Audio recording Sermon manuscript: If there hadn’t been this latest surge in cases, we might have thought that we were getting back to some kind of normal. As it is, case count have gone up significantly not just in Iowa, not just in red states, not just in the United States, but throughout the northern hemisphere. In light of this, the governing authorities have recommended that we all stay home for Thanksgiving. And so we can just add this to the list of things that we thought would never happen. Before this pestilence came upon us, I never would have thought that Christians would be prevented from gathering in churches for Easter, and yet, so it was. Now many families won’t get together for Thanksgiving—at least not in the same way as we are accustomed to. Who would have thought? But Easter was not cancelled this year. Every element of Easter worship was fulfilled this year as it is every year by those who are Christians. For true worship is nothing other than faith. And most assuredly there were Christians on Easter believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who rose from the dead. Even without meeting in large numbers or in the way that we normally do—even without receiving the sacrament that day—nothing was missing from the celebration of Easter for those Christians to whom faith in Christ has been given. For Jesus says in John 6 that his flesh can be eaten and his blood can be drunk by faith. Those who believe that his flesh is the living bread from heaven, and that whoever eats this bread will live forever, most assuredly have what Jesus says, because Jesus doesn’t lie. As it was, Easter went on an involuntary diet. Lots of stuff went by the wayside. There were no large scale Easter egg hunts. There were no large scale ham dinners. But everything that was essential for Christian worship was there, for you have been given the promises of God concerning Christ. True worship is nothing other than believing that God’s promises in Christ are true. This is pleasing to God, when we honor Christ, by believing what God has said about him. One of the ways that trying times, such as the ones we are living through, can be beneficial for us is that it reveals what is essential. When all the niceties go away, what does it mean to be a Christian? What is necessary for the Christian Church to survive? The answer, again, is faith. When Peter identified Jesus as the Christ, Jesus told him that this confession is like a rock. Even the gates of hell cannot prevail against a Christian’s confession that Jesus is the Christ. Not this Sunday, but the Sunday after, you will hear Jesus say in the Gospel reading that heaven and earth not only might pass away, but most certainly will pass away. And yet, Jesus says, his word will never pass away. This is a very practical matter. It is applicable to times like ours when things are done differently than they normally are. Wherever there is faith in Christ, you may be assured that everything is going to turn out just fine sooner or later. Or even if we are not dealing with these large scale events, but quite personal tragedies and evils, the same applies. If you are sick unto death, and it’s hard to breath, and there’s little hope that you will recover, so long as you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, all things will turn out right. Heaven and earth will pass away, but Jesus’s Word will never pass away. And he says, Whoever is baptized and believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. This means you are not dependent upon living forever in this world in order for you to be happy. Jesus will make you happy at that time that he has already predetermined for you. You are not dependent upon not getting sick with this virus in order to be happy. Any one of us could get this virus, regardless of how careful we might be. Is all lost if that should be the case? Or if we do get the disease, is our happiness dependent upon recovering and surviving? If that is the way t

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Today I’d like to consider our Gospel reading. This is one of Jesus’s parables. At the outset I’d like to remind you that, generally speaking, Jesus’s parables are not nice, satisfying stories, as some might assume. More often than not Jesus’s parables are intentionally unsatisfying. What I mean by that is that usually not everything is wrapped up in a tidy package where the plot goes the way that you think it should go. Jesus’s parables describe the kingdom of God, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts nor are his ways our ways. His parables reveal and obscure at the same time. So it isn’t surprising that there should be plenty for us to wonder about, even after hearing the same parable many times for many years. With the parable before us today I think there are several elements that we can quickly identify and explain. Then we can spend some more time considering what is more difficult. This parable is taken from a long section at the end of Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus is teaching about the end of the world. With that as the context, it is certain that this parable is about the end of this world and Christ’s second coming. So the bridegroom in the parable is Jesus. Jesus is coming again. We are not sure of the day nor the hour. The ten virgins represent Christians—or at least those who identify themselves as Christians. As virgins, they are pure and undefiled. With the number ten you have a number of completion. While they all identify as Christians, whether they are genuine or not seems to be at the heart of what is being taught. Not all ten make