200419 Easter 2 Drive in Service audio 200419 Easter 2 Order of Service Sermon Manuscript: When Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning he appeared to several disciples in different places, as you yourself can read about in the last chapters of the Gospels. Our Gospel reading today tells us what happened on the evening of Easter Day as well as a week later with Thomas. On the evening of Easter Day his disciples were in lockdown in an upper room of a house, fearing the Jews. Locked doors are no problem for Jesus with his glorified body. He appeared, showed them his hands and his feet, and said, “Peace be with you.” That is what is meant when we say, “God bless you.” When we say, “God bless you,” we are saying, “May God make it so that things go well for you today.” So when Jesus said, “Peace be with you,” he was saying, “Let your hearts be at rest, for things are set right. Look at my hands and my feet. Although I died in agony with big fat nails stuck through my limbs, I am dead no longer. I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”These are kind and generous words to these disciples who have not been very faithful or admirable. Jesus does not say, “What’s wrong with you?” or “Shame on you.” He says, “Everything is going to be fine. The bloody cross has made it so—just look at my hands and my feet. I did this for you—for your blessing.”Then we have some words that are very important for understanding the nature of the Gospel ministry and the Christian Church that is created by that ministry. If you want to know who Christians are and what they do, then this is one of the best places to go. Jesus said, “Just as the Father has sent me, I am also sending you.” After saying this he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whenever you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven. Whenever you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”Jesus says he is sending the apostles. The word “apostle” means “one who is sent.” Jesus was sent from the Father to do and make known the Father’s will, so also these apostles were sent out by Jesus. When the apostles went out they did not preach their own will, their own ideas. They were sent out with a particular mission. They were to forgive the sins of those who repent. They were to bind the sins of those who do not repent. In this way the will of the Father that is accomplished in the Son finds its home in the hearts of those who believe by the power of the Holy Spirit. The will of the Father is that we should be set free from our slavery to sin, death, and the devil and become his beloved children by being baptized into Christ his only Son.You and I and all Christians are creations of this Gospel ministry that was set in motion by Jesus’s sending of the apostles. The lineage of our Christian faith passes through the generations all the way back to these apostles. There is a genealogy. For these apostles went out and preached. Some of those who heard them believed. From among those who heard and believed, God raised up fathers and mothers who taught their children, witnesses and martyrs who prevailed against the devil’s and the world’s attacks, pastors and teachers who preached the Word. They corrected, rebuked, and encouraged with great patience and careful instruction. Through these people, who made known the will of our Triune God, some more people heard and believed. So on and so forth, it has gone down through the ages until this very day. Christians are made through the preaching of the Gospel. The Gospel is not just preached through preachers, or pastors, but by all who make known the will of God toward us poor, miserable sinners. When Christian fathers and mothers preach to their children, their words are certainly not less efficacious than a pastor’s preaching—so long as they are not making things up out of their own head, but are faithfully making known the will of God that

200412 Easter Drive in Service audio 200412 Easter Order of Service Sermon manuscript: There is a lot of peace that can be gained from the thought that everything is going to go back to normal. It is encouraging when we think of that time when we will no longer need to meet in cars or listen to sermons on our computer. It will be nice when we can go sit down in a restaurant somewhere or go to the golf course. But maybe what will be nicest of all is when we won’t have to worry about getting sick. We’ve had this trouble of this disease come upon us. We will all have a greater peace of mind when the trouble is taken away from us.The peace that comes from troubles being taken away from us is a peace that everybody immediately understands. We’ve understood since we were babies. When we had the trouble of being hungry we let Mom know about it. When we were filled up with milk, we had peace. When we stubbed our toe and it throbbed painfully, we had peace when the pain went away. When we have trouble we are not at peace. When the trouble goes away, we have peace.Now let’s apply this thinking to Easter morning. To call what had been going on “trouble,” is such an understatement that it is almost farcical. Jesus did not just have “trouble.” He lost his reputation and his dignity. People treated him as though he were a fool. He was beaten and whipped and spit upon. All his friends left him. Peter denied him three times. Nails were pounded through his hands and his feet and his body was suspended from these nails until he could no longer breathe. His heart gave out, and he hanged limply upon the cross, dead. To make sure that he was really dead the soldiers callously thrust a spear into his side, further