Compare this to the world around us: there are constant divisions between political parties, businesses, towns, schools, sports fans, and, sadly, even between Christian churches. There are so many foolish reasons for this. Money, land, pride, selfishness, and arrogance serve only to divide and destroy. And worst of all, the world is so confused about unity that it accuses those who hold fast to the truth of Christ of being divisive while labeling those who come with half-truths and outright falsehoods as being unifying simply because they do not demand  real, actual, substantial unity. Besides this, we often confuse unity with uniformity, seeing outward commonality as the sign of unity rather than deep and abiding common substance.

Gerry was good at gathering. And this should not surprise us. Gerry didn’t just live a life characterized by it, but his life was formed by it from the beginning. Gerry was born on August 24, 1949 and only a few short weeks later, he was gathered. He was not gathered by family who came to see the new baby. No, he was gathered into the Kingdom of God by the Good Shepherd who called Gerry to Himself in holy Baptism.

But death is not easily dismissed. It is relentless, hounding each and every one of us no matter what we might do to avoid it. It is greedy, it gobbles up men, women, and children; the young and old; the rich and poor. All will eventually be held by its cold embrace. Given enough experience with it and you too will find yourself thinking about it. And, I will admit, I do not like death. But even more, I do not want to meet it. It is not fear, not really, but that I know that death is often not pleasant and comes with great suffering. But the thing that most makes me pause, the one thing about death that grips me when it crosses my mind, is its inescapable nature.

Such is the power that mammon, money and riches, exercises over us. Our possessions are a powerful thing in our lives in the sense that they control and relate to so much that we do. As the old saying goes, we put our money where we see value in putting it. So it comes to closely define our sense of security and safety. What can we do?

Find out in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

     But in this description lurks a problem, one that hounds each and every one of us: we all know what we ought to do. We all know how we should be living. We all know what it means for us to live the Christian life. The problem is not knowledge of such things. Rather, the problem lies in actually doing them. Each of us does not do everything that we want. Each of us has sins and iniquities. Each of us goes to bed with regrets. So, what are we to do about this?

It is easy when Scripture speaks on particular topics and church practices. But what happens when Scripture does not speak? Is it a free-for-all, everyone doing what seems right in their own eyes?

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This way of looking at the world has three major parts. First, people should turn inward to find truth and meaning. Second, this inner truth and meaning must be shown outwardly in order to be authentic. Third, traditional social roles, religious teachings, and cultural norms are all to be treated as secondary to these inner truths. This may take a bit of unpacking.

 Much of the world around us tells us to look inward to find who we are, Scripture counsels us to look to Christ; in Him we find our identity.

Our Lord’s grief should not surprise us, that is, if we know the Scriptures. God does not like when His people are deprived of His truths, His Word, His grace. He does not like when they stray or grow ignorant. He especially does not like when those who have been given the responsibility of overseeing the teaching of His Word and the conduct of His worship instead move on to other things.

  Jesus wept over Jerusalem, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” The truth was hidden. They did not see Christ as He is. They did not acknowledge Him as the eternal Son of the Father. They did not see Him as God of God. They rejected Him as the Prophet of the Most High. They cast aside His rule as their loving King. And what remained for them was destruction.

Today the Church observes the Feast of the Visitation. As we heard in the Holy Gospel, this day commemorates the visit of the blessed virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, to St. Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Baptist. It is a seemingly simple event. A young woman visits her elderly relative. Yet hidden beneath this ordinary meeting is one of the most profound moments in all of Scripture. Here two expectant mothers meet, but more importantly, the unborn Savior comes to the unborn prophet. The Lord visits His people even before He is born.

The Church has long treasured this feast because it teaches us several important truths about our God, about ourselves, and about our salvation.

There is perhaps no word more frequently used in the Church today than the word unity. Nearly everyone says they want it. Church leaders call for it. Congregations long for it. Christians rightly grieve divisions between churches. But before we can pursue unity, we must first ask a much more important question: What is Christian unity?

Our answer cannot come from our feelings, our preferences, or our experiences. It must come from the Word of God. St. Peter helps us address this question: "Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind." He does not merely say, "Be united." He says, "Have unity of mind." This is not accidental. It tells us exactly what kind of unity the Lord desires for His Church.

