Peace Lutheran Church
Posts Tagged "God"
Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 10, 2026
Text: Acts 17:16-31
Theme: An Old New Teaching
Outline
1. Paul in Athens
2. Old teaching: In God we live move and have our being.
3. New Teaching: Jesus and Resurrection, will judge world by One whom He has appointed.
Sermon
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!
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 Acts of the Apostles, the seventeenth chapter verses sixteen through thirty-one.
Beloved Lambs, I pray that you are doing well today. Have you ever been surrounded? I know many of you are surrounded every night by al of the blankets, stuffies, and toys in your beds. We are often surrounded by friends and family at school and home. Here at church we are surrounded by all of the fellow believers in Jesus Christ around God’s Word and Sacraments. In our text for today, Saint Paul is surrounded. What is he surrounded by? How does he use his surroundings to tell about Jesus? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. Paul in Athens
Our text begins, “Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens ” Saint Paul is in the city of Athens, waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him from Berea. As Paul is in Athens for what is probably the first time, he plays tourist. He walks around Athens, conversing with the shop owners, talking with the passersby who will listen. He debates with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers as they gather daily in the market places.
Athens is unlike any other city that Paul has been to. In the past, Athens taught the world the concept of democracy, the rule of the people. It had been the great center of philosophy, the love of wisdom. For its past contributions in politics, art, literature, and the world of ideas, the city was honored by the Roman Empire. But its glories had dimmed, and it was no longer the chief city of Greece. Those who live there still hold onto their intellectual past, even though Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles, Demosthenes and Zeno had been dead for hundreds of years. The people loved nothing more than to constantly hear the worlds news, listen to new ideas, ponder, and debate everything.
As Paul is being a tourist, he is utterly appalled by what he sees. His spirit was παροξύνω parozuno, angered/provoked within him. Why was Paul’s spirit angry? On every single corner, he sees idols dedicated to a false god. The ancient writer Petronius said that in Athens it is easier to find a god than a man. The physician Pausanias said that Athens had more images than all of Greece put together. The historian philosopher Xenophon called Athens one great altar to the gods. Every god of Olympus had an altar or temple in the city. Many had entire buildings dedicated to their honor. Every public structure surrounding the Agora was in the name of one or more of the deities. There were the gods of fame, modesty, energy, persuasion, to name a few. Even a few to unknown gods. Six hundred years before Paul, a terrible plague came on the city and a man name Epimenides had an idea. He let loose a flock of sheep through the town, and wherever they lay down, they sacrificed that sheep to the god that had the nearest shrine or temple. If a sheep lay down near no shrine or temple, they sacrificed the sheep TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
2. Old teaching
Paul uses this Altar to the unknown God to proclaim the glory of the true God. He is brought to Mars hill, where the supreme court of Athens used to meet. They want to know what in the world Paul is talking about with Jesus and the Resurrection. Some think he’s just a babbler, a seed picker picking up bits of wisdom from others and putting his own spin on things. Paul begins with the old teaching that is plain to everyone still today, even to those who do not believe. There is a God.
“Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. Paul praises the city for being religious and points out that they have a god for everything, even the gods that are unknown to them but known to others.
This is what we call natural knowledge of God as Creator. God has placed His fingerprints into the very fabric of creation. Just look at the natural world around us. The complexity of nature tells us that there is a god. The fact that trees produce oxygen and we exhale the carbon dioxide that they need is nothing short of a miracle. The complexity of our brains, ears, and eyes is so amazing that we cannot comprehend it. There is no way that everything can arise from random chance.
There must be a god, but whose god is the true god? The people of Athens are very religious, to their own destruction. They followed idols of their own creations, silver, wood, stone, and gold. They created and followed after gods of their own making, made of silver, gold, wood, and stone. These gods needed things from their worshipers. The people had to make a temple, a dwelling place. They had to provide food and drink for the god to eat. They had to do something to appease the god if they were angry at them for whatever sin they did. The Athenians constantly listened to and debated ideas so that they could best follow the gods that they had made.
Not much has changed, even after all these years. We still break the first commandment, creating and following gods of our own making. Our sinful nature wants a god that we can comprehend. We want a god that we can understand fully, one who acts like us, thinks like us, behaves like us. One that we can appease if things do not go rightly.
