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...

Click here to listen to this sermon. An mp3 file is available upon request. “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.   The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.   But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.   You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall” (Malachi 4:1-2). Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! “The day is coming,” say the Lord in our Old Testament lesson.   And Jesus continues the theme in our Gospel, speaking of a day and the days leading up to it.   What day are we talking about?   Well, let me give you a hint.   It’s in November; we’re in the last couple of Sundays of the church year, where our lessons focus is the end times.   And so the day that is coming is the Last Day, the Day o...

Click here for an audio version of this sermon. An mp3 file is available upon request. The text for today is Luke 20:37-38: “ But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.   Now He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him.” Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!   On this Veterans Day weekend, you’ll see a number of the vets handing out poppies for people to wear.  Not many people know the history behind it.   The wearing of poppies can be traced back to a poem written by John McCrae in World War I, entitled, “In Flanders Fields.”  It describes the graves of those who fell in battle and were buried in the fields in Belgium where poppies grow in abundance.  Specifically, the poem is written from the viewpoint of those in the grave . In Flanders fields the poppies blow Betwee...

Click here to listen to this sermon. An mp3 file is available upon request. The text for today is Revelation 7:9-10: “ After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”   Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! St. John gives us a glimpse of the other side of glory.   But be careful.   Don’t miss this brief opportunity by focusing on the wrong thing.    The great multitude is certainly impressive in scope and range.   But look beyond the great multitude to the object of their focus.   Notice how they are all staring in the same direction, with the same look of astonishment and awe and love upon their faces. T...