Sermons and More from Saint Peter's Lutheran Church in Door County

Sermons and More from Saint Peter's Lutheran Church in Door County
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Sermons, Bible Studies, and other audio media from Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County, Wisconsin. Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County is located in the village of Forestville, Wisconsin. We are a congregation of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. We are a confessional and liturgical congregation. Saint Peter’s is located at 316 W. Main Street, Forestville, WI 54213. Phone: 920-856-6420. Email: info@doorcounty.church. Website: https://doorcounty.church. We welcome listener comments, questions, and feedback.

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    Shining with the Light of Christ [Sermon]

    Sermon Title: Shining with the Light of Christ [Sermon] Sermon Text: Philippians 2:1–4, 14–18 Sermon Summary: The masses can be massively wrong, following the devil toward ruin. God calls us individually to repentance under His law, redeems us in Christ, and sends us to shine as lights in a crooked generation. Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson Liturgical Date: Pentecost 18, Proper 21 A Calendar Date: 2026-09-27 Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI: TRANSCRIPT In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we heard from St. Paul these words: “Be children of God, without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.” And we are going to be talking about shining with the light of Christ in our sermon today. So I’m sure many of you have heard the legend of the lemmings, right? What’s the legend of the lemmings? Up in places like Norway and Sweden, there are these little animals. They’re maybe like a hamster or a gerbil or something like this, very similar, a little creature. And the legend of the lemmings is that, once a year, they all go and jump off a cliff into the sea. That’s not exactly right, although that is a legend. We’ll talk about how that became famous. But it’s based on something that does happen. So pretty often these lemmings will have these big, huge mass migrations, where just huge numbers of them will just pick up and all together start running across the landscape to some other place. And as they run across that landscape, they can do things which seem to be rather ridiculous, run straight headlong into a river or a stream or something of this nature. And that’s the basis of the legend of the lemmings running off of a cliff. But how did that idea become so popular? Of course, it was Disney. Back in the fifties, Disney produced a movie in which they showed, in real life, a bunch of lemmings running off of a cliff. And so that’s the source for why maybe your parents said, “Would you just run off a cliff like a lemming?” Meaning, are you just gonna follow the masses and the crowds and just do whatever they do because they’re doing it? But interestingly enough, knowing that background to the story helps us to see really what’s behind the masses of people in their confusion. So how did Disney get those lemmings to run off a cliff? They hired a lemming wrangler. And the lemming wrangler’s job was to feed those lemmings, raise those lemmings. I imagine that those lemmings really thought the lemming wrangler was a great guy, right? Whenever he showed up, they got fed, and he had to make them reproduce until he had this nice big, large mass of lemmings. And then one day, this individual who you think is so great and taking care of all your needs and whatever, drives you out to what seems like a really nice environment, right? You had been maybe housed in a barn somewhere in Norway, but now he took you out to this beautiful field, and he starts shooing you in the direction he wants you to go. You think this is the right way to go because my lemming wrangler is telling me where to go. And all of a sudden you start running with your fellow lemmings straight off a cliff. This was before those times, the times now where you see the things like “no animals were harmed in the making of this video.” That didn’t exist in the 1950s. It’s a great illustration, I think, for what happens to the masses of people around us. Because even as people collectively come to various moral positions which are contrary to the word of God, which will ultimately lead them to running off the cliff, the way that people come to various spiritual ideas which have an even worse consequence, running off the cliff to perdition—well, there’s someone behind that, the devil himself. And when God snatches us out of that by means of our calling, our election, our sanctification, so that we come to trust in His Word and trust in His grace and mercy, He’s snatching us away from this great mass of people and from the one who seeks to do us in. Praise be to God for that. That’s really at the heart of our message today. ‘Cause as we shine like lights, this is a call to live as Christians, to believe as Christians, and that’s always going to look different than the mass of people around us. And praise be to God for this. We’re gonna talk about this in our three points. First of all, we are going to talk about the point that the