it into the wedding banquet. Five of them do. Five of them do not. So it seems that all ten of them identified themselves as Christians and thought of themselves as Christians, but only five of them ended up with the Lord Jesus. Jesus himself gives us the moral of the story, which he sometimes does after his parables. Whenever Jesus does that, I think it is especially important that we pay close attention to what he says. Here Jesus says, “Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” I feel quite confident about all the things that we have identified so far, but there are several things that we haven’t talked about yet. We especially have not talked about the differences between the ten virgins. Five are identified as wise. Five of them are foolish. The reason why the five are wise is because they took an extra flask of oil with them. The foolish ones did not. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been a problem if the bridegroom would have come when they were expecting him to come. But he didn’t. He was delayed. They all became drowsy and fell asleep. Presumably, while they were sleeping their oil lamps were burning away, using up their oil. When they woke up with the cry, “Wake, awake! Here comes the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” They suddenly discover, to their horror, that the flame is ever so low, if not extinguished all together. This would never do for such a festive occasion. The five wise virgins thanked their lucky stars that they had remembered to pack some extra. The five foolish virgins couldn’t do anything about their lamps then and there. They’d have to find some place that would sell them oil at that late hour. By the time they get back, the door was already shut. The Lord is rather cold to them. He says, “Amen, I tell you: I do not know you.” Presumably, therefore, they are left in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Immediately we wonder, “What went wrong here?” Jesus’s own words supply the answer, “Watch, therefore, because you do not know the day or the hour.” They should have stayed awake. If they had stayed awake they wouldn’t have been surprised. But notice that all ten of them, the wise as well as the foolish, became drowsy and fell asleep. This, I believe, is where we have something that is unexpected, which is a normal feature for Jesus’s parables. Jesus says, “Wat

 Audio Recording Sermon manuscript: The Old Testament prophet Daniel lived during a time when everything had fallen apart. Long gone were the days of Moses, David, or Solomon. The northern kingdom of the people of God was no more. It had long been taken over by the Assyrians. During Daniel’s own lifetime the remnant of God’s people, the southern kingdom, Judah, where Daniel was from, was also taken over. The Babylonians had conquered Judah and torn down to the ground the great temple that Solomon had built. The king of Babylon decided to take back with him to Babylon the most talented and noblest of the Jewish people so that those left behind were leaderless. Things had not looked so bad for them since the days of slavery in Egypt. However, even with the rubble and ruin new growth was beginning to pop up. Daniel was one of these bright spots. He was among the leaders who were taken captive to Babylon. Although he was from a conquered and humbled people, God gave him strength and wisdom. He and three of his friends rose in the ranks of Babylon’s officials so that eventually they far surpassed all the others in power and influence. They were exiles and prisoners, but they couldn’t help but turn people’s heads. Even the king listened to them. Being placed in such positions of power would be remarkable enough, but besides governing and advising kings, God also gave Daniel many visions of what was to come. Our Old Testament reading today is a portion of such a vision. We generally do not spend much time studying the visions that are given in Scripture. As a teacher and a preacher I can understand why. They are not as easy to understand as other places in the Scriptures. There often seems to be a stubborn remainder that leaves you wondering whether you’ve quite gotten all of it—even after thoroughly explaining it. Be that as it may, we will still try our hand at it. We should not just always do what is easy. For better understanding the portion of Daniel’s vision that we heard about, I think it is helpful to know that this is a part of longer series of visions that are recorded in the book of Daniel. And although these several visions are all different from one another in the imagery that is used, they repeat a similar overall message. So before we look at what was specifically spoken of in today’s reading, lets consider three themes that are the most prominent throughout these visions. First of all, the subject or plot of the visions God gave to Daniel are about kingdoms and the rise of future empires. The Babylonian empire, which was dominant at that time, was soon going to be overtaken by the Persian empire. After the Persian empire was dominant for some time, it would be taken over by the great Greek general, Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great dies as a young man, and the very large empire was split up among his generals and their descendants. After that the Romans would come and rule with their iron fist for several centuries. This succession of great empires, one after the other, is something that runs through all the visions. The second theme that runs through all the visions is actually more important than the first one. The visions are prophecies concerning Christ. Daniel prophesies about 600 years before Christ was born. In these visions, after these empires turn over, one after another, the Christ rises up and rules over them all. In a sense, given Daniel’s circumstances, it is a little surprising that there should be such a vision or that it would be believable. After all, the people of God were in shambles at that time. His people were scattered hither and yon. There was no leadership left in Jerusalem. The sacrifices and services at the temple had ceased. The Jews were a tiny people, a conquered people, with no military power. How could one from them rise up and rule over the whole world? However, in another sense, Daniel would not have had a hard time believing this vision. Daniel had God’s promises in his

