A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! “ Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith… This is the catholic faith; whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved. A creed (from the Latin credo , “I believe”) is a confession of faith used by individual Christians, congregations, and churches to express what is believed, taught, and confessed about God and, consequently, what is not believed, taught, and confessed about God. Creeds and conflict are not just intertwined; they are inseparable. When disputes over doctrine emerge, creeds are a beacon of clarity, guiding us through the diverse interpretations of God's nature. Some perceive God in one way, others in another. Some view Jesus as a righteous man, others as God incarnate, and a few as a deity with a lowercase' g'. Some argue it is inconsequential, while others assert ...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Click here to view this sermon. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! In 1981, Jeffrey Stout, a professor of religion and philosophy at Princeton University, published a book called The Flight from Authority . In it, he described a social and philosophical trend in western society. Collectively, he argued, we have been on a “flight from authority” for several centuries. In the Reformation, we fled the authority of the church. Under rationalism, we ran from the authority of Scripture. With Kant, we turned our backs on the authority of reason and then morality....

Click here to listen to this sermon. The text for today is our Gospel lesson, John 8:48-59. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Available at Amazon.com The story line of “Beauty and the Beast” has all the features of a classic Disney cartoon.   An enchantress turns a young prince into a beast in order to teach him a lesson about judging by appearances.   The only way he can break the spell is to learn to love another and to earn her love in return before the last petal falls from his enchanted rose.   All in all, it’s relatively standard fairy tale fare.   But hidden in the midst of heroic lovers, loathsome villains, sympathetic victims, magic spells, and castles is a cutting commentary on sinful human nature.   Having lost his bid to gain Belle’s affections, Gaston convinces the villagers that the beast is dangerous and he rallies them to storm the castle.   In the midst of their rage, the mob breaks out in...