Sermons by Pr. Mark D. Lovett

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): John 14:1-6 Date of Delivery: February 25, 2017 In the name of the Father and of the+Son and of the Holy SpiritThe Lord has gone to prepare a place for His disciples, for His Church, His people. And He is coming again to take us to Himself.In the meantime, we travel along the Way. And that Way is Christ who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried and on the third day rose again from the dead to open for us the way of everlasting life.How does one travel, though? It is easy to dismiss such language as poetic prose or allegory, to say that we travel the Way, and that Way is Christ. But it is no mere allegory. Christ is the Way. He is the Way to Paradise, to Heaven. He is the way to eternal life. In fact, He is the Life as much as He is the Way to Life.He is the Way to the Father. And that is where we want to be; in our Father’s house.So to get there, we travel along the Way. We listen to Him of whom the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.” We hear His voice calling us to the still waters of Holy Baptism and the abundant feast of His most holy body and blood, given and shed for you. We hear His voice say, “You are forgiven,” and “Peace be with you.” Words that come into sharp focus when we consider such things as death and mortality.A loving father tucks his children in at night and says, “Good-night. I love you. I’ll see you in the morning.” And the little one confidently closes his eyes and fall fast to sleep having heard the promise of his father, the comforting words that speak peace – I love you and I’ll see you in the morning. So it is with our Christ. He says to us as we lay down to sleep the sleep of death, “I love you. I’ll see you in the morning.” And we are always laying down to sleep the sleep of death for it is appointed once for a man to die and such is the way of all flesh. Therefore, since we are always on our way to death we must always hear His words of life, of peace, of love, of comfort: Don’t be afraid, I’ll see you in the morning.And so He shall. For He Himself is the Bright and Morning Star that will rise and shine on us. He is our protector and defender even when our life has departed and our body lies here waiting for our Christ, our Great Redeemer, to wake us from our sleep and return our life to our body so that what is mortal puts on immortality and what was perishable becomes imperishable, and we become like He is, alive forevermore.And then He shall take us to the Father. That is where we are going along the Way that is Christ. That is why He must be for us the Life, for no mortal man can look upon the Father and live. That is why He must be for us the Truth, for there is no falsehood in the Father.And when we close our eyes that final day and the breath leaves our mortal body for the last time, and we join our sister here and all those who have fallen asleep in Christ, who is the repose of the blessed dead, we, too, will be confident in our Lord’s words: I love you. I’ll see you in the morning. Peace be with you.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 8:4-15 Date of Delivery: February 19, 2017

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 20:1-16 Date of Delivery: February 12, 2017 In the name of theFatherand of the+Sonand of theHoly Spirit.The beauty of the Law is that it’s fair. The hindrance of the Gospel is that it is unfair.The Law says an eye for an eye. That’s fair. The Law says that to whomever does good, good will be given. That’s fair. We like the Law. It’s fair. Which is why we always gravitate toward the Law. We always gravitate towards what’s fair, what seems right in our eyes.But it's only beautiful because we make ourselves the center of the Law. It’s not just what’s fair, it’s what’s fair in our eyes. Those rebels in Israel you’ve just heard about didn’t think it was fair that Moses got to make the rules. Who was he, anyway? They, too, were Israelites, Hebrews from the line of Abraham. It’s not fair that God only spoke to Moses. So they grumbled and complained. Some got swallowed up by the earth, others got apoisonoussnake bite. And none of those grumblers whothoughtlife was fair made it to the Promised Land.They all wandered the wilderness for forty years eating the same food and bearing the burdens of the Law given through Moses, but they all died in the wilderness.It was those who came at the last who entered the Promise Land.But we’re not likethose rebels. At least we don’t think we are. Hardly anyone thinks they’re in the wrong. Just look at our country. Riots, lootings, ridiculously stupid arguments about fairness and justice in which there is no fairness or justice. But those doing these things think it’s fair. We do too when we rebel. We think it’s fair to rebel.Otherwise, why would we rebel. After all, we’re not bad people. We’re not trying to pick a fight. We just want what’s fair.Teenagers don’t generally set out to be rebels, they just don’t think it’s fair that mom and dad get to make the rules. They want to make their own rules. So they rebel. But to them it’s fair. When we rebel we think it’s fair. That’s why so many Christians don’t seeaproblem with leaving church when they think the pastor or some other member isn’t being unfair.We don’t think we’re like those rebels in the wilderness or those vineyard workers hired first. But we are. As soon as we lay possessive hold of a thing,that it’s ours,even if that thing is ourselves, then we have rebelledand the Law damns us.But we always view the Law from our point of view, from our perspective. And our perspective always has us sitting on the throne of judgment. Oh, not God’s throne, we think. We wouldn’t presume to sit on His throne. Funny, though,thatGod always seems to be on your side, doesn’t He?The god in our mind always argues like we argue; always hates what we hate; always loves what we love. The god in our mind always condemns who we condemn and always takes our side. We don’t mind if he forgives our enemies, but we think he understands why we can’t. We don’t mind that He saves those we don’t think deserve it, but we picture him as understanding why we won’t go to church with them or why we won’t open our hearts to them. After all, the way they are, that wouldn’t be fair to us. Who are they anyway?That’s why those vineyard workers who’d born the heat of the day got angry and complained to the Master. It wasn’t fair. At least, it wasn’t fair from their perspective. They worked more, they should get more. This is how we live our lives. Repent.Repent because such thinking is not godly. It’s not even properly the Law. We think the Law is fair, but it’s not. It’s not fair at all because the Law puts our neighbor above us. It makes the poor the receiver of our wealth. It makes the diseased the receiver of our affections. It makes the ne’er-do-well the receiver of our good will. The Law isn’t fair at all. At least, it’s not fair from our perspective, which is to always put yourself first. We even say this to those going through a tough time. We don’t say to our struggling friend, “Listen, I know you’re struggling, and that’s hard, but it’s because of sin and self-love.” No, we say, “I’m sorry you’re struggling; and you’re right, you know, it’s not fair. You should be treated better. Gotta take care of yourself first.” Repent.There’s the weight of the real Law.We think it’s beautiful so we reach out to touch it only to find that its barbs are full of deadly poison.It crushes the self-server, the self-centered. It lays waste to the self-worshiper who thinks life isn’t fairand seeks to make it fair for himself.But the Law is good.It is able to make one wise. The Law is good because it is given by God who is good. He is wiseand so He alone can give wisdom. And more than that, He is gracious.And only by His grace can we see the Law rightly; that it is the will of God from God’s perspective, not ours.Those first laborers got hired by contract: a day’s wage. The rest of the laborers got no such contract. The Master only told them, “Work in my vineyard and I will do right by you.” All they had is a promise, the promise of the Master. On His promise they went in an worked. Some as the third hour, some at the sixth hour, some at the ninth hour, and some at the eleventh hour. When the day was over those hired last, who did the least, got paid. They got a day’s wage. So did those hired at the ninth, sixth, and third hours. Surely, then, those hired first, who worked the longest, would get more.No. They got what they were contracted to get.But then they got the boot. Take what is yours and go. The ones who held on to what they thought was theirs didn’t get hang around with the Master. They claimed possession of their money so the Master let them have their money. And they had to go away from Him. Those grumblers and complainers who grumbled and complained against Moses didn’t get to hang around in the Promised Land. They took what they thought was theirs by right and they went away.Better to lose your life that you might gain it than to gain your life and lose it.The Lord’s perspective is not ours until He reveals it to us. And He has revealed it to us, would that we pay attention. His perspective is toward His neighbor, toward us. And He works for and toward us and our salvation. He preaches the Word when we need it preached to us. He gives us the testing we need that we would cling to His mercy. He gives us the friends we need so that our burdens would not be so heavy. Hegives us the poor that we would be merciful. He gives us the ne’er-do-well so we would be forgiving as He forgives us. Hegives us the Church so that we would find salvation.He hung on the cross at the third hour, at the sixth hour, at the ninth hour, and at the eleventh hour sothat we would receive His wage, which is eternal life.Don’t begrudge the generosity of our Lord lest He say to you, “Take what is yours and go.” Rather rejoice in the grace of God for others as well as for yourself. Receive others as you have been received. Show mercy as mercy has been shown to you. And do not consider that anything belongs to you, not even your own body, for you are not contracted laborers but the Master has simply said, “I will do right by you.”+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): 2 Peter 1:16-21 Date of Delivery: February 9, 2017 In the name of the Father and of the+Son and of the Holy SpiritDearly beloved, we have something more sure. We have the prophetic word, to which we do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.Death is a dark place. We can talk all we want about celebrating life and remembering the good we had, but for all our bravado and resolve, the tears still flow and sorrow still holds fast to our hearts. And we are in a dark place. We can talk all we want about our loved ones, our dear sister, being in a better place and all the reunions and fun that is going on for right now as she passes from this world to the next, but we the unspoken truth. That here she lies. And like us, she is waiting for that better place to be revealed to all the nations; to every tribe and nation of men.We Christians shouldn’t be too enamored by this world’s attempts to find comfort in ourselves or in the lives of our loved ones, as if salvation from death is merely found in metaphor and hyperbole. We shouldn’t let the world’s sentimentality blind us to the truth that all men die and that such death is the wage of sin. We shouldn’t let our emotions rule the truth. But often we seek comfort not in the Comforter, the promised Spirit of God who brings to remembrance what the promises of our Lord, who is raised from His dark place, from His grave, but we seek comfort in pagan notions of Valhalla-like paradises and Disney-esk happily-ever-afters of endless fishing trips or heavenly kitchens. We talk about our loved ones as though they live on through our memories and in our love. But this is no real and lasting comfort for one day we too will die. Then where will our memories be? Where will our love be?The only real comfort, the only lasting comfort is the comfort of the more sure prophetic word. The word of life and of resurrection; the word of the kingdom of God. This word is greater than our death and greater than our lives. It is greater than our love and greater than our memories. This word is light of the world and is the life of all men, and He has made His home with men that men may live with God.The Lord promises to come again and wake those who are dead, who are asleep, and shine on them and on us as our Morning Star. He will dispel the dark places as a bright and shining light; the Light of lights shining with the brightness of the sun so that in those days there will be no need of sun or moon or stars, for the Lamb will be our light.He is our light. He is the light of the world and the darkness shall not overcome Him.We have something more sure. More sure than our loved ones good works, we have the good works of God who has defeated death and promises His life to all who believe and are baptized. We have something more sure than greatness of our faith, which was challenged and threatened and often waivers. Everyone’s faith is threatened but only the faith of One stands firm. Our Lord Jesus stood in the wilderness, hungry and tired, and the devil came and tempted Him. He tempted Him to disbelief. He was tempted as we are. Only He was without sin. He never disbelieved the promises of His Father. He never disbelieved that more sure prophetic word. He was faithful; even unto death on the cross. And for His obedience He was awarded not only the crown of life but the name that is above every name; the name to which every knee will bow and every tongue confess: Jesus is Lord. His faith is the definition of faithfulness so that even when we are faithless He remains faithful.He remains faithful to His promises, which is to say, He remains faithful to you and to our beloved sister who received His promises through His blessed mysteries. She heard His words, “Take, eat; this is my body given for you. Take, drink; this cup is the new testament in my blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” She heard His words that whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood shall never die. He is faithful, for there is no death in Him and she is in Him as He is in the Father. He remains faithful to those words. He remains faithful to her.He remains faithful to you. Your sins are forgiven. Your shame is covered. Your mortality is swallowed up by His immortality. Your grave is opened because His grave is open. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. For we were buried with Him through Holy Baptism into death in order that just as He is risen from the dead, so shall we walk in His life. He remains faithful to you as He has promised to raise you and all the dead from death and to give the crown of life to those who call upon His name.We have something more sure. More sure than our hopes and well wishes. We have the promises of Almighty God, Lord of Armies, God of gods and Lord of lords. We have the promise of Him who shines in the darkness. We have seen His glory, glory as of the only begotten of God, full of grace and truth.We have something more sure, the prophetic word to which we do well to listen. For the Lord Jesus is the Word. He is the Word made flesh and we listen to Him. And what does He say? Rise, and have no fear.Have no fear little flock for is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Your Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises as some count slowness. But to Him a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. So wait upon the Lord. That is what faith is: waiting upon the Lord even as our Lord waited and even now waits upon the Father. Gather to your Lord and hear His word, His promises. Gather to your Lord and receive His body and blood for by these you participate in Him and His life is yours. Gather to Him and rejoice in His resurrection and ascension, for by it you have a home in the kingdom of heaven. Wait upon the Lord and He will renew your strength. You will rise up, as on eagle’s wings. You will run and not grow weary. You will walk through the valley of the shadow of death and not faint.You have something more sure. You have the Lord and He is faithful.