Sermons 2025

Luke 4:1-9

Sermon Outline
    2.    Sin is why we’re here—in this wilderness.
    1.    We’re why Jesus is here in this wilderness.

CHRIST IS WITH US IN OUR WILDERNESS.

Sermon

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke, the fourth chapter verse one through nine.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. This church year is going by fast! First Christmas, then Epiphany, now Lent, soon we will celebrate Easter. Why do you come to church?  This Christian Church, is here for one reason—for God to expose and remove your sin. That’s the only business of the Church. That’s why you’re here—or should be. The purpose of Lent, of Christ, of the Church is to take away your sin. God’s forgiveness—acting, doing everything—because of sin. How does God forgive all of your sins? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

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Unfortunately, if we don’t think our sin is so serious, so deadly. Then we do not think that our sins will eventually give you up dead, then we don’t really need the Church; we don’t need Christ. What good is a bloody Savior no one needs? 

So we end up going through the motions of religion. After all, nothing really happens here that interests us. Some people try to redefine Church as a social club or charitable organization—where you can do “nice things” for others who need it. You can gather and socialize with fellow people. The idea is that we’re all fine and good. It’s the other people who need our deliverance. Well, true. Every neighbor needs your mercy and charity.

But if we ever lose sight of the fact that we are “poor miserable sinners” (where every word of that hurts!); that of all the people in the world, we are the most guilty, the most sinful, the most unclean; that my sin (whether it’s secret or out in the open) drives me out of heaven and into hell forever! Hell is a real, bitter place: total isolation, misery, you and your terror never separated, ever—if we ever lose sight that we need deliverance from our sin, and our children need deliverance from their sin, and our co-workers and friends and classmates need deliverance from their sin—if we ever lose sight of the quiet tragedy in us (behind the easy grins and Sunday best clothes), then the Church has lost its purpose. God put this Church here, in this city, this very place, for you, so he can remove your sin. That’s why he is here now.

That is my job as your pastor—to speak truthfully about what God’s word says about us—I must stand before even all the “good” people who have come . . . and announce what is true about us. That sin has infected you with death. You can’t escape it. It’s festering in your deepest parts, working all the way down and all the way through. Of course, the world—and even we Christians—sometimes defend ourselves, say we’re mostly(!) “good” deep down. But if we mean it, then the world and we don’t understand sin at all. Sin rots you. It decays. It perverts what it touches, and it touches you. Proof? Ever been sick? Mistreated someone—friend or enemy (enemies are easier to mistreat!)? What grudge are you still holding, even here in this place? Have you ever been rejected and even once known tears? Suffered an accident? These things are not God’s judgment on you for specific sins, but they are signs of the sin that is on all people, all creation, on you. These things cannot happen to sinless people in a pure, sinless world. It’s all residue—sometimes a thick residue—of sin. I can prove you touched a hot stove by showing you your burning fingers. I can show you your sin by showing you your pain, your weakness, your anger, and your bitterness in this world.

If your marriage is perfect, your children are perfect, health is perfect, house is perfect, school is perfect, if nothing breaks down, nothing disappoints, if nothing hurts, if everything is “milk and honey,” then relax. You’re safe . . . sin has not polluted you. You will live forever, even without Christ, apparently. (“Who needs him?!”) But if your life is not perfect, your health not perfect, your family not perfect, then something deadly is causing it, all this grief and pain.

It is not God. God doesn’t break things or pollute or trouble things. God is peace and not chaos around you. Love, not hate. Life, not death in you (although sometimes—the muddled way we perceive things—we’re not too sure; we “suspect” him). If chaos and hatred and sickness and suspicion and death have invaded your life and family, then you ought best recognize it. It is this: Sin has corrupted you—and deep—after all. You are “ruined” by it and condemned by it. It’s a “wilderness” (a wasteland) out there, and you are lost in it, forever.

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But what happens immediately after Jesus’ baptism? Luke states “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.”

Look beside you in this wilderness, this desert. There is Jesus. Also alone. Also starving after not eating for 40 days and nights. Also miserable. Also stalked and hunted by Satan seeking whom he may devour. This is Jesus on his way to dying too! Why is Jesus here? He has never sinned. His body—flesh and bone and heart and soul—are pure and holy (in the biggest way!). Why is he in this barren place—hungry, tempted, suffering like this? Don’t you know? Because you are here.