Few passages of Scripture are quoted more often by unbelievers, and even by many Christians, than the simple phrase, “Judge not.” It is held up as though Jesus had forbidden every moral evaluation, every criticism, every act of discernment. The prevailing wisdom of our age says that the highest virtue is to approve of everyone’s choices and to leave all matters of truth and error to personal preference.

But that is not what Jesus is teaching. If Christ truly meant that no one should ever judge another person, then He Himself would be contradicting the rest of Scripture. He commands the Church to rebuke false doctrine. Parents are to discipline their children. Pastors are to exercise the Office of the Keys. Civil authorities are to punish evildoers and praise those who do good. Christians are repeatedly told to test the spirits, to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to admonish brothers caught in sin. Jesus does not end our reading by saying, “Leave the speck in your brother’s eye.” Instead He says, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck.” The goal is still helping your brother. The problem is not judgment itself. The problem is hypocritical judgment.

A sober driver recognizes the dangers of the road but continues confidently to his destination. A fearful driver becomes paralyzed, seeing disaster around every corner. Likewise, the Christian acknowledges that temptation is real, that Satan is real, and that suffering is real. Yet the Christian does not cower before them, because Christ is greater than them all.

Our Lord Jesus tells a striking parable this morning. He places before our eyes two men whose earthly circumstances could hardly have been more different. One was rich, clothed in purple and fine linen, feasting sumptuously every day. The other was poor, covered with sores,  who laid at the rich man's gate, longing for scraps from the table. One was honored by the world. The other was despised.

But when death came, everything was shown to be reversed. The rich man found himself in torment. Lazarus was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. Through this parable our Lord teaches us about stewardship, faith, heaven, hell, and the true riches that endure forever.

Many people speak of the Spirit as though He were merely a feeling, a force, or an experience. Others imagine that the Holy Spirit’s primary work is to produce dramatic signs, ecstatic speech, or emotional excitement. But Jesus teaches us otherwise. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal power. He is God Himself, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity and with the Father and the Son He is worshiped and glorified. He proceeds from the Father and the Son and is sent into the world by Christ.

*Correction: The Azusa Street Revival which began in 1906 was in Los Angeles*

But kings seldom rule from the front lines so to speak. Usually they rule through messengers. Throughout history, kings have used emissaries, heralds, and ambassadors to make known their wills. A king sends these officers to his people, bearing his authority and carrying his message. When the herald of the king relays this message faithfully, the people do not merely hear the messenger; they hear the king himself through the messenger. To reject the herald is to reject the ruler who sent him.

Forty days after His resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven. Dear Christians, saints of the Lord, the Ascension is not Jesus leaving His Church behind. It is not Christ withdrawing from the world. Rather, the Ascension is Christ taking His throne. The crucified and risen Lord is now enthroned as King of kings and Lord of lords at the right hand of God. Ascension Day is a feast of victory and comfort. Jesus reigns. This is not a future reality alone; it is not a metaphor or mystical idea that sounds nice but has no reality behind it. Jesus truly reigns even now. The Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rules over all things for the good of His Church.

The disciples themselves struggled at first to understand this. In our reading from Acts, they ask, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were still thinking in earthly categories. They expected visible political power, national restoration, and worldly glory. But Jesus directed them to something greater. His kingdom is not limited to one nation or earthly throne. His reign extends over heaven and earth.

No matter how we slice it, there is an intimate unity between what we believe and what we do. The ancient Christians summarized this with the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, that is, the law of prayer is the law of belief. In other words, what one truly believes inevitably expresses itself outwardly. Indeed, we rightly recognize hypocrisy when someone’s words and actions contradict one another. We expect unity between confession and conduct in others, and rightly so. Therefore, we should also desire such unity in ourselves.

But this raises an important question: what is the foundation of the Christian life? Is Christianity ultimately about behavior? Is the Christian faith merely moral improvement? Is St. James teaching that salvation depends upon your ability to produce enough good works? No. Not at all. St. James is not saying that works create faith. He is teaching that living faith produces works.

Our Lord Jesus says in Matthew 19: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” 

Notice that Jesus points back to the fabric of creation itself. Before sin entered the world, before suffering and death, before all the brokenness we now experience, God established marriage. It belongs to Him. He created it. He defines it. And because He designed it, He also knows its purpose.

