Much at all.

There is news that matters, though. Right now we have a lot of news in California that matters to a lot of people,

even for us, the fires that are going on in LA, I bet they're affecting people you know and love.

They're certainly affecting our sister churches that are being in the path of these terrible fires, or we have members of those sister churches that have lost homes. If you're interested in updates, the Pacific Southwest District sends out an email regularly that lets everybody know who is affected and how

that is the kind of news that matters to us, leads us to prayer, leads us to care for the people that we love.

But even for that kind of news, for the people who live far away, if you live in Maine,

mostly it's just a thing on the news that you go, I should pray for those people.

Other news matters a great deal.

When you get news that I've been hired for a new job that matters a lot.

That means that you are going to do things a little differently. The next day, you'll show up at a different time and a different place,

different duties.

Here's another big one that matters when the wife walks up to her husband and says

it says, pregnant,

that is news that matters, your life is going to change, and you will change with it.

There is news that matters, a news that does not. News that matters is news that we have to react to that will change our lives and make things different.

Our gospel reading today is all about news that matters, news that matters to all of creation.

John the Baptist went to the Jordan River and proclaimed that there was news the Messiah was coming.

He says, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie, He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

John's message was simple, the Messiah is on his way, the Mighty One, the powerful one, he comes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Big news for the people, but

it wasn't just that.

He said His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

There is a sorting going on.

The Messiah comes with a winnowing fork. Do you know what a winnowing fork is? It's like a it's like a rake. It's a big fork. And what you do is you take the wheat and you throw it up into the air, and the wheat berries are heavier than the chaff, and so you toss it up into the air, and the chaff floats off in the wind, and the good stuff stays it falls right down.

Winnowing is sorting between the stuff you don't eat and the stuff you do,

between the good

and the bad. Now, the Messiah didn't come to sort things that you could grind into flour to bake bread and things that you couldn't.

He came to sort and judge the earth between the people who are gathered into eternal life and those who go into unquenchable fire.

He came

to bring judgment and salvation. What

I think is really funny after that message is what Luke says about him. It says so with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people.

That's not what I would say if I looked at that thing that he just said, right, His winnowing fork is in His hand, and he will clear His threshing floor to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff, he will burn with unquenchable fire. Good news.

Fact you take that, he says something very similar as well.

He says the ax is already at the root of the tree, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Good news,

it really is, though, we get stuck on the burning we get stuck on the cutting down.

But if you're the wheat, this is great.

God is going to gather his people all together into eternal life, and

he's going to do it through Jesus.

Now the people of John's day, when they saw Jesus get baptized and there was the voice, they didn't know what it would mean. They didn't know that Jesus would come and die. They didn't know he would be placed in a tomb and rise from the dead. They had no idea that the salvation of God would be so crazy and amazing,

but they did know

that it required a change,

that the news of the Messiah should lead them to repentance, and

that's why They all came out to the Jordan River, the news of Jesus mattered,

and so they repented, and they asked John, what should we do?

He said,

The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.

When tax collectors came to him, he told them what they should do, don't collect any more than you are required to.

When soldiers came, he said, Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay.

Now these don't seem all that radical to us, because we're kind of used to that idea, but they were radical for Jesus's day,

tax collectors. That's just what you did. You took more money than you were supposed to. That's how you got rich. That's why you became a tax collector

Roman soldiers.

They were there because they were the conquerors. They were the mighty ones. They were in charge over those lowly, conquered peoples. Why in the world would you treat them nicely? You were the strong ones. There

was no reason to be good, to treat them fair,

but the news of Jesus Christ mattered.

It changed how they were supposed to live their lives, from the rules of the world to the rules of Christ's kingdom,

following a Savior who would die for them.

We're in a bit of a different position.

We look back at the news of this Messiah, the Son of God, who is baptized in the Jordan River, and we know the whole story in.

We know that Jesus was the one that the father said, This is my beloved son with him, I am well pleased.

We know everything that he did,

that he would live and die and rise to give us eternal life. And we know all of this and have been living together in the Christian faith, many of us for a very long time. In fact, some of you sitting in the pews today have been Christians longer than I've been alive, and have heard this story and heard the message of John the baptism more times than I have.

