THE TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
17 August 2025
Jeremiah 23:16-29
Hebrews 11:17-12:3
Luke 12:49-56
Christ’s Suffering and Death Bring Division
The Lord Jesus causes fear and trembling and division because His Word is “like fire … and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces” (Jer. 23:29). His Law puts us all to death, whereas only His Gospel can bring us to life. He has fulfilled that Word for us by His cross and in His resurrection from the dead. He undergoes such a distressing baptism, accomplished by His death, in order to open the way for us through our Holy Baptism into His cross and resurrection. So, then, if we are able “to interpret the appearance of earth and sky” (Luke 12:56), let us mark this sign of His cross — recognizing that this world is subject to death, but knowing that Christ Jesus also has conquered death and obtained life everlasting for us. Let us fix our eyes on “Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,” and “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1–2).
Sermon: “True Faith”
THE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
10 August 2025
Genesis 15:1-6
Hebrews 11:1-16
Luke 12:22-40
The LORD Is Surely Coming to Give You His Kingdom
The LORD Himself was Abraham’s shield and great reward. For “the word of the LORD came to him” and sustained the patriarch’s faith in the face of death (Gen. 15:4). By divine grace, Abraham “believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6), on account of the holy Seed, Christ Jesus. To that one old man, the LORD granted “descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore” (Heb. 11:12). The LORD is likewise faithful to you. It is His glad desire “to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Therefore, “do not be anxious about your life,” but instead “seek his kingdom” (Luke 12:22, 31). Set your heart on that treasure. “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning … for the Son of Man is coming” (Luke 12:35, 40).
Sermon: “Co-Heirs With Jesus”
THE EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
2 August 2025
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-26
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21
Faith in Christ Is Rich Toward God
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).
Sermon: “The True God”
THE SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
27 July 2025
Genesis 18:20-33
Colossians 2:16-19
Luke 11:16-19
The Prayer of the Church is the Voice of Faith
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).
Sermon: “Confessing the Words of Life”
THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
20 July 2025
Genesis 18:1-14
Colossians 1:21-29
Luke 10:38-42
The Word of Christ is the One Thing Needed
“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).
Sermon: The Word of Life”
THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
13 July 2025
Leviticus 19:9-18
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
Jesus is Our Good Samaritan
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.
Sermon: “Love”
THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
6 July 2025
Isaiah 66:10-14
Galatians 6:1-18
Luke 10:1-20
The LORD Grants Peace and Life to His Church
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).
Sermon: “God Offers True, Abundant, and Eternal Life Within His Church”
THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
29 June 2025
1 Kings 19:9b-21
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62
Christ’s Messengers Proclaim His Kingdom
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).
Sermon: Authority and Responsibility
THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
22 June 2025
Isaiah 65:1-9
Galatians 3:23-4:7
Luke 8:26-39
Jesus Brings Release from the Bonds of Sin, Death and the Devil
The LORD finds those who did not seek Him or ask for Him. He spreads out His hands “to a rebellious people” (Is. 65:2) and calls them to be His people and to dwell in peace upon His holy mountain (Is. 65:9). For wherever Jesus Christ enters in, Satan is cast out. Those who were enslaved and driven mad by the assaults and accusations of the devil are set free by the Word of Christ. He drowns and destroys the old Adam in us with the waters of Holy Baptism and thereby brings us out of death into life. No longer naked in our shame, living “among the tombs” (Luke 8:27), we are brought into the LORD’S house, fully clothed by Christ; He has come in “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4) to fulfill the Law on our behalf and to redeem us from its every accusation. Therefore, having been justified by His grace through faith in His Gospel, “you are no longer a slave, but a son” (Gal. 4:7).