This deception is not directed to any and all knowledge, ultimately speaking. No, focuses on misleading about Christ, how we live as Christians, and how we relate to the Word of God. These eternal things are so important that they go beyond the sum total of all this universe. So James speaks to us plainly: do not be deceived. He wants us to be able to identify deception and to correct it by the very Word of God.

St. Peter gives us an answer that is not vague. It is concrete, demanding, and at times uncomfortable. He gives a twofold charge that defines the shape of the Christian life in this world. Our lives here are both inwardly at war and outwardly honorable.

Scripture describes us in a way that cuts against our pride. It calls us sheep. Not lions. Not independent wanderers forging our own path. Sheep. Creatures that are prone to stray, easily frightened, and unable to defend themselves against real danger. Left alone, sheep do not thrive. They become lost and they perish.

But the Word of God does not stop there. In Ezekiel 34, the Lord speaks a powerful promise into that reality: “Behold, I, I Myself will search for My sheep and will seek them out.” This is not the promise of a distant God. This is the promise of a God who sees the condition of His people and resolves to act. In the Gospel of John, Jesus stands before the people and declares, “I am the Good Shepherd.”

This is not a gentle metaphor meant to comfort sentimentally. It is a claim of divine identity. The Lord who promised in Ezekiel to shepherd His people is now standing among them in the flesh.

But what makes Him the Good Shepherd is not merely that He guides. It is that He lays down His life. And this brings us to the heart of the Gospel: the Shepherd becomes the Lamb. The One who seeks the sheep becomes the sacrifice for them.

The world often seems very strong, more than us. Sin still works around us. Death still claims those we love. The sinful self, the flesh, drags us down into weakness, fear, compromise, distraction, and shame.

So what does St. John mean? How can he speak so confidently about this? The Holy Spirit would teach us today that the world is not overcome by human strength, but by faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The One who had cast out her demons, the One who had spoken with authority unlike the scribes, the One who had healed the sick, forgiven sinners, and called the dead from their graves had been laid in one. She saw the Lord crucified. She had seen His suffering. She saw Him give up His spirit. She saw the spear pierce His side. She saw Him buried.

The offense is this: your sin is so serious before God, so damnable, so deserving of wrath and judgment, that nothing less than the suffering and death of the Son of God could atone for it.

And the comfort is this: that suffering and death have now been offered for your salvation, forgiveness, and life. Good Friday is not sentimental nor is it mild. Good Friday is where God shows us what sin really is and what its cost is. Sinners do not like that. By nature, we always want to minimize our guilt. We want to call sin a weakness, a mistake, a lapse in judgment, a rough patch, a personal struggle. We want to excuse it, explain it, manage it, or compare it favorably to the sins of others.

But here, before Good Friday arrives in full, before the nails and the spear and the cry of dereliction, our Lord Jesus Christ gives gifts to His people. More to the point, He takes time to give them on the night when He was betrayed.

He gives them not to worthy men, not to disciples who had proven themselves especially courageous or faithful, but to weak men, sinful men, frightened men. He gives them to men who are about to fail Him. He even gives them to weak men such as us.

Tonight, we hear of the gift that is His incarnation and death, the gift that is His Supper, and the gift that is His Church. All of it comes from Christ. All of it is given in His gracious love. All of it is for sinners.

The opposite, betrayal, is horrific. It is cowardly, the product of a weak constitution. It is demeaning; it repays good with evil. It shocks because it is so undeserved. No doubt, we have all experienced its icy grip. Whether it was a playground scuffle that led to the betrayal of a friend, a stolen romantic interest, or being taken advantage of in business by someone thought of as a friend, the stab of pain in the bowels is unmistakable.

Worse, the more goodness we find in someone, the more horrible the betrayal. A good man who is left behind to die in war by a cowardly soldier is a tragedy. Turning the very Son of God over to cruel men who seek His ruin is indescribable in its wickedness.

Is this glory? Per Jesus’ own words, yes. By worldly standards, no. One source is Truth, and one is deceived. The world tries to sell you a bill of goods wherein suffering is inglorious, wherein the avoidance or the fleeting from pain and sorrow is true glory. But what about Jesus’ Words? “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” 

Palm Sunday is certainly a day of joy, but it is a serious joy. There are palm branches, singing, and shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David!” But Palm Sunday is not simply a cheerful introduction to Easter decorations and springtime religion. It is the beginning of the Passion. It is the public presentation of Christ as King, and at the same time, it is His deliberate march toward the cross. Teachers of Scripture, exegetes, call this event the triumphal entry. And this shift in tone in the Gospel record from the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus to His setting of His face to Jerusalem for His death is why the triumphal entry matters so much. On Palm Sunday, Jesus shows us what kind of King He is, what kind of salvation He brings, and how He saves His people.

Zechariah prophesied this blessed event 550 years before it happened. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey.” That one verse gives us the heart of Palm Sunday.

Jesus is speaking to the Jews, to those who pride themselves on their lineage, and they insist: “Abraham is our father.” Their patrimony, that is their inheritance as being descendants of Abraham, was the basis of their identity. It was their confidence. It is the basis of their claim to righteousness before God. And Jesus did not let that stand. He pressed the issue and sharpened the question. In so doing, He exposed what truly makes someone a child of Abraham and what does not. Even more, He also presses the same question upon you: who is your father?

Despite the importance of Baptism, it is sadly often misunderstood. Some treat it as a mere symbol, something we do to show our commitment to God. Others neglect it altogether as total optional and indifferent in the Christian life. But Holy Scripture speaks very differently. Baptism is not our work for God, it is God’s work for us. So today we consider what Baptism is, what it gives, how it is received, and why it is such a deep and abiding comfort for the Christian.

In other words, where has the church begun to misunderstand marriage by adopting the expectations and worldview of the culture, rather than receiving marriage as it is given to us in the Word of God?

Stick around. In this episode, we are going to do some good old-fashioned myth-busting—exposing the false, cultural assumptions about marriage that have quietly crept into the church and, in many cases, have been baptized as if they were true.

So even during the somber, serious season of Lent, the Church pauses to rejoice.

The reason for that joy is what we see in our Gospel today: Christ provides abundantly for His people. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is one of the most well-known miracles in the entire New Testament. In fact, it is the only miracle of Jesus other than the resurrection that is recorded in all four Gospels. That alone tells us something important. The evangelists, that is to say, the writers of the four Gospels, want us to see that this miracle is not just a story about an abundance of bread. It reveals who Jesus is, what kind of King He is, and what kind of care He has for His people.

In the world around us, prayer is often treated as something dramatic or impressive. It becomes a performance. The person who uses the most elaborate language, the longest sentences, or the most emotional expressions is assumed to be the most devout. In other cases, prayer becomes a way of drawing attention to oneself. The act that should be directed toward God quietly becomes directed toward other people.

But Jesus speaks very differently about prayer.

What unfolded was not merely a dispute about a miracle. It was a revelation of the great spiritual reality that stands behind all human history: there are two realms, two rulers, two powers at work in this world. And Jesus says there is no neutral ground.

Christianity is not built on religious sentiment or spiritual emotions. It is built on a real Lord who lived, died, and rose in real history. If Christ is real, then what we say about Him can be either true or false, right or wrong. The historical reality of Jesus demands specificity. He is not a collection of ideas or mythologies from which we may draw at our leisure. He is a true and living Savior, who really became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Who really suffered and died and rose again.

St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Thessalonica that, “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” It is not God’s will that you should be destroyed, forgotten, or condemned. No, God wants you, His people, to be holy. “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.” This is a high calling. And it immediately brings us into conflict. This conflict is not firstly with the world out there, but with the sinful self within.

But the Christian faith teaches something very different. It teaches that salvation does not come from within. Faith does not come from within. Truth does not come from within. Certainly our Lord Jesus Christ does not come from within. Salvation comes from outside of you. Faith comes from outside of you by the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. Truth comes from outside of you. Christ comes to you from outside, through His Word and Sacraments.

Listen again to how Paul the Apostle describes the Christian life: “As impostors, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” Everything about this is paradoxical. Everything appears to be a contradiction. And yet this paradox is not accidental. It is the very shape of the Christian life, because it is the shape of Christ Himself.

This morning, consider this truth: The Christian life appears weak, but is powerful, because you are united to Christ.

“Let not your hearts be troubled,” says our Lord Jesus.

Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks these words in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the Sermon on the Mount: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them… When you give to the needy… when you pray… when you fast… do not be like the hypocrites.”