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 17:1-9 Date of Delivery: February 5, 2017 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.After six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light.Isn’t that just like the Lord; to do it in a way that makes His disciples move. He never makes it easy on His disciples. Why not be transfigured before them where they were? Why lead them up the high mountain? If it was privacy He was after, why not wait until night fall? Or why not simply blind the eyes of everyone else around them as He so often blinded the eyes of many men when He didn’t want them to see what He was up to; as He did when His army of angles attacked the Midians in the days of Gideon?But no, the Lord made them follow Him up the high mountain. Mt. Tabor, according to tradition. Mt. Tabor is a steep slope that is not an easy climb. Today it is, since there’s a path that leads to the top, but in Jesus’ day there was no path. Just a mountain to climb.So up they went. Up over rocks and boulders and loose gravel. Up the Lord went. He didn’t float up the mountain a few inches off the ground. He climbed. He led His disciples. They climbed. Up they went.At the top He was transfigured before them.There He showed them that He is the Lord of the living and the dead since both Moses who died and Elijah who lived worshiped Him. The Father honored the Son with the glory He had since the beginning by declaring Him to be His beloved Son with whom He is well pleased, and that it is to Him, to this Man, that the disciples were to listen. He showed them that He is the Light that went out in the darkness as His face shone from within, a light brighter than the sun. His clothes because pure white, showing them that He is the Righteous One who is pure and undefiled.Then it all went away. The brightness. The cloud. The Voice from heaven. Moses and Elijah. All gone. Only Jesus remained with His disciples. And down the mountain they went with only the words of Jesus, those blessed words of power and hope and tranquility: Do not be afraid.But lest they be side tracked and begin to think that they had experienced the fullness of God’s love and being, the Lord forbids them to speak of this most holy event until after He is raised from the dead. This immediately ties the Transfiguration of Jesus with His resurrection. It was a foreshadow of what is to come once He is risen and ascended and once He brings with Him all His disciples, His followers. He will lead them up on high carrying a host of captives on the train of His robe.So that’s what the Transfiguration is. It is a glimpse of the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus. It’s the end-goal, as it were. When the Transfiguration is fulfilled, when the Son of Man comes in the clouds of heaven as He ascended, then Peter’s misplaced words will find there place: Lord, it is good for us to be here.But don’t get there too quick. Don’t think that your mountain top experience is where you’re supposed to be. As if you’re not also supposed to be in the muck and mire, caring for wounded sinners and praying with and for those whose live with unbelievable sin and filth.In truth, we are simply following our Lord up the mountain. Up our Lord goes with us as He promised, “Lo, I will be with you always, even unto the end of the age.” Up He goes the rough and steep mountain, leading the way. He is not floating over your live a few inches off the ground, unaffected by what affects you. So He said to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, as Saul was murdering and persecuting the Lord’s Christians, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” The Lord suffers with you and you with Him.Up you go; up the mountain. Following your Lord who is leading you. Leading you to that place where it is good to be.But life isn’t the image of life. Platitudes and imagery and stories put the scope of life into focus; they put words to the grandness of life. But they are not life. Life is going home in a few minutes to a world of chaos and letdowns and sin. Life is remembering what you’ve done and what you’ve failed to do. Life is dealing with hell and yearning for heaven. The imagery is that life is Mt. Tabor, steep and hard to climb. But the Lord is leading you. And He is not leading you in imagery. He is leading you by His divine gathering. He is leading you by giving you His body and blood to eat and to drink. He is leading you by giving you the Holy Absolution as often as you want to receive it.Because as much as the imagery of going up the mountain puts life into perspective as we struggle against sin and shame, so does the Lord coming down the mountain with His disciples put life into perspective as we hear His precious and blessed words: Do not be afraid.The Lord is risen from the dead. It is good to be here because Jesus is here. And wherever Jesus is there heaven is since He brings heaven with Him. Wherever Jesus is there too are Moses and Elijah and all the Prophets. There, too, is Peter, James, and John and all the other apostles. There, too, are the Fathers and the Christian saints down through the ages, even our brothers and sisters who are asleep or living. Since Jesus is with all His saints, living and dead, so then are we with all the saints since we are with Jesus. Where Jesus is there, too, is His army of angels; those same angels who blinded the Midians for Gideon and announced the Nativity to the shepherds and who are now assigned to guard and keep the Lord’s little ones.With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven: it is good, Lord, to be with You; going up or down the mountain or waiting quietly in the grave.+In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): 2 Timothy 4:7-8 Date of Delivery: February 1, 2017 [Audo only]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 8:23-27 Date of Delivery: January 29, 2017 In the name of theFatherand of the +Sonand of theHoly SpiritSurely those men of Galilee were praying fervently for rescue as their little boat was being tossed to andfroby the wind and waves, threatening to be overcome by the sea. Surely they were praying for their lives, for even the unbeliever and heathen prays to the unknown God when disaster is being heaped up on him and he feels the crushing weight of chaos.In fact, the unbeliever, though he does not believe, will often ask you, his Christian friend or relative to pray for him or for his family. He’ll say something like, “Well you know I’m no Christian, but I could use some prayers.” So pray. And do not be afraid.But how shall you pray? Shall you stand then and there and speak words to your heavenly Father? Yes. Shall you wake up in the morning and make the sign of the Holy Cross, confess the Creed, pray the Our Father, and also pray for your friend? Yes, you shall. Shall you, when night falls and your eyes are heavy, not again make the sign of the Holy Cross, confess the Creed and pray the Our Father, and then pray again for your friend? Yes, you shall.It is written, “Bless, for to this you were called”(1 Peter 3:9).“But,” you say, “the Lord does not hear me. He seems to be otherwise occupied or asleep. My friend’s troubles continue to press on him and nothing seems to be getting better and now he is even cursing God because he blames God for his troubles.” And you begin to fretand to be afraid. Not that you don’t believe that God can heal or can rescue your friend from his plight, or even rescue you from yours, but the eyes see only trouble and chaos and the body only feels the weight of sin and disaster.Here our faith is revealed. Here in the tension between the promises of God our savior and the chaotic, death-filled world that surrounds us.Here your faith is revealed and fashioned.No doubt the disciples were praying for themselves and for their wives and families as surely death had come upon them. But Life was with them. And even had death come and taken them to the place of the dead, Life would still be with them. For those who fall asleep in Christ fall asleep in the lap of the Lord and Giver of Life who will raise them from the dead.Beloved, our prayers, though they are for healing and life now in this life, they are all the more for the life of the world to come. Your unbelieving friend does not merely need your prayers for healing, as though the stripes of Christ have not already healed him or his family or you or your family. By His stripes we are healed. All will be raised from the dead, which is the healing of the body. Those who have done evil will go off to the place prepared for the devil and his angels,where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,but the righteous to eternal life.No doubt those wind and wave-tossed men of Galilee were praying for salvation. “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” And the Lord saved them, though the wind and waves were no real threat. That is why the Lord said, “O you of little faith.”The Lord rebuked the winds and the waves, thoughtheywere not thereal threat.The real threat was that the disciples thought that wind and waves could steal them from the Life of the World. Why else be afraid?Your Lord has overcome death. Do not be afraid. You will rise from the dead and be with the Lord, even as the Lord is with you today.Your prayers, though they seem to be small and nearly pointless, have been heard and answered. Jesus is the answer to your prayers, even as He was the answer to the prayers of those men of Galilee. He is the answer because your prayer is always, “Lord, have mercy.” He is the mercy ofGod. Your prayer is answered because you always pray, “Lord, letuslive!” He is the Life of the World. You shall live.Though now it seems as though you are perishing. Asit seems toyour friend who beckons you to pray for him. But you are not as one who has no hope. Your hope is risen from the dead and lives and reigns for all eternity. You have the Spirit of the living God to say to your friend, “Why are you afraid? See what sort of Man the Lord is. He has overcome your sickness, your disease, your poverty; He has overcome your sin and your guilt. He is risen from the dead. Do not be afraid.”Don’t get all wrapped up in convincing your friend– or yourself –that Jesus is real or that there is a God or any such philosophical arguments. They do little good and often lead to false faiths such as Gnosticism and the theology of glory where the cross is emptied of its power.What does a world ofgoodand what does the world a lot of good arethe prayers of the Church, the Body of Christ;your prayers that are joined to the prayers of all God’s holy peoplein the mystical union of the Body of Christ.What does your friend good is you coming here to receive the blessing and benediction of your God, the Lord Jesus Christ, for then you are filled with the Spirit to bless and not curse, to raise up and not tear down, to heal not to hurt.To love your neighbor and do him good.The Lord has heard your prayers, even answered them. Don’t be afraid, you little ones of faith, for the Father loves you because you love the Son, and they have made their home with you.Say to your friend, as I say to you now, See what sort of Lord this Man is?+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 8:1-13 Date of Delivery: January 22, 2017 [Audio only]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 2:41-52 Date of Delivery: January 8, 2017 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy SpiritWhere does one find Jesus? Where does one look for Him? In His Father's house.Here you a perfect picture of salvation and the kingdom of heaven.Mary and Joseph have lost the Holy Child. But He is not lost. They are. Didn’t you know, He asks them, that I would be in my Father’s house? I am where I am supposed to be. Why are you not with me?It’s the same with you and me. We often lose Jesus. I’m not talking about losing faith or going to hell, such talk is rarely on spot. I’m talking about losing Jesus from sight; not the sight of our eyes but of our hearts. For we walk by faith not by sight. We get in a panic. Where is He? Why is not with us? Where did He go?Such questions are usually in the midst of some great trouble or distress, some catastrophe that has come upon us. And we are at a loss of what to do or where to go to find the Lord. It seems as though His face no longer shines upon us and that His blessing and benediction are far removed from us.Of course, that is never the case. The Lord does not leave us – unless our faith has in fact grown cold, but even then it is not the Lord who has left us but we who have left Him. He never leaves. He is always in His Father’s house. Which means even if we have left Him or even if He appears to be missing from our journey as we travel through this barren wasteland of sin and death, even then we know where to find Him and how to be with Him.But like Mary and Joseph, we get into a frenzy about where He could be. He doesn’t seem to be in our prayers – which are often shallow and self-serving anyway, which is why they are not answered, as St. James says. We need to stop praying merely for our wellbeing and start praying for more faith and for the wellbeing of others. Imagine, if you prayed for more faith and for the wellbeing of others, and we all did that, then our Lord would pour out His Spirit on us – for a prayer for faith is a prayer to be in the Holy Spirit – and as we prayed for others they would pray for us. Then we would have an army praying for each of us as we all prayed for one another, which is our duty and our privilege. Of course, no one can pray for you if you do not share your burdens with them. Which is what St. Paul says, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”But we can’t see past our own noses most of the time. So we can’t find the Lord Jesus in our lives. He doesn’t seem to be in our daily life as trial upon trial is heaped on us so that we are nearly crushed under the weight of heartache and fear and worry. Of course, St. Peter tells us not to be surprised at these things as the come upon us for they are there to strengthen our faith, not destroy it. But usually the first thing to go is our faith; faith that our Father – made our Father by our union with the Holy Child of God in baptism – has left us to our own devises. Fear is the opposite of faith. So, too is anxiety and worry. Which is why our Lord says “Do not be afraid” and “Do not worry about tomorrow.” Fear causes us to test the Lord in forbidden ways, asking Him to turn stones into bread rather than fasting from this earthly life to feast on His word and promises.Like Mary and Joseph, we are in a frenzy to find Him. And we do look for Him. We search our relatives. Maybe they know where Jesus is. We search our houses. Maybe I left Him in the Bible on the coffee table. Or maybe He’s in the sincerity of my fear as I cry myself to sleep. We search high and low for the Christ but cannot find Him.Take heart! He is in His Father’s house! A house that you may enter freely. A house you are invited to remain in as a son. For a slave does not remain forever, but a son remains forever. And His Father’s house is His Church, His Body, where His Spirit dwells and He dwells with man.Don’t be so Protestant that you are fooled into thinking that you are His Father’s house. That somehow your heart is the house of God where He lives and stays. It’s a foolish notion. If that were the case, then why the fear? Why the anxiety in your heart? Why the loneliness and darkness? But isn’t it written that He will come and make His home with us? That the Spirit of God dwells in us so that we are His temple? Yes, it is written. But it is also written that whoever does not gather to Him scatters and that He is where His Body is. In other words, the Spirit has not made a person His temple if that person is never found in the Church of God. The Father and the Son don’t come to make their home with the person who is not first part of the Body of Christ.The more inward you look for Christ, the less you will find Him until you are worse off than Mary and Joseph. Instead of searching and finally finding the Holy Child, your search will have grown cold and either you will be left with absolute despair or else you will have fashioned a god after your own heart. Would that the Lord be merciful and leave us merely in despair so that we would continue to search.But as I said in the beginning, this is a perfect picture of salvation.For the Lord makes Himself known to those who search for Him. True, we often search and search and search after He has made Himself known because we want something more fantastic, more moving, more energizing. But the fact is, He has made Himself known in the breaking of the bread and the prayers of the Church. He has made Himself known to you and to the whole world in His holy Christian and Apostolic Church, which is His Father’s house.And once we have found Him where He has promised to be, where He said He would be and where we should expect to find Him, then, and only then, does He do as He did with Mary and Joseph, and go down with us and is even submissive to us.That is the great miracle and mystery of the Christian faith. God becomes submissive to men. Not that He is the slave of man but that He came to serve rather than to be served. He came to show us the way and carry us on the way rather than have us carve out a way for ourselves, which cannot be done. He goes down with us and answers our prayers – prayers that are now for more faith and for the wellbeing of others. He goes down with us and tends to our needs as a dutiful son tends to the needs of his aging parents.He goes down with us, even into the hell, so that He might also bring us up into the heavenly places where He and His Father dwell, in His Father’s house where there are many rooms being prepared for you and for all His children.