Sermons
Joy When the Lost Is Found
The Third Sunday after Trinity
What matters to Jesus is not the numbers. It’s the individual. To him you are not just one of the crowd. You are a dear child of God, paid for by his own blood. Learn from Jesus to love your neighbor like that, like the shepherd who seeks after his sheep or the woman who searches for her coin. Love them the way your Savior does, the Savior who died for you. You were lost, and you have been found. Your Lord loved you too much to lose you. And when you reach heaven you won’t be given a number or told to take a ticket. You will be welcomed in as his own dear child. There is rejoicing in heaven over you.
Heed the Banquet Invitation
The Second Sunday after Trinity
As you live in this world and as you carry out your vocations, heed the banquet invitation and live for the feast. Don’t neglect the word of God and prayer. Don’t despise the sacraments. In these simple-seeming things you have a taste of heaven. Seek the Lord. Receive his gifts with thanksgiving. And be filled at the feast of his salvation.
Faith Makes All the Difference
The First Sunday after Trinity
Would you rather live for this life, or for the next, when angels will carry you to Abraham’s side, when you will have every tear wiped from your eye, when you will see your Savior face to face and be welcomed into the mansions he in his love has prepared for you? That answer’s an easy one, but that’s because God has opened your eyes to see it. He is your help. He has given you this faith. And faith makes all the difference.
New Birth from Our Triune God
Holy Trinity Sunday
You were baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. One God in three persons, and three persons in one God. To know God as he reveals himself, as he wants to be known, is to know his salvation. He alone can reveal earthly things and heavenly things. And he tells you to look to the cross, to listen to his word, and to find assurance in your baptism. By this he gives you eternal life.
The Holy Spirit Comes to Us with Peace
Pentecost: The Coming of the Holy Spirit
God has chosen not to work by outward signs. He has chosen not to be in your face, but to be in your heart. This is a wonder we can hardly comprehend. But this, my heart, is where Almighty God, the Lord of Armies, who is Holy, Holy, Holy and whose glory fills the heavens and the earth—this God makes my heart his home. He couldn’t be contained by any magnificent building of stones and yet here in my small heart, with me, he is pleased to dwell.
Reflections on Repentance: Revealing Our Sinful Nature
Ash Wednesday
God in his mercy reveals your sinful nature so that you can see and know just how great is his mercy at the cross. Your sinful nature shut you off from God, with no solution, with only the burden of guilt and the darkness of death. But Jesus is your light and life, he is your forgiveness. In him you are the righteousness of God.