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Showing posts with the label Presentation of the Augsburg Confession

Sermon - Trinity IX, 2026 - Luke 16:1-13

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The Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540 Christian Wisdom Seeks Eternal Dwellings Wisdom is forward thinking and focused on the goal Christian wisdom employs every treasure, heavenly and worldly, for the sake of reaching the goal If there is a hardest parable, it might be this one; throws people off every time. The parable presents a rich man with a steward who was found wasting the rich man’s possessions. The job of a steward is to be faithful with someone else’s possessions, and this guy wasn’t cutting it. So obviously, he got fired. What’s crazy is the rich man lets the steward hand in the books, and he doesn’t hunt them down and take them from him immediately. The steward does exactly what you don’t want the steward to do, which is why normally the books get taken from the steward: the steward cooks the books. He meets some of the rich man’s debtors, probably tenant farmers, and in order to ingratiate himself with the debtors he adjusts how much they owe, ...
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Sermon - Presentation of the Augsburg Confession 2023 - Matthew 10:26-33

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Presentation of the Augsburg Confession,  St. John's Church in Schweinfurt, late 16th Cent. Having the courage to confess the truth of scripture Historical details Courage is fearing God instead of man Confessing the truth requires we love both God and man, but in that order Are you willing to die on that hill? Usually that’s a question asked in order to convince someone to back down from their position. That’s fair, not every hill is worth dying on. But, when it comes to our faith in God, that is a hill we must die on. The Lutheran reformers 500 years ago realized that. October 31st, 1517 is popularly known as Reformation Day among us. Although, to be frank, it wasn’t a particularly significant day in history, since Martin Luther just posted the 95 Theses in Wittenberg, and his theses weren’t very good. But June 25th, 1530, although not widely known, is a much more significant day in history. On that day we see that our Lutheran forefathers had the courage to confess the truth of ...
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