mass can be massively wrong. Second of all, we’re going to talk about that repentance is a matter of understanding that we as individuals stand under God’s law. So we as individuals stand under God’s law and we’ll be judged individually. Then finally, praise be to God, the Lord redeems us individually so that in turn, while we shine collectively as lights with our fellow Christians, yet this will be distinct and different than the rest of the world. The Mass Can Be Massively Wrong There’s another story from the 1950s that I’d like to tell you that helps you to see how the mass can be massively wrong. Most people, when they try to understand what’s good, what is right, or what is true, normally what they will do is they will look around at the people around them, and as long as their customs and practices and beliefs look within range of similarity of the people around them, they think that they’re at least right, or in the range of being right. And that’s the instinct that most people have, but that’s an instinct that can lead to really mass delusion. And there are documented examples of mass delusion. I think it was 1954, there was something called the Seattle Windshield Mass Delusion. What was the Seattle Windshield Mass Delusion? Basically, one night a police officer was walking around Seattle, and Seattle is a place where there’s a lot of houses close together—most people don’t have garages—and so the cars were sitting out in the driveways, and the lights are shining down and made it easier to see the surface of the windshields. And he noticed something. In so many of the windshields on the beat that he was walking, so many of these windshields had divots and pockmarks in them. It seemed like every other windshield had a divot or a pockmark in it. He went and he reported that to the newspaper. The newspaper picked up that story. They published it. What did everybody do as soon as they opened the newspaper? They went out and inspected their own windshields. Guess what they found? Divots. Pockmarks. “Something’s gotta be causing this,” people thought. And there were all kinds of theories. Some people theorized that gangs of young ruffians were going around with BB guns to put pockmarks in people’s windshields. And so people would stay up late trying to catch these young ne’er-do-wells, and cops began being on the lookout for these bands of boys causing all these problems. Other people thought that it was because there was nuclear fallout coming down and landing on the windshields and causing these pockmarks, so people began to panic that maybe there’s nuclear fallout falling on Seattle. And so people started going around with Geiger counters. There was a guy on the police force, and I’m guessing he was probably one of the least popular guys on the police force, right? ‘Cause he’s one of those contrarian guys. He didn’t go along with the crowds and the rest of his police officers looking for these ne’er-do-wells. He thought maybe there’s something else going on here. You know that guy. When you say something and everybody agrees on it, it’s, really? Usually not a very popular guy. And so what he decided to do when his beat came up, he wasn’t gonna walk around the driveways. He decided to go check out the new car lots. And guess what? No pock marks on the windshields of the new cars. What everybody had noticed and began thinking was some sort of massive conspiracy was just the normal wear and tear on an average car with probably less advanced glass technology than we have now. It’s as if everybody would’ve gotten panicked over the northern Wisconsin rust epidemic on cars. It just happens, right? It doesn’t mean people are going around putting rust on your cars. It just happens. It’s one of the most well-documented cases of mass delusion. And there are many examples of mass delusions, many examples of mass psychosis. There have been documented examples of entire countries of young women having a laughing epidemic. There are examples of werewolf panics in medieval Europe. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the masses around us can be and often are massively wrong. Paul saw this. What did he call the masses of people around him? A crooked and twisted generation. What about Ezekiel? Ezekiel looked around him and found a generation that too was massively wrong. It was the saying that he quoted, a saying that seemed to have been common in his age, that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and their children had their teeth set on edge. Evidently, it seemed like many in his generation were blaming their problems on the generations that had come before. Instead of honoring father and mother, they disregarded and disdained father and mother. Instead of taking personal accountability for the problems of their household and for the problems of their city and their nation, they blamed the ones who had come before them. That wasn’t the only problem that Ezekiel called out. Ezekiel also called attention to the sexual immorality of the people around him. And in addition to this, Ezekiel also focused in on the idolatry of his generation, of the people who ought to have been God’s people. They were practicing syncretism. Maybe they hadn

  2. Sep 22

    Daily Repentance [Sermon]