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): John 1:1-14 Date of Delivery: December 25, 2016 [Audo only.]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): John 1:19-28 Date of Delivery: December 18, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy SpiritSelf-preserving sinners never ask to see or engage the Christ, they always want to argue with the messenger because they always want to self-preserve.That’s what we have in today’s gospel reading from St. John the Evangelist. The delegation sent from the Pharisees and Levites came to question John not to find the Christ. Even though John pointed Him out to them and to everyone, saying to follow Him. Even when John’s own disciples left him for the Christ John did not discourage them or have his feelings hurt, he rejoiced that he was decreasing and the Lord Christ was increasing.He would have rejoiced, too, if this band of sinners had repented and headed his preaching and themselves chased after Christ. But they didn’t. They weren’t concerned with the Christ. They weren’t even concerned with John. There were concerned only with themselves.They were concerned about being right. They were concerned about their reputations. After all, if the Christ had truly come, what would He say of them? What would He do to their holy orders and positions? Above all, the sinner seeks self-preservation. That is why John the Baptist would say that he must decrease and Christ increase. John would have nothing of self-preservation. He wanted only the Christ.But the Pharisees and Levites, the very religious people who were known for being good and holy and righteous in the ways of men, they wanted only to preserve themselves. They wanted only to preserve their thoughts, their opinions of right and wrong, just and unjust. They wanted to preserve their religion because they thought their religion was good and right and holy. After all, people spoke and thought well of them. Turns out, though, John was calling them a brood of vipers and sons of the devil. He was calling them to repent. Them! They tithed and gave to the poor and went to church all the time and he had the audacity to say that their hearts weren’t right and that they were not children of Abraham. He had the audacity to say that they would be cut down and thrown into the fire.But instead of listening to John and heading his preaching and warnings, they argued with him. That’s what self-preserving sinners do: they argue with the Church. And that’s what John is. He is the embodiment of the Church. Baptizing, preaching, teaching, and pointing to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.And sinners argue with the Church. They ask of her the same questions the Pharisees and Levites asked of John. Who are you? Who are you to demand baptism? Who are you to tell everyone to repent and turn from their self-made religions and follow Jesus in the way of the cross, the way of self-denial? Who are you to demand adherence to your doctrines and teachings?To the sinner, the Church looks pompous. She looks braggadocios; claiming that she is the voice in the wilderness calling out: prepare the way of the Lord. She has the audacity to tell sinners that they need to listen to her and heed her voice and follow her pointing. The sinner wants nothing of it. The sinner wants nothing of it because such preaching demands that the sinner decrease and that the Christ increase.This is the fight you are in. This is the battle ground that Satan attacks you on. He’s not plotting your next fall from moral goodness. He’s not threatening to tear your life down and rob you of your possessions and goods and status in life. If anything, he is plotting to increase your worldly goods and increase your moral compass. He is building and army of people who think well of you, who think you’re a good Christian, holy and good. He is plotting to bend your ear to hear your own praises so that you would begin to argue with the preacher. He is plotting to make you think that you’re good enough, that you tithe enough, give enough, worship enough, known enough, pray enough, and so forth. Because that’s the language of the kingdom of hell: just enough.But it’s never enough because it isn’t the Christ.If that delegation of sinners had listened to John, as Andrew did who was a disciple of John and the first to follow Jesus, if they had listened to John they would have found the Christ and that would have been enough.That is how it is with the sinner and the Church. When the sinner listens to the Church, which is really the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit, as John was, the Holy Spirit always witnessing of and about the Christ and drawing sinners to repentance by His preaching. When the sinner listens to the Church he finds the Christ sitting patiently waiting to receive him. She finds the Christ overjoyed at her coming to Him. The sinner finds the Lord merciful and long-suffering, receiving and eating with sinners of every stripe, of every background among men. When the sinner listens to the preaching of the Church the sinner begins to rejoice in the Lord and finds her tongue loosed to sing His praises. He finds his feet free to chase down and overtake the Lord that he would be with the Lord.And that is what the Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, wants. He wants sinners to come to Him, to chase Him down, to sit at His feet; to receive from Him His life and salvation.The sinners that went to John left without the Christ. They went back as empty as they had come. But had they listened to John they would not have gone back to their old religion of self-preservation, a righteousness of self-ordained goodness. They would have no longer listened to the crowds that sang their praises. Their bent ears, bent to hear their own praises, would have been straightened. The crooked path made straight. And they would have stayed with Jesus. That is what repentant sinners do. They stay with Jesus.That is why the Lord has given us His Church and His sacraments. That is how we stay with Jesus. True, you will leave this building, and we will say that “church is over”. But in truth, you never leave Jesus unless you start listening to another voice. The Sacrament is the Lord’s pledge to you that He has come to rescue you; to save you; that He loves you and that His kingdom is being stored up for you. Not simply because you actually eat and drink of the Sacrament, but the very fact that the Sacrament is present on earth preaches these things to you. The Sacrament preaches to the whole world that the Christ is here and that He is to be found by sinners.Your whole life – all your activities and actions, all your relationships and goings-on – need to be view through and in light of this divine gathering, this blessed congregation, this Holy Supper. Then you will be looking at the world through the eyes of the cross, through the eyes of your Lord. Then you will no longer pine for this world but the hunger for the world to come will awaken within you and you will not be satisfied with anything or anyone other than the One who prepares a place for you and is coming to receive you in His Father’s kingdom. Then you will hear only the voice of him who is calling out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 1:18-21 Date of Delivery: December 14, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 11:2-10 Date of Delivery: December 12, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy SpiritOne can hear many things in the question of St. John the Baptist, addressed to the Lord: Are you the one to come or should we wait for another?We can hear hope in St. John’s question. Hope like a football fan cheering on his team that is already winning. Confident in the outcome. Christians are confident in the outcome. But we can also hear desperation in that question: are You the one to come or should we wait for another?John sat in prison for preaching the truth. He sat in prison and was subject to the whims of a madman and his mad court. John’s situation was rather desperate as things go in this life. It isn’t hard to hear John asking the Son of Mary, Are You the one to come or should we wait for another, because John’s surroundings, his situation was beginning to weigh on him and get the better of him. It is not without reason that the Church prays to her Lord, “Keep us steadfast” and “Lead me not into temptation.” If we were left to our own devices and imaginations we would be driven to live a fantasy. We would ignore the reality of sin and death. Such people either pretend that they are not affected by sin and death or they pretend it’s all a made-up morality.But days like today are stark reminders that we cannot ignore the truth and we cannot pretend it’s all a made-up reality. The wages of sin is death.But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ.That’s the promise. For Jesus’ sake, by His body given and His blood shed, we have peace with God and the death we die is only a sleep to be awakened from. Jesus is the firstborn from among the dead, the first-fruits of the resurrection. Now we, with our brother, Gary, and all those who dwell on earth, either awake or asleep, are waiting for the completion of the resurrection began in Christ Jesus.In the face of such sorrow, be it ours by right or borrowed from the sorrow of others, such sorrow leads the world to embrace St. John’s question as its own: Are You, Jesus, the one to come or should we wait for another?We know who Jesus is, who He claims to be. And we know the evidences: the lame walk, the deaf hear, the mute speak, and the dead are raised up. And the poor have the good news preached to them. The good news. The good news is that God Almighty has made His home with us. He has thrown in His lot with His creatures and taken up our cause. Our God wears our flesh. That’s good news. Because He is the author of life. And if the author of life wears our flesh then we shall live! Even though we die, yet shall we live.We can, even in sorrow, say to the Son of Mary, the Son of God, “To you, O Lord, I life up my life, O my God. I trust in You: let me not be put to shame. Let not my enemies laugh at me. For all who wait upon You shall not be ashamed.” If this is you, Lord, then fulfill Your promises. Exalt Your people. Lift them up and carry them forever.The Lord replies to our question: “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”Jesus, the Son of Mary, is Lord. He is the Promised Offspring of woman. He is the Expected Prophet like unto Moses. He is the Pride of Judah, the Son of David, He is the Root of Jesse. He is the Righteousness of God with healing in His wings. And He is gathering His people from the whole world. He is collecting His flock, calling His sheep out of the crooks and ravines and off the plains and down from the mountains. They hear His voice and are drawn to Him. And they follow Him as He makes His ways known to them. He teaches them His paths. (Psalm 25)The way of the Lord is the cross. His path is suffering. As the blessed apostle teaches, “that through many tribulations we mustenterthekingdomof God.” (Acts 14:22b) Do not be surprised when the fiery trials come upon you, as if something strange were happening to you. The Lord has given you all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue. By these you have been given exceeding great and precious promise, that through these promises you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world.In a word, the Lord’s answer to John, His answer to us, is to wait. It is good that one whoudl wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Our bother here is waiting quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Put your trust and hope in the Lord. Just as the people of God had been doing for thousands of years and still do today. The Lord knows where you are and what you are suffering, even as He knew of John in prison. He hasn’t forgotten you. Indeed, He loves you beyond measure just as He loved John and all His holy prophets. Remember, He is the God who called Noah to build the ark and called Abram to leave his father’s land. He is the God who build up Jacob and raised up Moses; who saw His people endure slavery for some 400 years. He is the God who brought them out of Egypt and into the Promise Land. He is the God who defeated the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and all the others. He is the God who raised up Gideon and Sampson and finally David. He is also the God who saw His people be taken into captivity; their cities and country burned and destroyed. All the while He is the God who brought comfort to His people by the Promised Offspring of woman.Well unto You has been given this Savior; to us a child is born to us a Son is given. He is your hope and your comfort. And at the appointed time, be it today or in another thousands of years, He will restore you and His people, even John the Baptist, giving us the crown of life that will never fade away.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 11:2-10 Date of Delivery: December 11, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy SpiritIt’s popular to advance the theory that the Old Testament people weren’t expecting God to become man; that over time the Lord God revealed His plan of salvation in ever-increasing ways until finally, the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem.But that theory is bust. From the beginning the Lord promised that the offspring of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. It would bruise her Offspring, but He would prevail. When the woman gave birth to her firstborn, she exclaimed, “I have received a man, the Lord!” She understood that her child was given to her and thought that he would be the promised Savior. Of course he wasn’t, but the point is that that’s what she was expecting: the Lord in the flesh.David also, speaking in the Spirit says of the Messiah, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.” He understood that his son, David’s son, would be the Lord. The holy prophets of old were expecting God in the flesh. All of God’s faithful people were taught this and were expecting it. Which is how in the gospel account Simeon held the Holy Child in the Temple and declared that now he could depart in peace for his eyes had seen the salvation of all people.The people of God – the true people of God, those of faith – were always expecting the Lord to come and make His dwelling with them, even in the flesh. St. John the Baptist was no different. God becoming flesh was no secret, even if the timing was; even if it is still so fantastic that reason can’t begin to grasp it. Faith must lay hold of it and say “amen” to Emmanuel. John sat in prison having seen the Promised Offspring of Eve, the Promised Prophet of Moses, David’s Greater Son, Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, even Israel’s Glory and the Hope of the Gentiles.The evidence of Jesus, as the Lord Himself indicates, is in the work that is being done. The lame walk the blind see the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them. What good news? That the Lord God Almighty has come down to earth to save man from sin and death and to open the kingdom of heaven.It is also popular to advance the theory that the Old Testament people were expecting a Savior to save them from their earthly oppressors; the Romans in Jesus’ day. But that’s not a great theory either. God waited until His people had had more oppressors than any other people to send the Savior to show that He wasn’t doing this to save them from earthly oppressors but from spiritual oppressors. Why not come during the Babylonian captivity? Or in Egypt? Or to fight the Assyrians? Why wait for the Romans? Perhaps the faithless thought that the Messiah would save them from the Romans, but not the faithful. They believed that the Lord would rescue from all their enemies, most especially the enemy of death. So the prophet Job declares: “After my flesh is thus destroyed, this I know, that with my eyes I shall see the Lord.”The point is this: the people of God – the faithful – were expecting God to visit them in the flesh and that He would save them not merely from a worldly oppressor but would lift them high above all things, raising them even from death. This is what John the Baptist believed.So he sent his disciples to confirm it and to be confirmed by it. After all, he was sitting in a prison waiting for death to come. What greater need is there to be confirmed by the Life-giver than that? Are You the one or should we wait for another?One can hear a lot of things in that question. Hope. Expectation. Desperation. As well as God’s people knew the Psalms – something we should know if we prayed them daily – it’s not hard to hear Psalm 25 in John’s words.