Sermons 2025

Text: Acts 16:9-15

Outline
The Rock
The Ripples
Ripples still today

Sermon

Christ is Risen!

He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Epistle Lesson of the Acts of the Apostles the sixteenth chapter verses nine through fifteen.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Do you know what I have here? I have a bowl of water and some rocks. Watch what happens when the rocks hit the water. They make ripples! They start out small, but then they get bigger and bigger as they go outwards from the rock. This would be a good way of showing what happens in our text for today. Paul has ben busy. He has been going all throughout Jerusalem and Judea. Now in our text, Paul comes to the entry of Europe. We hear today how the Gospel spreads out, even to us today. We see that  God’s Mission Carries the Gospel across Oceans to People of All Continents—Starting in Asia, Going to Europe, and to the Ends of the World. How can we continue the spread of God’s Gospel today? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

The Rock
        
        First, we should begin, as with all things, at the center of the ripple. We begin with the source and cause. The rock. The rock is none other than our Triune God, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We see in our text that the Triune God has a mission for our salvation.
        The mission was the salvation of humanity. The destruction of sin, death, and the power of the devil. The forgiveness of sins. The fulfilling of the Law and a restoration of a sinful world with a holy and just God. For that reason, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—the crucified and risen Lord—was sent by the Father “for us and our salvation.” Through Jesus’ perfect life in our place, the perfectness that the Law requires is fulfilled. Our sins and guilt is covered by His precious blood, and we are made His dear and beloved children. By dying, He destroyed the power of death and by His resurrection gives us newness of life. He crushed the head of the Devil and rendered Satan completely and utterly powerless.

        But the work of the Trinity does not end with the work of the Son. There is given to us, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. He is sent by the Father on request of the Son to equip the Church with “power from on high” (Lk 24:49), to bring to remembrance everything that our Lord Jesus said and did. As our Lord says to His disciples “all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26). As the Holy Spirit is sent and given to the apostles. They are clothed with power from on high at Pentecost. The Rock splashes at Pentecost in Jerusalem, and ripples to all the world. As we hear at our Lord’s ascension, to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth. The apostles were sent to proclaim forgiveness for all men. (Jn 20:21–23).

The Ripples

        That message or forgiveness is a message Paul is proclaiming to those in Phillippi. He goes from Troas to Philippi and speaks of the Gospel. Paul does not do this on a spur of the moment because he feels like it. He does this because the Holy Spirit gives him a vision. A man from Macedonia, modern day northern Greece, begs him to come and help him. We can almost hear the desperation in his voice as he pleads for help. Paul obeys. Paul and the men with him go to Philippi. We should note a bit of irony in our text, Paul sees a man in his vision but at Philippi he meets only a few women by the riverbank, there are not enough men for a synagogue. By the river, Paul proclaims the Gospel and a woman named Lydia believes, is baptized, and opens her home to the disciples.

        Lydia is a name that is still honored and remembered fondly today. She is not one that we would assume would become a believer. We know that she was rich because our text says that she was a seller of purple goods. Purple was used by the Romans as a symbol of status. It denoted power, nobility, and divine sanction. It was a sign of immeasurable, priceless luxury, almost belonging to a mythical realm alongside other rare goods. It was considered the ultimate symbol of status and prestige.  If you could afford to have purple on the hem of your robe, much less clothing yourself entirely in purple, you were well off indeed. The making of  purple dye was extremely labor intensive. It required a person to gather thousands of a specific kind of snail, Murex. A roman statesman name Pliny give us an example of how the process was done in his book Natural History: Carnivorous snails were caught using baited baskets, and their shells were removed to extract the hypobranchial vein. This vein was soaked in salt for no more than three days. Pliny emphasized that while salting was necessary, it had to be done carefully, as fresher glands produced more vibrant dye. The veins were then boiled in lead vessels over moderate heat, using a long funnel connected to the furnace. After a maximum of ten days, or when the desired shade was achieved, wool or other cloth was dipped in the dye and soaked for at least five days, depending on the mixtures used. Sunlight exposure was necessary to activate the dye’s color. Pliny also described the range of purple hues that could be produced and their varying social and monetary value, with the dark "blood" purple from Tyre being the most prized. Several factors influenced the dye's final color, including boiling time, sunlight exposure, and additives like kermes or urine.
        Lydia would have been vastly wealthy, beyond the wildest dreams of many of her standing. Yet she would have been constantly smelly and wet from gathering and boiling the snails. As rich as she was, she would also have been an outsider due to her constant smelliness as well as \one unclean by those who followed the Jewish Law as snails were considered unclean animals. Yet by the grace and mercy of God, because of Paul’s message, Lydia is the very first convert in all of Europe!