    Sermon Title: Daily Repentance [Sermon] Sermon Text: Isaiah 55:6-9 Sermon Summary: The proper time for repentance is today, not years past or some future date. God invites us to daily confess our sins and covers us with the robe of Christ’s righteousness. Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson Liturgical Date: Pentecost 17, Proper 20 A Calendar Date: 2026-09-20 Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church, 316 W. Main St., Forestville, WI 54213. 920-856-6420. Saint Peter’s serves Sister Bay and other area throughout Northeast Wisconsin. The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI: TRANSCRIPT In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. You may be seated. Today we heard from the prophet Isaiah, “Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him, and to our God for He will abundantly pardon.” And on the basis of this passage, we’re going to be taking up the theme that the proper time for repentance is today. Not sometime off in the future, not far off years ago, but rather instead today. A Pickup Truck Full of Rust Back in college, as many of you know, I had my dirt bag white water rafting guide days. And one summer I was getting ready and making the preparations for when I’d be guiding out west in Colorado. The place where I was gonna be guiding out west didn’t have a bunk house for the guides, and so we had to kind of provide our own arrangements for sleeping. And so I went and I looked around the community and I found a Dodge D-100, a 1989 Dodge D-100. You know, this is just before they transitioned to that more rounded body. It was still the boxy body, classic look. But what really set this pickup truck apart from just about any other that I could find, it had an eight-foot long bed. And for a six-foot long guy, that was the perfect size for me to live out of the back end for a summer, and that was my plan. I was literally going to use the bed of the pickup truck as a bed. Now, I ended up not needing it there. I found a literally one-room shack with no electric and no water that I lived in for the summer. So a bit of an upgrade over what I was looking to. But anyways, I still had this pickup truck. And as I was driving out west to Colorado from where I went to school in Indiana, I drove through Topeka, Kansas, where my granddad, a jack-of-all-trades farmer, lived. And my granddad saw the pickup truck and about lost his mind ’cause it was full of rust. He couldn’t stand the sight of that rust. And so he took me into his shop, handed me an angle grinder, and started showing me everywhere he wanted me to knock the rust off that vehicle, on the bumper, on the doors. And on the doors after I knocked that rust off the vehicle, he gave me a can of white primer, and he said, “Okay, go ahead and put this primer over it. Unfortunately, the day is getting short and I don’t have any top coat, but when you get out to Colorado, make sure you buy some top coat.” So across the country I go, out to Colorado in my baby blue pickup truck with white spots on the doors there. It looked like I was driving the sky there, like clouds in the sky. Off I went out west and, you know, I had a good intention. Yeah, when I get there, I will go ahead and buy that top coat. Friends, do you think I ever bought that top coat and painted over those white primer spots on my doors? No. It stayed that way for a few years until I finally sold it, and what was absolutely predictable happened, right? Eventually, the rust stains started showing through again, and eventually, well, I had big old holes in my doors. The Corrosion of Sin I’m here to tell you that we have a corrosion far more serious than rust on the side of a door. And that corrosion that we all have is the corrosion, the corruption of sin. And on the one hand, we might be like 21-year-old Chris Jackson and say, “You know, I’m gonna take care of that at some point in the future.” The fact of the matter is that the time to address that corruption, that corrosion of sin, it’s not at some ambiguous point in the future, but instead it is now. And that is the point that Isaiah was making to the people of God in Jerusalem about 2,700 years ago. Isaiah was telling the people of Jerusalem this: Now is the time to repent. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. What Isaiah was saying is this: You may think, people of Israel, that you have time to lay aside your sin. You may think that you have time to get rid of all those idols that you are hiding or maybe not even hiding but rather instead putting in full sight on your rooftops. You may think you have time for that. And you may think that you have time to reform your business practices by which you defraud one another. Instead of using your business to serve one another, instead you are using it to defraud one another. You have time to reform those practices, but the time is now. You don’t know about the future. The Day to Repent Is Now And brothers and sisters in Christ, that is a message as pertinent today as when it was first preached by Isaiah so many thousands of years ago. And that’s a message that we as well need to hear. Oh, we may think that we have time to lay aside whatever our besetting sins are. Maybe this is the abuse of alcohol. Maybe this is lust. Maybe this is greed. Whatever it is, we may think that we have time, but the fact of the matter is that the Lord has not guaranteed the next day, let alone the next breath. This was driven home recently to me and my family. Right now she didn’t end up going, but right now my wife’s classmates from high school are celebrating their 20th anniversary of their graduation with a reunion. And an email went out pointing out the fact that of her class 20 years ago, these are people still in their 40s mind you, but of their class 20 years ago, 30 people in her class have already passed away. And as a 46-year-old man, I look around and it seems like every other day I hear about a guy my age that’s drawing his last breath. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the day to repent is now. Not far off at some future date. But rather, God calls each of us to daily confess our sins. We’re gonna talk about that a little bit more in a minute. To daily confess our sins, and God, who is faithful and just, will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In other words, if we confess our sins, God will in fact remove that rust from us far better than I could with that angle grinder, and God will cover us over with something better than an automotive top coat. But instead, He will cover us with the robe of Christ’s righteousness. A righteousness which he earned for us through a holy life that he lived for our sakes, and an atoning death that he died for our sins. It Is Never Too Late to Repent Now on the other hand, there may be some of us present who know that their days maybe are a little bit more numbered than others, but who think that the opportunity for repentance has far passed. Maybe the years have grown long and the sunset is in view. And we look back upon our lives, and all of a sudden we understand how we have failed to do as God has commanded, and we think that maybe there is not time to get right with God, and that time has passed. And to this we have this beautiful parable that the Lord Jesus Christ preached. The parable of the master of the vineyard, this generous master who gives to all of his workers equally, whether they came in the cool of the morning or as the day was waning, he gives to each of them the same reward. And so it is with our God. Whether we have come to Christ as an infant, as Leighton was just baptized, or whether we come to Christ at late age, God’s grace and mercy remains the same. And it is able to cover over all of our sins. And so my message for you is this, is that repentance is not something that we ought to have done far back years ago, nor is repentance something that we can delay for some future date, but rather instead, the proper moment of repentance is right now. And this applies for each and every one of us. A Life of Daily Repentance I’d like for you to open up your hymnals to page 325. Page 325. So this is the Small Catechism, which, in a great blessing, is included in our hymnals, and on page 325 we have the Small Catechism’s discussion of the sacrament of holy baptism. And on the right-hand column, down towards the middle of the column, there’s the fourth part of the teachings regarding the sacrament of holy baptism. And it asks this question, “What does such baptizing with water indicate?” I’d like for you all to read the answer along with me. “It indicates that the old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” This is a beautiful representation of the Lutheran teaching regarding repentance. There are some Christians who teach that repentance is maybe a one-time occasion in your life, or maybe something if you backslide that maybe you do a few times, or maybe even once a year when the revival season comes around. For those who have this viewpoint, repentance is an infrequent activity. There are other Christians who maybe believe that repentance is a little bit more frequent. Maybe repentance is something that you do every few months or every m

