We are coming to the end of the church year. One more week and counting. With the end comes talk of the end. The end of all things and the coming of Jesus, the Son of Man, coming in a cloud with power and great glory. The end is a source…
Early in my work as a pastor, I learned to be wary of the hypothetical question. Usually they were posed by an overly bright teenager or a college sophomore who had just discovered new ways to make the adults around her squirm with uncomfortable questions. Sometimes they came from unbelieving adults, usually with a…
Who can stand? That is the question at the end of the sixth of seven seals in the chapter immediately prior to the text from the Revelation read eariler. The entire cosmos is shaken to its foundation; the sun goes black; the moon turns to blood; the stars fall from the sky like…
“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Romans 3:28). Can it be any clearer than that? Can it be any more plain even to the casual hearer? All have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God, all are justified by God’s…
Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. “They” are the disciples, whom Jesus is instructing and preparing for the last days when they will no longer see Him but would have to “watch and pray.” Today’s Gospel and Old Testament readings are…
Scandals, millstones, mustard seeds, unworthy servants. What ties it all together is faith - simple, childlike, drop dead trust in a dead and risen Savior. The righteous, the justified, shall live by his faith.
“Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come.” Permit…
Complacency and creature comforts are on the table for our examination this morning. Amos chides the people of the north for their hearts made heavy by luxury, by food and drink and hedonistic idleness. Jesus tells a parable about a man who had everything who went to hell, and a poor man who…
We try though, don’t we? Serve two masters. God on Sunday, Money on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, maybe even Saturday. And you know what it’s like to have two masters, two bosses with opposite agendas. You’re like one of those rubber Gumby dolls, stretched to the point of snapping like…
“Jesus sinners doth receive; oh may all this saying ponder.” Here is a trustworthy saying worthy of all acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am chief.”
Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep loses one of them. Does he not leave the…
The Christian is perfectly free, lord of all, subject to none; the Christian is perfectly bound, servant of all, subject to all. So said Luther in his writing On the Liberty of the Christian in 1521. Perfectly free before God through faith in Christ; perfectly bound before the neighbor through love.
That…