One of the ways that we try to understand and control god is through our intellect. We hunger and discuss every scrap of news that we can get ahold of, whether good or bad. We constantly have the 24/7 news station of our choosing constantly going. We get notification after notification on our phones for this or that breaking news story. We hear one news story, discuss it and dissect it from multiple angles, then the next day it is old news, another has replaced it and the cycle continues again. We use this knowledge and discuss to shape our worldview of both ourselves and of God.
Rather than pondering over the Word of God, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting the very Words that He has graciously given to us, we digest the news and things of this world. We make our own gods of ourselves, our wants, needs, and desires. We follow after gods who cannot speak, hear, or act, because we want our own pleasures fulfilled rather than following the true God. Truly, we are just as religious as the Athenians were, a god on every corner, to our own eternal destruction.
3. New Teaching
Paul give them a new teaching. That which they had known as an unknown god, Paul proclaim as known. He states 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. ” we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man
The true God of creation is not one that needs humanity to serve Him. He is not one formed by our own hands of silver and gold. He is not a god of our own creation, of our own minds. He does not always act how we think he should act. God controls everything. He does not need our food and drink to so that he can eat. He is not one that can be appeased by our works, for indeed our best works are as dirty filthy rags. Rather, the true God is outside of our comprehension, outside of time and space itself as the ultimate Creator of heaven and Earth.
Yet, God is not distant. God is not an aloof Creator, merely starting creation then letting happen whatever happens. In grace and mercy, God has made Himself known. How has He done this? Not only through Creation but also in and through His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the glory of God made flesh. As Jesus says in John, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” God has entered into His creation to serve and save us. Jesus took on flesh in the womb of the blessed virgin Mary to save us from our sins, death, and the devil. To give to us everlasting life through His death and resurrection from the dead.
Because Jesus died, we know that our sins are forgiven. He has borne the sins of everyone across all of time and space. He died our death in our place. He shed His blood so that we do not have to shed ours. We know that His sacrifice upon the cross was acceptable in the eyes of God the Father because Jesus did not stay dead. He rose from the dead on the third day. That is the Father’s Amen to our Lord’s cry of Telestestai “It is finished.”
The God who created everything seen and unseen, loves you so much that He dies and rises again from the dead to forgive you. God dies, God bleeds, for you. His love is constantly shown for you in His Word and Sacrament. In the waters of Holy Baptism, you are united to Him and made a beloved child of God Himself. He calls you His offspring, His Sons because of His eternally Beloved Son.
A beloved Son whom We will see face to face. Jesus died and rose, and He will come again. As Paul says, “he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” Jesus has won the right, as the One who has redeemed humanity, to judge the living and the dead at the end of time itself. Jesus will come again. He will raise the dead, judge the world in righreiousness, and we will live with Him in a world without end.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
The Peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Epiphany 4
February 01, 2026
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Theme “Wise Foolishness”
Outline
1. God’s Wisdom is not wisdom of the world
2. How wise do we think we are, learn really quickly we are not wise, faith not something of our will/intellect (Stumbling block to Jews, folly to Gentiles)
3. Yet, God chose us to be wise in Christ, gives us of His Spirit to thwart the world’s wisdom. (30-31)
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 First letter of Saint Paul sent to the church in Corinth, the first chapter verses eighteen through thirty-one.
Beloved lambs, I pray that you are doing well today. Do you know what I have here? I have a large book. There are lots of books about a wide variety of topics. This one is about some of the words in the Bible. We can find books about plants, about animals, about the human body, the solar system, if you can think of it, you can find a book about it. We can learn many things, but Saint Paul says that no matter how much we learn, it is foolishness in comparison to knowing God and what He has done for us. How can we have God’s knowledge and be truly wise? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. God’s Wisdom is not wisdom of the world
How wise are you? We place a lot of importance upon being wise in the world. The world says you use your knowledge or your wisdom to do whatever makes you happy. For most people, they quantify their happiness usually in terms of financial gain. They try to get the most money for the least amount of work, because we are lazy at our cores. You can make a lot of money just by knowing a lot of random facts. Contestants on the TV show Jeopardy strive to accumulate as much money as possible by answering accurately and quickly. The value of each correct response varies from $200 to $1,000 in the Jeopardy round and $400 to $2,000 in the Double Jeopardy round. If you got every answer correct, you could win a maximum of $566,400, not bad for knowing a lot of facts in a single day’s work. One of the contestants, Ken Jennings ,has won $2,520,700 for only being on there for six months. To make that amount, we would have to do nothing but work an 8-hour day for 26 years. Truly, knowledge and wisdom can pay good money.