  3. Sep 15

    The Power to Forgive [Sermon]

    Sermon Title: The Power to Forgive [Sermon] Sermon Text: Matthew 18:21-34 Sermon Summary: Forgiveness is not a power that lies in us but a gift God bestows through the gospel. He transforms our hearts so we can forgive from the heart, as Jesus commands, and receive the blessings that ripple out to others. Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson Liturgical Date: Pentecost 16 Proper 19 A Calendar Date: 2026-09-13 Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church, E5221 Church Road, Forestville, WI 54213. 920-856-6420. The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI: TRANSCRIPT In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Back when I was Sunday school aged, at the age of five years old, my dad, for whom the faith was a very important thing to him, asked me a question. He said, “Christopher, what did Jesus do for you?” And I answered him, “Jesus died to take away my sins.” And oh, my dad was so proud. You know, the buttons on his shirt burst and he was so happy that his son knew that essential fact of the gospel. And then I turned right around and said, “Jesus should give them back.” Little five-year-old Chris Jackson couldn’t comprehend forgiveness. Couldn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense to him, right? So if someone wanted to take something from me, it was probably something that I wanted, right? If my little brother wanted to take my He-Man figurine from me, it’s because that He-Man figurine was super cool, and he wanted it. If my parents would take something from me, you know, maybe I had found my dad’s screwdriver and was playing with that, and my parents took that away from me, that was something good that I kinda wanted, but they didn’t want me to have, right? It was totally incomprehensible to me, and actually it is incomprehensible that someone would want to take something that is worthless from you. And more than worthless, something that could actually hurt you and harm you. The point that I’m getting at is this: that the forgiveness of God, his grace and mercy, is something that the mind cannot comprehend. Something Bigger Than Us It goes beyond our understanding. And praise be to God for this, that because it is something that goes beyond our understanding, it is therefore something that we can trust in, something bigger than us, something that we can have faith in. And the grace and mercy of God is not something that we receive by means of the mind, but rather it’s something that we receive by means of the heart as we trust in him, right? That has everything to do with what we are going to be talking about today. Because today we saw Jesus asking us to do something which seems incomprehensible. Something that there’s no way we can accomplish it, and that’s the point. That forgiveness is not a power that lies in us, but instead it is a power of God. And it is a power that He bestows upon the Christian as we receive His grace, as we receive His mercy, as we receive His forgiveness. God empowers us to do that which seems incomprehensible. That’s the third theme of our sermon today, the power to forgive. The Power to Forgive Because truth be told, what God asks us to do here seems beyond us. It certainly seemed beyond Peter, right? Peter came up and said to Jesus, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” And Peter thought that that in itself would be a fairly generous thing to do. But Jesus blows that out of the water, says, “No, I tell you, not seven times, but 70 times seven.” And Jesus even goes beyond this. Because Jesus qualifies what this forgiveness ought to look like. And this is not just an external kind of maintaining appearances. It’s not just being polite to the individual that you feel has wronged you. It’s much deeper than that. Jesus, at the end of our reading today: “And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers,” the unforgiving servant, right? “Until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” Oh, Jesus. Why did you have to add those last three words there, from your heart? Because, you know, I can make a good effort at doing things externally, right? I can seem to keep the commands at least in an external way. I can keep up pretenses well enough. From the heart, that’s a different matter. God Demands Purity of the Heart I mean, God demands purity of the heart. That’s why I find the ninth and 10th commandments to be the hardest commandments, right? Thou shalt not murder. And certainly, you know, I have not taken an innocent man’s blood with my hands, but according to the ninth commandment, you shall not covet, which have to do with our heart. Jesus says, “Look, even if you have hatred in your heart against your brother, you are a murderer.” And He does