190203 Sermon on Matthew 8:23-27 (Epiphany 4) February 4, 2019.mp3 Our Gospel reading this morning is one of the most dramatic stories in the Bible.  Put yourself into the shoes of these disciples.  They start making their way across the sea, which presumably is not too big of a deal for them.  We know that several of them were commercial fishermen before they left their nets to follow Jesus, so they knew what they were doing.  Everything was going fine when suddenly a great wind arose and enormous waves came with it.  The Sea of Galilee is a very large body of water and so it is capable of producing enormous waves.  The boats that the disciples were in were made accordingly for that.  These people didn’t go to the trouble and expense of making a boat only to have it sink.  Their boats were large—made for the conditions a person might find on such body of water.  And yet, the waves were such that they began to go over the side and started to slosh around the bottom of the boat.This is a very bad thing to have happen at such a time as this.  The more water that goes into the boat, the heaver it becomes, the lower it goes in the water, and the easier it is for more waves to start to pour in.  And that seems to be exactly what was happening.  Water was coming over the side and the boat was being filled up.  There’s so much water coming in that there’s no use in trying to bail it out.  In only a moment or two the boat would sink below the water and the men would be forced to swim.  But there would be no way that they could stay afloat.  Waves that are high enough to sink one of those boats are surely great enough to swallow up a man.  So when these men say to Jesus, “Save us, Lord, for we are perishing,” they say this because they really are dying.  In a matter of minutes they will be dead.  And so you can imagine that they might have been a lot of screaming and yelling, “We are dying!”We are confronted with two strange facts at this point that we will get back to when we finish our story.  First, Jesus was sleeping through all this being tossed about by the waves and all the rest of the commotion.  I guess that goes to show that he truly was tired.  Second, it is also strange what he says upon being awakened.  Before he even got out of his bed he said to these frantic men, “Why are you afraid, Oh you of little faith!”  If a person shouldn’t be afraid when their boat is sinking in a terrible wind storm in the middle of the sea, then when should a person be afraid?But Jesus has mercy on the men.  He gets up and rebukes the wind and the sea.  That means that Jesus tells the wind and the sea to knock it off.  Amazingly, the wind and the sea listen to him.  Immediately the wind stops.  Once a wind stops it doesn’t take long at all for waves to stop too.  The apostles say that a great calm came over the whole place.  Maybe you folks who have gone to the lakes in the north woods know what this is like.  When there is no wind at all the lake can become like a sheet of glass and it is indeed very calm.  The change of circumstances had to have been almost overwhelming.  Seconds before they were all convinced that they were dying and they couldn’t keep their footing as the sinking boat was being tossed by the waves.  Now they are sitting still and nothing is moving.  They have gone from believing that they are going to die, to an absolute calm.  The apostles say that the men “marveled.”  That means they just couldn’t believe what had happened.  “Who is this Man whom even the wind and the waves obey?”  By this sign Jesus manifested his glory and the disciples believed in him all the more.Now let’s go back to what we find strange about this story: Jesus’s lack of concern.  Worry is what can keep a person up at night so that they cannot slee

190127 Sermon on Matthew 8:1-13 (Epiphany 3) January 27, 2019 I’d like to focus on the second part of our Gospel reading today that has to do with the Roman centurion.  It is worth our time and consideration when we hear Jesus say that he has not found faith in all of Israel like he sees in the centurion.  There is nothing so important as to have faith, and so it makes sense that we should learn what we can from this person whom Jesus holds out as an example.  There are two outstanding qualities to this man’s faith that we can see in our text.  First, this man is humble.  Second, he trusts that Jesus is able to do anything and will help him.We can see that this man is humble by the way that he responds to Jesus’s willingness to come to his house to heal the man’s servant.  The centurion says, “I’m not worthy that you should come into my house.”  Why isn’t the man worthy for Jesus to come and help him?  The short answer is that he is a sinner.  But we are kind of used to that answer since we have received the training that we have in God’s Word.  We know that we are poor miserable sinners.  This can become kind of like a textbook answer where we know what we are supposed to say.  It is something different when we speak by knowledge of our own experience and say, “I am a sinner.  I am not worthy that Jesus should come under my roof.”Luther liked to talk about painted sins and real sins.  Having painted sins is the way of talking about sin where we say, “Oops, I messed up, but nobody’s perfect.”  This is when we excuse away our sinfulness, while acknowledging that we are still technically sinners.  Having real sins is when we realize that we have offended God by what we have done and that he has every right to be angry with us and punish us.  Real sins are stinky and revolting.  They are the kind of things that you don’t want anybody else to know about because you would be so embarrassed if they knew.  But God knows all that we have done.  Again, here we can have this as a textbook answer: “We know that God knows everything, ergo, he must also know all the sins that I’ve committed.”  Or we can know this by experience: “I know that I have offended God and his angels by my actions.  How can I possibly not be punished in this life by all kinds of tragedy and misery and go to hell in the next?”When the centurion says that he is not worthy for Jesus to come under his roof he is not rattling off some textbook answer to Jesus.  He certainly isn’t saying this as though these were “some magic words” whereby he can manipulate Jesus into doing nice things for him.  The sin is heavy and hot and stinky.  He says that he isn’t worthy of Jesus coming under his roof because he knows it to be the truth.  He knows that that roof just might come down upon his own head as punishment for the sins that he has committed.  This man’s humility is the first element of the greatness of his faith.The second element to the greatness of his faith is his boundless trust that Jesus can do whatever he wants to do, and he dares to believe that Jesus will do good to him.  “Just say the word,” he says, “and I know that you can heal my servant.”  He even preaches a little to Jesus.  He tells Jesus that he knows what it’s like.  As a commander in the army he can tell one soldier to go here or there and he goes, or he tells someone to do this or that and he does it.  The word and the command are enough.  And he is a man who is underauthority, and yet he can do that kind of thing.  And so of course it is possible that the one to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given—namely, Jesus; of course it is possible that Jesus can just say the word and it will come to pass by his almighty divine power.In this second part of the centurion’s great faith we can also hear these words in kind of a

190120 Sermon on Ephesians 5:22-33 (Epiphany 2), January 20, 2019 One of the old accusations against Christians is that they don’t want anybody to have any fun.  The old pagans among the Romans and the Germans didn’t like having their drinking parties and their orgies denounced as wicked.  They countered by saying that Christians are prudes.  But this is not just an ancient thing.  Ever since the widespread use of the automobile in the 1910s young people have gone off to secret places to give vent to their lusts.  This was a change from the courtship that used to take place at the woman’s parents’ house.  Those preachers who might take up a charge of lewdness or fornication against these young people were disliked.  A lot of young people voted with their feet and quit coming to church, or maybe the quit coming to that church and went to some other one where they could be more comfortable.Even though this is just one hundred years ago it might seem like ancient history for us.  Why bring it up?  I bring it up to show that we are dealing with not just a new problem when it comes to dating, living together, marriage, and so on.  We are in fact dealing with an old problem that has been avoided.  It’s easy to show that it is an old problem by pointing out the similarity of the charge made against Christians.  One hundred years ago the liberated young people were saying that the Church was being prudish and old fashioned.  Times had changed but the Church had not changed with it.  That is the very same thing you will hear today too. Why haven’t we dealt with this old problem?  It’s because this is an uncomfortable topic that affects all of us.  Who among us is without sin?  And people vote with their feet.  So if your only goal is to perpetuate the existence of the congregation, then topics like this appear to be off limits.  But it is evil and devilish for congregations to just want to continue to exist.  That is not the reason why we have congregations.  The only reason for congregations to exist is so that the Word of God can help people avoid hell and enter heaven.  There would be no reason whatsoever to talk about uncomfortable things if people’s blessedness and salvation were not at stake.  But because they are at stake, and because God’s Word gives us direction in these things for the purpose of helping us, then let us go boldly forward and learn and repent and believe in Jesus.  Then let us teach—all of us, not just me—helping those who are trapped in the imagination of their own hearts about these matters.Our Epistle reading today is located towards the end of St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  Often towards the end of their letters the apostles would address how the Christian is now to live in the callings God has given.  That’s where our reading comes from today.  And in the portion we read he is addressing wives and husbands.  Wives are to submit to their husbands in everything like the Church submits to Christ in all things.  Husbands are to love their wives like Christ loved the Church—giving himself up for us on the cross so that we could be cleansed from every sin and stain and be presented to himself in splendor.Some other time, perhaps, I could spend some time on these words addressed to the women and the men.  A lot of people don’t like these words because there is an inequality between the roles.  Husbands and wives are not equal.  They are not the same.  They are not interchangeable.  Each has their role.  The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the Church.  Many people have hated these words for a long time because they believe that only equality and sameness is honorable.  I’m happy to defend what St. Paul says here against those who would pervert the natural order.But today I’d like to focus on something a b

190106 Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12 (Epiphany) The fact that there are twelve days of Christmas has been made well known by the song that speaks of what your true love gave to you on each of the 12 days.  Yesterday, January 5th, was the twelfth day of Christmas, and so if you have a true love, then you should have received 12 drummers drumming.  Today, January 6th, closes out this season of the Church Year with the festival of Epiphany.The occasion that is commemorated by this holiday was recounted for you in our Gospel reading this morning.  Some sages from the east saw a new star in the sky and somehow they knew that this meant a king had been born to the Jews.  And so they traveled to the land of Judea, to Jerusalem, the capital and made inquiries there about where their king was to be born.  What they found out was that the Scriptures prophesied that the king was going to be born in David’s city, Bethlehem, and so they turn in that direction, and the star comes to rest over where the child was.  And so they worship this child and give him expensive gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Among us this festival is not especially well known.  Everybody, including the unbeliever, knows what Christmas is about—that it is the birth of Jesus.  Compare that to the awareness of Epiphany.  Most would not immediately know what the festival was about.  At other times and among other Christians this festival was celebrated with much more solemnity and fervency that it is today among us.  The reason for this was that it was thought that this was the first time in Jesus’s life where Gentiles—those who were not Jewish—were given the gift of recognizing Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah.  That is why the festival has the name of Epiphany.  When someone has had an epiphany it means that they have suddenly realized something that was previously hidden to them.  The epiphany of the festival of Epiphany was that the Gentiles suddenly became aware of the Christ.  Instead of believing in magic or progress or technology or philosophy or however else a person might make sense of their life on this earth, these wise men bowed down and worshipped this boy who is their Redeemer and Savior.Having this “epiphany” is a part of the story in everyone’s salvation.  It was most certainly necessary for our salvation that the Son of God should become incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, be born, suffer and die under Pontius Pilate, and on the third day be raised from the dead together with all the other facts that are conveyed to us in our creeds.  But it is also necessary that the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, should bring about an epiphany for us so that we can follow the Words and promises of the Scriptures to the Christ.  Without this epiphany we remain in darkness and in the shadow of death.  We remain devoted to the furtherance of our own fortunes or striving after our own happiness according to our own ideas instead of being devoted to Jesus, the center of the universe.  We should not take it lightly that this knowledge has been revealed to us.  In that regard perhaps we can learn from those other Christians of other times who loved this festival.  Their devotion was marked by both fear of God and gratitude towards God.  They were not puffed up and proud and for good reason.  Gentiles are less than Jews.  Way back in history the Gentiles rejected God’s Word and promises and worshipped the devil instead.  Only Abraham and his descendants believed and worshipped the true God.  It was to him and his descendants that the instructions and promises of the Scriptures were given.  Meanwhile our ancient ancestors were sacrificing their unwanted children to the devil in order to have a better quality of life.  They were devoted to pornography and money and power and the other lusts of the flesh and cared

181230 (Guest Preacher Bruce Boyce) Sermon on Luke 2:22-40

181225 Sermon on Exodus 40:17-21, 34-38 (Christmas Day), December 25, 2018 It might seem a little strange that we have the Old Testament reading that we do for Christmas Day.  What does the tabernacle have to do with Christ’s birth?  The link between Christmas and the tabernacle might not be as clear as it otherwise could be because of the way one of the verses of our Gospel reading is translated.  At the end of our Gospel reading it says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”  A more literal translation of the Greek would read: “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”  St. John is linking together the birth of Christ with the tabernacle that God instituted at Mt. Sinai.  In order that we might learn something of the significance of Christ’s birth, I’d like to look at this connection between the tabernacle and Christ and what it means for us still today.The tabernacle was not Moses’s idea, nor was it the idea of any man.  God gave Moses the instructions for the tabernacle while he was atop Mt. Sinai.  You can read this for yourself in Exodus chapters 25-31.  The substance of what is going on with the tabernacle is that this is the way that the people of Israel were blessed with God’s own presence in their midst.  This is what made the people of Israel different from all the other nations on earth.  All the other nations worshipped idols, believing that they would be blessed by their own arts and practices.  The Israelites had the one true God living together with them with the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle.  Wherever God went the people followed.  Wherever God went the people conquered and prospered.  So long as the Israelites had God and God was gracious to them, there was nothing that they had to fear.It is wonderful that God chose this ragtag nation of shepherds and lived together with them in this tent with his gracious presence.  It is even more wonderful that God chose the Virgin Mary as the mother of the man in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily, as St. Paul puts it in Colossians.  Choosing someone’s tent to live in is one thing, or as it was later with the temple: choosing someone’s house to live in is one thing.  But what does it mean that God takes up our very human nature to live in?  If you choose to live in someone’s tent or house you are wanting to be on quite intimate terms with them.  But these are things outside of us.  With Christ God has decided to live together with us in the most intimate way possible.  We frankly are joined together.  He took on the fullness of our human nature.  He did not even just take on our body, but also our minds and our souls.  The incarnation of the Son of God was not in such a way where he just came to inhabit the body, and use the body like a puppet, and the mind and soul were the mind and soul of God that controlled the body like a puppeteer.  Jesus is true man totally and completely, even as he is true God.  Jesus was a true baby.  He needed to have his diaper changed and he suckled at Mary’s breast.  As a baby he was helpless and in need of care from his mother Mary and stepfather Joseph.  As true God he ruled over all things.This is a great mystery that we cannot get to the bottom of.  It is similar to the mystery of how Jesus died on the cross even though he is true God as well as true Man, and so how is it that God could die?  Shouldn’t God dying be impossible?  Wouldn’t everything have fallen apart at his death?  But then again, how can a man, once he has died and been dead and turned cold and hard, be resurrected from the dead?These are things to wonder about, not to answer.  It is one thing for a Christian to wonder about these things and say, “How can these things be?” as he or she thinks about the story of salvation—the marvelous lengths that God goes to in or

181224 Sermon on Titus 2:11-14 (Christmas Eve), December 24, 2018 There is no shortage of explanations for what the Christmas season is all about.  The explanations are always about things that are good.  People will say that Christmas is about family and friends.  It’s about mending bridges.  It’s about helping people with gifts.  Nobody talks about the Christmas season as the time to commit crimes or be crabby.  No, the explanations of the Christmas season are always for good and beneficial things.This is true also for the explanation of what Christmas is all about that the Bible gives.  We had a short little explanation of what the Christmas season is all about from St. Paul in our Epistle reading from Titus.  This is what I’d like to talk about tonight.  Let’s hear, again, what he says:The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.There are a lot of words in what I just read that don’t immediately hit home most likely because we are not familiar with them.  We are used to talking about sports and shopping and work.  We don’t talk all that much about the saving grace of God that has appeared in the birth of Jesus Christ.  Since we are unfamiliar with the words and concepts that are brought up by St. Paul it can kind of sound like the teacher sounds in the Charlie Brown cartoons.  You hear the noises, but the meaning is not taken in.  It might just sound like a bunch of church words heaped up together, one after another.I don’t plan on fixing all this with just one sermon.  God will bless you if you study this text on your own—and you go ahead and test me on that to see if I’m speaking the truth.  Prove me wrong.  There isn’t a wasted word in the whole paragraph.  But for tonight I’d like to focus on just two words that might help us understand what Christmas is all about.  The two words are pretty much opposites.  One word is the way that we are before Christ comes, the other words is for after.  “Godless” is a word that sums us up pretty well before and apart from Christ.  “Godly” is the way that Christ makes us live.  If I can simplify what St. Paul says in our reading tonight: the saving grace of God has appeared that trains us to renounce ungodliness and to live godly lives as we wait for the appearing of Jesus Christ. So let’s think a little more about these two words: ungodliness and godliness.  What does it mean to be ungodly?  There’s a pretty bad connotation connected with that word the way that we normally use it.  If you say that someone is ungodly, then you are saying that he or she is a pretty bad person.  They have no scruples.  They have no respect for common morals.  They are wild and wooly, doing as they please. Normal people, so it is thought, are far from being ungodly.  They go to work, pay their taxes, and don’t get in trouble with the police.  They aren’t perfect—nobody’s perfect, right?—but they aren’t that bad either.  And so the way that we use the word “ungodly” does not apply to most people.It’s interesting that something similar happens with the word “godly” also.  This is not a word that we readily apply to normal people.  Pastors, priests, saints, goody-two-shoes, and other people who don’t live “normal” lives might be possible candidates for being “godly,” but not just any Joe Schmo.  Godly people are thought to have an air about them that sets them apart from everybody else.  It’s an exclusive club.And so what you have with t

181223 Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:15-19 (Advent 4), December 23, 2018 The Bible is a pretty big book, and so there are a lot of stories in it.  There are so many stories that most Sunday School curriculums operate on a three year cycle.  It takes three years to get through the stories of the Old and New Testament, and even with these three years there is quite a bit that gets left out.  Because there is so much material to absorb I think it is pretty common for people to get overwhelmed by it.  It’s like a great big box of stuff is plopped down in front of a person and all the stories are mixed up in it.  They all sound familiar, because the stories have been heard in Church and Sunday School, but the timelines are pretty shaky for who it all hangs together, and there’s little awareness of what is really significant about the different stories.  It’s a jumbled collection without rhyme or reason.Today I’d like to speak about one of those Bible stories that is very important in the Bible with ongoing significance.  It’s the highpoint, you might say, of God’s dealing with his people in the Old Testament.  It’s when Israel was gathered together below Mt. Sinai, or Mt. Horeb as it is also called, after they have come out of Egypt.  The whole reason why Moses had gone to Pharaoh in the first place, when the Israelites were still slaves under him, was so that the Israelites could go into the wilderness to worship the Lord God.  This request was refused by Pharaoh and so God sent all those plagues upon him.  Therefore, when the Israelites are gathered together below Mt. Sinai, this is the fulfillment of the request that Moses had made, but Pharaoh had refused.  The people were finally able to be together with their God.  But now they didn’t need to go back to Egypt, go back to slavery.  They had been made free by the blood of the Passover lambs and been baptized in the water of the Red Sea.  They were now God’s people instead of Pharaoh’s.  The peculiar thing about it, though, is that throughout the books of Moses you hear the Israelites constantly wanting to return to their slavery under Pharaoh instead of being God’s people.There is also something new and amazing that happens with the Israelites at Sinai.  This is where God appears to them in cloud and majesty and awe, to quote our chief hymn this morning.  Prior to Sinai God holds back his glory when he appears to the patriarchs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He would come in the form of an angel or of a man—think, for example, of the way that Jacob wrestled with that strange man all night long until his hip was put out of joint.  That was God that he wrestled with.But now at Sinai God reveals his glory in a majestic way.  When he speaks the Ten Commandments to the Israelites Moses says that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain with a very loud trumpet blast that grew louder and louder.  The whole mountain was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended upon it with fire.  The smoke of it was like the smoke of a kiln and the whole mountain shook.  Prior to this God does not reveal himself in such an awesome way as he does here.  And indeed after this, too, he cloaks himself somewhat with the tabernacle and temple, in the most holy place, and the people do not see his glory in the same way.And so the story of Mt. Sinai and the giving of the Law in cloud and majesty and awe is significant because it was a one-time-event.  God would not be together with his people in this same way again, at least, that is, while we are yet living in this old world.  As we’ve been talking for these past several weeks about the second advent of Christ at the end of this old world, I think you can hear in the prophesies something of this Mt. Sinai glory being revealed once again when Christ comes on the clouds.But why is this a one-time-

181216 Homeschool Children's Christmas Service

181209 Sermon on Luke 21:25-36 (Advent 2), December 9, 2018 Ever since the fall into sin and Man’s mind was darkened so that he could no longer believe in or worship the one true God without the almighty aid of the Holy Spirit, he has been choosing other things to believe in and worship.  Chief among these things have been the heavenly bodies—the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars.  It has not been unusual for societies to worship the sun as the greatest among the gods, and this is understandable.  The sun is hugely powerful and our life on this planet is sustained by its power.  If the sun would not shine, or even shine as powerfully as it does, then everything would fall apart.  The wind wouldn’t even blow, to say nothing of grass and trees and all the food that sustains us.The moon, also, is quite impressive.  It reflects the glory of the sun.  Its regularity and predictability makes it well suited for marking time, and the variability of it with the different phases might have been one of the reasons why it was preferred as the basis for calendars in ancient times.  The movement of the planets, also, is wonderful as they do not rotate exactly with the rest of the stars in the night sky, but will move in strange loops as they shift in their orbits relative to the earth’s orbit.  These celestial powers are extremely regular and predictable in their movements—something quite different from the changeableness of our lives.  This has made them worthy of Man’s wonderment, and for the unbeliever’s devotion.  They are some of the high and exalted things.  Ancient Man, in particular worshipped these things.It might seem as though we modern people are totally different from them.  We do not have extensive lists of different gods.  We do not have temples with priests and priestesses to offer sacrifice, sing, and dance before the many gods.  Those in academia believe that this is a matter of historical development and sophistication.  Primitive people were thought to be stupid and so they didn’t know any better than to think that life was full of gods wanting to be worshipped.  Monotheism, or the belief in one God, instead of polytheism, or the belief in many gods, is thought to be a matter of applying our reason to our situation and discovering that having only one God is more reasonable than having several.For the past couple hundred years many people have believed that we have become yet more sophisticated.  By applying our reason even more, people believe that they have discovered that no god exists.  The only things that exist are matter, time, and energy.  These basic things interact with one another and are capable of explaining our existence from the Big Bang onward until now without needing to “cheat” by adding a god or many gods into the mix to explain stuff.  But this movement towards an imagined sophistication is nothing other than the high and mighty getting lost in the imagination of their own hearts, as St. Mary says in her Magnificat.  It is an imagined sophistication, because there is nothing sophisticated about ignoring God, ignoring our responsibility towards him, ignoring the way that we are going to be judged by him for the way that we have lived our lives.  It’s childish and selfish.  It also is nothing new.  Adam and Eve tried their hardest to forget about the God who had warned them not to sin.  They got busy doing other things.  This is exactly what modern Man does as well when he busies himself with trying to fix all the effects of the fall into sin while ignoring the God who has placed this curse of death upon us.  Modern Man believes that he will be better blessed by devoting himself to all the various causes out there, rather than turning in repentance to the God who smites us and saying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”Because modern people still believe that