Sermons

What is preaching? St. Paul writes in Romans: “Whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14-15)

Therefore our Lutheran Confessions state: “It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.” (Augsburg Confession VII:1-3)

There are 256 posts filed in Sermons (this is page 51 of 86).

Trinity 25 2011 – Matthew 24:15-28

06. November 2011
Trinity 25
Matthew 24:15-28

When God plans to destroy what He has created, He first brings warning by one of His holy angels. He does not desire the death of the wicked but that they repent and turn to him in faith, looking to God for grace and mercy. When God speaks by His messenger, listen. Pharaoh and his host were given ten warnings to repent and listen to the Word of God. The Lord is long-suffering. His prophet Moses’s repeated proclamation was rejected and denied. Pharaoh hardened his heart to God’s Word and was in the end destroyed.

Great is the hardness of the sinful will against the Word of God. According to your flesh, you hate both God and His commands. A brief consideration of your heart’s desires against the Holy Ten Commands will reveal how far from God we walk.

No matter whether you think your sins great or small (and for everyone born of the flesh—they are great), the wages of sin is death. That is, everyone of you knows the judgment of Christ. Everyone knows what God thinks about every transgression, for we all know death. We’ve seen this enemy take our spouse or child. We’ve seen the enemy take friend and foe alike. We hate this enemy. We hate this judgment we deserve, preferring rather to gloss over our sin.

Job confessed this truth. Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not… Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one. Try as we might, we cannot hide or sin or escape its just punishment.

Christ warns us today of a great horror that began in His day and continues to this very time. He warns of the “abomination of desolation” to the Temple as foretold in Daniel 9 and 11. Speaking of the holy of holies within the temple, Daniel said:  They shall defile the sanctuary fortress; then they shall take away the daily sacrifices, and place there the abomination of desolation.

In that day, a great idol will sit upon the throne reserved for Christ in the Holy Place. He will speak, claiming Christ’s Word. He will command, claiming Christ’s authority. He will promise, claiming Christ’s mercy. From this idolatrous throne, he will perform great signs and wonders, trying to lead even the elect of God astray.

Do not think you are immune from this prophecy. The old Adam is strong, sin remains tempting, and the Devil’s lies still are whispered in your ear. Your fallen will still desires to dethrone Christ from your heart and place instead other idols to rule and govern your thoughts and deeds. You are consumed with the material of this world that you worship your “stuff” more than Christ. Repent. Turn back to Christ and live.

You have made your family and idol, giving your spouse and children priority over daily prayer and divine worship. Thus, you have cast Christ off his throne and replaced Him with other fallen creatures. You worship your family more than the one who saved you. Repent. Return to Christ and live.

You may have put your trust in princes, blindly following messianic politicians, who claim they can solve this country’s problems. They claim to put more money in your pocket, food on the table, and an addition on the house. You have dethroned your savior who is the sole provider for your every need of body and soul. Repent and live.

When these powerful enemies pursue your heart, heed the prophet’s warning. Flee to the mountains. Leap from your place of rest and run from the field. Pray that you will not be held back by cares for family. Pray that it not be winter or the Sabbath. Run fast and never turn back.

Dear Christian, you know that you are in the death throes. You daily struggle against our foes—sin, death, and Satan himself. The battle has been long. The great tribulation is upon you. Yet, the prophet, too, has a promise. If those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for your sake, the elect, those days have been cut short.

This present darkness will find its end in death. Death is judgment, to be sure. But do not look for solace in the false Christ’s of this world. There are those who would lead you astray. There are those who would convince you to worship them and forget Jesus. There are those who will try to lead you to believe you can “have your best life now,” that you “are not a poor, miserable sinner,” or worse yet, mix error with truth. Anyone or anything that claims to save you apart from or in addition to Jesus is against him.

They are the anti-Christ, the false prophet. They will tell you a great many things which sound good and true and may even be verified by great success. Their churches may grow by leaps and bounds. Yet, they are synagogues of Satan, abominations of desolation.

This devil is a great deceiver and ruler of this world. He can convince sinful heart and mind to believe and see that which it wants. Yet, it is only God’s Word that gives what we truly need. It is only the testimony of the Spirit in the church that brings you Jesus Christ crucified. It is only the Son of God’s atoning blood, his body sacrificed, his death, and his glorious resurrection that must be enthroned in your heart.

No thoughts of self-righteousness, no looking to your wealth or prosperity, no beautiful family, nor any growing congregation will clean the temple of your heart. Only the strong man can loose the bonds, break the fetters, and release the chains that have bound you. Only your victor king Jesus can conquer and rule you in His grace and mercy.

Heed the warning, therefore. No one knows the day or the hour of Christ’s coming in judgment. No one knows the day or hour of their death. They are the same. Call out: Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors… in your righteousness deliver me, incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily!

And it is so. The Lord has rescued you. The Lord has established his holy habitation in you. He has named you His child, anointed you, and set you apart for sacred worship. You and he are forever joined, bonded inseparably as the bride of Christ and the bridegroom. Within the one flesh union of the Son of God, you are purified of your evil. Christ himself has conquered your enemies, the ones who set up abominations in your heart where love alone should dwell. He has run out the idolatry of sin and reclaimed you as iconic temples to Him. Thus, as Christians, sweet prayers arise like incense from your lips, you serve as living sacrifices, and Christ sits with mercy for you in your flesh upon the ark of His Word.