mutilating his beaten and scarred body. Just before sunset on Good Friday he was placed into a cold dark grave.That was a heap of trouble for Jesus personally, but this also extended to his disciples. His disciples loved him tremendously, and so to hear of the terrible things that happened to him was dreadfully painful. And he had died. There is a special kind of sadness that comes from young people dying. Jesus was in the prime of his life—around 30 years old. But, more than that, Jesus was so good and loveable. The disciples adored him. Now he was so suddenly and violently dead.But there’s more. The disciples did not think that Jesus was just an ordinary man. They believed that he was the Christ who was promised to come according to the Old Testament Scriptures. They believed that he was by all rights in heaven and on earth the king of the Jews. The twelve apostles had left their livelihoods behind to be his students. They had preached and urged others to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that through that faith, they would be blessed by his rulership. According to their way of thinking about how Jesus should be the Christ, Jesus’s death meant was all over and done with. How can someone who is dead be king? You can’t prop his corpse up on a throne, can you?And so all of Jesus’s disciples had a heap of troubles too as they all entered into that Easter morning. All of their most pressing troubles came from the fact that Jesus was dead. So according to the logic that we’ve looked at this morning, with the removal of these heaps and heaps of troubles that comes with Jesus being resurrected—no longer dead—Jesus’s disciples should have had peace—tons and tons of peace. So my question to you is, “Where’s the peace?” The angel told these women the good news: They should not be alarmed. Jesus, who was crucified, is risen. That’s why he isn’t there. He lives and is out and about. That’s why he’s not lying there as the women expected him to be. You’d think that after hearing how all their troubles have ended that they would go out from the tomb leaping and skipping for joy—peace having taken complete possession of their hearts. But what Mark says is that they bolted for the door and got out of there as quickly as the

200410 Good Friday Drive in Service (audio) 200410 Good Friday Order of Service (bulletin) Sermon Manuscript: I’d like to speak with you tonight about the events leading up to the crucifixion during Holy Week. Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday. 500 years before Holy Week the prophet Zechariah said, “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! Look! Your King is coming to you. He is righteous and brings salvation. He is humble and is riding on a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey.” We heard this prophesy being fulfilled on Palm Sunday. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey the people were shouting and rejoicing. They said, “Hosanna,” which means, “please, save us.” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.”This did not make everyone in Jerusalem happy, though. Most of the church officials in Jerusalem thought that Jesus was a false teacher—a Sabbath breaker. “How could someone who heals on the Sabbath be anything but evil?” they wondered. Since they were so certain that Jesus was no good, it was extremely galling to them that he was so popular. The stupid people who hadn’t read the right books were latching on to Jesus and asking him to save them. They were calling him “the anointed,” or “the Christ.” They were calling him the King. This was troubling to the Jewish authorities. The Romans were the occupying power over the Jews at that time. If they heard about this king idea, then there was going to be trouble. The church officials always had to walk a fine line. They had to be subservient to the Romans on the one hand, but appear independent and orthodox to the Jewish faithful on the other. If the people go after Jesus as the king, then this throws their whole well-choreographed scheme into chaos. Who knows what might happen? But it probably wouldn’t be good for them. They had to neutralize Jesus as the rising leader of the Jewish people.This is what they try to do. The first couple days after Palm Sunday they send their best debaters after Jesus. They ask him tough question after tough question. They tried to trap Jesus into saying something wrong. This doesn’t work. Instead of Jesus looking like a fool, they were looking like fools. It got to the point where they didn’t dare ask him any more questions.I think Jesus’s disciples thought that this was great fun. It’s always good to be a part of the winning team, and Jesus was winning. It’s also nice to be part of the inner circle of somebody who is powerful, and, to be sure, Jesus’s star was rising.But Jesus’s mindset was different than his disciples. While his disciples are thinking about kingdom building and greatness, Jesus has his eye toward the end of the world. It is during the first part of this Holy Week that we get Jesus’s great teachings about the end of the world. At the end of the Church Year, when we consider the prophesies about the end of the world, our Gospel readings come from what Jesus says on Holy Week.The fact that Jesus and his disciples are not on the same page explains several things that happen. It explains why the disciples were arguing among themselves over who among them was the greatest when Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper. It explains why Peter took out his sword and was prepared to fight when Jesus was arrested. Instead of praising Peter for this bold act Jesus told Peter to knock it off. The story line that the disciples had of going from one triumph to another did not include Jesus being arrested—or at least not peaceably going along with it. It is shameful when someone gets arrested. Even if the person is innocent, it is still highly embarrassing, for most people think, “the guy must have done something wrong, otherwise they wouldn’t have arrested him.” And so it came to pass that in spite of all the disciples’ bravado; in spite of all their bragging about being willing to die rather than forsake Jesus; when the Shepherd was struck the sheep were scattered. They all took to the hil