These words are appointed for Ash Wednesday because they strike directly at the heart of what Lent is and what it is not. Lent is a season of discipline. It is a season of repentance. It is a season of self-examination. But if we misunderstand why we do these things, Lent becomes spiritually dangerous instead of spiritually beneficial. It becomes legalistic instead of evangelical, that is, Gospel oriented. There is a danger in spiritual discipline where our such works become about our righteousness instead of Christ’s righteousness.

This is all to say that general culture tends to define love in two primary ways: first, love is emotion, a powerful internal feeling. Second, love is unconditional affirmation,  supporting someone’s choices without judgment and full-throated encouragement. Love, in this view, is measured by intensity and tolerance. It is something we feel and something we give in order to validate another person’s self-expression.

But today’s readings dismantle that definition and replace it with something far deeper, far more demanding, and far more salvific.

Scripture is clear about certain things. God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Christ died for the sins of the whole world. The Gospel, the means by which God brings sinners to salvation, is preached widely and freely. And yet, not all are saved. Some hear the Word and fall away. Others never believe at all.

This is not only something Scripture teaches; our Lord Himself speaks of the outer darkness. It is also something we encounter in life. We know people who respond to Christ with open contempt, and others who meet Him with a militant indifference. The Word of God describes reality as it truly is.

Our Lord’s Parable of the Sower confronts this question directly. And it does so in a way that strips away false comfort, exposes dangerous assumptions, and finally leads us to the only place where real and lasting comfort can be found.

While is it important to know that the earthly parents of the Lord Jesus were pious, godly people, we see in this act of obedience far more than a ritual being fulfilled. We see the eternal Son of God taking His place under the Law, entering our human condition fully. Today’s text from Hebrews reminds us why this matters: Christ comes not only to live among us but to save us. He comes to take our place, to bear our burdens, and to make us holy in God’s sight.

And because that rule is so deeply ingrained in us, Jesus’s parable this morning does not merely surprise us. It offends us. A landowner hired laborers throughout the day. Some are hired at dawn, some mid-morning, some in the afternoon, and some with barely an hour of work left. At the end of the day, he pays them all the same wage. And Jesus does not tell this story to illustrate injustice. He tells it to describe the kingdom of heaven.

And that is the problem. Because this parable exposes the fact that we often want God’s kingdom to operate like the kingdoms of this world. And when it does not, when grace is given freely and equally, something in us begins to grumble.

Much of present-day spirituality answers that question with hesitation. God, we are told, is ultimately mysterious, perhaps even unknowable. Truth is said to be relative, especially about God and religious things. Religious claims are treated as personal expressions of opinion rather than statements about reality. God, if He exists at all, is distant, certainly not the sort of God who speaks clearly or acts decisively in history or Who is present with His people.

The Transfiguration stands directly against that spirit. On the holy mountain, Jesus does not become less accessible or more abstract. He becomes clearer. Brighter. More definite. And the Apostle Peter insists that this was not a subjective religious experience, but a real event, witnessed, heard, and testified.

That is why he writes: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths … but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” The Transfiguration reveals that Christ is knowable, objective, and present.

That is what today’s readings set before us: a God who dwells with His people, a God who orders their life together in love, and a God who sanctifies marriage by His own gracious presence.

Today’s readings all press the same point from different angles: God does His saving work through humble means, so that faith rests not in us, but in Him alone. And this central truth is clearly seen in Holy Baptism.

The first social institution God created was marriage; it even predates the fall into sin, as our reading from Genesis chapter 2 reminds us. Our Lord Jesus, who is Himself God in the flesh, worked His first miracle in support of a wedding feast in Cana. And throughout the Scriptures, marriage is spoken of in reverent and joyful tones.

All of this is to say something rather simple: God delights when people receive and enjoy His good gifts. This is, in fact, His preferred way of dealing with us. He does not demand that we climb our way up to Him; rather, He relates to us by giving His good gifts freely. Today, we focus on one of those gifts: marriage.

Epiphany is a festival of revelation. It is the Church’s celebration that the child born in Bethlehem is not only the Savior of Israel, but the Savior of the nations, even the Light for the Gentiles. And this was not some unexpected revealing, no it is exactly what the prophet Isaiah proclaimed over five hundred years before: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.”