this with all the other commandments, by the way. The fact of the matter is that God sees our hearts and cares about our hearts, even in a sense, even more than the external actions. And those external actions themselves can be hard to control. I mean, just yesterday, I obviously would like to shed a few pounds. But just yesterday I spent multiple hours cleaning up the toilet paper that showed up in my yard again, because I’ve got high schoolers, got a few more years to deal with that issue. Okay? So I’m out there cleaning up the toilet paper. We’re still not done, but we’re making headway against it here. I’m out there cleaning it up for hours in the morning and into the afternoon, and I even took a late lunch just to kinda keep on working. Finally, I come in, and it was kind of a hot, muggy day yesterday. And, you know, I fixed my lunch, and I take my dish over to the sink, and right next to the sink is the refrigerator with that freezer underneath. And in that freezer was some nice creamy vanilla ice cream. And I knew I shouldn’t, but after that hot morning and afternoon, I knew that would taste so good. And so, yeah, I scooped myself a little bit of ice cream there yesterday afternoon. What am I getting at? We can do a halfway decent job at putting on the external show. But even there, it’s easy for us to crack, and it’s hard for us to control ourselves externally. And certainly when it comes to forgiveness, we might be able, as I said, keep up those pretenses, be polite, be at least neutral. Lord, I have a hard enough time controlling my hands when it comes to the freezer. How can I control my heart? And that’s the point, brothers and sisters: that when it comes to the demand of God to forgive the brother from the heart, something that goes beyond the way the secular gurus talk about forgiveness. I mean, you can hear secular people talking about forgiveness, but it’s all about, like, mentally moving on and, you know, getting freedom from that. But Christian forgiveness is different. Christian forgiveness isn’t just about the psyche, it’s about the heart. And it is not just about what you can gain from forgiveness, although there is much to gain from it, but it’s also about the love that the Lord desires for you to pour out for the neighbor. And that, my friends, is not something that you can accomplish for yourself. That is something that can only happen by the power of God. Solemn Warnings And the Lord has given us many blessings unto that end. First of all, the Lord has given us solemn warnings in the holy scriptures about the danger of unforgiveness, and those warnings can be hard to hear, and yet they are necessary for us to hear, and it is good for us to hear those warnings. We heard one of those warnings this morning. “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” We have another warning that is so important that the Lord incorporated it in the prayer that he taught us to pray. “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And those are some very hard words to pray and to read. They’re a good reminder to us about the danger that comes alongside a lack of forgiveness. You see, if we harden our hearts against our neighbor, then we may run the risk of hardening them to a place of total hardness against our neighbor’s creator, God himself. And if our hearts are hard against our neighbors so that we do not forgive, then they may become so hardened that we do not receive the forgiveness that the Lord desires to give us, a forgiveness that we can only receive by means of faith, hearts that look to God in trust. It’s a stern warning, but it’s a good warning that we must hear and heed. The Lord also empowers us unto forgiveness by means of putting before our eyes the blessings that come along with forgiveness. Blessings for ourselves, blessings for others as well. The Example of Joseph We have a beautiful example of this in the example of Joseph. Right? Now, his brothers sought a measure of forgiveness from Joseph, but it was just a measure of it. They thought, “Look, because of what we did to Joseph, perhaps he will have us put to death. In fact, he probably will. So let’s do this instead. Let’s concoct this story about our father, and then in addition to that, we will offer ourselves up to him as slaves.” So the idea is Joseph could have us killed. Probably the best that we could ask for is to be his slaves instead. And so therefore, they come into his courtroom. They throw themselves down at his feet. They beg him to make them their slaves. But the forgiveness that Joseph had was such an incredible forgiveness that instead of letting them sit there groveling face to foot, he lifts them up so that they can look to him eye to eye. And he welcomes them into his palace, and he sets a feast before them, and he eats

