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Sermon - Trinity 15, 2026 - Matthew 6:24-34

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Prophet Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta , Bernardo Strozzi, 1630 Your Heavenly Father Knows what you need, so seek first His Kingdom The situation: The anxiety of the daily grind can be all consuming The reality: Our heavenly Father knows all our needs and gives us all things The reorientation: Therefore, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and God will provide the rest “ Do not be anxious about your life .” You would think given the extreme levels of comfort and ease that we enjoy in our country today that we would have very low rates of anxiety. But it’s the direct opposite. This is, as some call it, the anxious generation. This has largely been driven by the digital age, and over the past two decades rates of anxiety are through the roof, especially among young people. However it’s not just the young, not just those addicted to screens, but many feel anxious and worried about any number of things. A lot of our anxiety today is not related to basic necessities being l...
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Sermon - Trinity XIII, 2026 - 2 Chronicles 28:8-15

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The Good Samaritan, Joseph Highmore, 1744   God’s People are Those Who Have Faith in Him We typically think my people are those who are like me externally History of the two kingdoms The Faithful Remnant of Samaria was more faithful than Judah We are God’s people through faith The lawyer asked Jesus: “ Who is my neighbor? ” That’s another way of asking: “Who are my people?” We ask this question because like prefers like and we want to love those people who are like us more than we love those who are not like us. This is a generally true principle in many facets of life. We do this in mostly playful ways with sports, where we greatly prefer our team which we identify with and we do not like the rival teams. This happens more seriously between countries, sometimes even to the point of war. This happens with some seriousness between political parties, sometimes leading to political assassinations. This happens in families when one family member defends another even through criminal be...
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Sermon - Trinity XI, 2026 - Luke 18:9-14

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The Pharisee and the Publican , Barent Fabritius, 1661 The Righteousness of Faith External righteousness is an unreliable predictor of true righteousness Pride often masquerades as righteousness True righteousness is received in humble repentance You can’t judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes. The same is similarly true in regards to righteousness. External righteousness is an unreliable predictor of true righteousness. This is evidently true throughout the scriptures. We see Cain and Abel; both hard working men, both offer the fruit of their labors to the Lord, with Abel the Lord is pleased, and with Cain the Lord is not. We see Saul and David. Saul is a man’s man, tall, handsome, muscular, the kind of man you’d expect to be king. David is ruddy and youthful, you might say he’s a pretty boy. Yet David was a man after God’s own heart, and Saul displeased the Lord. We see a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee is a good solid church goer, lives an upright life, very pious...
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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 - Trinity VII, 2026 - Mark 8:1-9

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The Multiplication of Loaves, Daniel Halle, 1664 Those who abide with Jesus will be satisfied by Jesus Jesus has compassion on those who abide in Him Jesus provides for us by means of others Those who sacrifice for Christ shall receive far more later Jesus satisfies our hungry hearts so that we do not faint on the way but have strength to reach our heavenly home St. Paul explains: “ I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. ” We’re simple people, or at least I am, and the way in which the Lord reveals Himself to us is through natural, human things. As such, the miracles of Jesus are always more than meets the eye. Of course the feeding of the four thousand reveals God’s providence for us. Of course each miracle reveals the divinity of Christ. However, the miracles are more than the miracles themselves, and they do more than reveal the divinity of Christ. Each miracle Jesus performs is meant to teach us and reveal to us God’s greater work of redemption for all o...
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Sermon - Trinity VI, 2026 - Matthew 5:17-26

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Moses Descends from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, Ferdinand Bol, 1622 The Law of God is His Eternal Will God’s Law is: His good and gracious will for human flourishing Broadly all that He speaks Narrowly ceremonial, civic, and moral The ceremonial was fulfilled in Jesus The civic partially fell away with the exile/captivity/destruction of Jerusalem The moral law continues for eternity God’s Law does: Curb: Dissuade us from evil Mirror: Reveal our sins Guide: Direct our path forward God’s law is wholly fulfilled in Jesus’ active obedience to the Law “ Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. ” Sometimes it’s tempting for us to think about the law negatively, to think of God’s Law as a bunch of stodgy rules, and we don’t like stodgy rules, and therefore we like to think ...
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