That light is Christ Himself. And today, in the visit of the Magi, we see that light drawing the nations to Him.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

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And it should not surprise us that the holy family, that is, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and the child Jesus Christ, experienced fear. Yes, much can and should be said of the faithfulness of Mary and Joseph, but it is also easy to see that they were rightly worried. After all, Joseph chose to flee the very night he was warned in a dream about the murderous intent of Herod. A man lacking in fear would have waited at least until the morning.

So this family flees to Egypt, a place foreign to them.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

This feast is easy to overlook. It comes quietly, tucked between Christmas joy and the turning of the calendar year. Yet it presses upon us a profound and necessary truth: the Son of God does not hover above the Law, He places Himself under it. He does not merely visit humanity; He binds Himself to it in flesh, blood, covenant, and Name.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Christmas does not begin with human expectation but with divine intervention. As Micah foretold, the ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem, a town too small to matter by the world’s standards, yet was chosen by God to be the place where peace would enter the world. What the shepherds saw that night was not merely a child, but the arrival of God’s salvation in the flesh.    

Today we confess not simply that Christ was born, but why He has come, how He has come, and how He continues to deliver that salvation to us here and now.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Simeon takes the Child Jesus into his arms and blesses God, but then he speaks words that cut sharply against a merely cozy Christmas: “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed … so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

A light for revelation and a sword for the heart. The same Child who brings consolation to Israel also brings division. The same Christ who saves also judges. The same Gospel that comforts the broken also exposes the proud. Christmas does not merely soothe; it reveals.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

The world around us often treats Christianity as unreasonable. It is often said that our faith is too dogmatic, too demanding, too tied to ancient texts, too restrictive of personal freedom. Yet Holy Scripture insists otherwise. Christianity is not irrational, arbitrary, or detached from reality. It is reasonable precisely because it is grounded in who God is, what He has promised, and what He has done in Christ. As we wait for Christ’s coming, both His coming in glory and His nearness now, we learn what true Christian reasonableness looks like.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Malachi foretold this: “Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me.” John is the messenger. Christ is the Lord who comes. And the way is prepared by repentance, a repentance that is not man-made or self-generated, but a repentance that is itself a gift of God.

Today we consider repentance not as something dreadful, but as something profoundly good, good for the soul, good for our relationships, good for our sanity, and good for our faith. And finally, we will see that repentance is never an end in itself. It aims at the Gospel. Repentance clears the rubble so Christ’s entrance and healing can be grabbed onto in Christian faith.

Find out more in this sermon for the Second Wednesday in Advent from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

And into that world of instability and unrest, the Word of God speaks a single command: Stand firm. Stand fast. Lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near. Today the Lord teaches His Church to stand firm when everything else moves. And He gives you everything you need to do just that.

Find out more in this sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Both of these readings ask a simple but profound question: How should God’s people wait? Not with servile fear. Not with boredom. Not with distraction or apathy. But with trust, patience, and repentance. And this is what we learn in Advent: that the waiting of faith is not empty. It is expectant. It is active. It is shaped by the Lord who has come, who still comes, and who will come again.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Our readings today all teach us something simple, but needful: Wake up! Your King is at the door! That is to say, Advent is marked by three waitings. One was fulfilled with the birth of our Lord Jesus over two thousand years ago when Jesus came in the flesh. The second is fulfilled today when Jesus comes to us for forgiveness and salvation through the Word and the Sacraments. The third will be fulfilled when Jesus comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead, that is, when He arrives again at the end of time.

Find out more in this sermon for the First Sunday in Advent from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

True thankfulness always has an object. More specifically, it clings to someone specific. One cannot be, in the most basic sense, thankful in general. No, thankfulness requires an acknowledgement of both the gift and the one who gives that gift. In the same way, Christian thankfulness is not simply “having a good attitude” or “being positive.” It is recognizing concrete gifts from the hand of God and returning to the Giver with appropriate thanksgiving.

Thankfulness is specific and concrete. You are thankful for something such as a blessing received or a  gift given. And so the Samaritan returned, fell at Jesus’s feet, and gave thanks because he knows exactly what Christ has done for him.