And you know you are here because you believe in the Savior and want to live this life,

and this winnowing fork that Jesus has is to bring us eternal life,

to sort the world from those who will be destroyed and those who will be who will live forever with Christ,

we trust that he has come to save us.

What that also does

is it drives us to be different from the world,

just as the soldiers who came to the river to repent, the same with the tax collectors, the same with everybody. The news of Jesus, the Messiah, constantly drives us to be different from the world,

not to follow their rules. But the gospel of Jesus Christ,

we who live in Him, we have to ask, What shall we do?

And Jesus provides us. He says to us, we must be different. That is the whole point of Romans chapter six, when it says, We were buried, therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

You see, we are no longer enslaved to sin.

We are no longer like the world. Christ has come and died for us and chose us and made us different,

which means

we must live that way.

We must act as those who repent and turn from the ways of the world.

And that's the hard part. We

are kind. Constantly learning,

constantly growing, constantly striving to follow the image of Christ, our Savior, which means we're sometimes going to learn new things or be challenged. We're sometimes going to forget the things that we have learned

and have to repent again, and

that is one of the hardest things of the Christian life

to always be saying, What must I do? What can I learn? How can I grow? How do I turn from the voices of the world that want me to follow them,

because we have news that matters. Messiah has come. He is here. He has saved us, and he's coming back again. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and

we want to be with the wheat. We

want to follow Him,

REPENT and be with our Savior,

he's coming. It's news that matters

in Jesus. Name Amen.

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Power and God's Kingdom: Sermon for Epiphany, 2025

Matthew 2:1-12

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

“‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. Tonight, we're looking at the story of the wise men, the story of these Magi, sometimes called kings, whatever they are traveling all the way to Israel to worship the newborn king. They saw a star, and they want to figure out where he is. Sometimes we assume they know more than they do, because they go to the wrong place first. They must not have updated their GPS like back when it would turn people into the river, and they would do whatever the phone told them to do. They end up in Jerusalem. They end up seeing Herod, the king, and this story of these Magi and who they visit helps us to see a contrast between two important kings who are in the story there is one King Herod and one King Jesus, and they show us important things about the Kingdom of God. They show us the different approaches to power and how the Christian church is supposed to work. Herod, obviously, is the bad example of the power at work in the world, and Jesus the Good example. And what I'd like to do today is contrast the two, the way Herod, the king, tries to affect the world, how he lives in it, compared to the way Jesus, the King, comes into the world and affects it. So let's start by taking a look at Herod. There are several Herods in the Bible. This one is Herod, the Great, the father of the other Herods that you might run into. Herod the Great was the king of all of the region propped up by the Romans. He had been chosen by multiple emperors and people to remain as King there, showing that he was quite the political guy. He knew what he was doing. And so when the wise men show up, they come to town looking for where the king is. They say, the we saw the star. We know there's a king born. And so where do they go? Well, where would you go if you are going to say, ha, ha. The president's wife is about to have a child. Where should I go? You would say, Washington, DC. Right. So the wise men, they go to Jerusalem and they come up to Herod's palace. They get there, they're long trained. There are many people who are with them, this caravan from the east, and they go to where Herod is. You might not know much about Herod, but he was a guy who liked showy things. He went about doing all sorts of architecture projects that are still famous today. The one that was most recognizable in Jerusalem was he actually built the temple that was there, remodeled it and made it so much more glorious. He knew what it looked like and how to act as if you had power, and that's what Jerusalem was for the king of the region. Jerusalem was the place where you showed off your power. He had a palace, he had soldiers, he had priests at his back. And call when the when the wise men said, Where is the king? Herod summoned all the people who were nearby, scribes and priests, to find out where it would be, because he didn't know. We do the same thing today. The White House is the symbol of the president, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, lives on Downing Street. Buckingham Palace is still really impressive, and we use these things to project the importance and power of. The people who live there, they're not there just to be nice and cool, but to say this person is really, really important. You should do what they tell you, Herod is projecting this kind of power and majesty into the world.