  4. Sep 8

    Worldly Sacrifice for the Sake of Christ

    Sermon Title: Worldly Sacrifice for the Sake of Christ Sermon Text: Mathew 16:21-28 Sermon Summary: Worldly sacrifices are not sacrifices at all. Giving up our sins is pure gain, and even good things we lay aside are exchanged for the gospel and the gift of eternal life. Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson Liturgical Date: Pentecost 14, Proper 17 A Calendar Date: 2026-08-30 Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church serves Ephraim and other areas in Northeastern Wisconsin. The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI: TRANSCRIPT In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And on the basis of this, we’re going to be talking about the theme that worldly sacrifices aren’t sacrifices at all. I have stared directly into the eyes of evil, evil incarnate. Black eyes, just as black as night. And around the eye it was a face full of hair, shaggy hair, and that shaggy hair went all down its body. The face of evil that I stared into stood about two and a half feet off the ground. His name was McGregor. He was a Portuguese water dog. He was the dog that Mary and I first owned when we first got married. And we had to get rid of him. He was a threat to our family. He developed these very strong opinions about a few things, and if you went against that opinion the teeth would start to flash, and the voice would start to snarl, and we just could not have this creature in our home. It was very scary and certainly when you had little kids in the house, just completely not something that we needed at all. So we ended up getting rid of him. But here’s the thing, it took us far longer than it probably should have to get rid of him. And it was maybe a little bit sad when we got rid of him. We certainly liked him in some ways, even though he was categorically evil. And isn’t this just like our sins, brothers and sisters in Christ? Amen. Which while they do much harm to us, they do much harm to others, yet we cling so closely to them. But with these words, Jesus invites us to lay aside our sins, to, as the theologians say, crucify the mortal flesh or to mortify the flesh. And that’s part of what we’re going to be talking about today. We’re going to be talking about the fact that simply giving up the evil things of this world, it’s pure gain. Even the good things that Christ our Lord asks us to sacrifice, we sacrifice those good things for the sake of better things. And of all those better things that the Lord grants us, eternal life is chief among them. Giving Up the Evil Things of This World Is Pure Gain Let’s think on that first point. Simply giving up the evil things of this world is pure gain. Back to that dog McGregor, certainly there were some things that we enjoyed about him. He brought certain pleasures. I remember one of the things I really enjoyed when our kids were little and we’d walk the dog to the playground in the neighborhood, and the dog would come along, and the kids were there, and all the neighborhood kids were around there. I actually had this thing trained that he could climb up the eight-foot-tall slide and slide down that slide, and literally the entire playground of kids would—their jaws would be dropping to see this shaggy dog climbing up the slide and going down the slide. Gained a little bit of neighborhood notoriety through that. And certainly, it was fun to pet him when he was in a good mood. There were certainly some things that we enjoyed about him. Nonetheless, he was a threat to us and to our family, and isn’t this so much like our sins? The sin of bearing a grudge. The sin of holding on to bitterness. This is a sin. Let’s have no mistake about it. We pray after all, “Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We ought to forgive even as we have been forgiven. We have freely received, so also ought we to freely give, and yet it feels so good sometimes to cling to that bitterness, to cling to that grudge. What does that grudge, that bitterness let you do? It lets you put someone lower than you. It lets you look down your nose. You say, “You have done this to me, therefore you are less than me, and I have this leverage over you now.” Don’t get me wrong here. If we are wronged, yes, there can be frustration, sorrow, anger. But the nursing of a bitterness or the nursing of a grudge is holding that against somebody. And that is indeed a thing of status. That can feel good in a way. It can feel good to hold yourself up and above somebody else. And yet it’s ultimately destructive. If we hold and nurse bitterness and grudges to those around us, it cuts us off from relationship with them. There can be no relationship with others without forgiveness. And so therefore, when we nurse that bitterness, when we nurse that grudge, we cut