Sermons 2026

“Jesus Gives Us Rest by Bearing Our Burdens”

Matthew 11:25-30

In the name of Jesus…

    How the time has flown! Many of you have seen me grow up over the years and it hasn’t even seemed that long. In another aspect, it is now July, summer is in full swing, the Fourth of July/Fort Benton Summer Celebration have come and gone, and things don’t seem to slow down much. We are busy people always looking at the next thing and while some things can be exciting, it can also be very tiring. Work, school, eat, sleep, do it again the next day. When can I just get some rest? In our Gospel reading, Jesus talks about rest and where to find it.

(JESUS GIVES US REST BY BEARING OUR BURDENS.)

I.
    “Jesus declared, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children’” (Matthew 11:25). There are many things that we would like to know that we can’t explain. We are tempted to want to know and explain everything according to our human reason, but some things have not been revealed to us. Worrying about our life of faith and the future can be exhausting. Consider some of those biblical doctrines that we try to wrap our heads around. How can the Incarnate Christ be both fully God and fully man? How can Jesus’ body and blood be truly present at multiple altars at the same time? Why are some saved and not others? By trying to explain these doctrines beyond what Scripture says, we do nothing but buy ourselves trouble. We know what Scripture says and we can leave it at that. What are those burdens in your life that you seek to answer? Why must our friends and family die? Why did I have to receive a bad medical diagnosis? What did I do to deserve this? Why is God punishing me? Our human reason seeks to answer the questions that we cannot answer. So, why can’t the knowledge of salvation depend on human reason? Well, what does Scripture say? We are sinful beings who cannot fully understand everything in God’s creation. We do not have the same knowledge that God has by design.

Jesus thanked his Father for revealing the truth of the Gospel to children. While little children ask questions (sometimes too many) and desire to know things, they also receive what has been revealed to them with great faith. Children can proudly proclaim that Jesus died for them without trying to explain the how. Jesus said, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:14-15). May we have a childlike faith by trusting in God’s Word and leave it at that without trying to explain beyond what Scripture has revealed to us. These are just some of the burdens we face when we worry about the things we don’t know by not having a childlike faith.

In addition to those burdens, we are also burdened with sin which is at the root of our earthly problems. In our Epistle reading, Paul talks about something we can all relate to, that is, wrestling against our own inclination to sin even though we desire to do good (Romans 7:15). God’s commandments teach us how to live and from a young age, we are taught the difference between right and wrong. We know this, yet we find ourselves doing the opposite of how we should live and conduct ourselves. The Old Adam still dwells in us after Baptism. Therefore, as Luther teaches us in the Small Catechism, “the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” It is tiring to keep fighting against sin and temptation by drowning the Old Adam each and every day by confessing our sins receiving forgiveness. Though it is a daily struggle, we must focus on the cause of the burden of sin. We must diagnose the problem.

We are burdened when we don’t keep the law because nothing good dwells in us (Romans 7:18). We are poor miserable sinners, plain and simple. The problem is that sin dwells within me (Romans 7:17). The problem is not the law (Romans 7:16, 22) even though the law is heavy and weights us down by showing us our sin. St. Paul says, “Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good” (Romans 7:16) and “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being” (Romans 7:22). We know that the law is good since God gave it to us as a guide for how we are to live our lives. However, we cannot keep the law even though we know it is good. Therefore, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). As sinners, we deserve nothing but God’s wrath and punishment, resulting in our eternal death. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).

II.

    Jesus bears our burdens in his death on the cross. This morning, we are blessed with that reminder of Palm Sunday in our Old Testament reading. “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, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). In context, Judah had just returned from exile in Babylon. What a heavy burden God’s people had suffered during their seventy-year period of captivity. To say they must have been tired is probably an understatement. Zechariah assured Judah that their king would protect them from foreign enemies. To God’s people, the exile was like a yoke which is what an animal wears to pull a wagon or cart. On Palm Sunday, Jesus humbly rode into Jerusalem on a donkey toward the yoke of the cross which he would carry to Mount Calvary. By bearing our burdens on the cross, Jesus rescued us from sin and the burden of knowing that we fail to keep the law and live a Christian life as we should. Where can we find our rest and some relief from our burdens?

    We find our rest in Jesus. He said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Jesus tells us where to find rest, by being yoked to him. This means living each and every day of your life as a disciple of Jesus, reading God’s Word, and receiving His gifts. When our sins our forgiven, the yoke is lifted off our shoulders, just like when “we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.” We also find rest where Jesus has promised to be, in his Holy Supper where we eat and drink his body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Here, Jesus makes our burdens light. All of our sins and sorrows were carried by Jesus and were nailed with him to the cross. He died for each and every one of our sins – when we weren’t content with what Scripture has revealed to us, when we wanted to know why this or that happened and demanded answers. All of those things that cause us to become restless, tired, and exhausted, Christ died for them and gives us rest even when we fail to put our trust in him. By assuming human flesh, Christ was tempted in every way that we are but did not sin. He bore the weight of the entire world’s sin so that we don’t have to. He died so that we might live.
    Even though we continue to feel the burden of exhaustion, we take comfort knowing that we have rest in Jesus. While time will continue to fly by despite us wanting to just slow down and relax, God is always with you through it all. Remember the words of Jesus: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Thanks be to God for the rest that He continues to give us each and every day. Amen.

Now may the peace of God…
 

Text: Romans 7:1-13
Theme: Dead to Sin

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 is the Epistle of Saint Paul sent to the church in Rome, the seventh chapter verses one through thirteen.

Beloved lambs, I pray that you are doing well today. Do you know what I have here? Right, I have a puppet. Can this puppet do anything on its own? No. All it will do is lie there. But if I put my hand in it, now it is moving, active, and speaking. Anything that my hand says or do, that is what the puppet does and says. Let’s say this puppet said a really really bad word, would you blame the puppet? You might, but the one to blame would be the person controlling the puppet. That is what Saint Paul explains in our text when he is talking about God’s Law and its relation to Sin. He says that sin used and controlled the Law to do bad things. Is God’s Law bad? How do we use God’s Law today? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

1.    Death parts

We hear this promise made at every single wedding service. “I take you to be my wedding wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy will; and I pledge to your my faithfulness.” This is a binding promise, made before God and all those present, that you will be faithful to your spouse for the entirety of your life. 

At that moment, husbands become the heads and wives become the ones under their authority. The Greek word that Paul uses for a wife is an under a man woman. Wives are under the control of their husbands and their responsibility and headship. If a woman breaks this promise then she is considered an adulteress.  Why? Because they have broken the vow and are one who stands condemned under the Law. There is only one way to be freed from under this Law. One way to be free of this responsibility. The death of a husband. If the husband is dead, a wife is freed from that obligation and vow that was made. She could use her freedom to remarry or remain single, either is appropriate.

The same is true of us as Christians under the Law. We are no longer bound by the Law. We are no longer constrained by what we must do. We have been freed by its condemnation. How did this happen? A death. Specifically, the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross.  In the blessed waters of Holy Baptism, we are connected to Jesus Christ and His death upon the cross. There we die with Christ and are raised to new life. Through His body, we have died to the Law, we have been set free from its bondage. When Christ’s body hung upon the cross, when God spared not His own Son but gave Him up for us all, when Christ took on Himself for all of us the curse of the Law that struck us all, then we died to the Law. The Law had done its utmost and was done with us, for we were all included in the body of the Crucified. His Law, Gods love, has made His death the death of all. The same act of God that delivered us from the dominion of sin has freed us from the dominion of the Law, and for the same purpose; that we might live to Him who died and rose for us and thus bear fruit for God, the fruit of a life drawn from His life and lived to His glory.

As Rev. Black comments upon this verse, “The union of the risen Christ and the Christian has just been depicted in terms of marriage. Paul continues the figure: such a union is expected to produce the “fruit” of reformed life dedicated to God. “The believer is free to contract a new union with his Risen Lord, and obtain new progeny through this fresh marriage” (Black, Romans, 94) ”

2.    Fruits

This union that we have with Christ leads to the fruit of new life. This is a fruit that we do not produce because of our own power or strength. To try under our own power leads to death because of how sin twists the Law for its own evil purpose. Death occurs because the Law demands perfection. Are you perfect? No, then you stand accused under the Law and bear the consequence of your sin, which is your death. 
Even worse, sin takes the opportunity to rise up and twist the Law into something evil. Saint Paul states, “Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. ”.  Paul uses covet because to covet has an inner heart desire which leads to an outward action. 

When the commandment comes in not to covet, you begin to see that you are covetous. You covet all sorts of things: better health, more money, a different car, a better preacher, worship in the sanctuary, whatever.  And then what do you do?  You resolve to obey the commandment, “Thou shall not covet,” and you earnestly pursue that goal, that you may produce good fruit.  But you don’t escape from the Law, because now you only covet something else.  You covet being a non-coveting person.  You covet righteousness.  It is precisely in trying to fulfill the law that one comes to violate it. 

The Law demands perfection to receive life. As the Lord says in Leviticus 18:5, “You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.”  Do the Law and you will live. Do not do the Law and you will be accursed. As the Lord says in Deuteronomy 27:26 “Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.”  Do and live, do not do and stand accursed. I stand accused under the Law, as do you. Sin exploited the commandments to deceive us and so kill us. Sin invokes the deadly curse upon us.

The Law shows the stain of sin upon us. The Word of God is as a Lamp to our feet and a light to our path. It shines a bright light upon how deep and corrupt we really are. When we see how deep and vast the corruption of our sinful nature goes, we should be afraid. 

As one of the monks of Qumran once wrote:
“When I called to mind all my guilty deeds and the perfidy of my sires- when wicked men opposed Thy covenant and forward men Thy word- trembling seized hold one me and quaking, all my bones were a quiver; my heart became like wax melting before a fire, my knees were like to water pouring over a steep (IV, 33-34)” 

You see your corruption and mourn because the Law shows how much your have sinned. How imperfect you still are. Picture it this way. When you get done working on the car or out in the garden, you go inside to wash up and what do you see looking in the mirror? The oil and grim of the car, the dirt, mud, and muck of the garden. 

Do we blame the mirror for showing the dirt and grim? Most people rejoice in it as it shows you where you most need to focus to be cleansed. The same is true of the Law. Even though sin corrupts and twists the Law for its own goals, a single step leading to death. We do not say that the Law is evil. Just as, we would not blame the puppet when it says a foul word or makes an obscene gesture, so too we do not blame the Law for revealing to us our sins. As we just sang, the Law of God is good and wise. 

“The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.  ” It reveals to us our sins, shows us sins corruption and our imperfections, that we might be prepared for the sweetness of the Gospel. 

3.    Guides

The Law also guides us as Christians. It answers the question, so you have been freed by Christ, what does that new life look like?  You listen intently to the Law as it reveals your sinfulness and my own. We quake in terror turning towards God in repentance, remembering the mercy and grace shown to us in Christ Jesus.

We strive to obey the Law as best as we can because it is the good will of God for us. We do this imperfectly, thus why the Christian life is one of constant repentance. Jesus has freed you from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for you. He has borne all your sins, all the breaking of the Law. You are forgiven because of His sake. Live in that forgiveness as you and I wait in constant repentance, longing for His glorious appearing, and the recreation of the Heavens and Earth to life everlasting.

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

Text: Romans 6:12-23

INTRODUCTION

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 is the Epistle of Saint Paul sent to the church in Rome, the sixth chapter verses twelve through twenty-three.
 

ILLUSTRATION
Beloved lambs, I pray that you are doing well today.
 

Have you ever played the game Simon Says? You have to do whatever Simon says, let's play a bit. Simon says pat your head. Spin around. Oh, caught you. Simon says jump like a bunny. Simon says is a fun game. It is also a good way of explaining what a slave is. A slave is someone who has no freedom of their own. They have to do everything that their master says whenever he says it. If you were told, 'I want a hot fudge sundae.' at midnight, you would have to make a hot fudge sundae at midnight. If you were told to jump, you'd have to say how high? Are we slaves or are we free? How are we given freedom? How do we use our freedom? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

SCRIPTURE

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Ro 6:12–14.
Pasted from English Standard Version. © Crossway. Used here under fair use; verify rights before publishing.

EXPLANATION

Are you a slave? You are, even if you do not realize it. Paul talks about what it is to be a slave. You are either a slave of sin or a slave of righteousness. Those are really the only two options.
As we discussed last week, every single one of us starts as a slave to sin because of Adam's failure to uphold God's Law as commanded. We all want to be our own gods and make our own decisions, we want to follow our own desires and lusts.

The word in the Greek, in the Epistle lesson is epithumi, which is sometimes translated desire or lust. We normally think of lust in terms of the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery. We should see that there is a lust that lives in every one of the commandments. Whatever the commandments forbid, that is what you and I desire. Your sinful flesh and my sinful flesh want. The same as when mom makes a plate of delicious cookies or brownies, saying, do not touch, they are for dessert. What do you want to do? Touch them and eat them, perhaps you are hungry or not, merely because you were forbidden from doing so.

We can apply this to all the commandments. The fourth commandment, honor your father and mother. We want to be rebellious and rebel against our parents and other authorities. According to the fifth commandment, you shall not murder. We want to be angry. We want to hate our neighbor's actions when they hurt us. We do not want to forgive them. According to the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery. We want to be unchaste and sexually immoral. According to the seventh commandment, you shall not steal. We are greedy and desire more and more posessions. We want to have the things that we’re not supposed to have. The Eighth Commandment, you shall not bear false witness. We are bitter and envious. We want to exalt ourselves among the people around us.

We want to sin. This desire to sin is called by the theologians concupiscence. It is important for us to know. It means that inward desire and inclination to sin. It means to miss the mark. For example let's say you are driving a car. You press the gas, but it goes backward instead of forwards in drive. You try to go straight, but it jerks right and then immediately left. Would you feel safe? No, because something is wrong with the car. It’s always going off the track. It’s always going the wrong direction. And that, even that desire to sin is already sin itself. It’s already guilt. The fact that you want the wrong thing means that you’re guilty.

So, this is the situation in which we find ourselves, that we according to our sinful nature want the wrong things. We confess what we call the bondage of the will. Our will cannot choose or decide to follow Jesus, choose or decide to be a believer and so forth. So, we confess the bondage of the will, but we also confess the bondage of the want, the corruption of the desires that we have.

The devil wants us to believe that by doing what we wnat to do, that we are living in freedom.

Choosing to do what you desire is living free from bondage. The devil wants us to think that the Ten Commandments are what put us in bondage and that our sinful choices are what cause us to live free. Do you see?

TRANSITION

What can we do? Nothing. There is nothing that we can do to save ourselves as we confess every Sunday. We are sinners in thought, word, and deed. We are powerless to free ourselves from this slavery to sin, death, and everlasting death.

EXPLANATION

It all depends upon the work of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, on our behalf. Through His perfect life, Jesus perfectly kept the Law on your behalf. Judas betrayed Jesus to the religious rulers, who were slaves to their own power and authority. Pilate was a slave to power and fear, giving into the demands of the crowds, sentencing Jesus to be crucified. There, bleeding and dying, Jesus pays the price for you to gain your freedom.

Sin was a tyrant ruling over you. However, that tyrant has been crushed and his authority over you has come crashing down! Jesus paid the price to free you. His blood covers every single one of your sins. There is no more that you have to pay for your freedom. Even the Devil has no more power over you. We do not have to give into his deadly lies because Jesus has crushed his head. He lies defanged and declawed. Even death has been destroyed because Jesus rose from the dead, crushing its power beneath His nail-scarred feet.

We are no longer slaves to sin, death, or the devil! Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.

You no longer belong to your lust. You no longer are defined by your corruption. You are no longer under the dominion of death. You are free. You belong to Jesus. This is a freedom that the world cannot know but it needs desperately to have, and the Lord sends us out as ambassadors to this freedom, to those who are fighting to remain slaves of their own lusts and desires.

APPLICATION

What does this look like? This looks like people who resist their sinful natures. Who resist the temptations of the devil. We know and see what the reality of our sin is, where it leads, and how it is an enslavement that leads to eternal death.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit living within us, we use our freedom wisely. We do not use it to fall back into sin. That would be to cheapen the grace of God and make a mockery of it. Rather, as Saint Paul writes, "present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness." The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Ro 6:13.

We do the good things that God has given us to do. We fight against our sinful flesh. We tell the Devil that he has been defeated. We help our neighbor keep his possessions. Likewise, we speak well of him when we hear of lies and slander against him. We honor those in authority over us, praying that God would work through them to do His holy will in our lives, for our good, and to keep evil in check. We keep the marriage bed pure, honoring our spouses, always looking out, not for our own interests, but their well being and interests above all.

May the Lord grant us the strength to always be instruments of righteousness, working through us in our lives that we may be truly free, in and because of Jesus Christ our Lord.

CONCLUSION

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