He didn't just project his power through image. He used it a great deal. Herod was famous for killing his rivals, including members of his family. He's the kind of guy you wanted as a dad, right? Nearly every one of his rivals throughout his career was murdered somehow, including his beloved wife and a couple of their children. But even more famous is what he does after this story in the Gospel of Matthew, when the wise men do not come back and Herod figures it out. He sends his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill off every male child under two years old. That is how the world projects power. That is how they influence things when there is a threat to eliminate it, when there is a problem, you point a spear at it. And you might think this guy sounds like a terrible kind of villain. He killed his family. He killed all those poor little children in Bethlehem. He was really normal for the ancient world. This is what you did to stay in power. In those days, you killed, you murdered. And power is still expressed in similar ways, maybe not with spear and sword, but with law. The world still tries to force people to do what they want by power and might. We still have criminals locked up. We still fight wars. The only difference between now and then is we have a little bit more technology so we can do it with a joystick from across the world.

This kind of power is typical, but you have to ask, what is the lasting impact of King Herod? Herod was mighty and powerful, the king of a small nation. He had all of these people. He would do whatever they wanted. He could kill and eliminate. And you know what he did? He died, and then he was gone. And his mighty kingdom, this thing that he built up that he could pass on to his children disappeared as soon as he was gone. Sure, Herod built a number of interesting architectural things. There are cities that still exist because of him. But you know what? We talk about him more now because of Jesus than we do because of what he has done. Herod would actually just be a footnote in obscure histories about the Roman Empire if it weren't that he was ruling in a town just a little bit farther away from where Jesus was born. And so many groups and organizations and governments and empires have faded just like that, haven't they, these places that thought that they could build and establish something that was eternal by the power of a spear, a sword or a gun, they have all faded. Where is the great Persian Empire? It's gone. Where is Rome gone? Where are all the mighty empires of the world? They've crumbled and turned to dust. Even today, states are breaking apart and splitting and getting smaller and smaller. Everything built on this kind of power disappears. Herod is a perfect example of the way of violence and might and power that is obvious and confrontation.

Jesus is different. Herod was in this. A palace in the city of Jerusalem. But where was Jesus in Bethlehem? Listen to what the prophecy says, and you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Bethlehem was not a great town, not a mighty place. It was a small city outside of Jerusalem. The only thing that made it special in the history of Israel that was well, a king was born there. At one time, King David, Jesus was not in a in a palace, but a house, a house that was likely at one time so full they didn't get to stay in the guest room, but had to sleep with the animals next to the manger. They spent up to two years there as a poor and lowly family. Real power doesn't need a palace. It doesn't need all the trappings. Real power came from a child being the Son of God, a savior born into the world who is going to be the true king over all of creation, not just of this little kingdom where Herod was, but over all the earth.

Jesus expressed his power differently too. He didn't need sword or spear, but just his word. He healed the sick, he cast out demons. He calmed the storm by saying, Peace be still. Isn't that power isn't that might. Can you imagine how cool that would be. But the amazing thing about what Jesus does you think about all of his miracles, all of the works that he did, all of the great and mighty deeds, not a single one made his own life easier. He did it because sick people needed healing. He called them the storm because the disciples were terrified. He cast out demons because they were oppressing the people and he didn't conquer anyone. He didn't destroy the cross as he was being dragged to it. He didn't send the angels that he could have called upon to scatter all his accusers. He used his power for other people. And you might think, Well, okay, maybe he used his power to get himself famous, right? If I were to run around casting out demons and healing the sick and walking on water, people would be like, well, that dude's cool. But Jesus even told them not to talk about the people he healed, especially in the Gospel of Mark, he says, don't tell anyone, because his miracles weren't for his fame or his ease or to create a mighty army, but because he has power and love to serve. But the most amazing way that Jesus expressed his power is the most radical. He died on a cross and rose from the dead. How crazy is that to express the power of God by being nailed to an instrument of torture. Jesus, the Messiah, king of the world, died a rebellious slave's death, and it's how he saved all of humanity that was the most scandalous thing about Jesus, when they were spreading the news to the pagan world, the king died like a lowly slave. Gave up his life instead of conquering like Herod gave his up his life for you, instead of destroying you, like Herod might have, and it's still scandalous today, when the church talks about sacrifice, that the power of God would not show itself in amazing miracles and. In wisdom or politics or power or great PR machines, the symbol of the church is still a dead man on a cross and the word of God that tells his story, it's still the spoken word of God that shares the message about the death and resurrection of Jesus, Christ for the forgiveness sins and your own resurrection, we still use only the power of the Word of God.