ourselves off from the love that the Lord desires of us to give that individual and the love that the Lord desires for us to receive back from that individual. It’s destructive. Harmful. What about other sins? What about the sin of being given to drunkenness? There comes some certain worldly pleasures with that. The thrill of letting go, the freedom maybe from anxieties or cares or regrets or sorrows or whatever it is. I can give you some relief from that momentarily. But with drunkenness comes ill health. Drunkenness comes as well potentially a threat to others and to our own safety. Drunkenness maybe comes with activity that we later regret. And that too is its own kind of destruction and danger. What about the sin of lust or promiscuity? Same thing. In the moment, a thrill, but in the end, heartbreak, sorrow, destruction. When Christ invites us to take up our cross and to follow him, it’s an incredibly pregnant phrase, and I don’t want to reduce it to any one thing. But at the very least, part of what Christ is inviting us to do is to repent of our sins. To lay aside these worthless things. And that’s pure gain. When we gave up that dog, what did we gain? We gained a sense of safety. We gained a sense of relief. We got a place in our house that we could get a much better dog that you see Sunday to Sunday sitting at our porch, that we love her so much. It was pure gain. And the invitation to repent of our sins, that too is pure gain. Yes, there may be some things from a worldly perspective that are lost, but truly those things are not losses. It’s all pure gain. Laying Aside Good Things for the Sake of Better Things Now, when Christ invites us to take up our cross and follow him, on the one hand there is an invitation to lay aside the worthless things of the sinful flesh. On the other hand, there is also an invitation to take up and to receive the means by which the work of the cross comes upon us in our lives. To lay aside the good things that the Lord does give us for the sake of better things. Now, sometimes the Lord invites us to lay aside good things for the sake of better things. We can see this right exactly in this passage by the way. And we think about the context in which Jesus is saying this passage. Jesus is answering Peter, right? This is in the midst of this dialogue and this back and forth with Peter where Jesus says, “Look, the time is coming and coming soon when I’m going to travel to Jerusalem, I’m going to be rejected, I’m going to be killed, and on the third day rise.” And Peter says, “This is never going to happen to you.” And Jesus rebukes Peter, and then on the basis of that, he then goes on and says, “If anyone would be my disciple, he must take up his cross, deny himself, and follow me.” And think about this in the context of Peter. Because that call to Peter was certainly a call to lay aside what I would call objectively good things. Now, this is different from Matthew, right? Matthew was this tax collector, and we think of tax collectors today, and we think of some disinterested bureaucrat in a faraway office who makes a paltry little salary from the government and who has all kinds of laws and regulations and procedures all around what he does. This was not the case with a tax collector in the time of the Roman Empire. Roman tax collectors were businessmen. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a businessman at all, if the business is legitimate and isn’t exploitative. But that’s the thing about the way the tax business was structured. You were required as a tax collector to have a certain amount of taxes to collect and to hand over to the Romans, and one of the ways that you made money was adding a little bit for yourself on the top. And right away you can see the ability to be exploitative. And so there’s this tinge to Matthew’s background, right? Peter, it’s hard to find anything like that, right? Think about the way that Peter made his daily bread. It’s hard to think of anything more wholesome, right? He’s a fisherman, and he goes out and he toils, sometimes late into night, forgoing sleep. He toils when the sun comes up under the harsh Mediterranean sun. He’s literally earning his bread by the sweat of his brow. He’s risking his life for the sake of this. And his business is just giving food to people. It’s hard to think of anything more wholesome than that. And then on top of that, he seems to be fairly successful at what he does to some degree. He seems to own this property, which is big enough that he can play host to his mother-in-law, and he’s an established member of Capernaum there and seems to be known in the synagogue. Peter is a model of an upstanding man embedded in his community, good to his family, and who earns his way through honest, wholesome work, right? That’s not to say he wasn’t a sinner, bu

