Trinity 12 - G - 2017 - A Christian Hears, Believes, and Confesses

Trinity 6 - G - 2017 - The Law and the Gospel are both good, true and wise

Trinity 5 - G - 2017 - A little bit about vocation

Trinity 4 - G - 2017 - I don't think Judge not means what you think it means

Trinity 3 - G - 2017 - Sinners searched for and rescued

Due to a loose cable, the video didn't record.  Sorry for the inconvenience!  

Trinity 2 - G - 2017 - Making Excuses for God's Banquet

First Sunday after Trinity - G - 2017 - Father's Day - Dad's Responsibilities

Sermon Starts Here

The Holy Trinity - O - 2017 - Before the Holy Holy Holy

Pentecost - OT - 2017 - The Word Confused and United

Easter 7 - Exaudi - G - 2017 - Persecution and the Helper

Easter 6 - Rogate - G - 2017 - Prayer: What is prayer and what's it do?

Sunday School sings at 12:00

Guest Preacher - Rev. Chris Brademeyer

Easter 4 - Jubilate - Confirmation - E - 2017 - Faith Comes Through Hearing the Word of Christ

Easter 3 - Misericordias Domini - G - 2017 - You are Jesus' little dear lamb for whom He died

Easter 2 - Quasimodo Geniti - O - 2017 - Dead bones alive

Easter Sunrise Sermon - Abridged from Martin Luther 1534

Easter Sunrise!

Christ is Risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  Amen. 

To the honor and praise of our merciful, eternal God, we wish to preach today about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is proper that we do so.  This festival enables us to focus on the Gospel’s account of Christ’s resurrection and to learn from it.  It is incumbent upon us therefore, to speak of these happenings, since so much depends upon them for our good, not only in this present life but also in the life to come.  Moreover, when we dwell upon these events, we do so not only because it is useful and good, but also because there with God is praised and glorified.  At least a few on earth may listen to it earnestly and then to come to thank our Lord Jesus Christ for his suffering and resurrection.  Accordingly, it pleases God when we thus pay attention to and preach about the story. 

In fact, the times never comes when we have preached and heard enough concerning the significance of Christ’s resurrection.  We are not preaching anything new, but always, without ceasing about that man who is called Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who died for our sins and rose for our justification.  Yet even if we were again and again to preach about and dwell upon these events, we could never really exhaust their meaning.  We would remain like infants and young children, just learning to speak, scarcely able to form half words!

That is why we wish to speak about it now, because our highest good depends upon it.  So, it is my greatest concern to sustain your interest in this article so that when I’m dead and gone, I might have left you with this treasure.  A treasure that lasts forever, where rust and mold do not destroy.  A treasure of eternal life found in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. 

Yes, today is about him.  He is the one who has won the victory for us.  Death attacked him, who should not die, and was defeated.  For death had to be swallowed up!  The devil must have trembled in fear along with our enemy death.  For they were felled and laid prostrate under Christ’s feet. 

Christ tore open the belly of the devil and the muzzle of death on this day!  Sin death, do you hear?  Shameful devil, why are you accusing us?  What right have you against us?  Sin death and the devil must now be silent as far as Christ is concerned, for he triumphed as Lord over sin death and the devil, not only because he was true God, but also because he was innocent as concerns his human nature.    

And now we esteem him as highest.  Christ is Lord of all.  For if he is mighty, so too must be the resurrection which he experienced – and which we will one day experience as well.  Yes, you will raise because Christ has raised.  Death is powerless, in fact it has been reduced, as Christ says himself, to a sleep. 

Hear it again!  Today we rejoice because our Lord Jesus Christ by his triumph overwhelmed and felled death and the devil; the devil he strangled in his own body, death he drowned in his own blood; sin he erased with his martyrdom and suffering.  All this Christ personally accomplished, but not for himself.  He did not require such a victory for himself after all, he accomplished it for you and for your forgiveness.  Because of his work, you, I and everyone else, all of us are benefited.  That is the power and the fruit of Christ’s suffering and resurrection. 

If a person does not wish to believe this, let him be.  We preach to those who gladly hear and who have need of this message.  These are the ones who live in mortal fear and despair of death and say, “I have sinned I have neither peace nor rest.  I will one day die for my guilt.” 

Against such an enemy it is necessary and needful that we arm and compose ourselves with a correct understanding of the power and fruit of Christ’s Resurrection.  He did not come for his own sake to earth.  He did not permit himself to be killed for his own sake.  He had no need of this, but instead he bore your sin, and by his death he swallowed up your death (and mine) forever.  Hell, which we deserved, he has destroyed, as Hosea writes, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave.  I will redeem them from death.” 

And so it is that we must remember this day, this Easter, every day of our life.  If the devil approaches us and says, “Look here, see how great your sin is; see too how bitter, how terrible is the death you must suffer;” then you must counter with “Devil, don’t you know the power of my Lord Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection?  In him there is eternal righteousness and eternal life; his resurrection from the dead is mightier than my sin, death, and hell, greater than heaven and earth.  My death and sin are minute drops, but my Lord Jesus’ death and resurrection is a vast ocean.

Dear friends, Christ is risen today!  We should be confident that through Christ’s resurrection and victory we have the firm assurance that no sin, not even death, may frighten us.  If sin and death frighten us, it is unjustly so, or because we don’t believe, for Christ has set us free.  He has surmounted all excruciating suffering, and wishes to be our comfort, greater than our sin and death, yes greater than heaven and earth.  But how does our human nature react?  Since this treasure is not in dollars or gold pieces, which we can see and our fists grab hold of, we despise it when it is preached to us through the Word.  I admonish each of you that you learn and comprehend these facts well.  Whoever is not well-grounded and practiced in these articles of faith will find when attacked what a master the devil is.  May our Dear Lord Jesus Christ, who wishes to be our comfort, give us his grace and Spirit, so that we may well remember and retain this lesson. 

For Christ is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!  Amen.  

Easter Vigil 2017

Tenebrae 2017

Tre Ore 2017

Maundy Thursday Sermon

Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. ³ Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. ⁴ And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, ⁶ and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

⁷ “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸ They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. ⁹ Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. ¹⁰ And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. ¹¹ In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. ¹² For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

¹⁴ “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

1 Corinthians 11:23-32

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. ³⁰ That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. ³¹ But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. ³² But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

John 13:1-15, 34-35 

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ² During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, ³ Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, ⁴ rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. ⁵ Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. ⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” ⁷ Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”⁸ Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

¹² When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? ¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.”  Thus Paul begins his teaching on the Lord’s Supper to a very divided and struggling congregation in the Roman city of Corinth.  And as Paul uses this words, he uses a very technical greek phrase for the passing on of a tradition.  Meaning the thing he is talking about didn’t begin with him, or his fellow pastors or teachers in fact.  Paul received it, Paul was taught it, and the source of that teaching, he says, was the Lord Jesus Christ on the night he was betrayed. 

In other words, the Lord’s Supper is just that, the teaching of the Lord.  It’s the Lord’s Word that is involved.  It’s the Lord’s Supper.  It delivers the Lord’s promises, which Paul says, the Lord is now passing on to you as well.   

And what are those promises?  They are two-fold really.  First as he take the bread and the wine he promises that these are now – by His word – his body and blood.  That means that Christ’s body and blood are really present in the Lord’s Supper.  Its not for us to understand how this happens, we can’t explain it using philosophy or science.  We can’t see it, we can’t prove or disprove it, all we can do is receive the teaching of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus and believe Him.  It is His supper after all.  It is His Word that says so.  We take him at his word.  The bread is his body.  The wine is his blood.  He is present.

Secondly, he promises that this eating and drinking is for you.  Specifically, he teaches in Matthews Gospel that it forgives your sins.  Yes, yours.  The body and blood, in the bread and the wine deliver the forgiveness earned by Christ on the cross right into our own mouths.  By eating the body of Christ in the bread, you have forgiveness of sins.  By drinking the cup of wine which is his blood, you have forgiveness of sins.  And to be clear it’s not that your action of taking, eating and drinking do this – it is God’s Work.  He gives you this great gift, he comes into your presence to be eaten for your forgiveness. 

That’s the message that Paul received – ultimately from the Lord Jesus himself, and that he is passing along to the Corinthians as is recorded in the words of Scripture. 

And that same message is passed along to us today as well.  It is what we believe teach and confess as Lutherans.  We have these words from St. Paul, which we hear tonight in remembrance of Christ’s first uttering them.  What Paul received, he passed down to us also.  The Word of the Lord, spoken that first Maundy Thursday comes to us here now as well. 

And so, tonight, will you let the Lord have his say?  Will you let him forgive your sins in the eating and drinking of His own body and blood?  Will you participate with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven in the foretaste of the wedding feast of the lamb in His kingdom?  Or will you ignore him?  Will you change what he says to better suit your own rationalism?  Will you make the Lord’s Supper into your supper? 

Of course not, you’ll take the Lord at his Word.  You’ll eat his body in the bread, and his blood in the wine, and be forgiven.  You’ll participate in the heavenly wedding feast of Jesus as it is hidden in the Divine Service.   

The first part of that is acknowledging you have sin that needs to be forgiven.  You know that you do.  We’ve already confessed it, haven’t we?   I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment.  But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I pray You of Your boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.  And what we spoke was true for all of us. 

And we heard God’s Word, and were forgiven.  That too is taught by Paul, in chapter 15 of 1^st Corinthians.  “For I delivered unto you as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”  And thus the forgiveness for Christ’s sake was announced by God’s word. 

And now in that forgiveness, we feast.  We eat the body in the bread.  We drink the blood in the wine.  We relish the continued forgiveness of sins.  We participate in that forgiveness boldly.  And in so doing, we remember the Lord Jesus Christ who remembered us upon the cross. 

It is the Lord’s Supper we receive tonight, on the night he was betrayed.  It is a precious means of grace that delivers the forgiveness of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus to us Christians to eat and drink.  It is a teaching we have received as upmost importance.  And as often as we eat and drink – which we ought to often, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.