And it's amazing what Christ has done, isn't it? Herod didn't even last a couple of years past Jesus's birth, His kingdom fell apart. The Roman Empire disappeared. But who is still here? The Kingdom of Christ. They tried to kill us. They tried to get rid of us all the ways that they knew how they put us in the arena. They chopped up our heads, they nailed us to crosses, they they burned us and boiled us with oil. They did all sorts of awful things. And you know what it did? It made us stronger, because the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't come with spears or swords or guns, but by the death and resurrection of the Savior who guides us through death into eternal life. See the power at work in Christ. This is what lasts. It changes hearts. It moves people. It makes us one with God, and leads us into eternity. All those other things disappear. This child, Jesus, where the wise men come to visit him. He shows us the true power of God, not the way the world. Does it like Herod by force and prestige. Jesus does it in humility, by the power of His Word, through His death and resurrection in His name. Amen. Please stand and.

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Chosen, Redeemed, and Sealed: Sermon for January 5th, 2025

Ephesians 1:3-14

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, Amen, today, we think about the incredible truth of being first chosen, second, redeemed and third, sealed in Christ, these three words sum up God's eternal plan of salvation and reveal the wonderful love For us all. They assure us of our identity and inheritance in Christ and calls us to live lives of praise to God. Let us think about the three truths, these truths, as we look at what it means to be chosen, redeemed and sealed by God, we will study each of these words and see what it means to us. Let us first begin with the word and concept of being chosen by God, to be chosen means to be selected or set apart for a specific purpose in biblical times, this meant to be chosen to receive an inheritance, which meant for the person to be included in a family, so they had an inheritance of the family. Promises Paul writes in Ephesians one verse four, he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. This choice was not random but deliberate, rooted in God's love and purpose. Again, he chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in his sight, Paul tells us in verse five, in love, He predestined us for adoption to himself as Sons through Jesus Christ, in Roman culture, adoption was a legal act that granted the adopted individual all the rights and privileges of a natural born child, this included inherent inheritance into the family. Adoption by God makes us part of God's eternal family and recipients of his promises. This inheritance is imperishable, unfading and secure, as it says in First Peter one, verse four, being chosen transforms our lives in three ways. First, we are now part of God's family, his sons and daughters. Second, we are part of God's eternal plan. And third, this promise provides us with identity and purpose, being chosen leads to a promised inheritance of eternal life with God. This adoption unites all believers and brothers and sisters in Christ, breaking down barriers of race, gender and social status, as it says in Galatians three verse 28 our promised inheritance encourages us in our trials, reminding us of the eternal glory that awaits us. The prodigal son story in Luke 15 verses 11 through 32 is a good illustration of this truth. The Father, representing God, reaffirms God's grace and a son's identity as a member of the family Upon his return. In verse 24 of Luke 15, it says, quote, this son of mine was dead and is alive again. End, quote, God chooses us to belong to his family, not because of our worth, our worthiness, but because of his love for us. Now, let us look at the concept to be redeemed. To redeem is to buy back or deliver from bondage, often at great cost. Trust. What does it mean to be redeemed by God? In Christ, redemption is the act of freeing us from the power and penalty of sin. Paul proclaims in Ephesians, one, verse seven. Quote in Him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. End, quote, redemption came at the cost of Christ's own life. His blood was shed to pay for the price of our sins, liberating us from sins grip and restoring our relationship with God. Redemption is the act of Christ shedding His blood to pay the price for our sins. What is life like when we are redeemed, we have freedom and forgiveness. Our past sins are forgiven. We are no longer defined by them. We are free to live as a child of God. We have reconciliation and peace. Redemption restores our broken relationship with God, bringing us peace and confidence in His grace, the prodigal son came. Prodigal Son redemption came at a cost to the Father. Remember that he had great wealth, and he divided his wealth between the two sons, one to the prodigal son who left, to the other to the son who stayed. So he was left with no money or wealth. The Father welcomed the prodigal son back, restoring his position and dignity in the family with the robe, the ring and the sandals, like Christ sacrificed for our sins, He redeemed us with His blood and restored our relationship with God to be sealed is a mark of or guarantee of something assuring its authenticity and security. What does it mean to be sealed by God? In Christ, the Holy Spirit seals us as God's own. Paul declares in verse 13, quote, you were sealed with a promised Holy Spirit, who is a guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. The Holy Spirit is God's mark of ownership and his promise to protect and preserve us until we take possession of it on the day of redemption, the last day, the impact and application their lives in our lives of being sealed are One. The Holy Spirit assures us of our salvation and sustains our faith. Two, we are protected and preserved by God until the day of redemption. And three, we live confidently knowing that we are eternally secure in Christ in Second Corinthians, chapter one, verses 21 to 22 it says, quote, he anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. The Holy Spirit sustains our faith and assures us of our salvation. You are protected and preserved by God until the day you inherit eternal life. Knowing you are sealed by the Spirit gives you courage and joy to live confidently in Christ. The ring given to the prodigal son signifies ownership, security and a sealed restoration, restored inheritance. It is a seal of his position in the family. The Holy Spirit is our seal, guaranteeing our eternal inheritance in Christ.