 Audio Recording Sermon manuscript: The belief that the universe is eternal has been around for a very long time. The ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, taught that the universe has always existed. Plato believed that there was an infinite regression went all the way back into infinity. Aristotle taught that in the gray dawn of time there was a prime mover. Now all things are working themselves out of their own accord. Despite all our sophistication, our people have not gotten much further. The prime mover has been replaced by the big bang. Matter, time, space, and whatever other dimension there might be has always existed and always will exist. The universe is without beginning and without end. As it was in the beginning, it is now, and will be forever. Although I am telling you what is generally acceptable to the scientific community, it probably isn’t something that most people think about. That stuff is for philosophers and astrophysicists. Normal people don’t go around talking about this. What do normal people talk about? They talk about buying and selling, eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, planting and building. That is to say that normal people are concerned with the everyday things of life. They do not look at the big picture. Their field of vision doesn’t go out that far. This is not a mundane coincidence, unimportant, a matter of taste, as we might assume. St. Paul speaks of the god of this age blinding the minds of unbelievers to keep them from clearly seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is God’s image. How exactly does the devil, the god of this age, do this? Jesus’s words in our Gospel reading give us some insight. The people at the time of Noah were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: They were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. These people’s narrow field of vision, looking only to the everyday stuff, made it so that they were not able to see the signs of the times. They could not foresee the change of circumstances that was coming upon them because they assumed that all things would go on like they always have been. Generally speaking, all of you are practical people who do not wish to be concerned about big questions. You are concerned with your livelihood. You want to put food on the table, and pass along a nice inheritance to your kids. You want to get together with your family for Christmas. You don’t want to be bothered with philosophy, theology, or any other ivory tower subject. Since when did any of these things help anybody accomplish anything? They are totally impractical. But that only holds true based on the assumption that life will always go on as it always has. If people are going to go on forever, eating and drinking, buying and selling, and so on, then it would be a waste of time to consider any bigger questions—because it has already been decided that there are no bigger questions. All that matters is accumulating and consuming. But if this assumption is not true, then it is decidedly impractical not to consider it. It was very impractical, for example, that the people at the time of Noah were amassing fortunes and building up great institutions. The flood came and destroyed them all, in spite of all their hopes and dreams and hard work. Or, as Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul?” The Bible teaches that things will not always go on forever. The universe is not eternal. God created it from nothing. It has a starting point. It also has an ending point. On what will otherwise be an ordinary day Jesus will come on the clouds with great power and glory together with his angels. This old creation, w

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Lately I’ve spent some free time learning about artificial intelligence by watching some YouTube videos. Artificial intelligence has made much progress in the past couple decades. What by now is a long time ago scientists were able to program a computer that was able to beat a grand master at chess. A little more recently they were able to do a similar thing with the much more complicated game of Go. Perhaps you remember watching Jeopardy a few years ago, when the IBM computer named Watson defeated the most successful human players. It wasn’t even close. The computer blew away its human opponents. One of the main reasons why artificial intelligence has become more powerful is a new technique in programming the computers. Computers are no longer hard coded with instructions like “if x happens then do y; if y happens then do z.” Instead the computer is taught almost like you would teach a human. It is told to “watch this.” Then it is fed millions upon millions of examples, many lifetimes’ worth of examples, whereby it can make deductions. Computers are able to process this information more quickly than we can. Neither do they slumber nor sleep. So they are able to work out an