The Lord Is with You Where the Wild Things Are

Because you are ransomed and redeemed by the Lord, reconciled to God, and righteous in His sight through faith in His Word, the roaring lion who is always on the prowl, always seeking to devour you, and the vicious beasts that would destroy you — they are all kept at bay. The wild things cannot harm you, because the Lord is with you. It often may not seem that way at all in your present experience. For here and now, in this body and life on earth, you still suffer harm and heartache, hurts and hungers, death and the grave. But have you not heard? Christ Jesus Himself has also suffered all of these things and more, and everything that you suffer. He has spent His time in the wilderness, where the wild things are.

Advent, SermonRick StuckwischDecember 16, 2023Advent, Gaudete, SermonComment

Sermon on Psalm 141

Preaching, Sermon, SynodDavid PetersenOctober 27, 2023Psalm 141 Comment

A Bit of Luther on Christ and His Bride

My death thus vanishes in His life, my sins in His righteousness, and my condemnation in His salvation. Here my sin is forced between the hammer and the anvil, so that it perishes and vanishes. For now since my sin, my filth is taken away, He must adorn me and clothe me with His eternal righteousness and with all His grace until I become beautiful; for I am His Bride.

Luther, SermonRick StuckwischOctober 8, 2023Luther Sermon Comments

The Sum of the Commandment

The chief article of our doctrine must come to our help, namely, that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was sent into the world by the Father, suffered and died for us and thereby reconciled and moved the Father to grace, and now sits at the right hand of the Father, pleading our cause as our Savior and as our constant Mediator and Intercessor interceding for us who can not of ourselves have or obtain this perfect purity and good conscience. Therefore through Him we can say before God: Although I am not pure and cannot have a good conscience, yet I cleave to Him who possesses perfect purity and good conscience and offers them for me, indeed, gives them to me.

Luther, Preaching, SermonRick StuckwischJuly 11, 2023Luther Sermon, Good ConscienceComment

The Resurrection and the Life by the Way of the Cross

Now it is that death itself suffers an intrusion, and its own violence is turned back upon its head, because Life Himself has entered in where He had no need to go. His own Love compels Him, nothing else. Here He befriends the whole world of sinful mortal men at their worst and most helpless. He does not intervene to spare His friends from the pain of death, but He approaches death in the Flesh, in order to reconcile the world to His God and Father. He invades the tomb in order to empty it, to raise the dead and give them Life and bring them to God in faith and love.

SermonRick StuckwischMarch 27, 2023Sermon, Lent, Raising of Lazarus, Cross and ResurrectionComment

The Lord Is for You and for Your Children

As before in the history of God’s people, another Joseph now brings his Father’s family into Egypt, lest they perish, in order to preserve the world from death. But as this story is unfolding, in the middle of the night, St. Joseph has no way of knowing what the outcome of these events will be. He has nothing to guide him or go by except the Word of the Lord, His warnings and His promises. With that, he goes in faith, and everything ensues and is fulfilled according to the Scriptures. Which is really to say that his situation then was not so very different from your own.

Blessed Are Those Who Hear and Receive this Word

What St. John and his fellow Apostles saw and heard and even touched and handled — the only-begotten God, the Word-made-Flesh, the incarnate Son of the Father, your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — no less than He is manifested and communicated to you in the apostolic Scriptures, as these have been written and as they are proclaimed within the Church. As the Father has spoken His Word to us in the Person of His Son, so is He now spoken to you in the apostolic preaching of the Gospel, whereby you have entered into the joyous friendship and glorious company of the holy Apostles, and into the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ, His Father, and His Holy Spirit.

After the Pattern of Christ Jesus

Stephen knew and trusted that he had a dwelling place with God, because God had made His dwelling place with Stephen in Christ Jesus. The holy martyr knew that he would be with Christ, with the Father in heaven, because the same Lord Jesus Christ was with him in his suffering and death. He knew that heaven was his home, and that heaven had been fully opened to him by the Cross and Resurrection of the incarnate Son of God. The Lord has just as surely done the same for you, as well. He has become Flesh for you. He has given Himself for you, even unto death. He has risen from the dead and ascended into heaven for you, also. And yet, He also remains with you here in His Church on earth, in His very own Flesh and Blood, with His Word and Holy Spirit. Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with you here.

We are beggars, that is true. Kyrie, eleison!

It is the Word of Jesus on His way to the Cross that defends you against those false and misleading voices of doubt and despair. So faith persists in the confidence of His Word, which declares that He is close at hand. And His Cross has taught you to know and believe these two most basic facts: You need Him, who alone is able to help and save you; and He has come for you in divine love.

Historic Lectionary, SermonRick StuckwischFebruary 27, 2022Quinquagesima, SermonComment

By the Ministry of the Word of Christ Jesus

The pastors and confessors of Christ Jesus bear and suffer His Cross in their body and life, as surely as they proclaim His Cross in their preaching and distribute the fruits of His Sacrifice by the Ministry of His Gospel. And they are content with the food and drink, the clothing and shelter that God provides through His people — just as the Lord also feeds His people and quenches their thirst with His Holy Supper, clothes them with His righteousness in Holy Baptism, and shelters them within His Church on earth through the labors of His called and ordained servants.