Include, in conclusion, in Christ, we are one chosen, set apart to be, to be beloved child of God. Two redeemed and. Freed from our sin through Christ's sacrifice, and three sealed marked by the Holy Spirit as God's own, secure in our salvation. These three truths form the foundation of our identity and our inheritance to eternal life with Jesus. As a result of this, we have a desire to respond by one, living in assurance of our identity in Christ. Two, praising God for his incredible grace, and three, sharing his hope and truth with others, inviting them to experience the joy of being chosen, redeemed and sealed in Christ, may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ, Jesus, amen.

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Depart in Peace: Sermon for December 29th, 2024

Luke 2:22-32

And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,

according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation

that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

and for glory to your people Israel.”

And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

Amen, Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, there is a great deal going on in our gospel reading today, all sorts of cool things that I wish I could talk about. All of them. We start out with a section about Mary and Joseph fulfilling the law of Moses. They offer up this sacrifice that reveals their poverty, as we read in the Old Testament, reading, you were supposed to sacrifice a lamb, but if you were poor, you could do some pigeons or two turtle doves. And it shows how important the choice of Mary and Joseph was in our salvation story, that they would be faithful to the law while Jesus was an infant. But we're not talking about that today, we could talk about Anna and the amazing prophetess who was in the temple as as a widow most of her life and celebrates the Son of God coming to the temple. But I'm not going to talk about that either. I know. I know disappointing. Today I want to talk about Simeon and about the song that he sings, the gospel of Luke. Has a lot of songs. In fact, the songs that Lutherans sing, we sing three from the Gospel of Luke. One of them is the Benedictus, named after the first word in the Latin This is sung by John the Baptist father, and it begins with, Blessed be the Lord or Benedictus. The other one is Mary's song, which comes right before this. We know it as the Magnificat. And it starts with that word in Latin, meaning, magnify My soul magnifies the Lord. And today we get Simeon in the temple, and he sings one of the three great songs from the Gospel of Luke The Nunc dimitti, which means, now, dismiss. Now you or as it's translated, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace. This is a fascinating song. Simeon is in the temple. Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit has been upon him, and he's received a promise that he would see the Christ before he dies. Then there's this amazing moment when Mary and Joseph are carrying this tiny baby into the temple and Simeon sees the child and knows. And I wonder how that happened. Maybe it was like in the video games, when you've got a glow on the objective, it's like in you can see it way in the distance, and you go up and you press triangle to pick it up. Was it like that? Well, there's no controller, of course. Was there a little glow around Jesus in Simeon eyes? We couldn't possibly know, but it's one of those questions. Simeon runs up, he sees the child, pulls it out of Mary's hands. Little weird, right? And then sings this song and blesses God. He sings, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for Glory to your people. Israel. He says, Lord, now I can die in peace. Your promise has been fulfilled. My eyes, not just my eyes, my hands have touched your salvation. Simeon, now knows promise is kept. He can die in peace. He's seen the promise, the great promise, of all of the Old Testament. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob Moses, David Solomon, everybody else, all of the prophets, wish they could be here for this moment.