“To You, O Lord, I lift up my life, O my God. I trust in You: let me not be put to shame. Let not my enemies laugh at me. For all who wait upon You shall not be ashamed.” If this is you, Lord, then fulfill Your promises. Exalt Your people. Lift them up and carry them forever.The Lord replies, “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”The Lord Jesus is the Lord. He is the Promised Offspring of woman. He is the Expected Prophet like unto Moses. He is the Pride of Judah, the Son of David, He is the Root of Jesse. He is the Righteousness of God with healing in His wings. And He is gathering His people from the whole world. He is collecting His flock, calling His sheep out of the crooks and ravines and off the plains and down from the mountains. They hear His voice and are drawn to Him. And they follow Him. So Psalm 25 also says, “Make known Your ways to me, O Lord, and teach me Your paths.”The way of the Lord is the cross. His path is suffering. Do not be surprised when the fiery trials come upon you, as if something strange were happening to you. The Lord has given you all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue. By these you have been given exceeding great and precious promise, that through these promises you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world.In a word, John could sit back and wait. Even if death came to him – and it did – he could put his trust and hope in the Lord. Just as the people of God had been doing for thousands of years and still do today. That is the comfort of God’s people. That is your comfort. The Lord knows where you are and what you are suffering, even as He knew of John in prison. He hasn’t forgotten you. Indeed, He loves you beyond measure just as He loved John and all His holy prophets. Remember, He is the God who called Noah to build the ark and called Abram to leave his father’s land. He is the God who build up Jacob and raised up Moses; who saw His people endure slavery for some 400 years. He is the God who brought them out of Egypt and into the Promise Land. He is the God who defeated the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and all the others. He is the God who raised up Gideon and Sampson and finally David. He is also the God who saw His people be taken into captivity; their cities and country burned and destroyed. All the while He is the God who brought comfort to His people by the Promised Offspring of woman.Well unto You has been given this Savior; to us a child is born to us a Son is given. He is your hope and your comfort. And at the appointed time, be it today or in another thousands of years, He will restore you and His people, even John the Baptist, giving us the crown of life that will never fade away.+ In Nomie Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 25:31-46 Date of Delivery: November 13, 2016 [Audio only]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 5:1-12 Date of Delivery: November 6, 2016 [Audio only]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 11:12-15 Date of Delivery: October 30, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 18:23-35 Date of Delivery: October 23, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 22:1-14 Date of Delivery: October 9, 2016 In the name of theFatherand of the +Sonand of theHoly SpiritThe Banquet Hall is the Church, the people of God. Those who were first invited were the faithless Jews. They were called by God through Abraham down through Moses and the Prophets, but generation after generation rejected the call, the invitation, and even killed the prophets and messengers of God.The King, who is the Lord who brought them out of Egypt, became angry and swore in His wrath that they would not taste His rest. So others were called. These are the Gentiles. Now the Apostle teaches us that there are Jews in the Church because God is not faithless to His promises. There is saved from among them a remnant. But the Church is not a people of this earth. It is not a Jewish Church or a Gentile Church. It is the Church where there is not Jew or Gentile but one people, the people of God made up from every tribe and nation among men.The oxen have been sacrificed. This is the Old Testament sacrifices. It is finished. And the fattened calf has also be sacrificed. A literal translation of “fattened calf” is “formed from wheat”. What is formed from wheat? Bread. So the Old Testament under Moses is complete. And the New Testament in Christ’s blood, where we feast on the Bread of Heaven is also here. Right here. In Hoisington, Kansas. At this gathering. This is the Banquet Hall. Here is the Church.But there is also an eschatological aspect to this parable. It is found in the words of our Lord, “When the King came in to look at the guests, He saw a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And the man was speechless. Then the King said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”This speaks of the final day when the Lord returns.It is meant to instill fear in you, for thethefear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.The wedding garment is baptism and the robes of righteousness that we receive in theholy waters of God. But if we then think that since we have been baptized and are so clothed by the robes of righteousness and therefore need not worry or fret about our lives, then there is a good chance we will be among the called but not among the chosen. Now you are worried. Or maybe now you are defensive. Or maybe now you are tuning out the words because you hear them going down the path of living a chaste life and you’re pretty sure that you’re good enough, that you and God have a good thing going. Add baptism to your goodness and you can’t possibly be found undressed in the wedding banquet.But the truth is, it doesn’t matter how good or faithful you’ve beenor you think you are. What matters is today. For today the Lord will remember you in His kingdom. Unless, of course, you don’t ask Him to.Those words, “remember you in His kingdom” are reminiscentof the thief on the cross. A much loved example by pretty much everyone. He’s a thief dying for his sins and he says to the Lord, “Remember me,” and the Lord grants him paradise. No good behavior. No time well spent in the hallowed walls of a church. In fact, the man lived a pretty bad life but got heaven.Encouragement to all the faithless that they can live how they want and cry out to the Lord on their death bed. They would do well to remember the rich man whom the Lord called “fool” and demanded of him his soul that very night. No paradise for him.But what about the thief on the cross? Why bring him up here? Well, he was invited to the banquet hall. His invitation was the crucifixion of our Lord, as is yours. He did not know of the resurrection, at least not like we do. He died three days before Jesus was raised from the dead. He did not die having a priest sacrifice for him. He might not even have been a Jew. Yet he was found with the proper wedding garment.He was found calling out to the Lord for life and salvation.Here before Him was the perfect Man who would be given the kingdom of God. Remember me in your kingdom!No better promise than that. No better salvation.To be remembered is to becalled into being.We do this weakly when we remember past events. We call them into the present. Not just in our minds, either. But we remember smells and sounds, tastes and the way things felt, physically and emotionally. We’d say it’s not real but it is. Just because we’re not there now doesn’t meant it’s not real any more than since we’re not in Moscow that doesn’t mean Moscow isn’t real. What we mean, of course, is that we can’t be there again. But with God all things are possible.When we “do this in remembrance of Him”we are not simply calling Jesus to mind. We are participating in Him. Our remembering isn’t a simple recall of past events, it is a sharing ofevents, past, present, and futuresince time and eternity belong to Christ.But so also is the Lord remembering us. He is calling us into His kingdom, into His reality, which is the only reality. He is opening our eyes and our ears. He is quickening our souls, our lives. The Lord is promising us what He promised the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” We don’t have to be dead to be in Paradise, though it’s easier there without this body of sin. To be in Paradise means to rest in Christ. To believe on Him who is sent by the Father.And that is what the thief is doing. He is asking the Christ to participate in Him. Herethe perfect man who knew no sin is suffering for the sins of all men. And when faith came alive in that condemned thief hanging on the cross, he professed the Christ and, short as it was, lived the life of the redeemed. Only, it wasn’t short. He’s still living the life of the redeemed because he is still redeemed in Christ. He is still remembered by our Lord.He is stillfasting and praying. He is fasting even from breathing as his bodylays somewhere in some unmarked tomb. But our Lord knows where and will raise him up on the Last Day. He is praying because when his life left his mortal body it went to be with the Lord where the saints of God are praying day and night, How long O Lord? They are remembering His promises even while they rest from their labors. So even in death, perhaps especially in death, the thief on the cross is living the life of asaint: living in God while fasting in this body and praying in the Spirit of the Lord.That is what it means to be wearing the wedding garment.To live in Christ.We are a dying people. This church is a hospital, hospice, really. We are here preparing to die well. That’s not morbid, it’s fantastic. For death has no hold on our Lord and so neither does it have a hold on us. We are not afraid of death: ours or the death of others. We mourn, to be sure, but we never mourn without hope, the sure and certain hope in Christ the Son of God.And perhaps not all of us will die, but we will be changed. We will put off this mortal body and put on immortality.We can laugh and play and enjoy this life as much as it can be enjoyed by us. But these things must be tempered by fasting and prayer.Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.But we don’t like fasting and prayer.We think they’re too Catholic. Never mind that our Lord instructs us to fast and pray with equal attention given to both of them. Same with almsgiving. But we’d much rather hang out in the banquet hall and snack and mingle, really just pretending to belong there.Many simplyhope to blend into the crowdand not be singled out. But the King comes to inspect His guests.The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Let the fear of the Lord guide you in your living. Keep the commandments of Christ: Do not repay evil with evil. Pray for those who persecute you. Do good to those who hurt you.Care for the widows and orphans, and so forth.You are not gaining heaven by these things but you are proving yourself well dressedforthe Kings Banquet.The Lord has promised: He will remember you in His kingdom. Live as though you believethis. Die as though you believe it.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 9:1-8 Date of Delivery: October 2, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 22:24-46 Date of Delivery: September 25, 2016 [Audio only.]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 14:1-11 Date of Delivery: September 18, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy SpiritIt is written that the Lord leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble His way (Ps. 25:9).The Lord leads you in what is right and teaches you his way.Why? Because those that exalt themselves He will humble and those that humble themselves, He will exalt. Therefore, seek humility. It is a fruit of the Spirit.But how does one seek humility? It does seem as though if we actively seek humility then we will actually be seeking exaltation. But we are called to seek both. St. Paul instructs us to run the race, to press on toward the goal of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. The two are not mutually exclusive. And both require practice and even hard work.It takes faith to foster and nurture humility. It takes the Holy Spirit as He does not act through us or in us without faith, even as He Himself gives us the faith. Which is to say that He enlightens us to the truth about God in Christ Jesus. In a very real way, all faith is is the confession of the truth about God in Christ. Not just the historical truths, but the truth that the Lord is even now saving us from sin and death and is even now reconciling us to Himself in His Body that once hung upon the tree.And because humility is born of faith and requires effort, so, too, does it require prayer. In fact, prayer is the only way to achieve humility. I know that sounds odd, to achieve humility, but that’s accurate. That doesn’t mean you’ll boast in your humility. In fact, when you achieve it you will most likely not even know it.Prayer is the path to humility, proper prayer, anyway, because prayer is communication, even communion with God. When we talk to our friends we look at them and listen and speak and are engaged with them in a way that is deeper than mere words. Our body language, our facial expressions, our tone of of voice, all of it is how we communicate with one another. So it is with the Lord. And when we talk with our friends we also talk to them in a way that comes from our friendship with them. The closer the friend the more we discuss everything from the trivial to the important, and everything in between. There is no friend closer than the Lord who loves you and calls you His friend. Or than your heavenly Father who calls you His child. Or the Holy Spirit who shares with you His divine life, the life of Christ.So your prayers to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are born of your friendship with Him; a friendship He initiated and He sustains. Lord, have mercy.Now at the risk of ruining it, did you see what happened here? Humility was born. There was no putting yourself forward in the presence of the King, even though the King is your friend. There was no posturing before others to show off your friendship to the King. There was humility. Taking the lowest seat is taking the right seat. And your seat is before God because God put you there.Of course, there is danger here, as there is everywhere. The danger is that we will think we are praying and being humble when we are doing neither. We cannot pray and so we cannot be humble if we do not know God. And the only way to know God is to know Jesus, the Son of God. And the only way to know Him is to hear His apostles, gather with His Body, the Church, and receive from Him His Holy Communion with us. In other words, nothing has changed. And that’s to be expected because God doesn’t change.Those who are proud and Pharisee-like are, at the heart of the matter, those who deny the word of the Lord and put their own word forward. They put themselves in the seat of judgment over what the apostles have written and thus over what the Lord Himself teaches. They think to be masters when they have never even been proper students.To be in proper prayer one must know God. And those who know God are those to whom the Son has chosen to reveal Him and are filled with the Holy Spirit. The Pharisees knew about God, but they did not know Him. The man with dropsy knew God. He was the One who healed on the Sabbath and called him a “son”.Your God heals you. He restores you. He lifts you up out of the curse of death. He promises you eternal life. And He is good on His word since He Himself is risen from the dead. And He seeks communion with you. You have have a disease now, such as dropsy or cancer or Alzheimer’s; you may be burying your loved ones know. But there will come a day when disease and sickness, and yes even death will be no more. So we press on toward the goal of the upward calling in Christ Jesus, we His humble servants, praying, hearing, listening, and rejoicing in Him who is our friend.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 7:11-17 Date of Delivery: September 11, 2016 [Audio only.]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 6:24-34 Date of Delivery: September 4, 2016 [Audio only.]

