Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I. Introduction
1. Toward the end of last week, the twelve days of the Christmas season came to a close and we began the next season of the Church Year: the season of Epiphany. The word Epiphany comes from Greek and it means “to reveal or manifest.” The season of Epiphany is really the perfect reciprocal of the season of Christmas. Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Yesterday morning I was scrolling through Facebook and looking at all of the “Happy New Year” posts. As I did so, I couldn’t help but notice a recurring sentiment. Almost everyone whose post I looked at expressed some sort of relief that 2021 is over and a new year is beginning. In fact, I saw multiple posts from people (who don’t know each other) saying, “I hope [or pray] 2022 will be better.” This is just one example of an attitude that I’ve come to realize permeates our society. We are excellent at taking note of all of the brokenness around us. Rather than learning to live and deal with the situation we are in now, we place our trust in the hope that somehow the future will be better. Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this morning is the Gospel Reading from Luke 2. We will be focusing specifically on verses 22-35.

I. Text
1. In our text, we hear the famous story of Simeon. It’s the interaction with Simeon which causes this Gospel Reading to be so well-known. But, the reason why Simeon even enters Luke’s Gospel account at this point is because Joseph and Mary have taken the baby Jesus to the temple in order to fulfill the law of the Lord regarding the presentation of Jesus and the purification of Mary. Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. In our text for this morning, again hear about John the Baptist, who takes every opportunity to point us to Christ who stands among us.

1. Our Gospel Reading begins with these words: And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. In our Gospel Reading for today we turn our attention to the great prophet known as John the Baptist. Interestingly, John doesn’t actually make an appearance in the text, but his disciples speak for him and Jesus speaks about him. As the text begins, we’re told that John is in prison. As you might recall, John was put in prison by King Herod after John had unapologetically preached against some of the things that Herod had been doing. Herod had gotten sick of John undermining his authority, so he put him in prison to get him to stop talking. The beginning of our text says this: Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to [Jesus], “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 10:2-3). Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. In our Gospel Reading for today, we heard Jesus telling his disciples about his final coming. In theology we have a fancy term which we use to describe Jesus’ final coming: the Eschaton. Eschaton is a Greek word which means “the last things.” So, when we talk about the Eschaton or Eschatology, we’re talking about Jesus’ final coming at the end of time. The Eschaton is Jesus’ focus in our text for today as he tells his disciples about “the last things” which will happen at the end of time. Before we discuss the Eschaton any further, I would like to make an observation about why it’s important to know about these things and to study theology at all. Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our text for this morning is the Gospel Reading from Matthew 21:1-9—the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday of Holy Week. This text is the Palm Sunday story, which is actually quite fitting for this first Sunday in Advent because this story points to why Jesus came to this earth. This time of year, it’s easy to lose sight of this and to be sucked into the whims of culture and to operate as if Christmas were about consumerism, giving and receiving gifts, and eating a ton of Christmas cookies. Our text invites us to ponder more deeply the reason why Christ came at Christmas. Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is the Gospel Reading from Mark 13:1-13. Our text begins with Jesus foretelling the destruction of the temple and then moves to a discussion of how the end times will impact the world and those in it. Let’s look more carefully at the text and see what Jesus has to teach us. Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is Revelation 7:2-17. We will especially be focusing on the first half of the reading.

1. In the second half of the reading from Revelation 7, we see a beautiful picture of the “Church Triumphant.” That is to say, we see a beautiful picture of the saints in heaven—men and women who have died in the faith and are pictured standing in their glorified state before the throne of God. It’s a beautiful picture to envision this “great multitude that no one could number . . standing before the throne and before the Lamb . . .” (Revelation 7:9). Continue reading →