Trinity 10

Luke 19:41-48 - Trinity Ten - August 9, 2015
 A Meditation on Divine Wrath

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The book of Lamentations, which is the 25^th book of the Bible, was written by the prophet Jeremiah who also wrote our Old Testament lesson this morning.  Jeremiah was a faithful prophet, who, like every faithful prophet or preacher, had the very unfortunate task of preaching about the impending wrath of God upon the impenitent.  It’s no fun to preach wrath and the threat of hell.  What pastor wants to preach about how God is angry with sin?  To sinners?  Especially when he himself is a sinner?  It’s a burden of the calling, I suppose.  But sin does make God mad.  So it must be preached.  God does send those who don’t repent to eternal hell.  So it must be preached.  God really does threaten to punish, to the third and fourth generation, those who hate him.  So Jeremiah preached it.  And unlike most preachers, Jeremiah lived to see the day when God’s threats were realized – when everyone was forced to acknowledge that he was right the whole time.  This brought no joy or sense of I-told-you-so to the prophet, only sorrow.  Jerusalem was sacked with him in it; and God permitted his people to be carried away by heathen enemies into captivity.  Reflecting on what he witnessed, Jeremiah writes,

Trinity 3

Luke 15:1-10 - Trinity Three - June 21, 2015
Rejoicing in Heaven

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Impenitence is man’s work.  Repentance is God’s work.  This is important to know.  When we sin, it is our fault.  When we turn back to God, it is God’s gracious work.  Jesus tells two parables to illustrate this point.  The first parable of the lost sheep shows us the problem we have as poor miserable sinners.  We got ourselves into the trouble we need to be rescued from.  All we like sheep have gone astray.  The second parable of the lost coin shows us the power we have as poor sinful beings.  We have no power to get ourselves out of the fix we are in.  A coin does nothing to get itself found.  In both parables Christ presents himself as the one who searches out the object of his love.  He is the main character in both. 

Pentecost

John14:23-31 - Pentecost — Confirmation - May 24, 2015
The Spirit of truth

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“If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). 

Keidyne, this is your confirmation verse.  I chose it for you because I have taught you the truth from God’s word; because you have learned the truth as it is laid out in Luther’s Small Catechism; and because this morning you will confess that you believe this truth to be the only thing that saves you and gives you eternal salvation.  It is a beautiful passage of Scripture.  And the word truth itself is also a beautiful word that should ring sweet in our ears.  In Greek, the word even has a beautiful sound to it: ἀλήθεια.  In your confirmation verse, Jesus uses this word ἀλήθεια three times.  You wouldn’t notice it right away because of how it’s translated into English.  But we could also say it like this: “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  

Easter 5

John 16:5-15 - Cantate Sunday - May 3, 2015

The Threefold Work of the Holy Spirit

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Oh that I had a thousand voices
To praise my God with thousand tongues!
My heart, which in the Lord rejoices,
Would then proclaim in grateful songs
To all, wherever I might be,
What great things God hath done for me. Amen. 

Today is called Cantate Sunday.  Cantate (which is where we get the word chant) is the Latin word for sing.  It’s in the imperative mood, which means it’s a command to sing, as in, “Sing to the Lord a new song.”  What is a new song?  And why should we sing it?  Far from being a call to always be singing the latest and most up-to-date expressions of faith, this command to sing a new song tells us first to consider what is old and what is new.  This is a spiritual distinction, not a chronological one, and so it’s good that we learn it here. 

Easter 2 Quasimodo Geniti

John 20:19-31 – Quasimodo Geniti – April 12, 2015
Jesus Comes through Closed Doors

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead and his ascension into heaven are really essentially the same event.  When Jesus had conquered sin, death, and the depths of hell, there were no longer any enemies to undo.  Nothing kept him from standing at the right hand of his Father in resplendent glory.  Entrance to heaven was open — for him – and to all of us who by faith place our confidence in him.  So here we do see one more enemy, don’t we?  We see one more obstacle that bars sinful flesh and blood from entering the presence of the holy God in his heavenly courts.  We see unbelief.  Or rather, because we don’t see, we struggle with unbelief.   

The devil still roams – not to stop Christ from accomplishing our salvation – that is too late – his head is crushed, his doom is certain.  But between now and the final judgment, he continues to do what he can to keep us from enjoying the salvation that Jesus won.  He seeks to block and destroy faith that receives and embraces this salvation.  The devil deceives with false doctrine and false promises of pleasure.  And the world is under his persuasion.  Now, God loves the world.  The devil hates the world because he hates God.  So it pleases the devil to torture the world with his lies and then use the very world for whom Christ died to tempt and persecute those who love God.  He is wicked.  There is nothing more wicked that the spiritual forces that compel poor sinners to reject the salvation that God has won for them.  And yet we see in ourselves exactly what this wickedness is handcrafted to appeal to.  It is designed by Satan to appeal to you. 

Good Friday

Hebrews4:14–5:7 - Good Friday - April 3, 2015
Our High Priest

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

What is a priest?  As my members may know, I often like to stress the importance of knowing Old Testament history, because if we don’t know it, we miss out on the context of much of the New Testament.  The fact that it is called the New Testament alone should itself compel us to become at least a little acquainted with the Old.  Now this is not to say that we need to become Jews in order to be true Christians.  God forbid!  The Law of Moses has been fulfilled and all the ceremonies that God commanded him to teach the people have been abrogated.  But why? 

Maundy Thursday

John13:1-15 - Maundy Thursday - April 2, 2015
Who Receives Christ Worthily?

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Let us pray:

Lamb of God, pure and holy, who on the cross didst suffer,
Ever patient and lowly, Thyself to scorn didst offer.
All sins Thou borest for us, else had despair reigned o’er us:
Have mercy on us, O Jesus!  Amen. 

These words were written by Nikolaus Decius in 1531 at the height of the Lutheran Reformation.  It was a hymnic version of the Agnus Dei, which for generations had been sung exclusively in Latin.  Agnus Dei simply means Lamb of God, as in, O Thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.  Decius wrote this hymn in order to bring this prayer into the language of the people.  But even as much as the people needed these words in their own language, they needed to understand what these words really meant – what the words actually teach us.  And this hymn kind of spells it out for us.  That’s the purpose of a hymn – to preach a sermon of sorts: