Sermons

God the Father, working through the Word of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, will make, accomplish, and do in you what is needful. And by repenting you, forgiving your sin, and amending your heart, the world around you will begin to change. The good measure given to you will overflow in the same kind for those around you. As you are forgiven by God, you forgive those who sin against you. As you are shown mercy by God, so mercy will overflow for those near you. As God removes the plank from your eye, you will compassionately and in love be given to assist your neighbor with the speck in theirs.

Our open rebellion against our fathers and squandering of the inheritance they bequeathed to us cannot separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. Our refusal to hear God’s Word and gladly hear and learn it can. Because that Word is life and light. When Jesus speaks with the Father’s authority, He reveals all our sinful rejection. But more than that, He reveals the love of God the Father in giving His Son for the bloody atonement of our sin and the sins of the world. His Word restores what we have forsaken. His Word clothes us again and again in Jesus’ righteousness. His Word sets before us a feast of forgiveness, the body and blood of the Word made flesh, Jesus. His Word resurrects the dead to life again. His Word forgives our rebellion against the heavenly inheritance we have wasted in prodigal living and restores them to us again.

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). The means which the Spirit uses is the Word. He does not work apart from Jesus and endeavors only to give you Jesus in the Word. He teaches you all that Jesus taught and reminds you daily of what Jesus said. It is the work of the Spirit that brings you, Jesus Christ, in the Word. Jesus speaks and deals with us still today in the Word. And where the Word is, there is the Spirit, living and active. The word of forgiveness in Jesus’s name is the living Word.

Jesus has not failed you and will not forget you or any of those whom He has called by name in Holy Baptism. He is even now moving heaven and earth to restore and renew your trust in His Word. He overthrows anyone or anything that you have given fear, love, or trust. God will be your God, and you will be His people. He sends the Promise of the Father to you to call you back home, to gather you again to the Christian church, to open your eyes again to the only way of life and escape from death, and to set you apart again as trusting people of God. 

We are not stray, inexplicable pieces but together with Christ, alive, in motion, sent to live and share the life of Christ, growing, changing, shaping ourselves to each person’s need so we may have life and have it more abundantly, the joy that cannot be taken away. Remember your Baptism. Live your Baptism. You were born again; new life is given. You are being born each day. Each day pregnant with the next, even the days that seem to deny you and God, for we, too, are going to the Father. Quickened by the Spirit, we go with Christ, who promised, “I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” (John 16:22).

But Jesus, your good shepherd, has come that you may live and that you may live more abundantly. He leads you out into the world to enjoy God’s creation, be free to roam and feed upon the hills and drink from the springs. His fold doesn’t stay in pen, but He opens the gate and leads you out into the wide world. 

Jesus hasn’t stopped breathing the Spirit upon all of selfish, rebellious humanity. He breathed the Spirit upon you in your Baptism. The Spirit continues to breathe on you, the once slain but now alive army of God. The Spirit gives you to listen to Jesus, to hear His Word, and receive the gifts that Word gives. Jesus tells you to touch His flesh in the Holy Sacrament. He gives you to hunger and thirst for His righteousness, drinking deeply from the well of His forgiveness. “Peace be with you” is proclaimed to you in the forgiveness of sins in His body and blood of His Supper.