A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. The text for today is our Epistle lesson, Hebrews 11:1-16, which has already been read. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! As Christians, we don’t worship the saints; yet we can look at those who have gone before us and marvel at what they did—or, better, what the Lord accomplished through them. Our epistle gives us a list of saints to ponder today. We begin with Abel. Our text tells us that he “offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” Why was it more excellent? Because it was offered by faith . Rather than believe that his sacrifice earned God’s favor, Abel offered it because he believed that the Savior would be born to save him from sin—thus Abel was commended as righteous for the sake of Jesus who was to come. We also know that Abel suffered for his sacrifice. Cain took him out into the field and killed him. Thus, the first shepherd was also the first to die because of sin, pointing toward t

Click here to listen to this sermon. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15). Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! The evidence is overwhelming. It’s undeniable. You read it in the pages of history. You see it on the television news. You hear it in the voice of your neighbor.  You feel it in the very fiber of your being. There is something wrong, my friends! There is something wrong with this world! There is something wrong with this nation! There is something wrong with your neighbor! There is something wrong with me! And there is something wrong with you! That something is sin—an awful, broken condition that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve and their fall into sin in the Garden of Eden. Sin. Not simply a “mistake” or “error.” No, what happened with Adam and Eve was lawlessness, rebellion, outright disobedience to

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530 Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! There is something wrong, my friends!  There is something wrong with this world!  There is something wrong with this nation!  There is something wrong with your neighbor!  There is something wrong with me!  And there is something wrong with you!  That something is sin, an awful, broken condition that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve’s and their fall into sin in the Garden of Eden.  Sin.  Not simply a “mistake” or “error.”  No, what happened with Adam and Eve was not merely “poor judgment” or “misinformation” as some may label it.  It was lawlessness.  It was rebellion.  It was outright disobedience to God’s specific command.  And their sin had enormous consequences for all of creation, a creation that God had declared “very good” upon its completion in six days.  The sin of Adam and Eve brought misery on the enti