A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. An mp3 file is available upon request. The text for today is our Gospel lesson, Luke 23:27-43. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Today is the Last Sunday of the Church Year, where our attention is pushed to the last things.   All things promised will be completely fulfilled in Jesus’ glorious return.   The resurrection of the dead will bring body and soul together.   There will be a new heaven and a new earth.   Sin and Satan will be dispatched forever.   All God’s people will be taken to live in His eternal presence. However, the readings for today also draw us back to the cross, when Jesus fulfills the ancient prophecies of the Christ, the Chosen One.   He delivers His people from darkness and into His kingdom, through the forgiveness of sins, because He is the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:13-14, 18).   Those in the book of remembrance are God’s treasured pos...

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 ...