200409 Maundy Thursday Drive in Service 200409 Maundy Thursday bulletin Sermon manuscript: About two and a half years ago our church celebrated the 500thanniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses concerning indulgences to the church door. This marked the beginning of an intense struggle throughout Christendom. Martin Luther’s writings caused much turmoil. Everybody had to take a stand. Was Luther correct or not?There was another man, named Desiderius Erasmus, who was a little older than Luther. He had long been in favor of cleaning up corruption in the Church at that time. For that reason he was sympathetic to some of what Luther was teaching. However, there was a lot that he didn’t like too. In a way he was rather conservative. He wanted to keep the teachings as they were, even if they weren’t biblical, because he feared the strife and dissension that comes with doctrinal controversies.So in 1524 Desiderius Erasmus wrote a short book where he attacked something that Luther had been teaching. Luther taught that we are born with an enslaved will. Erasmus said that we have a free will. This topic is important and beneficial to study. Perhaps we will some time. But I’m not bringing this up to discuss the controversy itself. I want to talk about something Erasmus said against Luther in course of his book.He basically said that Luther was being altogether too certain about what the Bible said. Over the course of history there have been a lot of people who have said different things about what the Bible says about this or that topic. The Bible, he said, was a confusing book. Who can make heads or tails of it? It is best to leave interpretation to the professionals. Let the priests, bishops, and the pope tell us what it all means, because the Bible is basically useless in settling any controversies.This really struck a nerve for Luther. I don’t think Erasmus was prepared for the vehemence with which Luther responded. I think Erasmus thought that all people thought that the Bible was a rather hazy and difficult book whose interpretation was best left to the professionals. Luther said, “No. The Bible is not hazy. The Bible is clear. If there’s anything that’s hazy, then it’s the people who are reading it. You will be better blessed by reading the inspired prophets and apostles than you will with reading all the other stuff that folks have written aboutwhat the Bible says. Each person can and should believe what the Bible says, not what people say.”I agree with Luther: The Bible is clear. It is plain spoken. It doesn’t beat around the bush and leave all kinds of things open to a person’s interpretation. If anything, the Bible is a bit too clear for our liking. People would like it to be less clear so that they can bend and twist it any way they please.I’ll give you a couple examples of the Bible being more explicit than we want it to be. When God called Abraham and his descendants to be his people he gave Abraham the sign of circumcision to accompany it. That means, “Cut off the foreskin from your penis, and cut off the foreskin from all your sons’ and grandsons’ penises eight days after they are born.” Does that make you a little uncomfortable? Well, that’s what circumcision is. I didn’t make it up. It’s right there in Genesis. How does circumcision do anything or benefit anyone? I’m not sure. But that’s what God clearly said.Or one time God told Abraham to take his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved, and kill him as a sacrifice on a mountain that God would show him. That’s all too plain in its meaning for our liking. We’d like to turn it into a metaphor or something so that we can safely ignore it. But Abraham believed this word to be true and faithful. He didn’t interpret it out of existence. Let God be true and every man a liar.This is how the Bible is. It records how God deals with people in a very simple way. The problem is that we often have a hard time believing it. But that isn’t God’s fault. Neither is it the Scri

200405 Palm Sunday Drive in Service <--click here for audio 200405 Palm Sunday Order of Service <--click here for bulletin Sermon manuscript: Parades are a time of celebration and pageantry. You don’t have a parade at the time of tragedy and defeat. Parades are for winners. Today we hear of a parade that happened in Jerusalem. The winner is Jesus. He was the one who was being celebrated. John tells us that one of the reasons why there was a large crowd surrounding Jesus as he entered the city was that they had heard about what he had done to Lazarus. Lazarus was a man who had died not long before this. He remained dead for four days. His body had started to decompose. But the composer of the Universe showed up—that’s Jesus—and told Lazarus to come out of his tomb. And he did. God’s people had had prophets in the past who were able to bring life back to the dead, but that was very rare. It also happened only with those who had freshly died. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Jesus had told Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s sisters, that he is the resurrection and the life. That indeed seemed to be the case.And so the people were wondering, might this be the Christ? Why, yes, that must be so. You hear them say that in the rousing chants as they marched along: “Hosanna,” (which means “please, save us.”) “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel.” They knew who Jesus was and they acted accordingly. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and warmth in that crowd. They were moved to produce song and dance and art spontaneously—which always makes the best kind of such things. They cut palm branches and waved them. They put their own clothes on the road for Jesus’s donkey to walk on them. Here we see a little foretaste of heaven. We creatures were made to praise God. It is our highest and most fulfilling activity. The problem we have while in this life is that our heart is so often not in it. And our heart is not in it because we are weighed down with cares and worries and sadness. That is why we Christians always enjoy when a little bit of heaven breaks into our gray and dreary lives and lifts up our hearts—lifts them up unto the Lord. It is good and right and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to the Lord. Nobody had to tell these people to do what they did. They did what they did because they wanted to, more than anything. Luke tells us that the Pharisees were appalled by this creative worship, but Jesus tells them that if the people didn’t cry out, then the stones would have to sing. The joy simply couldn’t be contained. Heaven is a good place.But the sour faces of the Pharisees show us that not everyone thought this parade was heavenly. The Pharisees had been convinced long before this that Jesus was no good. They were irritated that the people were being taken in by Jesus, whom they regarded as a false teacher. They had tried to get it across to the people that Jesus was a Sabbath breaker, and therefore couldn’t be any good, but the people weren’t listening to them. The Pharisees are frustrated, as you heard in our Gospel reading. “We aren’t getting anywhere,” they said. “Look, the whole world is going after him.”But they were exaggerating, as cranky churchmen are liable to do, when they said that the whole world was going after him. Not all of Jerusalem was there. Pontius Pilate certainly wasn’t there. He didn’t know anything about Jesus until the Jews brought him before him so that Jesus could be put to death. The vast majority of Jerusalem was going about their workday, for this was not a day of rest for them. According to the Jewish mindset their Saturday is our Sunday. Therefore their Sunday is our Monday. Sunday was the beginning of the work week for them. These Jews who joined in on the parade had to skip work to do so, which they gladly did. It’s not every day that the Messiah comes to town. But most people paid no mind to what was going o

200328 Home Worship Service (Lent 5) Audio Recording <--click here for sound 200329 Lent 5 Home Worship Order of Service Document <--click here for order of service Our Gospel reading today comes from John’s Gospel. John is one of the twelve apostles. His brother was named James. It is believed that John is the only one of the twelve who died a natural death after living to be an old man. All the others were killed for preaching that Christ is the Savior. This does not mean that John did not suffer. He did. But perhaps God wanted John to live out his days so that as an old man he could write a fourth Gospel in addition to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which had already been written. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the four Gospels knows that John is different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As an old man and as the sole survivor of the twelve apostles, I believe that John wanted to speak of the things that he had seen and heard as Jesus’s disciple that had not already been covered by the other three Gospels. If the other three Gospels had already said what needed to be said, then he left that be.And so it is that we hear of many of the things that Jesus said from John who was an eyewitness. Something that comes out very plainly in John’s Gospel is that Jesus was very simple and clear in what he said about himself. Let’s hear some of these simple declarations.You are quite familiar with this one: “God loved the world in this way, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” God sent his Son to save, not so that the world would be judged and condemned. God sent his Son to save because the world already was judged and condemned.Or consider this declaration from a couple chapters later. “Amen, amen, I tell you: Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He is not going to come into judgment but has crossed over from death to life. Amen, amen, I tell you: A time is coming and is here now when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who listen will live.” Whoever hears Jesus and believes that God has sent him has eternal life. There is no judgment. Such a one has crossed over from death to life.Here’s another statement from the next chapter: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day. For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.”I’m not out of passages. I could easily come up with some more plain statements that Jesus is the Son of God who was sent from the Father so that we may have eternal life in him. Those who believe will not be judged and condemned. They will not perish eternally. They will