Find out more in this sermon for Thanksgiving Day from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

But on this last day of the church year before the beginning of Advent, the season which focuses on the coming of our Lord Jesus, there is another immensely important thing that we should remember and contemplate: before the new heavens and the new earth comes judgment. The time of judgment will be swift, and it will be without warning. So now, hear this warning of your Lord: “Watch.” Dear Christian, you must be prepared, lest, like a thief in the night, the bridegroom comes and you are put out into the outer darkness for lack of faith.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Jesus begins by speaking of the “abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel.” To His disciples, this must have evoked memories of great desecrations, foreign armies that desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem, pagan sacrifices offered in the holy place of the Temple, and how God’s sacred place, this same Temple on Mount Zion, was defiled. But Jesus points His hearers forward to an event that would happen about forty years after He spoke these words. That is to say, the fulfillment of this prophecy spoken by Daniel  recorded in chapters nine and eleven of his book, the fulfillment of this prophecy was found in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Roman armies under Titus, the same Titus who would go on to be Emperor of Rome in 79 AD.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Faith always has an object, and the proper object is Christ and Him alone. Christian, saving faith clings to Him, not because we always understand how He will help, but because we know He can and will. This is what is shown to us in today’s Gospel lesson. Two very different people, from opposite ends of society, are driven by desperate need to the same Lord. One is an important synagogue ruler. The other is an unclean, forgotten woman. Both find their hope in Jesus, and both receive life from Him.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

“Blessed are the poor in spirit... Blessed are those who mourn... Blessed are the meek…” I think it is a fair assumption that many of us find these words family, poetic, and even beautiful. But if we stop and think about them we ask a simple but needed question, “How are people suffering these things blessed?”               

Poor, mourning, meek, persecuted; none of that sounds like a blessing! And yet Jesus declares them blessed. He speaks these words not as advice for how to become blessed, but as a description of what His kingdom looks like and what it means to belong to Him. The Beatitudes describe the reality life of faith, the life that flows from Christ’s righteousness, and the life that clings to Him even when suffering in weakness.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

And what followed was not the peace and comfort that one would expect from the pure proclamation of the Gospel, but conflict and turmoil. The Reformation may have been intended as  a polite academic debate, but it led to a period of violent upheaval, both spiritually and politically. The Gospel was restored to its proper place in  a world that had long been held captive by human traditions and self-righteousness.

This should have come as no surprise. Hostility to the Gospel on the part of the world was nothing new. We might think the Reformation is behind us, that such battles belong to history books. The Reformation wasn’t just a 16th-century event. It is the daily reality of every Christian. The same Gospel that set Luther free is still under attack today. And this is precisely what our Lord Jesus describes here in Matthew chapter eleven.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

They had already tried to politically entrap Him by asking “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” Jesus’ answer silenced them.

Then the Sadducees had tried to entrap Him theologically by asking about marriage and the resurrection. Jesus refuted them too, saying, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” In today’s reading from Matthew,  a lawyer, a professional in the Law of Moses, steps forward with what might at first glance seem an innocent question: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Find out more in this sermon for the funeral of Irene Meyer from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

And even if others play nice to keep face or because the self-important have social or business power, deep down, people do not enjoy being witness to this sort of arrogance.

More to the point, Jesus does not care for self-importance. He, who of all people has the greatest claim to honor and glory, did not conduct Himself in that way during His ministry. Instead, He chose the way of humility, simplicity, and service, even unto death for us sinners.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Those words set the tone: we do not face death alone. We face it as those joined to Christ’s own death and resurrection by holy Baptism. Our Gospel reading today gives us a picture of that truth. In Luke chapter seven, death is on parade. A widow walks behind the bier carrying her only son. She has had no husband for a certain amount of time. Now she doesn’t have a son. In his place she is left with only grief. But into this funeral procession enters Jesus, the Lord of Life. When He draws near, death retreats. Indeed, it can do nothing else.

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Every one of us has a relationship with money and possessions. Some of us have a lot, some of us have a little. Some are comfortable, others feel pressed on every side. But no matter our position, Scripture repeatedly reminds us: wealth is both a gift of God and a dangerous temptation. It can provide food for the hungry, or it can become a false god that robs us of faith in Christ. It can give great blessings, or it can lead to great anxiety. Today’s readings teach us how to manage wealth properly, that is,  as something to be received in trust, to be used in love, and to be kept from becoming an idol.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

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And what is meant by this unity? Nothing less than that they share in all things. That is, that they would have very things of Christ without division, without rivalry, without conflict. His prayer is for a unity among Christians that reflects the eternal unity between the Father and the Son.