        Thanks be to God that He does have mercy and grace, using poor sinners as the means of spreading His Gospel to the ends of the earth. Because of sin, there remains a desperate need for people to hear the Gospel, both in Paul’s time and still today. We are surrounded by souls that are in need of salvation, blind and deaf to God’s word and still need to have His message of Law and Gospel proclaimed to them, no matter how many are gathered. Neither we, nor they, can save ourselves. We cry out for help desperate to the Lord. In His mercy, He meets our needs, giving us help, comfort, and forgiveness by the death and resurrection of His Son.

        That is why the Lord sends the apostles, and Paul, to proclaim and grant His mercy, and grace in the midst of a sin-filled and broken world. He continues to send out the Holy Chrisitan Church today. His divine ministry of Word and Sacrament to people generates the Holy Christian Church. As we confess in Article V: Of the Ministry in the Augsburg Confession. We have the Office of the Holy Ministry:

“That we may obtain this faith, the Ministry of Teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, 2 the Holy Ghost is given, who works faith; where and when it pleases God, in them that hear 3 the Gospel, to wit, that God, not for our own merits, but for Christ’s sake, justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ’s sake.” (Source: https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/of-the-ministry/#ac-v-0001 )

Ripples Today

        We can sum everything up in this way Lutheran Churches do Lutheran missions. Lutheran missions plant Lutheran Churches. Lutheran Churches proclaim God’s Law to broken souls, that we, and they, are sinners in need of salvation. They also proclaim God’s Gospel. People are saved. Salvation is freely given. This is not because of anything that we have done. It is not by the works of our hands or the thoughts of our minds, or the feelings of our heart. Salvation is given purely by God’s grace and mercy shown in Jesus Christ our Lord. That is why we continue to do Lutheran missions, spreading God’s message of Law and Gospel to everyone, person by person, ripple by ripple. By doing missions we plant Lutheran Churches. By the grace of God, many workers are called out into the harvest field for work, though the workers are few and the harvest is plentiful. As we experienced as a Church this past month both seminaries, Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, as well as Fort Wayne Theological Seminary, placed man within the Office of the Holy Ministry as rightly called by the churches they will serve to minister around America as well as the world at large. We even had  two men called to serve in Deaf Missions, as we will hear more about next week.

        As those sent go out into all the world, they go on a divine mission, called by God through the means of the respective congregations. This divine mission builds the Church where and when the Holy Spirit wills. As we saw in our text, Paul was called to Macedonia: He crosses from Asia to Europe (vv 6–12) at the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit denies other routes and directs him to Philippi. God’s Word (and thus, the Church) moves like a good summer rain from one place to another (Luther). God’s Church grows like the spreading rings in the water, when throwing a stone into a pool (Luther).
    That means God’s mission crosses physical borders. Paul himself had certainly “crossed borders”! The great persecutor of the church had become it’s most zealous and prominent missionary; Jesus’ last apostle was called from unbelief to faith and discipleship. Paul preaches to God-fearing women, and Lydia is converted and baptized with her household (vv 13–15). The Church is planted in Europe!

        The divine mission has since led to church planting on all continents! Because of faithful missionaries, we have Lutheran churches throughout the world. Currently we have over 200 missionaries in 90 countries. For a few examples, we could be here all day  LCMS missionaries first went to Indian in 1895, the first foreign mission field in the Synod’s history. India has been in partnership with the LMS since 1959. In Ghana the LCMS established the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana (ELCG) in 1958 and the ELCG became a partner church of the LCMS in 1971. We still support the work by sending pastors to help in training for the seminary and partnering in medical work. In Ethiopia, as you have heard from Rev. Stinnett, he continues his mission work at the seminary there, work that has been done since 2000. Missions still continue to this very day. Just last year, in the heart of Rome itself, less than two miles from the Vatican, the LCMS planted a Lutheran church, called Christus Victory (Christ the Victor) Lutheran church.

        Even the history of Great Falls proclaims the wonder of the Lord’s grace and mercy. We were started all the way back in 1955 as a way of best ministering to the needs of Great Falls. As a way of providing both sides of town with the precious news of God’s word. For such a time as this, here and now, in this place, we show the great wonder of God’s grace and mercy, spreading His word to those around us through simple things, like giving of food, clothing, and our very lives in support of the church.

Conclusion: A simple thing, a rock falling in the water makes many ripples. Yet, what a great ripple can be made from a small rock! So too the Word of God spreads to all the world beginning at Jerusalem, across Asia, to Europe by Paul, all the way here to Montana and even further still. As William Lohe remarked, mission is nothing more than the Church in motion. May God by His grace continue to help and support His church as we continue to proclaim both Law and Gospel to those both far and near that all may know that:

Christ has risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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