A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. The text for today is our Old Testament Reading, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:   For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:                 a time to be born, and a time to die;                 a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;                 a time to kill, and a time to heal;                 a time to break down, and a time to build up;                 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;                 a time to mourn, and a time to dance;                 a time to cast away ...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! “ Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” So begins the famous passage in Ephesians about the blessed estate of marriage. Wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. This, of course, has led to all sorts of reactions—from snickers to cries of derision—as the world accuses Christians of seeking to subjugate women to a lesser role in life. It’s a strange accusation, even without exploring the Scriptures further. An unbiased look at world history would show that Christianity has done more to elevate the status of women in society than any other factor. Consider the plight of women in Hindu India who may be disfigured or killed for falling in love w...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Picture a society where the path to God is blocked by invisible barriers of ritual impurity, where even a slight touch can render someone unworthy to approach the divine. This was the burden imposed by the Law of Moses, which had evolved into a complex web of manmade traditions by Jesus’ time. As the Pharisees enforced these laws, their rigid adherence overshadowed the essence of God’s commandments and His message of grace and forgiveness. In our text from Mark 7, Jesus confronts this distortion head-on, revealing a more profound truth about what truly defiles us and how we can genuinely draw near to God. The Law of Moses contained a series of statutes about what could make a person “unclean.” This was not a question about sanitation or good personal hygiene but applied to ritual purity. Unclean things defiled a person so that he could not draw close to God without first purifying...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Jesus said:] “This is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day.” Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! A significant theme in John’s Gospel is how Jesus came to give life, especially eternal life. You see this promise throughout the book. But in the Bread of Life discourse of chapter 6, Jesus says more. He explicitly promises to raise His people on the Last Day four times (v 39, 40, 44, 54). This promise of resurrection is central to the Christian faith. As we confess in the Nicene Creed, the goal of the Christian life is the resurrection of the dead and life in the world to come. This reading allows us to address a few foundational questions about the nature of this resurrection under the theme, “The Bread of Life Raises.” First question: He will raise from what? The short answer is death. But this is more than the ...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! The strife is o’er, the battle done; / Now is the victor’s triumph won; Now be the song of praise begun. / Alleluia! ( LSB 464 st. 1) How fitting to sing these words on a day like this, a day of sorrow and mourning, yes, but also a day of joy, praise, and thanksgiving to God for all the blessings He bestowed upon Fay for Christ’s sake, and to you, Ron, Judy, Gary, Tim, others family members and friends as exhibited through Fay’s faith, love, and life of service to God and her neighbor. Though we will miss Fay’s infectious smile and her joyful spirit, we take great comfort in the fact that she has gone to be in the presence of our Lord, where there is no mourning, crying, pain, or death anymore. And we look forward to the Last Day, the Day of Resurrection. As you can read in her obituary, Fay was an active member of Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church. Over the years, she helped w...