intelligence that far surpasses our own as the examples I began with have shown. Thus we might ask, in the words of LBJ: “What hath Man wrought? And how will Man use his miracles?” The applications seem limitless. Think of how computers have invaded so much of our lives. Hardly any part has been left untouched. Artificial intelligence will only increase the power of the computing that has already been applied. Things will be done much more efficiently and easily. So it appears that artificial intelligence is but the latest step in a long story of progress that we’ve all been taught from our youth. The way that the story goes is that we have less toil and more free time. We have less suffering and more pleasure. The standard of living has been raised for all people. In the past ditches needed to be dug by ditch diggers. That was a lot of back breaking work. In the near future, with all the advancements that have been made, we won’t even have to have the guy in the cab manually operating the controls. For here’s the thing with all advancements: at first we’re grateful that the old work has gone away, but soon we get tired of the new work too. Even though operating an excavator is a whole lot easier than operating a spade, it still becomes tiresome when you have to do it day in and day out. So if that too is taken away, then we will be given the freedom to do those things that we find more enjoyable. But what then? There is a hole in this optimistic story of progress. It is always told in such a way where we are all supposed to be fabulously happy. I’m not so sure about that. Supposedly the people in the past were wretchedly miserable. We, supposedly, are so much better off than they are. And in the future people will be happier still. And why? Because we have mechanical slaves to do the work that we used to do. The future holds out the prospect of even more and better mechanical slaves. We arrogantly look back at the relatively slaveless people of times past as almost sub-human. But this is just a variation of the old Mammon story. Mammon, the god of wealth, promises that we will be ever so much happier if only we had a little bit more money. Visions of cars and vacations dance in our heads. On the other hand, Mammon also threatens. He says that if we don’t have money then we will have to eat our bread by the sweat of our own brow. Who wants to do that? So you better do whatever you have to do so that you are always only increasing your wealth. This view of life is extremely popular. It dominates how we talk and what is taught. In school people are educated only with the goal of making more money. I’m sure that the reason why it is so widespread is because Mammon’s promises and threats are so compelling. Who, after al

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: This Sunday of the Church Year is a little different from what we normally concern ourselves with on the other Sundays. On the other Sundays we are mainly concerned with something that happened with Jesus—his birth, his baptism, his death and resurrection, his teachings, his miracles, and so on. This puts our mind back in biblical times. With Reformation Sunday, however, we are dealing with things that happened in the 1500s and the times since then in the Lutheran Church. It can seem a little inappropriate to talk about the Reformation or the Lutheran Church in a worship service. Shouldn’t we be talking about the Bible instead? But this is an incorrect way of looking at being a Christian. We are not a Bible appreciation society where we celebrate all things bible merely for the sake of being about the bible. The Bible was never intended to be something for its own sake. It has always been for the purpose of faith in God, with love that follows after by the Holy Spirit’s healing of the sinful heart. This happened when God spoke to Adam and Eve before there even was a Bible. The earliest books of the Bible were written by Moses thousands of years after Adam and Eve lived. But between Adam and Eve and Moses there were generation upon generation of people who believed in Christ even though they did not have any of the books of the Bible that we have today. And so you can see that the story of there being Christians is larger than the portion of that that the Bible records. The plot of this story is the way that the Word of God fares among a people. God’s Laws and promises are either known or unknown, believed in or rejected, and thereby people either believe in Jesus Christ or they do not. This story was in effect from the beginning. It also continues on after the death of the apostles when the last of the Scriptures were written. This story has to do with the Christian Church as a whole as well as with individuals. Therefore this story includes the controversies in the early church about the two natures in Christ that resulted in the Nicene Creed. It includes the rise to power of the Roman bishop, also known as the pope. It includes the way that God fashioned a German monk named Martin Luther to be an instrument for reforming his Church. Therefore it is not inappropriate to talk about the history of the Reformation in Church. It is God’s church that was reformed in the Reformation. And we could also speak of more recent history, the history that brings us up to our present time. Not long after the Reformation the European churches were corrupted and suppressed by the governments in Europe. Some energetic and godly Lutheran men and women left Europe and settled in America in the 1800s. They made use of the freedom of religion afforded them at that time. They worked hard and sacrificed, developing and funding parochial