Despite our sin and our future death, we need not fear. Jesus has died for you. He has redeemed you. He has rescued you from the unholy trinity of sin, death, and the devil. We are temples to God, forever purified in the blood of Christ. Therefore, I do not want you to be uniformed, brothers, about those who have died.

We do not grieve as others who have no hope. For everyone who has died in Christ now rests from their labors. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep… for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so will always be with the Lord.

This is the wonderful promise of the Gospel. He has promised to show mercy to his humble servants. You trust not in our own merit, our sinful desires, or our self righteousness. Nor do you receive the severity of our just desserts. Instead you are blessed in Christ with grace and mercy. The abomination of desolation has been dethroned and Christ is restored in you. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord! … Therefore encourage one another with these words.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

Funeral of Joseph C. Koch – 29. October 2011

Pastor Christopher R. Gillespie

Grace Lutheran Church – Dyer, Indiana

29. October 2011

Funeral of Joseph C. Koch

 

+ IN NOMINE JESU +

The Lord’s unending blessing be upon you—Marion, aunt Carol, David, Gary, Lisa, Alex, Sydney, Kelli, Garrett, Kristen and Katherine, spouses, friends, neighbors, and fellow believers. I bid you warm greetings from your fellow saints of God at Grace Lutheran Church in Dyer. We mourn the death of your dearly beloved father, grandfather, brother, and friend. We will keep you in our prayers as we too know the pain of death and suffer with you.

In the midst of your grief, I have noticed a common desire. Each one of you desire a sure and certain hope for Joe. You are not unique. Everyone who suffers the loss of a loved one wants to know answers. So, you want to know why Joe suffered. You want to know why God would give life, nurture it, only to rip it away in the end. You want to know what is in store for Joe.

If we look to ourselves, our desires will guide our answers. We might think that Joe suffered after his heart attack and especially these last few years because God was punishing him. We might think that this is all just part of the “circle of life” and has no meaning at all.

We ought to look to the Scriptures for the truth. God’s servant Job underwent great trial and suffering. His family, livelihood, possessions, and even his very health were removed from him. He was brought to the kind of depths of hurt that Joe felt in the end.

This hurt, this suffering was given to him. God allowed even the wicked Devil to torment him day and night. Why? Why cause such grief and sorrow? Why suffer to the end?

It is not simply punishment. No, Joe suffered not to destroy his faith but to strengthen it. God desired Joe to return to His baptism, to trust in God’s mercy alone, to confess the one name of Jesus by which all must be saved. St Paul says: we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:3ff).

I pray that Joe’s suffering and your grief now will bring you not to hope in yourselves, in your own strength, in your own good works. No, I pray that your hope is like patriarch Job’s. Job utterly despaired of himself. Instead, he put his entire hope in the Redeemer who lives. Even after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself.

There is only one way you can be absolutely sure and certain that you are saved and will inherit the life eternal. St. Peter says: believe and be baptized and you will be saved. Or as we say in the Creed: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Therein is your only certain hope. Confess with your lips that Jesus Christ is Lord. Receive adoption as sons and daughters in Holy Baptism. Confess your sins before your pastor and receive Holy Absolution. Only the forgiveness of sins, purchased and won by the blood of Christ, will redeem you from the pit. Only forgiveness of sins will bring you from death to life.

This is our hope for Joe. Unfortunately, we cannot make light of the fact that Joe became both lax and then unable to participate in the holy catholic church or in the communion of saints around the altar, receiving Christ’s body and blood. This is a shame and even a tragedy. For Holy Baptism named him as a member in the one church and made him ready to participate in these gifts.

Yet, this does not leave us with our hope. For Joe was baptized. Christ chose him as one of his dear children. In my very brief conversations with him, he did not despair but calmly approached his death. He welcomed my prayers. Our hope is that the good work begun in him in baptism was made complete in his final breaths.

But, also heed Joe’s faults. Do not presume that baptism is a ticket to heaven. Let us make our calling and election sure. Let us make full use of the riches of God, in his preached Word, in his gift of Confession and Absolution, and in the holy Sacrament of his body and blood. Baptism now saves you, to be sure, but so also remain in your baptism by hearing, confessing, and receiving forgiveness of sins as often as you are able.

This may seem a harsh word for you but it is the truth. Joe’s love for you, his spouse Marion, while wonderful, does not save him. His fatherly love does not earn him anything. His taking the boys on fishing trips with Vic Bernardi doesn’t merit heaven. His hard work for our U.S. Army, Illinois Bell, or even Koch’s Courier are nothing to the work accomplished for him in Christ.

The apostles had this same concern. They wanted to know how they could go to be with the Father in the heavenly mansions. St. John records: Thomas said to [Jesus], “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him,  “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

The way to heaven isn’t through a noble or virtuous life. The way to heaven is not through being a good husband, father, or friend. The only way to heaven is through Jesus. It is through his way, his truth, and his life. Rejoice in Christ, in his appointed means of grace, his beloved Word of Holy Scripture, and his meritorious and sacrificial life, and be saved.

The Lord’s blessing be upon you— Marion, aunt Carol, David, Gary, Lisa, Alex, Sydney, Kelli, Garrett, Kristen and Katherine, spouses, friends, neighbors, and fellow believers. May the may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your heart and mind steadfast in Christ Jesus our Lord, even as we mourn the death of our dear friend, brother, father, and husband Joseph. Amen.

+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +