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Showing posts with the label Sexagesima

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 - Sexagesima 2024 - Luke 8:4-15

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Parable of the Sower , Marten van Valckenborch, 1580 Hearing the Word of God with Endurance Believing the Word in rebellion against the devil Holding fast to the Word even amidst trials Rising above the cares, riches, and pleasures of life on the Word I’ve noticed that many people have the idea that it’s easy to be saved, it’s easy to be a Christian. They hear the message from last week in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, which says that we’re saved by grace alone, and they think therefore that since we don’t earn our salvation that it’s easy to be saved. This notion that it’s really easy to be saved leads people to also believe that everyone will go to heaven, or at least almost everyone. But that mistaken impression is corrected in today’s parable of the different types of soil. Since out of four different types of soil or people, only one is saved. So Jesus cries out: “ He who has ears to hear, let him hear. ” Today’s lesson is that those who have ears to hear should rig...
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Sermon - Sexagesima 2023 - Luke 8:4-15

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From Hortus Deliciarum , Herrad of Landsberg, circa 1180 Hearing the Word Challenges to hearing Hearing rightly  At the height of popularity during Jesus’ ministry we read: “ A great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to Him. ” Cloaked in a parable Jesus taught them about what they were currently doing: hearing the word. To His apostles He privately explained that there are challenges to hearing and how we ought to hear rightly. Jesus’ parable is very appropriate for us today as well, since it helps to explain many of our current experiences. We live in an age which is rather depressing at times since we still remember, quite vividly, the good old days at church. The days when the pews and church calendar were filled to the brim. But especially the past twenty years there’s been a lot of change and decay in all around we see, like the hymn writer penned. Our attendance and membership has plummeted over the past couple of decades. This trend is true to our larg...
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Sermon -Sexagesima 2022 - Luke 8:4-15

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The Parable of the Sower  from The Garden of Delights , by Herrad of Landsberg, 1180  Does God care about what you spend your time doing? Does He care about your hobbies and habits? We probably don’t want God to care about those things because we’re nervous about what He would say about our habits, but the simple answer is yes, God does care. That’s what this parable is showing us: God cares about how we spend our time because it’s a matter of the salvation of our eternal souls. Here in this parable God warns us of the dangers to our faith in order to direct us to Him. Before we go much further though, we do need to establish this basic fact: “ God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. ” Jesus illustrates this with regards to the sower in the parable. “ “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it wi...
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Sermon - Sexagesima 2021 - Luke 8:4-15

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Last week the groundhog apparently emerged from his home to see his shadow, thus declaring that we will have another six weeks of winter. Based upon the fact that we live in northern Iowa, that furry critter is undoubtedly correct. Even so, Jesus’ parable today brings to our minds not snow and cold, but the Spring time planting season. It’s true, this coming weekend I plan on getting my onion seeds started inside under lights! Many a farmer has long been preparing for planting this Spring, starting already with ripping up the field this past Fall.  When a farmer prepares for planting, it’s good to think about the task not as caring for the plants, but as caring for the soil. In general, if you buy quality seed from a reputable salesman, the seeds will all germinate so long as the soil conditions are right. But if the soil is unhealthy, then the plants are unhealthy. If your soil is hard and packed down, the seeds will just sit on the surface and get eaten by animals. If your soil i...
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Sermon - Sexagesima 2020 - Luke 8:4-15

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“ A Sower went out to sow His seed. ” And as Jesus says: “ The seed is the Word of God. ” What a beautiful picture this is of our Lord sowing the seed of His Word across the world. Spreading it far and wide! And what a strange picture it is as well, almost to the point of absurdity, because it’s so wasteful!  Today’s agricultural industry is so mathematically and scientifically precise. Today we’re good at calculating our return on investments, only spending precisely what we need to in order to get the best possible yield per acre. Thus, we would never plant the roads and the ditches, the rock piles and the windbreaks, it would be a waste of money! You wouldn’t get anything out of it! But that’s not how God operates. He wouldn’t make a good capitalist, because his business practices are crazy! Last week we heard Him pay all of his employees the same wages, even the ones who came in the last hour and didn’t work. Today we hear Him sowing seed on bad soil which will never produ...
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Sermon - Sexagesima 2019 - Luke 8:4-15

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The earliest Christians after the resurrection and ascension of the Christ were often relegated to meet in their homes, in caves, or at cemetaries since they weren’t permitted to build church buildings by the government. Once Christianity became legal in many places and they were allowed to build churches, many Christians were burned alive inside of their churches as pagans sought to kill them.  In fact, this sort of thing still happens to this day, a cursory glance at a google search of Christian churches being burned down will bring up a plethora of results. For instance, just last October in Nigeria, Muslims attacked a crowded marketplace where many Christians gathered in order to kill them or burn them alive. At least 55 were killed that day, some of whom were burned beyond recognition. The next month, in the Congo of Africa, more than 40 Christians were massacred by Muslims while worshipping in their church. The doors were locked and all were burned to ashes. These weren’...
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