schools to galvanize our people in the rediscovered truths of the Lutheran Confessions. But this has not been maintained. Our people have lost their zeal. Our parochial schools have closed. We have been going after other gods such. We are in need of repentance and renewal. And finally this story comes right down to each of us personally. How has the Word of God fared with each one of us? Have we let it have its way with us so that we love it, speak of it, promote it and defend it against all nay-sayers? Or have we let it go in one ear and out the other? Have we become hard and calloused to it so that we neither fear God’s threats nor are comforted by his promises? Will we pluck up the courage to help our nearest and dearest to continue to believe in Christ? Will we denounce and speak against our nearest and dearest when they live in rebellion against God’s Laws and promises and are thereby plunging headlong into hell? The answer to these rhetorical questions, unfortunately, is that things are not good with us. It is as Jesus says, that we have lost our saltiness. And if we ha

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Let’s begin today by dealing with some history that takes place before our Old Testament reading. The Bible first introduces us to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That’s not too far into that first book of the Bible. Up to that point the history of the earth is laid out in a more general way, with a wide angle lens. In chapter 12 it focuses in on Abraham. God spoke several times to this man. He told him that he would inherit the land of Canaan for himself and his descendants. His descendants would be many and great. And through his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. God gave Abraham the sign of circumcision as a seal of this covenant, to be done to all the baby boys when they were eight days old. Moses, the author of Genesis, says that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s only son, was a long time coming. He was miraculously conceived and born to Abraham and Sarah when they were very old. Isaac married a woman named Rebecca. She was a distant relative of Abraham’s. Abraham and Sarah did not want him to marry one of the Canaanite women around them. Thereby he would be lured away from the true faith to worshipping the gods of the Canaanites. Rebecca, like Sarah before her, also had a hard time conceiving and bearing a child. No children came for a long time until Isaac’s prayer was finally answered with the birth of Esau and Jacob. Already, while the boys were in Rebecca’s womb, they were fighting with one another. Their mother went and inquired of the Lord, “Why is this happening to me?” The Lord said to her that two nations were in her womb. They will be separated from one another. One will be stronger than the other. The elder will serve the younger. And so it was that when Rebecca gave birth to the twins, the younger brother, Jacob, was holding on to the heel of his older brother, Esau. There is more that happened between Jacob and Esau that you can read about for yourself. For our purposes today, I will only speak about one more thing before getting into our Old Testament text. It happened right before our reading today. It is the reason why Jacob is alone in the middle of nowhere sleeping with a rock as his pillow. What happened just before our reading is that mother and son, Rebecca and Jacob, conspired against father and brother, Isaac and Esau, to get Isaac to bless Jacob instead of Esau. Rebecca had overheard that her husband was about to bless Esau after Esau provided a meal of wild game. So she and her favorite son, Jacob, went to work and tricked Isaac who was blind and old. Jacob, the younger, received the birthright. Esau did not. When Esau learned of this treachery he said that he was going to kill Jacob after his father, Isaac, had died. Rebecca found out about this and told Jacob. She wanted Jacob to go away, back to where she and Abraham, and their relatives were from. There was an additional benefit to Jacob going away besides avoiding his irate brother. He could also find a wife there. Jacob’s brother, Esau, had married two Canaanite women, which were a source of bitterness for Isaac and Rebecca. There’s nothing quite like marrying an unbeliever for derailing a person’s faith. So this brings us to our reading this morning. Jacob is on his way to his uncle Laban’s house. The sun had set, so he laid down to rest. When he fell asleep he had a dream where there was a staircase from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it. At the top of it was the Lord God. He declared to Jacob what he had already declared to his father and grandfather. Jacob and his descendants would possess this land. In his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Plus he added that he would be with Jacob wherever he went, and that he would bring him back to this chosen land. God would not leave him until he had fulfilled all the promises that he had made. Before we get into the tremendously graciou