Where children were taught to pray. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray, my Lord my soul to keep If I should die before I wake. I pray, the Lord my soul to take good one for four year olds, right? But this is, this is the idea here, is that as you, as you're getting ready for bed, it's a moment to think on your mortality. And so they sing this song, Lord, now You let your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. It's a song that we sing as trust, as we think about our future, as we think about what may happen next every time we go to bed, we realize maybe we won't wake up, but we've seen the salvation of God in Christ, who came and died for us and entered into the tomb so that We could rise on the last day with him. One of the other times we sing this song is right after Holy Communion. We don't do this here in our in first Lutheran, but if you look in our hymnals, it's in every single service. This was an edition that the Lutheran church added to the Western tradition of the liturgy. We would sing right after taking communion, you'd return to your seats. The pastor would say, please stand, and we'd sing, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. And it transports us into this moment too, where we are like Simeon in the temple, and we have just taken Christ ourselves, his we ate his body, we drank his blood, and we go, yes, now I have seen your salvation, not just seen, but ate and drank it, Which means I have peace with God, I have life that lasts forever, not a child in my hands, but a savior in my body, who is united with Me that I can live with him. Our tradition. We first communion happens right after confirmation. We have our students, you know, 12, 1314, years old. They go through two years of preparation. They read the Bible with their pastor, and they look at the Small Catechism. We do all sorts of training. And then they come and they take Holy Communion for the first time, 1314, ish years old. And what an interesting time to think now, I can die in peace. We don't think about that for 14 year olds, do we? Now, I can die in peace because I have seen your salvation. And so the song then becomes a rehearsal for the rest of our lives, as we take in Christ's Body and Blood every single week we receive it, and we say, Now I can die in peace, because the peace of God has entered into me. Eternal life is there for me.

What a way of saying, God, I trust God, you have saved. The last time we sing this song is at a funeral service right at the end, just before we do the benediction, the pastor says, I am the resurrection and the life. Says the Lord, He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and he who lives and believes in me will never die. The congregation says, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation. Nation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. It's a pretty intense moment, but what it recalls is that when a faithful Christian dies, they are not gone forever. God has dismissed them into the new life of Christ in peace. It reminds us of every moment they came forward and take, take, took Christ's Body and Blood, every moment the salvation of God was delivered to them, and that now they have gone to be with Christ forever. It reminds us that we are all bound together in that body of Christ, that this is not the last moment, but a moment that means that they will be forever with Him, and whether that person is 40 or 100 we say the same thing, you can dismiss your servant in peace because we have seen the salvation of Christ and have a sure and certain promise that the One who has died will rise again and it reminds us that every moment we come back to this place, and we come forward and take Christ's Body and Blood, we are bound together with that person too, as it says in our liturgy, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we come together and are brought together with with Christ in his mystical body, so that you see just a little bit of your lost loved in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion. And then singing with this church, we say, Lord, now You let your servant departed. Simeon song has become a part of our worship tradition for a great reason. When we see the salvation of Christ, we know we can be dismissed in peace, whether it is when we go to bed or when we're 14 and we take his body and blood for the first time, or on that last ritual when we say goodbye to a lost loved one, we know that when we see The salvation of Christ, we can go in peace, in Jesus, name Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Pondering Christ: Sermon for Christmas Day, 2024

Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, we are in the middle of the Christmas celebration. If you came last night, you got to see all the candles and all of the singing. We ended with the traditional Silent Night. And now today, we are in the middle of our Christmas Day celebration. I love how we get to extend this celebration, not just for a single day or even two, but we have Christmas for 12 whole days, all the way up until we celebrate Epiphany on January 6, which means we get to hear all sorts of versions of the Christmas story and the things that happen. Last night, we read about the angels and the shepherds and we saw Jesus in the manger. This morning, we read about the Word made flesh that dwelt among us. But today I'd like to focus once again, on the story from Luke and something that it says there. So Luke, chapter two, starting at verse 16, says, So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger when they had seen him. They spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them, But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart, the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told.