In and Out of Egypt with the Lamb of God

God does not fail or neglect the children of Bethlehem, but He calls them to Himself and rescues them from every evil, unto the Life everlasting in body and soul. Their little bodies are cruelly butchered and put to death, but God gives them rest, and He shall raise them in glory at the last.

Meanwhile, Christ Jesus does not “run away” in fear from danger and from death, but He proceeds in faith to the Sacrifice of His Cross, which shall be at the time appointed by His Father in heaven. No one takes His life from Him, but He lays it down willingly when that Day and that Hour come. He does not escape the trials and tribulations of this life — which the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem are spared, though their mothers and fathers are not. But He submits Himself to every bit of the Great Tribulation — for you and your salvation, and for the sake of all people.

The Light No Darkness Can Overcome

Beloved disciple of Jesus, what St. John saw with his eyes, and looked upon, and touched with his hands, is here given and poured out for you. Recline here upon Body of the Lord who loves you at His Supper, and know that in His Flesh and Blood you are safe in the bosom of the Father, because the Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses you from sin and releases you from death. For where there is forgiveness, as there is forgiveness for you here, there you shall not die but live.

Sermon, SaintsRick StuckwischDecember 27, 2021Saints, Sermons, St. John the Apostle and Evangelist Comment

Classical Lutheran homiletics: Does the preacher matter?

The preacher matters because God chooses to have His Word proclaimed by men who have hearts, minds, souls, and strengths that should be entirely given over to His purposes.

Preaching, SermonAdam KoontzNovember 23, 2021Preaching, Pastoral Practice, Rhetoric, LCMS Comments

Jesus Is a Friend of Yours

Here within His Church all your sins are freely and fully forgiven. Here you are safe, and here you are loved by God Himself in the Flesh. Here you are fed with the good Fruits of His Cross. Here you are given the Life of your dear Lord Jesus Christ. And though you do not yet see Him, what is now revealed to you by the Gospel, under the Cross, shall be openly revealed in the Glory of His Resurrection at the last, when your faith and life in Christ Jesus will be shown to be more precious than gold. As it was for St. Simon and St. Jude and all the Holy Apostles, so it is for you and all the friends of Jesus, and so shall it be for you and all the faithful, forever and forevermore.

Saints, Sermon, Sanctoral Calendar, Feasts & FestivalsRick StuckwischOctober 28, 2021St. Simon & St. Jude the Apostles, sermonComment

Fulfilled is All That Moses Told in Sure Prophetic Song of Old

What the Prophet Moses once saw from afar, from the cleft of the Rock on Mt. Sinai and from the heights of Mt. Nebo outside the Promised Land, he has rejoiced to see fulfilled in the One of whom he wrote and testified. On the Mountain of Transfiguration he spoke with Him concerning that great Exodus which the Lord Jesus was about to undergo and accomplish in Jerusalem. [So has He] opened the way through death into life. He has opened the Kingdom of heaven to all who believe and are baptized into Him.

As Moses carefully constructed the Tabernacle according to the sacred pattern that the Lord God showed to him, so has the true Image and Likeness of God been manifested in the Incarnate Son, Christ Jesus, who is the radiance of His Father’s Glory and the exact representation of His Nature, who upholds all things by the Word of His power. In Him, who has become Flesh and tabernacles with us, all the fullness of God dwells bodily.

Sermon, Sanctoral CalendarRick StuckwischSeptember 4, 2021Moses, Commemoration, Christ Jesus, Old TestamentComment

Thoughts on Trinity 13

A lawyer, desiring to justify himself, asked our Lord, “And who is my neighbor.” And our Lord, desiring to justify the lawyer, flipped the question around and asked him, “Which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”

Historic Lectionary, Preaching, SermonJason BraatenAugust 23, 2021Trinity 13 Comment

Thoughts on Trinity 12

To go along with the new podcast episodes on sermon preparation, I’ve put together some notes (some from my own hand and some from one of Petersen’s sermons on the text) for Trinity 12. Use some, all, or none of it. But maybe it will just get the sermon writing juices flowing.

These Are the Ones Who Follow the Lamb

Out of Egypt the God and Father of our dear Lord Jesus Christ calls you to be His own dear child. He calls you through the waters of Holy Baptism into the Resurrection and the Life everlasting. He opens your mouth to show forth His praise in both life and death, by placing on your tongue and on your lips the “new song” of the Cross. So are you called to follow the Lamb wherever He goes, and so do you follow Him through suffering and death into the Promised Land of heaven.

Saints, SermonRick StuckwischDecember 28, 2020sermon, Feasts & Festivals, The Holy InnocentsComment

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