be raised up on the Last Day to a superabundant life where all evil has been put away. This is as plain as plain can be. John reports what Jesus said.John also reports that in spite of Jesus being exceptionally clear, the Jews did not believe him—particularly the Jews in Jerusalem. Some people believed in Jesus in Galilee and even in Samaria, but the Jerusalem Jews were very hostile to Jesus. There were probably several reasons why the Jerusalem Jews did not like Jesus. I’ll mention just a couple. First of all, he was not from the big schools and big names in Jerusalem. He was from Nazareth of Galilee. What good can come from there? Jesus’s hometown is so prominent that it even gets painted as a mocking title over his cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.” Jesus was from the sticks. What would he know?This is related to a second reason why the Jerusalem Jews did not like Jesus: He didn’t know his place. He drove the money changers o

200322 Home Worship Service (Lent 4) <--click for audio 200322 Lent 4 Home Worship Order of Service <--click for bulletin/order of service Sermon manuscript: Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.Our readings today sound different from the way that they would under normal circumstances. Under normal circumstances we know where our daily bread is going to come from. We’re going to go to the grocery store and buy it. In order to pay for it we are going to go to work and cash our paycheck. Our pay has enough left over that we can go to a restaurant or a movie or take a vacation every now and then. Everybody has abundant provisions.Our second reading from the book of the acts of the apostles is the report of what happened right after Peter preached the Gospel on Pentecost. 3,000 were baptized. They met together and broke bread together. They had all things in common. If there was someone in need, they gave. If they didn’t have the means on hand, they sold. When things are operating normally we have measures and procedures set up for taking care of the less fortunate. Since other people are taking care of these problems we don’t worry about it. With what is going on right now, we might very well be called upon to give away our toilet paper to those who did not hoard it. Giving away our food and supplies, holding thing in common, is much more of a real possibility today and going forward into the future than it was a couple weeks ago.In our Gospel reading Jesus wants the disciples to feed the huge crowd of hungry people. Philip does the math and says that even if they spent 200 denarii, it wouldn’t even be close to enough, and to be sure, none of them had 200 denarii. 200 denarii is about 200 days’ wages. That would be over $20,000 in today’s money. How are these people going to be fed?Today we are beginning to hear people wonder aloud how the economy is going to keep going if everybody is confined to their houses. How are people’s needs going to be met? Where is the money going to come from? Today everybody’s attention is on the virus and on the healthcare system. Tomorrow the news will be focused on the great changes that have taken place in the economy.Perhaps we could sum up all these concerns by saying that we would like to know the future. We want to know where and how we are going to get everything that we need. When we don’t know how things will be in a month, or in a week, we become burdened and heavy laden with stress. There is stress when things are going normally, but that’s nothing compared to when things are uncertain. And if ever the situation should get to the point where we don’t know how we are going to eat tomorrow, then we would be greatly troubled.This was the situation in our first reading from Exodus. Moses and the hundreds of thousands of people had left Egypt. They had crossed through the Red Sea. They are on their way to Mt. Sinai. They had already gone through the first crisis that would take place during a journey like this. They had run out water. Where are you going to find water in a desert? When they finally found some, they couldn’t drink it. But God made the bitter water sweet. He led them to a place that did have good water. What is the thing that runs low after water? It’s food. The provisions that they brought along with them from Egypt had run out. What are they going to eat? They blamed Moses and Aaron for leading them into this terrible predicament. Here are the harsh and bitter words: “I wish we had died in Egypt. At least we had something to eat there. Now we have to watch our children starve in this miserable wilderness.” Reading these words can’t possibly do justice to the sights and sounds that had to have accompanied them. There had to be veins popping and screams and tears. If I said that they were stressed, you would probably say you can say that again. And why were they stressed? They were down to nothing. They didn’t k