 Audio Recording Sermon Manuscript: Our Epistle reading this week begins with chapter 1, verse 1. It is at the very beginning of a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the congregation that existed in the Greek city of Corinth. It is customary that we go about doing these kinds of things in a certain way. Among us we might begin a letter or an email by saying, “Dear So-and-so…” And then, before we get into the subject at hand, we might talk about things that are a mutual concern of the author as well as the recipient. One farmer might write to another farmer about the weather and how the crops have been growing. Old friends might begin a letter by talking about mutual acquaintances that they had recently come across. You get the idea. It is quite common for the beginning of a letter to speak to things that both the letter writer as well as the ones receiving the letter would find relevant. With the writing of Holy Scripture the Holy Spirit by no means despises these sorts of things. The vast majority of the Bible is quite ordinary in the way that it speaks. Only some of the prophetic works like Ezekiel or Daniel in the Old Testament or Revelation in the New Testament speak in a more exalted way. Otherwise you might say that the Holy Spirit wears everyday clothes when he inspires the authors of Scripture. The letters of Paul that we have in the New Testament certainly follow this typical pattern. Whenever Paul addresses a letter he is immediately thinking about the connection that exists between himself and those he is writing to. It is not surprising that he talks about Jesus Christ and God the Father and the Holy Spirit, for this is their shared interest. Already in the very first verses of the letter he is foreshadowing and preparing the ground for what he would like to say to them. He often lays out divine truths at the very beginning that he will apply to his hearers so that they can gain a greater understanding of them. Although Paul has not addressed a letter specifically to any one of us, nor to our congregation, what he says can also be applied to us because we have the same connection to him as these people to whom he was writing 2,000 years ago. We believe in the same Jesus Christ and God the Father and the Holy Spirit as they, so what Paul says to the Corinthians also applies to us. With that in mind there is a lot that we can learn from this little introduction to his letter. Therefore, today we will look at what Paul says to the Corinthians with the idea of also applying it to ourselves. First of all, Paul says where the letter is directed: to the church of God in Corinth. Then he adds a phrase that describes them. He says, “Those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, who are called as saints.” The important word behind “sanctify” and “saint” is “holy.” To sanctify means to make holy. A saint is someone who is holy. Holiness is something that is strictly limited to God and is only available through an association with him. There is no way for anyone or anything to be holy except by being in a relationship to the only source of holiness, which is God. So what Paul is saying is that the members of this congregation have been made holy in Christ Jesus, and that they are holy. This is the reason why the Father sent his Son. It was to make sinners into saints. Then Paul adds this: “along with all in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.” The congregation to which a person belongs is important. It is not by accident that certain people end up in certain congregations. It is the Holy Spirit who calls us and gathers us into congregations. But the Holy Christian Church, the fellowship of saints, is larger than any individual congregation. As Paul says, it is made up of all those in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord. Another way of saying this is that what makes a person a Christian is faith in Jesus as his or her Lord. For without fa

 Audio Recording Sermon manuscript: We Christians live in the time of the New Testament, the new covenant, the new arrangement between God and us. The nature of this New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. By the redeeming sacrifice of the Son of God, all people have been reconciled to God, even though they have disregarded and even actively fought against God’s will. Therefore, through faith in Jesus we are justified before God. That means that God accepts us and welcomes us and blesses us for Christ’s sake. There have been previous covenants, previous arrangements between God and his people, before the fullness of time came with Jesus. There was the Abrahamic covenant where Abraham and his descendants were given the sign of circumcision. There is also the much more extensive covenant that was given at Mt. Sinai. This covenant included the tabernacle and temple, all the sacrifices and festivals that went along with that, the distinction between clean and unclean food, and so on. Today we will be talking about one aspect of this Sinai covenant, the third commandment, which requires the people of God to not work on Saturdays. This, like many other aspects of the old covenant, set apart the people of God from all the other people on earth. As you know, we Christians do not observe the Sabbath. We do not forbid work on Saturday or Sunday. The application that we make with the third commandment is that we should not despise preaching and God’s Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. But we can do that on any day of the week if we so choose. It is an ancient custom, going all the way back to the apostles, that Christians meet on Sunday, the day the Lord was resurrected from the dead, but theoretically we could meet any day. We also do not observe the distinction between clean and unclean food. We are allowed to eat pork, shellfish, and whatever else, for what Jesus has made clean we ought not call unclean. Neither do we have the Levitical priesthood or the services and sacrifices and festivals of the temple in Jerusalem. These were prophesies and foreshadowings of the one great sacrifice of the God-Man Jesus Christ on the cross, the only sacrifice that is capable of atoning sin. Now all Christians are royal priests. We declare the excellencies