Preachrblog

Holy Trinity Sunday – May 26th, 2013 Messiah, La Crescent, MN "Do You Know God?" Friends, do you know God?  Now don't answer too quickly.  In light of our Gospel reading from John 8, it's a question worth pondering.  The Pharisees thought they knew God, but Jesus said they didn't.  But he does.  He calls them liars.  He confesses the truth. Today, who does know God, and for that matter how do we know him and what do we know about him?  Who is God, anyway?  Which god are we talking about?  Buddha?  Allah?  Yahweh?  Is there a difference?  Are they all the same? All of these questions are also important and appropriate on Trinity Sunday, in which we confess the Triune God, the God who is three and also one.  We take great pains to confess what Scripture teaches about this mystery, but not to go a step further than God's word goes.  So we know God by his word, and by the word that we confess in our creeds. ...

May 5th, 2013 St. John's and Trinity Lutheran Church, Suring, WI "Look to the Cross" What was the sin of the Israelites? They were ungrateful for God's blessings. And when suffering began, even a relatively mild suffering, the started to complain. They even complained ABOUT the blessings God had bestowed. Look what he had done: He gave them Moses, a deliverer – someone raised in the royal courts of Pharaoh and uniquely qualified to stand before the most powerful man in the world as a spokesman. He sent plagues to the Egyptians – not one, but ten! And each one more terrible than the last, until finally Pharaoh relented and let the people go. Oh, and by the way, through all these plagues on their enemies, the Lord kept the Israelites free from any of it. He even passed over their homes when the blood of the firstborn would be shed. And when Pharaoh finally did let the people go, they didn't just go, the Egyptians sent them p...