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Mark 6:14-29 Date of Delivery: August 28, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy SpiritAfter having been wrongfully thrown in prison, the Lord Jesus’ cousin, John, son of Zachariah the priest and Elizabeth, cousin of the Blessed Virgin, was executed by the removal of his head. Not because of any law he had broken but because of the hatred of another toward him. Hatred always kills. Love gives life.A husband and wife love one another and the result is the life of a child. A father loves his children and the result is a happy life. A brother loves his brother and the result is a fulfilled and shared life.But a husband who hates his wife murders their unity, their life dies. And his prayers are hindered. A father who hates his children gives them no life and they will not have the fear and instruction of the Lord. A brother who hates his brother rises up and kills him as Cain did to Abel.The Lord loves you. The Lord gives you life. The Lord loves the world. The Lord gives the world life. In fact, He is the life of the world. There is no room in Him for hatred. There is no death in Him. Why, then, are all the stories about His saints and about His church, the whole Bible, filled with death and hatred? His own life was marked most conspicuously with hatred and abuse, torture and finally death. Why is there nearly always a morose sense of death in every sermon, in every service, in every Bible study and prayer? Why? Because the world hates Him who is the Truth. And the truth is that we are at war. And war is violent. So our Lord said of the kingdom of heaven that from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force (St. Matthew 11:12).The world, embodied in King Herod and his wife, Herodias, hated St. John the Baptist because he was on the side of Truth and so listened to Him who said, “I am the Truth”. That’s why John was murdered. That’s not why John died. Death is the wage sin and John, for all his glory, was a sinner. John didn’t die because of Herodias’ hatred. He died because death entered the world and through sin death spread to all men. He didn’t die because of hatred, but he was murdered because of hatred. For he was not merely the Forerunner in his preaching and baptizing but also, and perhaps most pointedly, in his martyrdom.St. John preceded the Lord in his death. He prepared the way of the Lord by his death as much as by his preaching. He made the hills level and the rough places smooth and the crooked ways straight by his death. How so? By clinging to the truth even in death. As it is for all God’s saints, St. John’s was a fight between truth and lies, between light and darkness. He told the truth to the adulterous king: “It is not lawful for a man to have his brother’s wife.” That’s the truth. But Herod loved the lie. So John was murdered. Surely St. John the Baptist is the patron saint of every person who has told the truth and been hated for it.Jesus said, “I Am the Son of God.” That is the truth but the Jews and Pilate loved the lie. So Jesus was murdered. Surely Jesus is the Lord of everyone who has loved the truth and been murdered – in body or in reputation – by those who hate the truth. To that our Lord say, “Blessed are you when they revile you and say all manner of evil against you, even killing you, for My Name’s sake, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.”So take heart, dear Christian! Your Christ has overcome the world! Because you can’t kill the truth. You can kill the messenger but the Truth remains. That is why Jesus rose from the dead, because death could not hold Him for He is the Truth and there is no shadow in Him due to change or falsehood. There is no lie in Him for death to enter in.But you can kill a lie. You kill a lie with the Truth. Like light to darkness is the truth to lies. But know that light doesn’t sit down and argue with the darkness, trying to convince the darkness to become light. Light simply burns the darkness away. And darkness cannot remain where light shines. So truth doesn’t argue with lies, trying to make the lie into truth. The truth silences the lie. That is why the gates of hell cannot prevail against the onslaught of the Church of God. The Church of Christ is the Truth because she is the body of the Head who is Christ, who is the Truth. Hell is lies and full of lies, prepared for the father of lies and his angels, and so cannot stand up against the weight of the truth. So the kingdom of heaven marches on, crushing down and trampling down the gates of hell and the serpent that lives therein, preaching the Truth in face of lies. The Lord Himself descended into hell and set the captives free, because that what the Truth does. It sets you free.But our age likes to ask the question, “What is truth?” By “our age,” of course, I mean the age of mortal men, as this is the very question put to the Lord by the man who would condemn Him to die. Pilate, the quintessential mortal man, afraid of the crowds, afraid of those in authority, afraid of his legacy, afraid of everything, even the authority he had been given. Lies breed fear. He was afraid the Man who stood before him and asked Him “What is truth?”But the Man who stood before Pilate, before the world, was not the quintessential mortal man but is in fact the Man. And He replied to Pilate: “I Am the Truth.”Mortal men, that is, men of death, don’t like that answer. They prefer the answer to the question “What is truth” to be “whatever you think is true is the truth.” So there are liars who are honored as prophets and murderers who are championed as defenders of life, such as Planned Parenthood and those that defend them. There are those like King Herod who gladly hear the truth but chaff at being formed and fashioned by and in the image of the truth. There are those like Herodias who outright hate the truth and seek to kill it.But that’s just it, isn’t it? We are being made and fashioned in the image of the Truth, which is Christ. That is why there will be no liars and cheats, gluttons and idol worshipers in heaven. That is also why there will be no pain or tears of loss and regret in heaven, either. Your sicknesses and diseases, even your heart-aches, your depression and your loneliness, they are all lies. Even your sins and your grave are lies. That is not to say that they don’t hurt. John felt the sting of lies when the executioner’s blade touched his neck. Lies hurt. But they are not the truth and they will be washed away.Indeed, they have been washed away in the waters of Holy Baptism. For there you died your death to sin, being buried with Christ. And there you are raised with Him who is risen from the dead never to die again; in Him you move and live and have your being. You live and move and have your being in the Truth. Not a truth but the Truth. The Truth that ascended into the heavenly places and sits at the right hand of the Father. The Truth that holds your life in His hands from which nothing can pluck it or tear it away. The Truth that fills the whole earth in the services and on the altars of His Church. The Truth that heals your diseases and carries your sorrows. The Truth that gives you His body and blood to eat and drink, fashioning you in His image as you pass from one glory to another, even greater glory; a heavenly glory. For you are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.St. John the Baptist sat in prison, not just of bars and walls but the prison of lies. The Truth set him free and will raise him up on the Last Day. You, too, sit in prison. Not one of bars and walls but one of lies. But the Truth has set you free and will raise you up on the Last Day.+ In Nomie Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 10:213-37 Date of Delivery: August 21, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 1:39-55 Date of Delivery: August 14, 2016 In the name of the FATHER and of the +SON and of the HOLY SPIRITThe Church’s calendar is chalked full of saints’ days and days of commemoration and we would do well to recognize them and learn from them. They are our ancestors of the faith. They are our family tree in Christ. And if it’s important to us for our kids to know their grandparents and aunts and uncles, to know the important events in our family’s history, how much more important is it for them to know the history of the Family of God which shares our faith; who can encourage and strengthen us in our faith which is of far greater value than where the homestead was or who came over on what boat and settled where and married whom. The saints of God – living and at rest – fulfill the law of Christ and “bear [our] burdens,” (Galatians 6:2) and encourage us in the faith. We would do well to learn about the saints of God.And although it raises the heckles of us Lutherans, not to mention the wider group call “Protestants”, the chief saint from whom we should learn is the Ever-Virgin Mother, St. Mary. Whom Dr. Luther – after he has roundly rejected the popery – called the greatest teacher of theology. It’s a wonder that she is so widely ignored by us since her words are actually recorded in Scripture and it is said of her that all generations shall called her blessed, while the so-called Christian talks and books we hear and read, not to mention what passes for Christian music on the radio, rarely quote Scripture in its proper context and are little more than self-help, life-coach dialogues that are no different than secular ones – and often worse since they are so often found to be misrepresenting God. We would do better to sit for five or ten minutes a day meditating on the Lord’s Supper and learning life from it – or rather, from Him who is our Lord – than to listen to most of what passes for Christian teaching on the airwaves and between book covers.Tomorrow is August 15th. August 15th is the Dormition of St. Mary, Theokotos – which means “God bearer”. You’ll recall that the Blessed Virgin is prophesied in Holy Scripture right alongside her Son at the earliest prophesy of Christ and His redemptive work, recorded in Genesis chapter 3: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This “woman” isn’t Eve, whose son was a murderer; this woman was the Blessed Virgin whose Son is the giver of life.So why honor Mary? Beyond mentioning her at Christmas and having our little ones portray her in Christmas pageants and in coloring books? What role does Mary play in our faith, if any?Well first of all, she is Jesus’ mother. She is Theokotos, the God-bearer, even as the Ark of the Covenant was the bearer of the Mercy Seat and the Tabernacle was the bear of God’s name, and the burning bush bore God. God never works without means. He never engages humanity without means. And though we like to think of it like this – mostly due to the Protestant history of early America – God is not more fully active or more fully revealed or engaged with His people in the Old Testament than in the New. Quite the opposite, actually. God is not more fully engaged in humanity than He was before Jesus because in Jesus God actually joined Himself to humanity. Or rather, He joined humanity to Himself.And He did this through the Virgin Mary.No, we don’t worship Mary. She is not the co-redemptress with Her Son. But that doesn’t mean she is nothing. We like to say that while, yes, God used her as the vehicle of the Virgin Birth, He could have used anyone; that there’s nothing special about Mary. We say this partly to defend against such heresies as the co-redemptress teachings of Rome. But we also say itbecause of our own heresy. Our heresy that allows us to devalue and ignore the saints of God, the Church of God, really, is the heresy that nothing really matters as long as you love Jesus. Our heresy is the belief we operate with that pretty much everything recorded in the Bible is not the way things had to go but simply the way God decided to do things. We even treat the Cross this way.It didn’t have to happen that way, but God chose this way, and then we give some reasons why this is the best way. It’s no wonder there are people who accuse God of abusing His Son. If Jesus didn’t have to suffer and die, then why would an all-loving God let Him? Why not deal with sin another way? And that’s how our heresy leads us down rabbit holes that lead to faithlessness and unbelief.Our chief heresy is that we believe that the narrative given is one possibility of many rather than the will of God, even though the Scriptures everywhere say otherwise. So, yes, Mary is necessary. So is the cross. So are you.In football both the end-zone and the football are necessary, but they don’t do the same thing. In baking, both flour and water are necessary, but they are wholly different. It was necessary that the Christ suffer and die. And it was necessary that He be born of the Blessed Virgin. And it was necessary that it be Mary just like it was necessary that your children have you as their mom and dad.Our question of what is necessary is the heresy of the lowest common denominator. What’s absolutely necessary? This heresy has led countless millions, a whole generation or two, away from the Church and away from the Lord’s gathering. Why? Because someone asked the question, “Is it necessary to go to church?” And some well-meaning but misguided person said, “No, all that is necessary is to love Jesus.”But who loves Jesus and then doesn’t want to learn from Him? Who loves Jesus and then doesn’t want to eat what He has given to eat and drink what He has given to drink? Who loves Jesus but rejects His messengers because they don’t jive with our opinions? Who loves Jesus and then doesn’t bring their children to Him to be blessed by Him because they won’t sit still? Who loves Jesus and then gives the little ones to whom belongs the kingdom of God a nasty look because they’re too loud or they move too much?Who loves Jesus and ignores His mother?And there, I think, is perhaps the best lesson that the Blessed Mother can teach us today: to be saved is to be in communion with God. And to be in communion with God is to be in communion with His Son Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary. She teaches us, despite ourselves, that we can’t reduce the Christian faith down to a bunch of truth statements and dogmas. We can’t limit the power and work of our Lord with memorized Bible verses of which we don’t know the context. John 3:16 is not the Gospel in a nutshell because the Gospel can’t be put in a nutshell. Though it was once put into the womb of a virgin.You need the whole Bible. You need the whole Church, including Mary. You need the whole of salvation wrought by Christ. You need the Lord’s Supper. You need Baptism. You need to hear the word of God and keep it. You need Jesus, and He comes with all of this and much, much more.And He comes to commune with you because you matter; because you are necessary.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 18:9-14 Date of Delivery: August 7, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy SpiritGood and upright is the Lord, therefore He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble His way. (Psalm 25:8-9)What is the way of God? Jesus says, “I AM the Way.” The first Christians were not called “Christians” but they were called “followers of the Way.” A more appropriate title I cannot think of. We are followers of the Way, which is Jesus.But we don’t follow Jesus like a touring group follows its tourist guide. We follow Him like a disciple follows a master. That is to say that we follow Him in life. We live life like He lived life. We live like He lived life because He lived to God and He lives to God. He pressed on toward the goal, which was to live in the presence of the Father. He scorned the shame that He bore. He endured the cross. He set His face toward Jerusalem. He wept for those who rejected Him. He rebuked those who lied about Him. He forgave those who sought Him. He healed those who asked Him. He comforted those who mourned. He promised Paradise to those who confessed Him. In all of this He did the will of the Father. He achieved the goal because of His obedience to the Father. Jesus obeyed the Father and was rewarded for His obedience. That’s what St. Peter preaches in Acts chapter two, and what the other apostles preach elsewhere.St. Paul also preaches that we press on toward the goal. And the Lord teaches us that whoever keeps His words is like a builder who builds his house on the Rock. So we press on toward the goal, keeping the words of Jesus. We press on toward the goal of the upward calling of Christ Jesus that we, too, would live in the presence of the Father as our Lord Jesus does. We keep the words of Jesus so that we will hear the final words of Jesus: “Beloved of the Father, come and receive the inheritance prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”“Beloved of the Father.” That’s what Jesus is. He is the beloved of the Father. And in Him we, too, are the beloved of the Father. For we have been buried with Jesus through Baptism into His death that we might also live with Him in His life toward God.But what has all this to do with the Pharisee and the Tax Collector? It has everything to do with the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The Pharisee was a liar while the Tax Collector confessed the truth.It’s not that the Pharisee did all those nasty things he ascribed to others and failed to do the things he boasted of. He is a liar because he is like other men. If this were not so then the Lord Jesus did not come for his salvation or to redeem him. When he says that he is not like other men he lies and he calls God a liar. Satan is the father of lies and has been a liar from the beginning. Lies are not just morally wrong, they are evil and of the devil. Not just the lies we tell others to get away with something we’ve done or to get something we don’t really deserve. The real lie is the lie we tell ourselves that we are not like other men. If we are not like other men in their sin then neither are we like them in their righteousness, which is Christ, for He is the righteousness of God for men.Repent. Stop lying. You need Church. You need the Eucharist. You need the Bible. You need this congregation. You need a pastor. You need to confess your sins. You need to be absolved. You need to pray. You need to give alms and fast. Why? Not because by doing these things or having these things you gather to yourself a storehouse of goodness but because these things are the truth. And you need the Truth. Jesus said, “I am the Truth.”The Tax Collector told the truth. It’s not just that he told the truth about himself but that he told the truth about God. The Lord good and upright, therefore He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble His way. The truth is right. Not in a mathematical way but in an ontological way – that is, in a way that involves its very essence.The truth is right because the truth is. Lies are wrong because they speak of what is not. Jesus said: “I AM.” He is. In the beginning was the Truth. The devil seeks to blind us to the truth. He lies to us. And those of us who fall into temptation fall into lies. We fall into evil. We fall into nothingness.But the Lord Jesus our God is good and upright. He leads us sinners in His way, which is to speak – to confess – the truth. That is what the Tax Collector did and that is why he went down to his house justified. He participated in the truth about himself and about God. That is how we press on toward the goal of the upward calling in Christ Jesus. That is how we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling: by confessing the truth about ourselves and about God.This truth will set you free. It might take a lifetime, but it will set you free. Right now you feel as though you are in bondage to sin, to death. But the truth is that in Christ you are free. You feel as though the world is crushing you, that you can barely breathe because of all the wickedness in this world. But the truth is that you are yoked to Christ whose burden is easy and whose yoke is light. It seems as though others have it better than you and that you are suffering the ill effects of the lies of others and their hatred and mistreatment of you. But the truth is you are blessed and you will see the kingdom of heaven.But don’t lie. Don’t think that you are not like other men or that you do what you do because you have your own level of righteousness and goodness. Let the Pharisee be a stark warning for you. Remember, he prayed by himself. Even though he was in the temple we was not with God for God is no liar and He does not dwell with sin, with lies.In another divine irony, even though the Pharisee thought he spoke to God and spoke of other people, boasting in himself as if all eyes were and should be on him, his pride actually caused him to be all alone with no one to hear his prayer or to welcome him home. He had neither brother nor sister nor mother, He had no true God. He was a liar and belongs to the evil one.But the humility of the Tax Collector was honored by the Father because it was the truth. He has brothers and sisters and mothers because he does the will of the Father and speaks the truth. He has the true God who is merciful to sinners and kind to beggars and lifts up those of humble estate. Here you speak the truth. You gather to your Lord and your God to hear His word and to confess the truth. The Lord instructs you in the way by giving you His body to eat and His blood to drink. He leads you in what is right. You are going home – not to your earthly houses, which are but tents in the dessert – but you are going home to your Father’s house where there are many rooms. You will go home justified because you participate in the Way, the Truth, and the Life, which is Christ Jesus, our Lord.+In Nomie Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 19:4-48 Date of Delivery: July 31, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.God’s ways are not like our ways and His thoughts are not like our thoughts. And His anger is not like our anger. When the Lord gets angry He doesn’t then participate in the lust of revenge or the lust of hatred. His wrath is never of self-pity or self-righteousness. His wrath is driven by mercy.Our anger is not driven by mercy but by self-pity and self-righteousness. Our anger is driven by self-worship rather than for the salvation of others. That’s why we use that godless saying, “I can forgive but I can’t forget.” Our anger doesn’t let us forget. Our self-pity or self-righteousness will always remember the wrongs against ourselves, even giving way to thoughts of revenge and destruction of those who have hurt us. We allow our daydreams to take us away like a raging river, an out-of-control rush of anger and hatred. We don’t even want to forget. Our anger really does become for us a security blanket. We wrap ourselves in it to show how much we’ve been hurt, how much we have suffered, and how much other people owe us. In our daydreams our enemies cower before us or we destroy them completely. Not so that they would become our brothers and sisters, which would be merciful, but so that they would be put to shame or destroyed, or even that they would look up to us. Our anger removes God from the throne and tries to put us on the throne.Repent. The Lord’s anger is not because we have hurt Him but because men reject His mercy. Therefore it is a holy, righteous anger. Not a self-righteous anger like ours, but an anger directed toward unbelief. The reason we don’t need to be afraid of the Lord’s anger is because we believe. But the reason we need to fear the Lord and work out our salvation with fear and trembling is because we also disbelieve.The holy faith is not like knowing the answer to a 10 question quiz or like knowing how to solve a riddle. The holy faith is the holy life lived by the Word of God, which is not a dead letter but the living Word of God who is risen from the dead. Our disbelief is not proved by our rejection of the truths of Christianity but by our rejection of the life of Christ lived in and through us as His holy people. It is baby’s milk to repeat the Creed and say the Our Father and to know the events of the life of Christ. It is solid food to let the Creed control your life and to let the Our Father guide your living and the events of life of Christ to saturate your living.Which also means becoming angry at unbelief. Such anger doesn’t chase down restoration of the self but chases down men in mercy. Such anger does not seek revenge or restitution but seeks to drive out unbelief. Righteous anger isn’t the agent of the self but is the servant of the Lord for the good of men and not for their harm. The Lord’s wrath drives from us the snares of the devil because His wrath always comes to promote and proclaim His visitation.It is common these days to say that the Lord is not angry, that disaster doesn’t come upon us because He is angry but because of the fallenness of the world and because of sin. And that’s partly true. Sin, unbelief, does cause chaos. And this fallen, sinful world attacks itself and tries to destroy itself. But the Bible makes it clear that such things also are the purview of God. He controls the ragging of the seas and the tumult of the oceans. He controls the hail and the lightening. And He uses the unbeliever to punish wickedness, not immorality but unbelief. Because the world doesn’t know the Day of His visitation, which is Today, as long as it is called Today.The world is not here, clamoring to be near the Lord or to taste and see that He is good. The world is out there, filling its time with worldly things. But the Lord is merciful; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The world and those who belong to it, pity themselves thinking that the Lord has brought all this calamity upon them when in true it is their unbelief that has brought destruction upon themselves.But you are here. And here the Lord is visiting His people. Here the Lord is reminding you of His promises, mercy, and grace for you and for your children. And this causes you to rejoice and to give thanks. And it causes you to pray. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; not the city on earth but the heavenly city, the Holy Church. Pray for your brothers and sisters and for those who have given way to fear and anger and unbelief. Pray for the nations of the world for the House of God is the house of prayer.And pray most of all for the Lord to come again, whether at the end of the age or simply tomorrow when it is called Today, so that we would never be without the visitation of the Lord. This prayer is in keeping with His promise: I will never leave you nor forsake you; behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 7:15-23 Date of Delivery: July 17, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Mark 8:1-9 Date of Delivery: July 10, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 5:20-26 Date of Delivery: July 3, 2016 In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.Here are two teachings from Scripture: 1) Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And, 2) the righteous shall live by faith.If you’re trying to live the righteous life by what you do and say, then you have failed before you began. That’s what the scribes and Pharisees did. They tried to be righteous by what they said and did. But it’s not a righteousness of flesh that is true righteousness but a righteousness of the heart that is true and godly.So does that mean we give up on the flesh? Of course not. It is taught by the apostles that the flesh is to be subdued, contained, and controlled. The flesh is to be disciplined. Not according to the Ten Commandments, though that’s where we start, but according to the righteousness of faith.For we have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer? The life we lived we lived to sin, but the life we live in Christ we live to God. So how can we hate and bicker and fight and smear the reputation of others? How can we counteract the love of God by participating in the hatred of men?Beloved, it’s not your lustful thoughts that are your most sinful. It’s not your petty theft or your lying lips. These things are but evidence of true evil, true sin. Our true evil is that we don’t love our enemies as ourselves. This evidences our weakness of faith. We don’t even love our friends like we love ourselves. We don’t settle ourselves with our accusers – that is, we don’t seek peace and pursue it – instead we accuse our accusers and rage against others for taking what we think is ours: our country, our church, our money, our time.Without faith you cannot please God. But faith is not a commodity, and ingredient to pleasing God. Faith is God-pleasing. And faith does not produce the unrighteousness of men, sin – which is self-love – does that. Faith produces the righteousness that God requires.But what is faith? To long have we classified faith as simple belief in Jesus; as some cognitive, mental knowledge of God. This sort of definition of faith, which is not wrong but neither is it complete, leaves out the heart and body and deals only with the mind. That’s why we have co-called faithful Christians who attend services often and talk about God and Jesus yet live lives of filthy talk and ungodly actions. For them faith is nothing more than head knowledge of the events of Christ. They use their knowledge of Christ and His forgiveness as an excuse to be anti-Christ and hold grudges and promote themselves and ignore the needs of others. These are infant Christians who again and again need to be told the basics of the faith, never moving on to maturity, often needing rebuke but chaffing under it; often choked out by the wickedness of this world and the weakness of their own flesh. This shallow faith is easily overcome by Satan who seeks whom he may devour.The Law teaches us what we must do, what must be done, but offers no way to do it. The Law condemns, though it is good, teaching what must be done. It is faith - that active, living faith given us by the Holy Spirit – that teaches us how to be obedient to our Father in heaven. Faith teaches us how to be submissive to the Scriptures. Faith teaches us how to treat others as we ourselves desire to be treated. Faith teaches us to receive others as Christ has received us. The Law teaches us that we must love, but faith teaches us how to love.This is why we pray after the blessed Sacrament that by it our Father would teach us to love one another. The Sacrament teaches you how to live the life of faith, the live of love. Listen to Him.The Christian’s behavior is not based on the Ten Commandments, which is curb for evil men and a mirror for us sinners, and a guide to the weak, but never are the Ten Commandments the end-goal of righteousness. Rather faith produces the righteousness that God requires. Our behavior is based on our faith, the faith of Jesus.You have a heavenly Father who has ordained that you not be held accountable for your sins and wickedness, for your self-love and hatred of others. You have a heavenly Father who sent His only-begotten Son to take away your lack of faith, your hatred, your anger, your fear, and to give you His faith, His love, His peace, and His contentment. That you would be free of that which brings death and instead be filled with the live-giving Spirit.The life-giving Spirit who overflows your cup and gives you more heavenly sustenance than you need or want. He gives in abundance.So stop counting the times you’ve helped so-and-so. Stop counting the times so-and-so has betrayed you or hurt you or born false witness against you. Stop measuring the righteousness of others by how they have treated you or yours. Stop counting the dollars or hours you’ve given to the church or to your family or to the poor. Stop peddling that satanic lie that you can forgive but cannot forget; that satanic lie that says you forgive but you no longer love. Such is that shallow faith that has been overcome by the cares and changes of this life. Repent. Repent and believe the gospel. You belong to a forgetful God who forgets your sins and remembers them no more. You belong to the God who is love and in His love humbled Himself under the cross for you.We are the children of God. And the Son of God did not pour out His blood for us – for the whole world – in as-needed quantities. He poured out His blood so that it continues to fill the chalice of the Church to this day. He did not give His body in and as-needed manner, but gives it so that it feeds all the children of God throughout the whole earth, and has for generation upon generation.You have been buried with Christ through Holy Baptism. You are dead to sin. This does not mean that you don’t sin or that you have achieved some perfection that not even the apostles claims to have achieved. But it does mean that sin no longer reigns in your mortal body. It does mean that the life you live is not lived to sin, as a slave to sin, but is lived to God as a slave to righteousness. There is no condemnation for we who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation. So stop living in fear and stop peddling fear to others. Instead live in love and start peddling love to others.But this is hard and requires discipline, training. So it is written that we should train ourselves and our children in righteousness. This discipline is that of a daily grind. You cannot use yesterday’s righteousness for today. You cannot look to yesterday’s love to cover the lack fo love today. So many Christians become dull and dead in their love not because they don’t want to love or that they deny the gospel or the righteousness of God by faith, but because they try to live today on yesterday’s love. They begin to count the times and begin to count the cost. And in doing their eyes are removed from Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, and they begin to look at themselves and at others and first resentment grows and then gives birth to hatred, which leads to death.But you were not baptized into hatred but into love, for God is love. You were not baptized into unrighteousness but unto righteousness, the righteousness of God. You were not baptized unto death but unto life, having a clean conscience before God by the power of the resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. And the life you live you live to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Who Himself did not consider the cost but lay down His life for you to give you His life, His love, His sonship.And behold, you are heirs with the Son of God; heirs of His kingdom. And through Him and by Him and for Him, to the glory of God, you are given eternal life.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 5:1-11 Date of Delivery: June 26, 2016 In the name of the FATHER and of the +SON and of the HOLY SPIRIT.I have toiled all night and come up empty handed.It’s not hard to imagine that Peter and his fellow fishermen let down their nets with heavy sigs and forlorn attitudes. It’s not hard to imagine that they thought, “Why? What good will this do?”Faith is not absent simply because frustration is present. Mother’s may well be frustrated tending to their children, but they do it. And their work is faithful. It is faithful to the child who is cared for; it is faithful to the godly vocation of motherhood; and it is, even when an unbeliever does it, faithful to the word of God which tells mothers to be mothers. Now we want to be quick to point out that this faithfulness in no way earns the mother’s salvation, and so let it be pointed out. But we’re not talking about salvation. We’re talking about vocation. So even the unbeliever can made a good banker or teacher or farmer or father or president. Even and unbelieving king who cares about being king and his subjects is pleasing to God in his vocation.And there is reward for such faithfulness. The mother is rewarded with children who love her. The farmer is rewarded with crops. The teacher is rewarded with well-taught students. Not only this, but there is reward in the form of contentment. It’s no accident that a job well-done is pleasing both to the worker and the one for whom the job was done. Both find satisfaction in it. The book of Proverbs has much to say about this and is well worth the meditative reading.But the unbeliever, though he may be good at his job and so reap the benefits of it, is still an unbeliever. There is no faith in God’s word. It is God’s grace that gives him contentment and satisfaction and the benefits of his labor, even though the unbeliever won’t give thanks to God or acknowledge Him in any way. For God’s grace is not limited to believers only, but He gives daily bread to all people, even to all wicked people. His obedience to the will of God is not born of love. He has no purpose to do what he is doing beyond the here and now, the immediate, worldly benefits. That is why so many despair of their lives, of their vocations and leave them, leaving a wake of devastation behind them.Father’s grow tired of fathering and mothers grow tired of mothering. Husbands and wives grow tired of one another as do parents and children, and so on and so forth so that we have what we have today: a world torn apart by restlessness and faithlessness. It is because there is no greater reward to what is done that simply doing it. It is not done of love for God but out of love for self. So our libraries and book stores are full of books that talk about finding contentment in yourself and loving yourself and taking care of yourself first. But the self is never satisfied but always roaming and rebelling. The self toils all night and takes nothing because the work is meaningless and trite.But the believer’s obedience is born of love. And she does what she does because Her Lord has asked her to. So St. Peter says, “At your word I will let down the nets though we have toiled all night and taken nothing.” So the mother says, “At your word I will feed and play with my children because you have said to do so, even though I seem to get nothing but a aching back out of it.” And the husband says, “I will love and care for my wife and be faithful to her in all things because you have commanded it, even though my pride is not content in it and it brings my flesh little pleasure.” There is faithfulness even in frustration. And when it is done in faithfulness it drives out the old man which is why Peter, having obeyed, confesses his sins.Peter, having obeyed fell down saying, “I am a sinful man!” Confess your sins of unbelief and frustration and doubt; your sin of begrudging your duty and hating your charges. Such sins don’t undo your work any more than Peter’s sin undid the work of catching the fish. But what your confession does is clear the way for your faith to grow into stronger obedience. So the Lord says that the one who is faithful in very little will be given more but the one who is faithless will lose even what he thinks he has. He says to Peter, “You have been faithful hearing and obeying my word with the fish, now you will be catching men.”Now don’t think that the Lord has called you away, or might call you away from your vocations to some mythical field of evangelism or missions. But don’t think either that you are not catching men in the net of the gospel. It is true that there is the Office of the Holy Ministry. This office was ordained and instituted by our Lord to continue the apostolic teaching so that we wouldn’t go astray in doctrine and life. But He did not create it so that pastors alone catch men. The gospel catches men. It catches men in your vocations as father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, and worker. Do what you are called to do and give thanks to God, confessing your sins and rejoicing in the salvation of God in Christ Jesus. This is what catches men.The best thing you can do is attend the Lord’s gathering and make it known to the world that you do so. While we certainly acknowledge the Lord for all His benefits to us in many and various ways, none of them are as full or as obedient as this one. For He has said, “Take, eat; take, drink.” And He has said, “Do not neglect to gather together.” And He has said, “Hear my Word and listen to the voice of my Servant.” So even if we have done so with seemingly no benefit, still we say, “At your word, Lord, I will do so.” And He will bless you. Not with the treasures of this life but with the eternal treasures of the life of the world to come.`IN NOMINE IESU+ AMEN +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 6:36-42 Date of Delivery: June 19, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Rev. Fr. Michael Brockman Scripture Passage(s): Luke 15:1-10 Date of Delivery: June 12, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 14:16-24 Date of Delivery: June 5, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 16:19-31 Date of Delivery: May 29, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): John 20:19-31 Date of Delivery: April 3, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 26 - 27 Date of Delivery: March 20, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): John 8:46-59 Date of Delivery: March 13, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 15:21-28 Date of Delivery: February 21, 2016 In the name of the FATHER and of the +SON and of the HOLY SPIRIT.It’s only at the end of the struggle that the Lord blesses the faithful. It was only after Jacob had wrestled all night with the Angel of the Lord, who is the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, and not just some angel, as the text makes clear, that the Lord then blesses him. It is only after being ignored and dismissed and insulted that the Lord blesses the Syro-Phoenician woman. And it is only after you have suffered the angst and troubles of this life, even suffering death, that the Lord will bless you with eternal life.Dr. Luther said that what makes a theologian is oratio, meditatio, and tentatio. What makes a theologian is hearing the word of God, which gives way to prayer and meditation on God’s word, followed by tension or struggle between what we have heard and meditated on and the world around us, even our own flesh. But this 3-fold theologian maker isn’t like taking Theology 101, then 201, then 301, then you’re done. Rather it’s like learning to swim for the first time when the boat you’re on is sinking.We hear the word of God, but the only reason we listen is because of some trouble we’re in. It might be as vague as our unknown day of death so we listen to the Man who walked out of the tomb. Or it may be a more specific sickness or trouble in our life such as family trouble or financial trouble, so we listen to the Man who promises to wipe away our tears and fill us with joy. And once we’ve heard the word with ears to hear, then we pray and meditate on it. This, then, leads to more struggle because the word is opposite what we experience in life. It promises peace and blessings, and what we get is war and trouble. And more trouble and struggle leads to more listening, which leads to more praying, which leads to greater temptation and struggle against the flesh.And on and on it goes. This is the picture of Jacob wrestling with God. This is you wrestling with God. You don’t wrestle with God because you lack faith but because you have faith. And the greater your faith the stronger you are in your wrestling match. So much so that as day broke, the Lord perceived that He would not prevail against Jacob. Jacob’s great faith would overcome God! Same with the Canaanite dog of a woman. Her great faith would wear down and overcome the Lord.What has the Lord promised? He has promised life and salvation, resurrection and peace with God. So that is what we wrestle for. He has promised to heal our diseases and take away our infirmities. So that is what we wrestle for. He has promised to wipe away our tears and fill us with joy and peace. So that is what we wrestle Him for.Don’t stop wrestling. We stop wrestling when we doubt His promises – why engage the Lord if we don’t believe His promises? We stop wrestling when our faith has become sidetracked and we have been misled. This is what happens to so many Christians and why they no longer come to church, or why they start going somewhere that doesn’t preach the gospel or administer the Sacraments, but preaches peace now, prosperity now, the good life now. Such churches are synagogues of Satan.But so many are misled and they begin to ignore God’s promises and listen to Satan’s promises. Remember Eve? She had God’s promise, which was life and paradise. But she began to listen to Satan’s promise. She should have wrestled with God. She should have turned to Adam who was with her and said, “Is what this serpent is saying true? Will we be like God?”Then she would have heard the word of God and that would have been wrestling with God, which, interestingly enough, is what God wants.God wants you to wrestle with Him. He wants you to ask Him as children ask their father, never giving up, content with his love but desiring his blessing and gifts. He wants you to be persistent, like the Canaanite woman, because persistence means faith and the Lord, above all, wants to nurture and grow your faith so that you would overcome even Him and obtain His blessing.Don’t be afraid. God is not wrestling with you to destroy you or to have victory over you. In fact, He has given you the victory in Christ. You’re not wrestling with God because you’re afraid of the outcome and you want to stop the bad man, but because you believe God and you are set on receiving His blessing. So you continue to come to Him week after week to wrestle with Him. Here you present yourself as broken and sinful, unclean and undeserving, but here you also remind Him of His promises to you. Here you engage the Lord, not letting go until you have received His blessing.And here He blesses you. He engages you. The Scripture gives a physical depiction of Jacob wrestling with God, but your wrestling looks different. Your wrestling looks like singing hymns and hearing the Word. Your wrestling with God looks like eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ. In the face of your weakness you claim His strength. In the face of your sin your claim His obedience. In the face of your death you claim His life. In the face of your misery your claim His everlasting joy.You have been renamed in the waters of Holy Baptism. And the name you bear is child of God. Because ultimately Jesus, the true Jacob and the true Israel, wrestled God for you on the cross. And His name is placed on you you and covers you. You were called sinner and slanderer, murderer and God-haters, but now you are called God’s children. So you don’t wrestle with God hoping for a victorious outcome. You know the outcome. Jesus is risen from the dead. He won against sin and death. And His victory is yours. His righteousness is yours. His life is yours.You are blessed of God.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 12:38-50 Date of Delivery: February 17, 2016 In the name of the FATHER and of the +SON and of the HOLY SPIRIT.This is an evil generation. But then, so was the last generation. In fact, every generation since Adam has been an evil generation. The inclination of men’s heart is evil, even from their youth. There’s no golden age of any society or of any generation. Everyone born of flesh is flesh and belongs to the flesh, and therefore is corrupt and does wicked deeds.But the most wicked of deeds is not fornication or greed or lust, or any of the mortal sins. No, the most wicked of deeds is to demand from the Lord a sign. But not just any sign. Gideon demanded a sign, or at least requested one, and he got it. So, too many of the prophets, priests, and kings. Many of them asked for signs and many of them received the signs. In fact, it seems that one of the oddest passages of Scripture is in Isaiah 6 with king Ahaz refuses to ask for a sign from the Lord and is rebuked for it. That’s when we hear the prophet’s words, “The Lord Himself will give you a sign; behold the virgin shall conceive and give birth to a son. And you shall call His name ‘Emmanuel’.”Here our Lord rebukes every generation for asking for a sign, and yet as we have seen, many have asked before and received and poor Ahaz didn’t ask, preferring not to put the Lord to the test, and he was rebuked. It seems all backward. That is, until we discover why the sign is asked for.Every time anyone has asked of the Lord for a sign of His mercy, His favor and grace, they have received such a sign. That doesn’t mean they have heeded the sign or even thought of it as a sign from the Lord, but it is. The sign of His mercy and grace, His love, compassion, and long-suffering, His love toward you, is, of course, none other than the Lord Jesus Himself. He is both the sign and the reward. But also everything that comes with the Lord Jesus: the preaching of His gospel – that’s a sign of His favor; the administration of His sacraments – those are signs of His favor and love for us.Even tonight, the Lord being among us as He promises, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them,” He is giving us the sign of Hs love for us and favor toward us; a sign of His covenant of forgiveness in His blood. When you ask for a sign that God loves you, that He will have and has had mercy on you, this is what you get. If you’re looking for a different sign when you ask for the Lord’s mercy and favor, then you’re part of the wicked generation.But to the wicked no sign will be given. None but the sign of Jonah, that is. The wicked are those who reject the Lord’s favor and love, His mercy and peace. They don’t want signs of His grace and favor, they want signs that He is, in fact, God; that they must worship Him. They want proof that they must submit to Him. So do you. You want proof, especially when life has gone sideways. So you ask for signs. That’s what the scribes and Pharisees were after. Show us a sign that proves that you are God. Cast out all doubt that you are in control and Master of all. But no such sign is given. The only sign given is the sign of Jonah: His resurrection and the preaching of His gospel. But these are not the signs asked for by the wicked. They won’t believe these signs because they are not looking for His mercy and grace. And they will die in their sins.So Lord says that the evil spirit – the spirit of unbelief – goes out of a person and wanders around. This evil spirit is exercised by the Holy Spirit who comes with the preaching – the proclamation – of the Gospel. But those who reject the Spirit, who deny the gospel of Jesus, the evil spirit returns and the state of that person is worse than before they heard.But don’t look to these things as some type of proofs of the faith. Don’t be looking for signs that the evil spirit returns brining seven of its brothers with it. Don’t look for signs at all. Except for those signs the Lord gives; signs and pledges of His love, His mercy, and His grace toward you. These are trustworthy and are, in fact, more than signs. They are what they say they are. The Sacrament of the Altar is not a ritual, it is a the bestowal of God’s love and forgiveness on you, His promise that the risen body and blood of Jesus sustains you in your life and faith.Baptism has ritual around it, but it is not ritual or ceremony. It is the actual blessing of God, marking you with His name and sealing you by His Holy Spirit.You have been given the sign of God’s favor and mercy; of His love love and election. It is here, in the breaking of the bread and the prayers. It is here where Christ dwells with men and men with Christ. Rejoice, O blessed generation, for the Lord is good and upright, and He is instructing you in the way of righteousness, the way of true faith.+ In Nomie Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 4:1-11 Date of Delivery: February 14, 2016 In the name of the FATHER and of the +SON and of the HOLY SPIRIT.With Jesus the devil does not get what he wanted.The title “devil” means “slanderer”. The devil attempted to slander Jesus by causing Him to sin. This is what the devil does. He did it to Eve in the garden. Eve had the word of God yet the devil preached a false sermon and Eve succumbed to temptation. That’s how it always goes. The devil preaches a false and misleading sermon and we are led into temptation.The devil wants you to sin. He wants to accuse you before God. So he is also called “Satan” which means “adversary” or “accuser”. Just as he did with Job before God. He accused Job of being righteous only because Job had the blessings of God. But Job was righteous not because he was blessed by God with good health and good wealth, but because Job believed God’s word. Job was righteous by faith.So was Jesus, by the way. Jesus was righteous by faith for it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” Yes, Jesus was inherently righteous because He was not conceived of Adam but of God, but He did not call on this righteousness when faced with the devil’s temptations. He didn’t say, “Get behind me, Satan, I am God!” Rather He appealed to the Word of God to defeat the accuser, the slanderer. Jesus believed God’s Word and so defeated the tempter.We are attacked by the devil and his hordes daily, even hourly, minute by minute. This isn’t fanciful or Medieval superstition. This, too, is written, especially all over the psalms. And this is fitting because the psalms are our prayers. It is fitting that our prayers acknowledge and cry for relief from God from the constant attacking of the devil. He is a murderer and a liar, and he is relentless in his attacks on the children of men.And don’t think that he only attacks Christians, as in that old wives’ tale that the unbeliever already belongs to Satan so he leaves him alone. Not at all. He attacks all the children of men because all the children of men belong to God, made in His image. Jesus died for all mankind so that all mankind – man himself – is the devil’s enemy and target. The only difference between a believer and an unbeliever when it comes to the devil is that the believer puts his trust in the word of God and the unbeliever tries to win on his own. That, and a believer will not be a slanderer of others but will cover the sins of others by his love while the unbeliever will slander and hold another’s sin against him. The unbeliever will make the sinner pay for his sins even though Christ has already paid for them on the cross. Holding others’ sins over their head is the work of the devil, of unbelief and is not the way of the gospel.It is this gospel in which we put our trust and hope in. For our sakes the Lord Jesus suffered the temptation of the devil yet overcame him. For our sakes He died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and was raised again for our justification and reconciliation with the Father. This word of God lets us withstand the devil’s accusations and slandering tongue. By the gospel we resist the devil and he flees from us, by the power of the gospel, which is the power and proper preaching of the Spirit of God.Which is why it is so incumbent upon us to attend to the gospel and hear it and receive it, especially by gathering to Jesus to hear His words at His Holy Supper and receive from Him the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. For who can have just knelt with the Body of Christ and taken and eaten the body of Christ and have just taken and drank the blood of Christ who cannot then stand firm on the promise of God that we are His and that He desires to give us the kingdom, no matter what the devil may tempt us with? Who can so soon after receive pure andfree reconciliation from God even though your sins be scarlet, and not turn and forgive those who have sinned against him?This is one of the ways we test the Lord. We receive forgiveness and peace and the promise of the kingdom and then turn to our fellow man and do not offer him the same but expect that he will measure himself against us and live up to our standards. Thus the last temptation is first than the worst because the last temptation is to deny that the love of God covers the sins of all mankind. But it is written: “He died not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.” And also it is written, “Receive others as Christ has received you.”The devil wants you. He wants you to fall and stumble and sin so that He can accuse you before God and slander you and send you to hell. But with Jesus the devil never gets what he wants. The devil can’t have you because you are buried with Christ and your life is hidden in Christ. You are baptized and here you are, for better or for worse, standing on the promises of God your Savior.Jesus didn’t overcome the devil’s temptations for His own sake but for your sake, so that you would be spotless before the Father. When it is preached that we cling to Christ alone it meant that we cling to Him for a good reputation before God, which is what forgiveness is. And it is what St. Peter writes about Holy Baptism, that it saves us by a clean conscience before God; a conscience cleansed by the blood of Christ.With Jesus the devil doesn’t get what he wants. He doesn’t get you. He doesn’t get your reputation before God. He doesn’t get to slander you for your sins. He may throw at you all manner of temptation and doubt, trying to lead you into temptation. But we pray, “And lead us not into temptation.” We pray in this petition that the devil, the world, and our own sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false believe, despair, or other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by them, we pray we may finally overcome them and win the victory.And the victory we win is already won in Christ. Don’t argue with the devil, you will lose. Just throw Jesus at him. Hide behind Jesus. He will protect you from the devil’s lies and slander and accusations. He will defend you against all adversity and will make your ways straight and your paths level. He has withstood the devil and the devil has fled from Him. So shall he flee from you.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Vicar Adam Barkley Scripture Passage(s): Luke 18:31-43 Date of Delivery: February 8, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Luke 8:4-15 Date of Delivery: January 31, 2016 (This sermon was origianally preached on Sexagesima Sunday, 2014,by the Reverend Fr. David H. Petersen of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, IN.)

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 20:1-16 Date of Delivery: January 24, 2016 In the name of the FATHER and of the + SON and of the HOLY SPIRIT.The point of our Lord’s parable about the workers in the vineyard hired at the beginning, middle, and end of the day is obvious. It’s a parable about the mercy of the Lord. He gives equally to all, without qualification of when they first believed or how hard they work or what their job is in the vineyard.There’s no mention of laborious labor or that those hired first became lazy. There’s no mention of the last being more skilled and surpassing those hired first. The Lord’s provisions have nothing to do with the worker and everything to do with His mercy and grace.And we know this. He is the Lord. He can do as He pleases with what is His and all things are His. And we are in no position to begrudge His generosity. He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.And neither are we in any position to begrudge His discipline. Soldiers are disciplined so as to perform well in battle. Firemen are disciplined so as to perform well fighting fires. Teachers are disciplined so as to better instruct and guide their students. Pastors are disciplined so as to keep the congregation in the apostolic doctrine. And Christians are disciplined by their Lord so as to remain faithful in plenty and in want.The Lord gives and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. That’s a famous Scripture quote at funerals, and rightly so. But it really is a great Scripture quote for all of life. The Lord gives you all that you have. And He may well take it all away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.But what He does not remove from you is Himself. He never makes you fast from His word of mercy and grace, righteousness and peace. He never causes you to fast from His presence. He never says to Himself, “I’m going to let so and so go it alone for a while and see how they fare.” Instead, the point of His disciplining – where we get the word “disciple” – is to cause you to more steadfastly cling to His word and promises and seek His presence. The Lord disciplines those He loves so that they will love the One who disciplines them.It only becomes hard because we so often fall into temptation. Not particular sins, though particular sins are the fruit of falling into temptation, and what you get from that fruit is death. But rather, falling into temptation is to stop believing that your Lord is your Lord; that He has somehow failed you at one point or another and that you need to either look out for yourself or look to someone or something else for your good.I know the struggles. You leave here feeling good about the Lord but in the back of your mind is the thought, “But I got that job. I worked for it. But I pay for everything I own, the Lord doesn’t give anything to me for free. I’ve never won the lottery. If the Lord really loved me and disciplined me so that I would love Him, wouldn’t He heal my family or cause our church to grow or make me happier about life?”Repent. The Lord gives as He sees fit. Not to crush you and abandon you, but to lift you up on high and seat you in the heavenly places.Remember, Christian, this world is fast fleeting. Jesus is risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God. You’re not on this earth to have a particular career or a home of your own or a big, healthy family. Don’t fall into temptation by letting the cares and chances of this life choke out your faith. You’re on this earth that the glory and power of God may be shownthrough you. That begins with Him sending His Son to suffer and die for you, to shed His blood for you on the cross. Why? So that death would no longer threaten you; so that your rebellion would no longer damn you. Jesus is the Lamb of God who has taken away sin and death and in Him God is setting apart a holy people to display the glory of God.Your faith in the promises of God in Christ Jesus displays the power and mercy and grace of God to all people. Consider the martyr whose witness at death converts kings and armies and hardened heathens. Standing fast on the promises of God our Savior we can leap over a wall or stand against a thousand troops. But those are large and grandiose. Better than leaping walls or standing before armies or giving witness before kings is to love our children and teach them the ways of God. Not only is it better, but it’s harder.It’s harder because our children know us and our foibles. They’ve seen us give into hatred and anger. They’ve heard us curse each other and perhaps them, not to mention other people who have slighted us. It is harder because our children have seen our hypocrisy. But now let them see us love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. Let them see us lay down our lives not only for their future – which is a misty fog – but more for real people who need our time, our money, and our witness. Let them see us remain silent before our accusers. Let them hear us speak the truth about God and man. That is how the glory of God is shown through us.Don’t begrudge the Lord’s generosity to others. We all know the Lord Jesus died for everyone and loves everyone, but we forget that since we are the Body of Christ and individually members of it, that His death and love for them flows through us. Yet while we were sinners and haters of God, Christ died for us, for the ungodly. He loved us by giving us His beloved Son who by His great love for the Father and for us and all sinners, was crucified and shed His blood for us for the forgiveness of our rebellion.May this mercy of God discipline us so that we would give thanks in all things while loving all people, standing firm on the promises of God who promises to give us the kingdom.+ In Nomine Iesu +

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 17:1-9 Date of Delivery: January 17, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 3:13-17 Date of Delivery: January 10, 2016

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 2:13-23 Date of Delivery: January 3, 2016 In the name of the FATHER and of the +SON and of the HOLY SPIRIT.What is true about the Christ is also true about His Christians: He was not where He was or do what He did for His own sake but for the sake of others. The Lord Jesus was not born for His sake but for the sake of others. He did not suffer and die and rise again for His sake but for the sake of others. He did not suffer for His own sake but for the sake of others, for the salvation of others.You are not where you are for your own sake. You do not do what you do for your own sake. Even when you take a little “me” time you take it so that you can be refreshed in order to serve others. For the Son of Man came to serve, not to be served. So you who are being made in His image are to serve rather than to be served.Joseph served the Child and His mother by going down to Egypt. Never mind whether it was an easy thing or a hard thing, that’s very much beside the point. Rather, pay attention that Joseph did it. Mothers aren’t mothers for their own sake but for the sake of the child. Fathers aren’t fathers for their own sake but for the sake of their families. Neighbors are neighbors for the sake of their neighbors.But this is not the same thing as saying: make sure you think of others. Like all things in Christendom, this is more than a behavior, more than a habit. This is a fundamental shift in being. St. Paul says that in our sinfulness we do all things for ourselves and that the end of those things is death (Romans 6:21). But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God in Christ is eternal life (Romans 6:20-23).And what is sin if it is not living for one’s self? That is rebellion of the highest order. It rebels against the nature of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; none of the Holy Three Persons is living for Himself but is living for the others. For God is love and love is never for the individual but for others.Live for everyone else. This will kill you and blessed is that death.It might not kill you literally. But it will kill you. Every time you serve someone else you die a little that another may live. Every time you give yourself for the sake of another’s need, you decrease a little for their increase. This is true in normal, mundane things as well as in great big things. The mother who holds her crying daughter, comforting her from whatever has harmed her, is doing as mighty and great a work of love as the soldier who died defending his country. Perhaps a better one, in fact. For motherhood is ordained by God in the fabric of creation whereas soldering is ordained by men who need soldiers because of sin. The mother’s time and energy, her thoughts and even her soft lullaby are all for the sake of her daughter, even as the soldier’s time, energy, thoughts, and even battle cries are all for the sake of his homeland.Of course, unbelievers are capable of this, too. They are mothers and soldiers also. They give of themselves, too. And their giving of themselves is just as beneficial to the recipient as the Christian’s giving of him or herself. But we are consumed with this question of whether or not an unbeliever’s good works are just as good as a believer’s or if they are just as useful. Let us repent of this question and focus on the Scripture that says, Without faith it is impossible to please God.In faith Joseph took the Child and His mother to Egypt. In faith he brought them back out of Egypt and settled them in the land of Galilee of the Gentiles. In faith Mary had said, “I am theLord’s servant, let it be to me according to your word.” In faith, Joseph had taken Mary to be his wife even though she was with child.Why? Not for their sakes, not even for Jesus’ sake only. But for your sake. No less than the apostle Paul wrote his letters for your sake even as he says that the Old Testament, a record of the faith of the saints of God in Israel, was written for our sakes. But don’t become conceited as if everything centers around you. You, too, believe and live in faith for the sake of others. That doesn’t mean that your faith or the faith of Joseph can be someone else’s faith; each must give an account for his own life. But it means that your faith serves other people, especially those sitting next to you and behind you and in front of you.Behold your mother and your brothers and you sisters. Those who share in the Spirit of God and do the will of the Father.The only way to participate in Christ’s suffering as St. Peter teaches us this morning, is to participate in His faith. If Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness, how much more does the faith of Jesus count as righteousness? But Abraham cannot give you his faith but can only preach the One in Whom he believes. But Jesus gives you His faith when He pours out His Spirit on you so that you become as He is: a child of God. A pouring He does through such preaching.The Son of God took on the flesh of men to serve men. So the sons of God take on the flesh of others, so to speak, to serve them. This is what St. Paul means when he says to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. This is how we obey the Gospel of God: by consider the sins of others as our own and confessing the mercy and love of God in Christ Jesus.Your faith, dear Christian, is no different than Abraham’s or Jacob’s or Joseph’s. It’s not different, even, than Jesus’ faith. For we all have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of us all. We believe that He has sent His Servant, Jesus Christ, to do away with sin and sadness and to proclaim a kingdom of joy and gladness! To burst the bonds of sin and guilt and cloth us with the righteousness of God. We believe that just as Jesus was called out of Egypt, so shall we be called out of this land of slavery to the Promised Land, the heavenly land, the New Jerusalem.Our faith is bound up in the promises of God; promises that find their “yes” in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us rejoice in these promises of our Father, looking to Jesus the author of our faith. Let us not judge the sins of others but receive and eat with them. Let us not consider ourselves more than others but humble ourselves that the Lord may lift us up. For that is the will of God our Father, that you be lifted up on high in the heavenly places and that He would be your God.+ In Nomine Iesu+

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): Matthew 1:18-25 Date of Delivery: December 27, 2015

Speaker or Performer: Pr. Mark D. Lovett Scripture Passage(s): John 1:19-28 Date of Delivery: December 20, 2015 In the name of the FATHER and of the +SON and of the HOLY SPIRIT.Look at the Introit of the Day. The antiphon, the part that brackets the psalm, comes from Isaiah 45 (v.8). And it speaks of Christ.“Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness;let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit;let the earth cause them both to appear.”One of the chief holy days of the Church is just a few days away. Christmas, the Nativity of our Lord, is one of the four chief feasts of the Church: Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, and Ascension. These holy days – or they have come to be known: holidays – are the pillars of our faith. They are the bedrock of the Creed – born of the virgin Mary; was made man; was crucified, died, and was buried, and rose again on the third day; He ascended into heaven. There is no holy day, no festival for the Second Coming of Christ. Not because He hasn’t come again but because in truth, every Divine Service is a festival of His Second Coming.St. Paul says that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes in the future.In fact, every Divine Service is really a feast of all the chief holy days. We sing the song of the angels from Luke 2, when we sing the Greater Gloria. We sing the song of Passion Week when we sing the Kyrie. We sing the song of Epiphany as we proclaim Jesus as coming in the flesh. Easter pervades the entire service, which is proper, since this service is the service of the Risen Christ who is preaching to you His word and feeding you His life-giving Body and Blood, as He said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life in them.” And we sing the song of the Ascension because the Christ who here serves us and comforts us is the ascended Christ. We pray because He is ascended to the right hand of Power, as He says, “You will ask the Father because I go to the Father.” Pentecost, too, is here, as He promises that He will send His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, who will bring to mind all the things of Christ and by whom we pray and are joined together and to Jesus.Every time we are gathered together, whether is a multitude of us or just two or three, we are given the entire sum of salvation history and promises for the life to come.Every time we are gathered together, the words of Isaiah the prophet prove true: “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness.” Jesus is seen coming in the clouds of heaven. That’s not just an allusion to His Second Coming but to His continual presence. For the Lord was in the cloud that went before and followed after Israel, and now He is in His blessed mysteries, even His Church, going before and following after us. Here is the heavenly places where righteousness is showered down on you from above. Is not Christ the righteousness of God? Does He not here make Himself known to you in the breaking of the bread? Do you not hear His voice here in this place, the voice of the Prophet greater than Moses to whom we are to listen as He says, “Take, eat; this is my body”?“Let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit, let the earth cause both to sprout.” This is a prophesy of the birth of Christ. Mary is of the earth, of the flesh. Yet the Lord opened her womb and she bore the Salvation and Righteousness for all mankind, and all generations shall call her blessed. It is her Son that bears much fruit. But so, too, is this prophecy a prophecy of this holy convocation, this divine gathering. It must be because this divine gathering is the gathering of the Righteous One. The earth here opens as the Lord uses bread andwine and broken men to declare the blessings of paradise. The Lord’s holy Supper is no less a miracle than the Virgin Birth, and perhaps, if I may be so bold, a far greater one. For then He came to Mary and Joseph and to the town called Bethlehem, but now He comes to all people in a the city from above called the new Jerusalem. And the fruit you get from Him, St. Paul says, is eternal life.Therefore, the Apostle exhorts, Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice! The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. Of course, we generally flip this and pray and supplicate because of our anxiety rather than because of our thanksgiving. But how can we be anxious when the Lord has not left us alone as orphans but has provided for us a watering hole from which we drink from the River of Life, and the Bread of Heaven by which we are sustained? There, that is how all that has been said been said applies to your work-a-day world. This Divine Service colors your view of the rest of life, or else you do not believe. This holy gathering where the heavens shower down and the earth opens is the source of your life, even if you aren’t here all that often. All that means is that you’re cutting yourself off from the Lord and Giver of Life.This thing we call church – going to church – is not for our brains more so than for our bodies. It’s not for our emotions more so than for our reason. This is for all of us, for all parts of us. The Lord redeeming you, body and soul, mind and spirit. Here the Lord is Emmanuel, God with us, and here the Savior of the nations comes to the nations.He will come again as He went 40 days after Easter, at His ascension. He will come again with power and great might, subduing the nations under Him and defeating the final enemy, which is death. Not that these things are a foregone conclusion, they are. But that until that time we proclaim His death, resurrection, and ascension by gathering to Him who is our Head and receiving from Him all blessings and honor and glory. For that is what Christmas teaches us. That the glory of the Lord is shared with men so that not only does He share in our humanity, redeeming humanity, but we share in His glory by which He elevates humanity to the right hand of God. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.+ In Nomie Iesu +