of God who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Our sacrifices are not goats and rams, but our own bodies as living sacrifices—offered up in love for God and for our neighbor. Christians are being conformed to the image of the crucified Christ, being glorified, just as Jesus was glorified on the cross in such a way where it is only visible through faith. So it is not possible for us Christians to go back to the old covenant. The new has come. The old has passed away. If we seek to establish our righteousness by observing the Sabbath or the distinction between clean and unclean food, then Jesus does us no good—for we are no longer believing in him but in our keeping of the Law. This is what Paul writes about at length in his letter to the Galatians. Either we are justified through faith in Jesus or we are justified by our own works and laws. The righteousness that we receive through faith in Jesus is greater than any righteousness we can work up on our own. And so we must not let people trouble us with any failure to keep the Law—especially those temporary, ceremonial laws of the Sabbath and clean and unclean foods that applied only to the Jews from the time of Sinai until the death and resurrection of Christ. This was the beginning of the New Testament that we now live in of Jesus’s blood that is shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins. So this is how things are for us. The apostles have made this clear to us, even though it took them some time to understand it too, as we can easily see in the writings of the New Testament. It was hard for them to understand how any of God’s commandments could

 Audio Recording Luther quotation mentioned in the sermon:A Word from LutherAll miracles and works of God are considered impossible in our eyes, and they are also impossible for the natural man to grasp; and this is to the end that God may be confessed to be an almighty Creator, for whom something impossible can be made possible, and can make something out of nothing. … Therefore, if death be present and I can no longer live, I must still know enough to say: “Nevertheless I live, and I will live. Death, even though it is all around me, is no more than a little spark, and life is as great as the sea.” Now reason cannot grasp how this takes place. But whoever believes, knows for a certainty that death will be like a spark of fire falling into the midst of the ocean, that is, it will be extinguished in a moment. God is almighty, he who believes is in God, therefore he is in life, even though he be in the midst of death. From Luther’s Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, alt. Sermon manuscript:Words are one thing. Actions are another. We’ve all known this for a long time—ever since we were kids. Threats of punishment are one thing. Punishments being carried out is another. So long as mom has only said such and such, we might very well go against her wishes. When she says she’s going to tell dad, that’s a whole different feeling.It seems that we have an amazing ability to hear the sounds of words, somewhat understand their meaning, but carry on regardless—as though we had never heard it. Mere words leave us in charge of what we might do. With actions, though, we might not be in charge anymore. When dad was to be told we could no longer go on our merry way. We knew that dad was going to impose his will upon us, and we weren’t going to like it.When it comes to Christianity there are a whole lot of words that get used. God’s revelation to us is with words. Therefore, also, words are used in catechesis, in preaching, and in confessing. Even our sacraments are quite wordy. Baptism is the joining of water with the word of God. The Lord’s Supper is the joining of bread and wine with the word of God. Without the word of God the water is plain water, and the bread and wine mere bread and wine. Without words there is no Christianity.It is not surprising, therefore, that people assume that Christianity is merely words, that there is no action. When Christianity is assumed to be merely words it becomes somewhat like a parlor game. There’s talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And, “Mmm. That’s interesting.” But everybody does what he or she wishes. Everybody does what they were going to do anyway. There’s a good reason why we act this way with Christianity. It’s pleasant. It’s nonthreatening. You are the one who gets to judge all the talk. If there’s talk that you like, then you can like it, but if there’s talk that you don’t like, then you can brush it aside. You are the one who is left in control.But genuine Christianity is not mere talk. God actually exists, and he does stuff. He blesses and he curses. He punishes and he rewards. The life we live is seen and judged by God already in this world. He threatens to punish all who break his commandments, therefore we should not do anything against them. He promises grace and every blessing to all who keep his commandments, therefore we should also love and trust in him and gladly do what he commands.However, this is not the only possible explanation for why our life goes the way that it does. In fact, believing that we are subject to God’s actions is a very rare way to look at life—even among Christians. Instead, people understand that life is a matter of chance or luck. The reason why good things happen is because you happened to be lucky. The reason why bad things happened is because you were unlucky. Or, there is that old saying that builds on this idea: “people make their own luck.” That is to say that successful people put themselves in the right position and the right time to score