But as we all know, this is certainly not the case at present. The Church seems fractured. There are divisions between the East and the West, Romans and Protestants, Lutherans and the Reformed, liberals and conservatives, confessionals and missionals, the Missouri Synod; the Wisconsin Synod; and the myriad of other Confessional synods. Christ’s Church seems broken into irreconcilable pieces.

And yet the Scriptures remind us that unity is not optional. Christian fellowship is necessary. It is the very will of Christ that His people be one.

Find out more in this sermon preached at the 2025 Calov Conference from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

Find out more in this sermon preached for the installation of the Rev. Christopher Durham as the chaplain of Wittenberg Chapel at the University of North Dakota.

While we Christians are accustomed to thinking about God’s Word as powerful and active, it is good for us to stop for a moment and thing about who Matthew was. He was a tax collector. A collaborator with the Romans. A man despised by his fellow Jews as a cheat and a traitor. In brief, he was the last person you would expect the Messiah to want in His inner circle. Yet Jesus called him to Himself.

Find out more about St. Matthew in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

And when we feel trapped and powerless, we seek solutions. What can we do in the face of such terrors?

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In today’s Gospel, we meet a man who has lived his whole life in that kind of frustration. He cannot hear. He can hardly speak. He is trapped in silence. And Jesus, with one word, opens what was closed. “Ephphatha—Be opened!” Immediately, he can hear. Immediately, he can speak.

But the miracle is more than about one man’s ears. It’s about the condition of all humanity under sin. Sin closes our ears to God’s Word and ties our tongues so we cannot confess His name rightly. And Christ comes to open our ears and loosen our tongues, so that faith may live in us and praise and right confession may live on our lips.

Find out more in this sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

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In the Scriptures, Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael, gives a great confession of Jesus, calling Him the Son of God and the King of Israel. But Bartholomew does not have much else that we can say about him biblically. It would be fair to say that, despite his great confession on the occasion of his conversion, there is little else that can be said with absolute certainty. It is fitting, then, that on his day we hear readings that speak of wisdom, of weakness, and of the strange greatness of the kingdom of God.

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The so-called Parable of the Unjust Steward, when viewed from man’s perspective, makes no sense whatsoever. A manager wastes his master’s possessions, and when this is discovered, the master tells him that he’s going to take the management away from him. The steward goes to work to pad his landing. There’s a twist right away. The master didn’t have him turn in the books right away, which gave the manager time to follow through on his shrewd plan. He has all of his master’s debtors come in one by one and slash their bills to a fraction of what they owed. And then the ultimate surprise: the master doesn’t throw him in prison; rather, he commends him for his shrewdness.

This parable makes no sense when viewed from the perspective of men. 

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND which was preached by the Rev. Mark Chepulis, president of the North Dakota district of the LCMS.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

                But this is not the only kind of hunger we experience.

Find out more in this sermon from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!

When we Lutherans speak of "the Law," we often mean it in a narrow sense: God's commands as opposed to the Gospel promises. But here Jesus refers to the Torah, a broader term that includes both the moral law and the first five books of Moses. In fact, by saying "the Law and the Prophets," Jesus means the entire Old Testament, the Scriptures that reveal both God's demands and His promises.

This matters because we sometimes fall into what we might call a "functional Marcionism." Marcion, an early heretic who died around 160 AD, famously rejected the Old Testament and claimed the Old Testament God of Israel was different from the God Jesus. While it is relatively rare to hear someone say this outright, it is unfortunately true that some treat the Old Testament as if it is less authoritative, less useful, less from God. Jesus teaches the opposite, the whole of Scripture matters. The entire Bible is God’s Word and is given for our learning. St. Paul wrote to Timothy, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." Jesus is calling us to honor all of Scripture, not just the parts that are easy or familiar.

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But today is not only characterized by grief and loss, it is also an occasion to reflect on the Savior of Esther, indeed the Savior of the entire world, Jesus Christ. And before us there are three lessons chosen by the family that teach us three things about what our Savior has done for Esther, indeed, for all the faithful.

Find out more in this sermon for the Funeral of Esther Orn from St. John's Lutheran Church of Oakes, ND!