St. Paul's Lockport Sermons

Why not be a hypocrite when you fast? Of course, no one wants to be known as a hypocrite, but Jesus doesn’t give instructions about hypocrisy for everything. Matthew speaks about hypocrisy in prayer, fasting, and judging others without your own repentance. The pharises are often called hypocrites for this kind of judgment. Jesus says they outwardly want to be seen as keeping the law but break it i...

Jesus tells a parable of the sower who sows one seed in four different places. Only in the good soil does the seed grow into a plant that yields a harvest, but in the good soil it yields a great harvest. In the other soils, the plant dies, or does not grow at all. As Jesus says, the seed is the word of God. It does not change, the same message of repentance and faith is broadcast to all. All peopl...

Jesus Christ has given you good work to do, and all by grace. While you did not deserve to do anything but idle without any meaning, He has brought you into his vineyard to work, to do something that really eternally matters.

Jesus is made manifest in His Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is the final Epiphany on the final Sunday of the Epiphany season. Peter, James, and John, led to the top of the high mountain, see Jesus in His glory as the Son of God. His face shines like the sun and his clothes become as white as the light. Though Jesus is often portrayed in paintings with a sort of angelic look, there would hav...

Faith is trust in Jesus, and you should be careful not to hear this passage outside of faith. Outside of faith, the eyes are the ruler. The eyes say, I see everything is good and fine in my life, therefore God loves me, or, I see terrible storms and problems in my life, therefore there is no God, or He doesn’t care for me. If you look at Jesus calming the storm outside of faith, you would think it...

In football, a long pass to the endzone, usually end of the game is called a “hail Mary” or sometimes “throwing up a prayer.” The idea is that of taking one last shot to win, looking more to providence or luck than skill or strategy. Of course, rarely is such a play done at the beginning of the game, when the coaches rely on their skill of their players and play calling, and no team would throw a...

The miracle of the water into wine may be one of Jesus’ strangest miracles. It is completely unnecessary for Jesus to do. This isn’t Jesus cleansing a leper who has been suffering his entire life, or bringing sight to the blind, or raising a dead daughter. If the wine had run out and they were unable to get more for the wedding, nothing much would have been lost. It’s extravagant. It’s unnecessary...

JESUS comes to John in the wilderness to be baptized by him. John refuses. He has been giving a baptism for repentance of sins. John knows that Jesus has no sins to repent of. John knows that Jesus has no reason to be washed clean. Jesus is already clean. In comparison, John is the one who is sinful and unclean. They should switch places. Yet Jesus answers him, “Let it be so now, for this it is fi...

Has God forgotten us? The Magi’s visit to the Christ child is great with their expensive gifts, but it means that now Jesus, the true King of the Jews, has come under jealous Herod’s radar. It seems every time things are going well Satan comes to throw up a brick wall. Is this all for nothing, the travel, the manger, the shepherds, the Magi? Will Joseph and Mary’s family end so soon?

Tonight’s sermon, is the last sermon you will probably hear in the year of our Lord 2021, as tomorrow begins the year of our Lord 2022. That is what A.D. means on our calendar, the Year of Our Lord. For these are the years after the coming of Christ, when God became man and dwelt among us. Secularists may try to erase the religious aspect of our years by calling them C.E., or Common Era, instead o...

The problem when we read a great martyrdom account like that of St. Stephen, is that we think we cannot relate, as we have never been persecuted for our faith. Our lives can seem petty and insignificant in comparison. This not true, persecution is not just the glorious death by stoning of St. Stephen or a Bible smuggler imprisoned by communists. Persecution is a spectrum, it is a wide array of att...

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This creation of God in the very beginning, God’s absolute creation from nothing, was formless, empty, and dark. It was uninhabitable by anything – plant, animal, angel or man. The human mind cannot comprehend the first undifferentiated creation, without distinction of matter or energy. Yet God was there, and the Spirit of God hovered over th...

After 400 years of silence, 400 years of no words from the prophets, the Savior is here, Christ the Lord. This Christ was foretold from the very beginning, the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head, the Son of David who would sit on the throne forever, the Ruler who would come from Bethlehem. This King is Son of God and born of Mary, both God and man, but He does not come into the w...

In modern American Christianity, a testimony is often what one person tells another person, usually a friend or acquaintance, about what God has done for them. Sometimes it can be a long story about how they lived a riotous and dissolute life as a younger person and now have come to a moral life of faith in Jesus. Sometimes these can be self-serving and more about the person than about Jesus. If y...

Who is a God like you? As we hear the final sermon this Advent season from the prophet Micah, we end with Micah’s statement, who is a God like you? He is the God who forgives sin of those who repent and trust in Him.

Rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice! So begins the introit today on the third Sunday of Advent, known as Gaudete – or, Rejoice! All you blind, rejoice, for you will see! All you lame rejoice, for you will walk! All you sick rejoice, for you will be cleansed! All you deaf rejoice, for you will hear! All you dead rejoice, for you will be raised! All you poor rejoice, for yo...

Why Bethlehem? Of course, you’ve heard the Christmas songs, you’ve heard of Bethlehem, the place where Jesus is born. What is so special about Bethlehem? Well, outwardly, it’s about as special as Tampico, Illinois. It’s a town so small that it wasn’t even worth mentioning when the cities were given out to the tribes of Israel as they entered the promised land. Like, Tampico, the birthplace of Rona...

You heard last week that Advent is not only about the coming of Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem, but the coming of the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom came when Jesus was born, comes to you now through Word and Sacrament, and will come fully when Jesus returns. It should be no surprise then that while our church is now festively decorated, thank you Hannah Guild, we hear Jesus speak about the end of...

At a time about 250 years after Solomon and 700 years before Christ, the people of God are divided into two kingdoms – Israel and Judah. While Judah has Jerusalem, the temple, and thus the place of true worship of God, Israel has made idols of golden calves to worship God by their own devising. This could lead one to believe by appearances that Israel is bad, while Judah is good. If you have read...

Happy New Year! Today begins a new church year. It is the first Sunday of Advent. The world looks at this as the Christmas season, but for the church, that starts on Christmas day. Advent means “coming” and one of the “comings” the church looks forward to is the advent of Jesus Christ being born in the manger at Bethlehem. There is certainly nothing wrong with starting to put up decorations now an...

Four hundred years ago this year the Pilgrims at Plymouth colony held their harvest feast which came to be known as the first Thanksgiving. With the help of the local Indians, their settlement began to thrive, and their shared their bounty with their native friends. Yet this happened only after the hard winter of 1620-21, when half of the settlers died. Despite terrible hardship, these Pilgrims pe...

“Wake, awake for night is flying!” the watchmen on the heights are crying, “Awake, Jerusalem arise!” Wake, and be watchful, for the bridegroom is coming! Get ready! This is what Jesus’ parable tells you today. Jesus is coming soon, and all those who are ready will enter with him into the feast, into eternal life. Yet those who are not ready will be shut out as Jesus says, “I never knew you.”

When Jesus, the Son of Man, returns in glory at the end of time there will be a final judgment of all the nations. The dead will rise and everyone who has ever lived will be separated as sheep from the goats. Those sheep on his right will go to eternal life, and those goats on his left will be sent to eternal punishment. For both, the judgment is eternal, there is no appeal and no parole. There is...

Today we remember all those who have died in Christ and passed from this valley of sorrow into the arms of their savior.

What would you do to help a friend? What lengths would you go to for a loved one if you knew you could help them? In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is teaching and healing in the city of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. He has just returned from the other side of the sea, where people told him to leave when he healed two demon-possessed men by driving the demons into a herd of pigs which ran off a c...