St. Matthew Lutheran Church

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 17, 2021

“The Wealth You Leave and the Wealth You Receive” (Mark 10:23-31)

Today Jesus speaks to us about wealth. He speaks of the wealth you need to leave in order to enter the kingdom of God. And he speaks of the wealth you receive when you do enter. And so our theme this morning: “The Wealth You Leave and the Wealth You Receive.”

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Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 5, 2021

“Jesus Speaks His ‘Ephphatha’ to Us” (Mark 7:31-37)

In the Holy Gospel for today from Mark 7, people bring to Jesus a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. Jesus says to him, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.” And, sure enough, the man’s ears are opened, his tongue is loosed, and he speaks plainly.

Now what you’ll often get in sermons based on this text is something like this: “Friends, our ears are deaf to God’s Word, and our tongues fail to speak plainly the good news to our neighbors. We need Jesus to speak his ‘Ephphatha’ to us and open our ears and loose our tongues.” In other words, the preacher just spiritualizes the text and basically ignores the physical healing.

We ought not to do that. The physical healing itself is important. Oh, we can get to a spiritual application also, but we shouldn’t skip over the actual healing of the man’s hearing and speaking. And we won’t. Today we’ll see how Jesus heals us both physically and spiritually, under the theme: “Jesus Speaks His ‘Ephphatha’ to Us.”

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Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 20, 2021

“A Great Storm, a Great Calm, a Great Fear” (Mark 4:35-41)

Our text is the Holy Gospel for today, from Mark 4, the story of Jesus stilling a storm. It’s only seven verses long, but this story will take us from a great storm to a great calm to–perhaps surprisingly–a great fear. So let’s get in the boat now with Jesus and his disciples, under the theme, “A Great Storm, a Great Calm, a Great Fear.”

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Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 6, 2021

“Binding the Strong Man, Plundering His House” (Mark 3:20-35)

When you were baptized, what did you get? Yeah, you got wet, sure. You had water poured on your head. But I mean, when you were baptized, what did you get, in the sense of what did you acquire? I’ll tell you what you acquired: You got an enemy for life. Did you know that? That when you were baptized, you gained a strong and powerful enemy who’s out to get you! You did! And his name is Satan, the devil. He is the “old evil foe” who “now means deadly woe.” He is your arch-enemy. He wants to destroy your faith, destroy you, and take you down to hell with him. And he is very strong.

Satan. The devil. We minimize his threat at our peril. But the Bible certainly does not. And Jesus does not dismiss the reality of Satan and the damage that he does to people. Jesus compares Satan to a “strong man” who has a bunch of goods stored in his house that he doesn’t want to let go of. Satan is strong; he’s hard to overcome. But the good news is that there is someone stronger, someone able to overcome the strong man. And his name is Jesus. For Jesus came “Binding the Strong Man, Plundering His House.”

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