Sermons
To live for earthly things “is vanity and a striving after wind,” and work that is driven by such vanity “is an unhappy business” (Eccl. 1:13–14). The man who lives like that has nothing to show for “all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun … all his days are full of sorrow” (Eccl. 2:22–23). So, too, your “covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5), makes a god out of that which cannot give you life or happiness. For “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). But “Christ who is your life” (Col. 3:4), in giving you Himself, gives you all the wealth of heaven. Instead of striving to lay up treasures for yourself, be “rich toward God” in Him (Luke 12:21).
Sermons
Jesus catechizes His disciples in the way of faith by teaching them how to pray. He promises us: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9). If earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to their children, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:13). Thus, father Abraham was bold in his prayer because he believed the gracious promise of the Lord, that he would “surely become a great and mighty nation” (Gen. 18:18). When we pray in Jesus’ name, we also hold “fast to the Head” (Col. 2:19), “rooted and built up in him and established in the faith” (Col. 2:6–7).
Sermons
“The LORD appeared to [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre” (Gen. 18:1) and received his hospitality. But Abraham received the gracious promise of a son. Though Abraham and Sarah were very old, nothing is “too hard for the LORD” (Gen. 18:14). His Word appointed the time and fulfilled the promise. In the same way, the Lord Jesus “entered a village” and received Martha’s hospitality (Luke 10:38). “Martha was distracted with much serving” because she was “anxious and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:40–41), but her sister, Mary, “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching” (Luke 10:39). The service of love is no sin, but “one thing is necessary” for both faith and love — the Word of Christ (Luke 10:42). Thus, the ministers of Christ are sent “to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Col. 1:25–26).
Sermons
The Law commands that “you shall love the Lord your God” with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Luke 10:27), and that you shall “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Love fulfills the Law because love does no harm to the neighbor. Christ Jesus is the Good Samaritan, who with divine compassion saves you from all evil. He takes your sin and death upon Himself and bears these in His body to the cross. He binds up your wounds with the healing balm of His Gospel, and He brings you into His Church, where He takes care of you at His own expense (Luke 10:34–35). By such mercy, He proves “to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers” (Luke 10:36). Therefore, “you go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). By “your faith in Christ Jesus” and “because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (Col. 1:4–5), you have the same love for others as the Lord Jesus has for you.
Sermons
The Lord restores Jerusalem, His Church, because she is the mother of His children, whom He comforts “as one whom his mother comforts” (Is. 66:13). We are “satisfied from her consoling breast” with the pure milk of the Word, and we “drink deeply with delight from her glorious abundance” (Is. 66:11). The messengers of Christ bestow such gifts upon His Church. For He sends them out “as lambs in the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3), bearing in their bodies the sacrifice of His cross, by which “the kingdom of God has come near” (Luke 10:9, 11). Wherever He enters in with this Gospel, Satan is cast out and falls “like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Thus, we do not “boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14). Rejoicing in this Gospel, we “bear one another’s burdens” in love, according to “the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
Sermons
When the prophet Elijah became discouraged and despaired of his life, “the word of the LORD came to him” (1 Kings 19:9b) and stood him “on the mount before the LORD” (1 Kings 19:11). The Lord made Himself known to the prophet — not in the impressive power of gale force winds, or in an earthquake, or in the fire, but in “the sound of a low whisper” (1 Kings 19:12). Today God reveals Himself to us through the frail preaching of the Gospel. The Son of Man sends “messengers ahead of him … to make preparations for him” (Luke 9:52). Putting their hand to that plow of preaching, they “go and proclaim the kingdom of God,” and they do not look back (Luke 9:60, 62). What they preach is not the power of the Law with its “yoke of slavery,” but the power of God unto salvation through the Gospel of forgiveness, by which “Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1).