But what if you are not book smart? You can still be knowledgeable. Many people put their trust into how much they can do with their street smarts, their experience, and what they have done with their hands. Many people take pride in the fact that they know how to fix anything at home no matter what goes wrong. There are thousands of YouTube videos on home repairing everything from how to put in a sink to snaking a drain or fixing a washer and dryer. We take pride that I did it myself, plus I saved money by not having to call in a professional. Or maybe you consider yourself a good judge of character, able to tell if someone means well or if they mean evil merely by looking at them, and how they act. That’s called body language and psychology, knowing how someone might act before they do is certainly something that we can take pride in knowing.
2. Worldly wisdom fails
As wise as we may consider ourselves in this world, whether by our book smarts, the work of our brains, or the work of our hands, everything will fail us. No matter how much we may make, there is always another bill to pay. Bank accounts are very quickly drained. All our knowledge equals nothing in the end. No matter how much we can learn, eventually as we age, all of it is as dust on the wind. Just think, how much has changed over your lifetimes? Teachers teach differently than they did twenty years ago. Trying to help someone with schoolwork is a challenge compared to when you were younger. There are updated ways to do math, reading, English. New ways to get to the same old answer of 2+2= 4.
As we get older, our knowledge fades, memories are not as good as they once were, even familiar faces and names that we have known all our lives can be erased by the dread diseases of Dementia and Alzheimer’s. With knowledge as fleeting as this, we can never put our trust into it. They cannot bring us true and lasting knowledge. That comes only from the Knowledge of God.
We cannot use our own intellect to even begin to understand the mind, and plans, of God. Before God, we know nothing. Our deepest and best knowledge is the same as a fool. On our own, we cannot understand what God has done for our Salvation. As Saint Paul writes, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles ”
Our reason struggles to understand Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. It fails logic and understanding. The Jews demanded miraculous signs from our Lord while He walked thie earth, they did not believe that what He was doing was in accordance with God’s will. They balked at this idea that a man could die a horrible death like a common criminal in order to save us. A criminal, crucified upon a cross saves me? The Gentiles seek after wisdom. They loved nothing more than learning new knowledge and debating traditions and customs in light of what they had learned. They bulk at this fact, that even after two thousand years, I can be saved and forgiven of my sins. It defies all manner of logic, time, and physics. Even our own sinful nature bulks at the fact that salvation is freely given. There is nothing in this world that is free. Everything comes at a cost, even it if is free, you are the cost in your data and privacy. What do you mean that everything God does is given freely? Surely, there must be something that I can do or add to God’s work!
3. God chose us to be wise in Christ
There is nothing that can add to God’s work. He has done it all, everything on our behalf.. While our reason, logic, and knowledge have their places, they are only the handmaidens to Holy Scripture. As we confess in the meaning of the Third Article. What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true. We confess that it is not because of ourselves that we are saved. It is not my strength, my reason, my wisdom, or intellect.
Rather, God chose us in Christ Jesus purely as an act of love to receive His knowledge. In grace, and mercy, He gives us of His Holy Spirit, that we can be wise! Wise not in worldly wisdom, but in Godly wisdom. We can know and believe that what Jesus did, He did for me and you. That yes, a man, beaten, whipped, and crucified upon a cross is indeed our Savior. He is no mere man, no teacher, miracle worker, or philosopher, He is God in the flesh for you, true man and true God for our salvation. Jesus Christ through His perfect life, death, and resurrection has defeated sin, death, and the power of the devil. Graciously, He gives you the Holy Spirit in the Word of God and in the Sacraments, that while the world may think that we are fools, we are wise in the eyes of God. “30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” ” We boast and trust not in our own wisdom, not in how much we know or have forgotten. We boast and trust not in the work of our hands or minds, for well we know how feeble they are. Rather, we place all of our boasting and trust in the Lord and what He has done for us upon the cross of Calvary, that by Jesus’ death and resurrection we are saved. We go forth in that boldness and confidence to spread the wisdom of God to the rest of the world, that they too may become wise beyond all understanding, and live with us in eternal life forever.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.