2023 LCMS Convention Sermon

“And … Festus said with a loud voice, ‘Paul, you are out of your mind.’”

Isn’t that what this world keeps on saying to you? And perhaps it’s crept into your own thoughts, as well: On Sunday afternoon, when you wonder if it’s all worth it. Or when you’re sitting in a meeting at church and once again, they’re arguing and vying for control. Or when you pick up that piece of bread at the altar and the blasphemous words enter your mind: “How can this be the body of Christ…

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Cantate 2023

Most people sense that something is deeply wrong in the world; everything from riots in the streets to the incredible rise of depression and suicide indicate this. The US surgeon general recently declared America has an epidemic of loneliness.

What’s been the response? American Christianity from Evangelicalism to the mainline churches set forth a vision of God as a feminized fuzzball of felicitous friendship. All have won and all must have prizes. Meanwhile, the “Tolerance” bumperstickers are gone, and politicians only make demands for reparations, recriminations, or retribution….

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Jubilate 2023

The world hates Christians. “They speak against you as evildoers.” It’s tempting to want to argue with them. People don’t get argued into the faith. Arguing just pulls us down into the passions we are called to avoid. God’s Word today tells us not to respond to evil with evil, but to respond only with good deeds….

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Holy Thursday 2023

Jesus, the enfleshed God, stoops down into our filth. The emperor becomes a servant. The earth is a graveyard filled with innumerable rotted corpses. Their dust clings to the soles of our feet. The ancient sin corrupts our hearts. But Jesus, the enfleshed God, cleans us and feeds us, as a father cares for his children. This is love. Not mere sentiment, but bold action. Action that costs….

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Christ Is Nothing Other than Sheer Life

A gem from Luther:

Christ is nothing other than sheer life, as his saints are likewise. The more profoundly you impress that image upon your heart and gaze upon it, the more the image of death will pale and vanish of itself without struggle or battle. Thus your heart will be at peace and you will be able to die calmly in Christ and with Christ, as we read in Revelation [14:13], “Blessed are they who die in the Lord Christ.”

LW 42:104

(DIS)ORDERED Now Available

My book (Dis)Ordered: Lies about Human Nature and the Truth That Sets Us Free is now in stock at Concordia Publishing House. It’s also available to pre-order (paperback or Kindle) at Amazon.

Here’s the opening of the first chapter, entitled “The Authentic Self”:

Underlying the rapid changes in today’s society—particularly the acceptance of homosexual “marriage” and the celebration of transgenderism—is a more fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? Descartes’s famous dictum cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) began a philosophical cascade of rooting man’s identity within his own mind: my cogitation defines me. Our society is in the process of replacing truth with feelings, and unmooring sex from marriage. This is a central cause of the profound instability we all feel in Western culture. It is unlike anything we have experienced in living memory. Today, our society seems to be focusing more on feelings than thoughts. This is resulting in instability in established institutions like marriage and human sexuality.

People are searching for authenticity, but that search is only leading them away from the Author. We are disconnected and discontent, and someone must bear the blame. Into this void, a doctrine of demons is becoming the state religion. The catechists of this religion have doctrines of sin that obscenely reverse the Ten Commandments. At the core of this new religion is the rejection of a God who creates and a mankind who receives life from the One who made them. This chapter will examine how the doctrines of this new religion have developed, and will also set forth man’s true nature, purpose, and destiny.

You can learn more about the book, and download the first chapter for free, by clicking here.