A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! It is the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, the season of the year in which we focus on Jesus revealing Himself as God Incarnate, the Savior of all mankind. It is also Sanctity of Life Sunday. So, it is fitting that our Old Testament lesson, Isaiah 49, is serving double duty today. Let’s focus especially on verses 5 and 6: And now the Lord says, He who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him; and that Israel might be gathered to Him—for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and My God has become My strength—He says: “It is too light a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make You as a light for the nations, that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Do you see the connection? This Servant will “bring the preserved of Israel” and will be “a light for ...

"Moses and the Burning Bush" by Marc Chagall Click here to listen to this sermon. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! One of the most famous speeches in American history is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The occasion was the dedication of a cemetery where those who had been killed in the Civil War battle were buried. It was, Lincoln said, “altogether fitting and proper” that they would do this. But, Lincoln went on, in a larger sense, those who had come to set apart that ground could not “dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.” The brave men who had struggled there had already hallowed it “far beyond our poor power to add or detract.” It was those who had died f...