A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! The three-year-old in our Sunday School has already learned this important teaching of the faith: God created the world, everything in the visible and invisible universe, in six days; and then He rested on the seventh. In a perfect world only seven days were necessary. Six days to work and the seventh to rest. For in six days did God create the world and on the seventh He rested. Seven is the number of completeness. No more days were required in that good place where Creator and His creation were in perfect fellowship, communion, and harmony. But as you are well aware, from both your life and from the Holy Scriptures, we don’t live in a perfect world. The good creation has been corrupted by sin which brought death with it. The seven days of the week—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—the days in which we are created, born, live, work, play...

Sermon preached at Risen Savior Lutheran Church for the dedication of their new church and preschool building.   Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! This is a day that has been long in coming. A day for which many of you here have dreamed and prayed for over ten years—the dedication of your own church. It was my privilege to be with you for some of important milestones along the way, and I want to thank you for inviting Aimee and me to be here with you today. From a human standpoint, it started out as a thought, a prayer, and a hope. Perhaps a church could be planted in Tea—a place and a people at which, in which, to which, and from which, the Gospel would be preached and taught. A small group of people started meeting for Bible study. After a while, that group, supported by the South Dakota District of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod decided to start holding Sunday worship services. Trinity...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Amen. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where He lay. Then go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead, and behold, He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him. See, I have told you” (Matthew 28:5-7). Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! “Do not be afraid.” That’s an interesting thing to say to women who have already made their way to a graveyard before the break of dawn to properly prepare the lifeless body of their Savior. One can only imagine what they have already gone through the last couple of dark days—the shameful spectacle of their Lord hanging bloody and beaten, dying and dead on the cross. The raw grief of their recent loss relooping in their brains, poking and prodding the most ...

Click here to listen to this sermon. It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit!” And having said this He breathed His last (Luke 23:44-46). Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! It may not be the posture for prayer that first comes to mind. The Son of Man cannot prostrate Himself with His face to the ground in the custom of the ancient Hebrews or modern day Muslims. He cannot kneel at the altar railing or by the side of His bed like you or I might.  He can bow His head and close His eyes, but He probably can’t see much already with the blood weeping from the pricks of His thorny crown. And He can’t fold His hands together like many of us teach our children to do. You see, both of His hands are stretched out as far as ...

Click here to listen to this sermon. And [Jesus] came out and went, as was His custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed Him. And when He came to the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.” And there appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and He said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:39-46). Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! On the night when He was betrayed the Lord institutes the Holy Sacrament of His Body and His Bl...

Click here to listen to this sermon. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Jesus Christ, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:5-7). Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! The Academy Award-winning motion picture “A Beautiful Mind” is loosely based upon the life of John Forbes Nash, a mathematician who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994. A brilliant but somewhat antisocial man, Nash preferred to spend his time with his thoughts, which were primarily of seeing mathematical formulae in everyday occurrences rather than interacting with other people. Two people with whom he did make a connection were Charles, his roommate at Princeton, and Alicia, one of his students when he was teaching at M.I.T. in the early 1950’s, whom he eventually marries. As time goes on, Nash...