The Christmas story is an amazing story. We get to hear the versions of it many times throughout our Christmas preparation and during this season, but they're limited to just a couple of places. Actually, Matthew has a very short snippet of the Christmas story. Basically. It says, When she had given birth, the rest happens. It's like, Thank you, Matthew, we wish we could have some more detail, please. Luke gives us the most detailed account, the one that we read over and over. The kids memorized it when they did those old plays with the in those days. Caesar Augustus, Mark skips it entirely. He just starts with the baptism of Jesus, and we're off to the races. And John, well, he starts with the creation of the world, and then skips to the skips to John the Baptist. And yet we ponder these stories every year. In the Luke story, Gabriel comes to Mary, tells her that she's going to have a child. When Mary begins to show she races off to Elizabeth, who recognizes the baby immediately, because child in her womb leaps and is filled with the Holy Spirit. Then Mary travels to Bethlehem with Joseph, likely not in the way that we see in our in the movies. It's probably not that Mary is on the donkey and she's like, Oh, hurry up, Joseph. He's where he's almost here. That makes for some good drama, but they would have been smarter than that. I we see the story, though, when we read about the angels and the shepherds and Jesus and all of that from the Bible's perspective, I want you to imagine for a second being in Mary and Joseph's shoes, after all the angels and all of that happens. It happens early on, and then you get six months or so of nothing. They get to Bethlehem, it's crowded. They're staying in the house, probably on the lower level with the animals. And then she has the baby, and you're like, whoo, it's all done. And suddenly a bunch of shepherds barge into your house and they're like, Where's the baby? Can you imagine? Mary's like, Oh, let me hold him. She. Birds show up, and they've got this weird message. A bunch of angels showed up and told us where he was and that he'd be wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger, and he's the savior. And she goes, Are you sure you didn't eat some of the funny grass with the sheep? That's of course, not how Mary responds. She hears the message everybody is wondering about the Savior, Christ, the Lord born in Bethlehem to save the world. And she treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. Luke doesn't write this just because he wants to say, Isn't Mary neat? See, he's got a plan for his gospel. He wants all of us to do exactly what Mary was doing to treasure up these things in our heart. He wants us to ponder and think not just about the Christmas story, but about the story of Jesus throughout his whole life. In fact, he tells us that's why he wrote this gospel right away in the very first chapter in verse three, he writes, it seemed good to me, also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that You have been taught. So Luke wrote the wrote this gospel so we could ponder these stories, treasure them up in our hearts and have them with us our whole lives. He wants us to hear and learn and read and ponder and treasure the stories of Jesus Christ every day, every moment, because He is our Savior, the Word made flesh, who came to dwell among us to deliver the grace and peace of God. Of course, it's not just that story, is it? Story of Jesus's birth, the manger, the shepherds. Right now we're beginning a journey with Christ, a journey that we take every year as he grows, as he begins his ministry, as he continues to serve, and eventually it leads us to the season of Lent, where he dies on a cross, rises from the dead and ascends into heaven. This powerful and amazing story of Jesus is the story of grace going out into all the world, and we read it every single year, because they are a treasure to be pondered, to think about. These stories are for us to help us, to guide us and lead us in faithful following of Jesus Christ. But as we ponder these stories, there can be a challenge to each one of us reading them and hearing them over and over again. And pastors feel this challenge right about this time of year, because we say, Okay, I have been preaching on this story of Mary and the shepherds and the angels on the passages of John every single Christmas for the last 20 years. How do we say something new and some of you have been at this a little longer than 20 years. Some of you have been hearing pastors preach on these stories, hearing them spoken and read. And the temptation might be, I've gotten everything out of it. I've heard this over and over and over again, but these stories are for us to be treasured and remembered. It's not because they are a thing that we we learn, we know the facts and then we move on, but because they are a central part of our life, to see a Savior who would leave a heavenly throne and come amongst us to live among the muck of human life.