Jesus cannot stay in heaven’s peace and glory while you are here suffering. If you lose all things, he loses all things. If you starve and sweat and squirm, he, too, must starve and sweat and squirm. If you suffer condemnation, he suffers condemnation. If you are to die, he must die too. He loves you too much to leave you here in sin’s desert, this world—even with its bright excitements and occasional splendor and excellent advertising—all at Satan’s tempting disposal. While “this world’s prince may still Scowl fierce as he will,” Jesus is “by [y]our side upon the plain” where you are and where the fight is. And Jesus does the fighting himself—hang on a tree, rise from the dead, ascend!—he indeed “holds the field forever” (LSB 656:3, 4, 2).

So something more is happening here: wherever Jesus walks in this desert, new life springs up. Your life. Life from heaven—from God to you. Like a leafy green tree heavy with fruit in the middle of a desert where you didn’t expect it. A tree of life to eat from, and so to eat and get life—after the Garden of Eden tree is long gone. And he is a spring of life-giving water, bubbling up (Jn 7:37–38) in the middle of your desert—shouting out defiantly against Satan and his carefully cultivated drought all around you. Jesus shouts his last Word upon the cross: “Tetelestai” “It is Finished!” “Forgiven!”

Jesus suffers. Jesus starves. Jesus wanders in this bitter forty-day wilderness for one reason: you are here. But he’s not here to empathize with you—not just to throw a comforting arm over your shoulder, just to say, “This is pretty bad, isn’t it?” He’s here to finally get you out of here, to re-create you, and take you back to heaven to his Father. That’s why the Holy Spirit led him to your spot, to the desert. And so he brings life down from heaven to this spot in the desert. He brings food down from heaven, healing for you—for your hurt mind, your heart, your bruised body and soul—the whole of you. God “authored” you. Sin wrecks you. So death claims you. But Christ heals you of death, forgives, perfects you.

His water is the only water in the wilderness that will save you. So he says, “I baptize you with it . . . in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And his food is the only food that will nourish you “to life everlasting,” so “Take and eat, this is my body . . . given . . . for you. And my blood shed . . . for you . . . forgiveness.” Here is life from heaven in this wilderness. Here is deliverance from Satan “and all his works and all his ways.” Here is cleansing from your sin!

This is why your God is in the desert, why

CHRIST IS WITH US IN OUR WILDERNESS.

Why his Body, the Church, is here, and even right here. Why you are here at this moment. This life, this deliverance, this cleansing is yours. And now your sin is deadly on you, but your God is with you . . . and has delivered you.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

ADVENT MIDWEEK 2

The Song of Elizabeth
Luke 1:39–45

Sermon Outline
    4.    Mary essentially walks into her cousin’s bridal shower, grabs the microphone, and sings that her baby is more important than Elizabeth’s.
    3.    But instead of being jealous, Elizabeth sings with Mary because she believes Mary’s baby is her glory too.
    2.    Unlike Elizabeth, we think glory is a zero-sum game in which others’ glory or Jesus’ glory costs us ours.
    1.    Instead, Christ made you a sinner no more and wrapped you in his glory.

Elizabeth Sings That You Have a God Who Has Given You His Glory.

Sermon

We often treat glory as a zero-sum game. The way we obtain glory, we often think, is to take it from someone else. The more glory our neighbor has, the less we have, or so we think. To use a musical analogy, we don’t believe in glory duets. If someone else is singing, the only way to make ourselves more glorious is to take the microphone and sing a song in praise of ourselves.
This is why, I suppose, our society has a bunch of unwritten rules trying to regulate this impulse. It’s why we warn people with a variety of phrases like “Don’t upstage him” or “Quit stealing her thunder.” This is why women other than the bride aren’t supposed to wear white at the wedding. It’s why you don’t start boasting of your own work-related accomplishments at a man’s retirement ceremony. It’s why a young woman shouldn’t announce her pregnancy at her friend’s baby shower.

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And yet, that last thing is essentially what the virgin Mary does when she greets her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s whole pregnancy is essentially a prolonged celebration, for a couple reasons. One, Elizabeth is old, far too old to be having children, especially when you consider that she’s been barren her entire life—something similar to Sarah’s conception of Isaac in the Old Testament. And on top of this, an angel told her husband that the child Elizabeth is going to bear is going to be a prophet, as I mentioned last week, this is something the Israelites haven’t seen in about three hundred years.

This is all pretty amazing. There’s a spotlight that’s glowing on Elizabeth in this moment. This is her moment to sing the song of glory, the song of the wonderful things God has done for her. But when Mary comes to visit, our Gospel text strongly implies that Mary immediately tells Elizabeth everything she’s just heard from the angel Gabriel. She tells Elizabeth that she’s going to give birth to the Christ Child, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. Mary essentially walks into her cousin’s bridal shower, grabs the microphone, and sings, “My pregnancy is even more miraculous than yours, and my baby is going to be even more important than your baby.”

3.
While many of us might be filled with sorrow, jealousy, or indignation in this moment, Elizabeth is filled with joy because, as a Christian, as a believer in the promise of salvation growing in Mary’s womb, Elizabeth doesn’t see glory as a zero-sum game. She doesn’t see it as a song she needs to sing instead of Mary. She sees it as a song she sings with Mary.

“When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy’ ” (vv 41–44).

Elizabeth knows that Mary’s baby is Elizabeth’s glory too. That’s why Elizabeth says what she says after feeling John the Baptist leap for joy in her womb as the mother of God comes into their presence. That’s why Elizabeth is filled with humility and asks the question, “Why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Elizabeth responds with humility and awe, she gladly shares the spotlight with Mary and even gives it to her, because she knows that the Man who is going to save her from her sins is now the little unborn child in Mary’s womb.

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We don’t think like Elizabeth. Rather, we think like the world and follow its zero-sum game, its song-of-glory ways. When Christ and his Word come into our presence, we don’t want to yield the spotlight, even when that spotlight is illuminating things that are far less glorious than what Elizabeth had surrounding her. So the Word says, “Look, Jesus is here forgiving your sins. Jesus is here to heal your broken hearts and cast out your demons and to give you the gift of eternal life. So put away your pride. Let go of your sins. And come find rest in the arms of God.”

But we don’t. Instead of singing the praises of Mary’s Son, we sing our own praises. We worship our own pride, boasting of our own righteousness before the world. We sing the songs of anger toward those who have sinned against us, thinking that tearing them down will clothe us in more glory. We sing songs of despair as we look out at the world, thinking that lamenting the filth of our neighbors can somehow make us clean. In all of this, we think if we can rip the microphones out of other people’s hands, we can make their glory our own and become someone worthy of love and attention. In all of this, we hear Christ singing to us, calling us to turn from our sins, and we sing, “I don’t care how good your news is. I’m the important one right now. This is my day, my moment.”

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But it’s not your moment. In fact, the very existence of your life belongs to Jesus, the same Jesus who was born of the virgin Mary, and the same Jesus who came into this world not to take the spotlight away from you but to welcome you into his spotlight.

The child in Elizabeth’s womb grew up to be John the Baptist, the one who prepared the way for the Christ who would die for the sins of the world. And the child in Mary’s womb grew up to be that crucified and risen Savior.
With the spotlight firmly fixed on Christ, the nails were pierced into his hands and feet. And as he hung on that cross with those lights burning onto his head, Jesus shed his blood and took away your sins, took away your pride, your arrogance, took away your refusal to hear his Word. As his body was broken apart on that cross, Jesus took away all your self-worship and idolatry. And as he took his final breath, as he cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46), Jesus sang the song that made you a sinner no more, the song that wrapped you in his glory and made it your own possession.

Then after hanging—and three days of lying—lifeless with that spotlight shining on him, Jesus began to move again. He lifted up his head, picked his life back up, cleared his throat, and told you that the hour had come for you to sing with him forever, for you to join the song Elizabeth sang with and to his mother, the song of salvation for all who believe.

“Blessed is Mary among all women,” Elizabeth sang, “and blessed is the fruit of her womb.” Now we can sing that song too because the holy fruit, the Lamb of God, has made you blessed. He’s washed you clean, fed you with salvation, and shown you that you don’t have a God who competes with you for glory.

Elizabeth Sings That
You Have a God Who Has Given You His Glory.

So sing with him forever. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.