200315 Sermon on Exodus 8:16-21 (Lent 3) March 15, 2020 I’d like to begin today by speaking about the background to our Old Testament lesson. Moses was an Israelite who was born during the time that the Israelites were enslaved under Pharaoh in Egypt. This was a time of persecution. The Egyptians didn’t want the Israelites to become too strong, so all the baby boys were supposed to be killed right after they were born. But his mother loved him and hid him for three months. Eventually it was too hard to hide him, so she put Moses in a basket in the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter found him, had pity on him, and raised him as her son. When Moses grew up he learned that he was an Israelite and pitied his people stuck in slavery. One day he saw an Egyptian striking his slave. Moses became angry, killed him, and buried him. He thought that nobody knew what he had done, but soon learned that word of his slaying was more commonly known. Fearing that he would be caught and punished, he went to Midian, which is the land that is east of the Sinai peninsula. There he met his wife, Zipporah, had children, and worked for his father-in-law Jethro.One day Moses was shepherding a flock by Mt. Horeb, which is another name for Mt. Sinai. God spoke to him there from the midst of a burning bush. What God said to Moses is that he should go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let his people go into the wilderness to worship God. This was not something that Moses wanted to do. He would rather keep working for his father-in-law. He wasn’t a good speaker. God would not hear of his objections, but he did give Moses some help. His brother, Aaron, would help him.So Moses went back to Pharaoh and told him what God had said. Pharaoh was not impressed. Not only did he not let the people go, but he wanted to show the Israelites who’s boss. He forced the Israelites to make bricks without straw, making their work more difficult.Moses and Aaron eventually went back to Pharaoh again. They were going to perform signs to back up what the Lord had said through Moses. When they appeared before Pharaoh Moses told Aaron to throw down his staff and it became a snake. But then Pharaoh called for his own academics and intellectuals. They were able to do the same thing. The only thing was that Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Nonetheless, Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he didn’t listen.Then God told Moses to warn Pharaoh about the first plague. All the water in the land would be turned to blood. Moses did as the Lord told him, and all the water was turned to blood. However, Pharaoh’s leading lights were able to do the same thing by their own arts and practices.Then God sent the second plague—a plague of frogs. Frogs went everywhere. They were in people’s houses, in their ovens, and in their cupboards. The Egyptian scholars, though, were able to do this same thing. Pharaoh eventually had had enough of the frogs. He asked Moses to pray for him. Moses did this and the frogs all died. Great heaps of dead frogs were everywhere. But then Pharaoh changed his mind. He didn’t want grant any freedom to his slaves.This brings us to today’s reading. The third plague was the plague of lice. Everyone and all the animals got infested with lice. Here there is an important change. Although the Egyptians magicians tried to produce lice by their occult practices, they were not able to do so. The magicians testified to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God. We are not able to replicate this.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hard.Then there is the swarms of flies. Maybe it was like those no-see-ums that we get from time to time. Here we also see a difference. God distinguished between where the Israelites lived and where the Egyptians lived. This plague struck the Egyptians, but not the Israelites.I won’t go through plagues five through nine. I’ll just say that the pattern that has already been established continues. Pharaoh and his people suffer. Pharaoh relents to the Lord’s demands, but then he change

200311 Midweek Sermon on Genesis 39:1-21 (Lent 2 Midweek) March 11, 2020 This past Sunday we heard Paul say, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” I’d like to pull out two words from that quotation: faith and peace. Faith and peace go together. When we believe that we are justified before God through Jesus Christ, our Lord, then we have peace. We know that everything is going to be okay.Faith and peace going together is not just a Christian thing. It is something that is true for everybody. Believing in something means that you think that it will work. When you believe that it will work, then you have peace. For example, when a thunderstorm approaches, you have peace when you believe that your house can withstand the wind. If you faith in your walls continuing to stand diminishes, so does your peace. If you hear the tornado siren going off, you suddenly do not believe that your house can withstand the wind as capably as you did before. You have less peace and you run to someplace that offers you more peace of mind—the basement. But if you hear that freight train sound that comes before the arrival of the tornado, perhaps your faith is diminished even in your basement’s safety. What has happened to the peace? It’s gone.I think nearly every year I bring this up at the end of the church year and during advent. During those seasons of the church year we consider what the Bible says about the end of the world. The signs that the end is near are frightening because the things that used to be believed in as trustworthy start to fail. These things that are believed in are assumed to be so trustworthy that they are taken for granted. So when we take for granted that the earth won’t shake, and earthquakes come, then we are troubled. When the sea is supposed to stay within its banks, and it isn’t acting as it should, this would be frightening. Jesus says that even the heavenly bodies—the sun, moon, and stars—things that are renowned for their ability to be stable and predictable—will go strange and wobbly.Here we get down to something that is so fundamental to us as human beings. Faith and gods go together. Whatever things a person puts his or her trust in—that thing is the person’s god. If your faith is directed towards the true God, then your faith is true. If your faith is in other things, then you are more or less an idolater. This gets at what is so fundamental to us as human beings because after the fall into sin we have become hopelessly addicted to idolatry. This is certainly true of people who don’t know the true God, but it is also true for those who do know him. Alongside the true God, idols are propped up in the human heart. Think of the people of God in the Old Testament. These folks knew the true God. They had his Word. They had his ordinances and sacrifices. They even named their children very pious names that referred to God, his goodness, faithfulness and so on. Most of the names that we hear of in the Old Testament in some way refer to God. And yet they could never get rid of those high places. They were plagued by Baal and Asherah and Chemosh and a whole bunch of other things in which they put their trust. They never wanted to get rid of the true Lord God, but they also didn’t want to trust only in him. They wanted to cover their bases by worshipping other things too.We Christians are no different. The reason why we find the prospect of the end of the world frightening is because all the old gods beside the true God are failing. These things in which we put our trust prove to be untrustworthy—they can’t help us. They can’t save us. Only One can do that. This is why Jesus says that when you see all these frightening things taking place, lift up your heads and look up, for your redemption is drawing near. When the old sources of peace can’t give you peace because they are untrustworthy, then have peace in the Lord God who is trustworthy. He is about to usher in

200308 Sermon on Romans 5:1-5 (Lent 2) March 8, 2020 Whenever you start discussing what life is all about you run the risk of immediately turning off a large segment of the population. Discussing what life is all about is what Philosophy majors do. “Normal” people don’t. Then, instead of discussing what life is all about, you end up talking about whether we should all be like the philosophy majors. Understandably, most people do not want to be one of those. They tend to get wrapped up in all kinds of silly questions and mental gymnastics. If that’s how they like to spend their time, then fine, but other people would rather spend their time watching football or NASCAR.I don’t want you all to be philosophy majors. I don’t care what you enjoy spending your time doing. But I am going to press you on this question of what life is all about. Where did you come from? Why do you exist? What is going to happen to you when you die?Before we get into your own answers, let’s talk about those around us. There is a very powerful force in our society that says these questions have already been answered for you. Over the course of time some very smart people have sorted this all out. For the question of where you’ve come from, they’ve discovered that you are the product of random chance. The universe has existed for billions of years.  This immense amount of time, that is impossible to understand, has allowed enough time for you and all other things to randomly develop. This creation story is extremely powerful. It is powerful enough to satisfy people’s religious urgings.As far as what will happen to you when you die, this is something that doesn’t really get talked about much by our society’s teachers. Some say that you simply cease to exist. Your body breaks down to feed the circle of life. This is not popular with the common folk, though. The common folk like to believe that the deceased live on in those who remember them. Sometimes they look down from heaven. Sometimes they are busy in heaven doing their favorite hobbies.As for why you exist now? The common response is that you exist to make the world a better place. By our advancements in all areas we now seem to have the power to fix whatever problem might come our way. This is linked up with that creation story I’ve already spoken about. Some really smart people have figured out that we do not need to think about any questions other than how we can make more and more progress. We should only think about how we can make more food, have more entertainment, have more money, and then we will all be blessed, that is to say, happy. In the meantime, don’t ask any big questions—that’s for philosophy majors to waste their time on. Instead, figure out a way to make lots and lots of money. Then you’ll have a good life. Otherwise, you will most certainly have a terrible life, because you won’t be able to buy all the entertainments you want to fill your time until you die.In answer to this, I’d like you to notice how the keystone to this whole structure is faith. Our society would have you believe that some really smart people have somehow discovered that God does not exist, that we had to have been created by chance, that there is no sense in asking big questions about life, and that we should all just continue on making as much money as we possibly can. Our teachers would have you believe that smart people have discovered this and that there can be no doubt about it. This is the message that goes all the way up into the most prestigious universities and graduate schools in the world. However, this is a lie. No such things have ever been discovered. There is no conclusive proof for our society’s creation story. But the only way that you can know that it is a lie is by studying the history of these things for yourself. The history of science shows that the way we think things are is by no means proven and certain. These so-called smart people of the past are not worthy of blind, unquestioning