For you and you know the facts that. It. But the thing is, about what do you do with them?

What do they mean for your life? How do they change every moment, every action, everything that you might do, that's what we need to ponder and learn is that Christ is not just a story with a plot, but a God who is present among you now through his word to drive you into faithfulness. I think there's another temptation though, as we ponder Christ, as we look at God's Holy Word, we look at it and we think, wow, I missed those days when it was new. I've been working with some people who it is actually new for them. We've had some baptisms, people who came to me, one of our our newest members, showed up one Sunday morning and said, so

I started with Genesis. And you go, okay, that's new, isn't it?

And when you're reading this stuff for the first time, or really into it for the first time, it's really cool, you get really excited. You're like, amazing. I've never learned this before. Isn't the grace of God outstanding? I can't believe all the cool things that are written down. Do you? Do you really understand what Paul is saying? And I'm like, Yeah, I've read it before, but by year 80 of that, you don't have that moment. Do you the AHA of reading something new, the moment where you go, wow, I am learning something amazing and different. Sometimes we chase them. I've seen teachers online that are really trying to do that if you watch Instagram reels, about every other Instagram reel that talks about the Bible is trying to chase that amazing aha moment where someone breaks down the Greek word or shows a pattern in the Bible that maybe you've never heard, and all the hosts on the show go, wow. And you know what it is, it's a bunch of crap every single time, because what you're chasing is a high a moment, the AHA, I had a member bring me a video from a former church Once it was talking about the story of when Jesus had his feet anointed and that were washed with the woman's tears. This was a a woman who came from a sinful background, and she was washing Jesus His feet with the tears. And the Pharisees looked at him and said, if, if he was really a prophet, He would know that that woman is a sinner, and this teacher was chasing that aha moment. He said, You know what? People of those days, they would have these tear jars, and the tear jars, they would cry into it, and they would store up the tears of generation after generation. And that must be what she had done. Isn't it amazing about the grace of God, the generations of pain and hurt were poured out on his feet? Sounds cool, doesn't it? Nowhere in the Bible, no indication that there are tear jars or anything like that. And in fact, that distracts us from what Jesus is actually doing. This sinful woman was forgiven and welcomed by Christ, who cares about the generations before her. This woman needed love and grace, and Christ welcomed her against the wishes of the men who are trying to reject her. And the reason I bring this up is because the stories of the Bible, they don't change, which is actually really good. They mean the same thing every time you read them over and over and over again. What changes is not the scriptures, but you because every year, you approach God's word from a slightly different place with slightly different needs you approach with with new problems, new victories, new hopes, new prayers, new new life. Situations and what what we need is not for the scripture to give us an aha moment, but an AHA application.

This new thing in my. Life. The baby Jesus now speaks to that this new hurt in my life, the grace of Jesus Christ heals

this new problem that I need to solve. The service of Jesus Christ drives me to serve as he did. We don't need to search for a new thing. We take the old thing and apply it in our life. So it's okay. Bible never changes. It's okay if the book of Romans says the same thing it said last year and the year before and the year before that. It's okay if we sing glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth the same way we do every year. Because when we ponder Christ, treasure up his stories in our hearts. They mean new things in action, in application, in salvation for you, they drive us towards new problems and give us new solutions, where the grace of Christ can be new for you in that moment. And so that's why we do this story. Every year. We start with the manger, we end with the ascension, and we ponder and treasure up the stories that Jesus gives us, because we need to hear them in every new situation, in every new moment of our lives, so that the grace of Christ can live in us in each of these situations. How wonderful and beautiful, this majestic story of Jesus, Christ is the story that doesn't change, but becomes new for us as our lives are different. And so we ponder, just as Mary does when we treasure up all these things and ponder them in our hearts, the grace of Christ drives us a new each day in Jesus, name Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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