  5. Sep 8

    The Christian’s Relationship to Civil Authority

    Sermon Title: The Christian’s Relationship to Civil AuthoritySermon Text: Romans 10:1-13Sermon Summary: Civil authorities are instituted by God for our wellbeing and are to be obeyed unless they command what is contrary to his word. God also rules his people inwardly by transforming hearts through the gospel of Jesus Christ.Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. JacksonLiturgical Date: Pentecost 15, Proper 18 ACalendar Date: 2026-09-06Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County Saint Peter’s serves Sister Bay and other locations in Northeast Wisconsin. The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI: TRANSCRIPT Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we are taking up the theme that civil authority is instituted by God for our wellbeing. La tema del sermon, la autoridad civil es instituida por Dios para nuestro bien. So today we are taking up that theme on the basis of our reading from Romans chapter 13. “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” And on the basis of this we’re going to be taking up three points. First of all, that civil authorities are instituted by God. That therefore, second point, civil authorities are to be obeyed insofar as they do not require anything contrary to the word of God. But then finally we’re going to be talking about the fact that God rules in another way besides the civil authorities. Rule not of external compulsion, but rather instead a rule of the heart by means of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A rule that he exercises over his people. So let’s think of that first point. Civil Authorities Are Instituted by God Civil authorities are instituted by God, and the scriptures are absolutely 100% clear about this. It doesn’t get any more clear than Saint Paul saying, “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Now I want you to take a look at the end of verse one there in Romans chapter 13. Let me ask you a question. Do you see an asterisk? Do you see a footnote? No. You see a period. They have been instituted by God, period. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no asterisks, no footnotes. God is Lord of all, and therefore nothing happens apart from His will. And when it comes to the government, when it comes to civil authorities, it is God who has established them in their place. Now, in God’s wisdom, God does, on occasion, settle people into civil authority or groups into civil authority which are unrighteous and unholy, and go against the will of God. As Christians, we are very aware of this, and yet we understand that God has His purposes, which we may not fully understand. Think about the civil authorities in the time of St. Paul. St. Paul was very familiar with civil authorities in various ways. He, for example, was aware of the fact that the Jewish civil authorities brought Jesus forward in order for Him to be tried in front of Pontius Pilate, the Roman authority, and eventually killed. St. Paul wasn’t there, but St. Paul also knew of the fact that Pontius Pilate was an unrighteous man and had betrayed what is good and what is true. He knew that even while Pontius Pilate knew the truth that Jesus Christ had done nothing wrong, had no deserving of death in Him, yet he gave Him over to be crucified. Pontius Pilate knew this from the inside. Or rather, I should say, St. Paul knew this from the inside. St. Paul, after all, before he was converted to Jesus Christ, used the political system in order to extradite believers from Damascus, for example, from various places back to Jerusalem in order to be persecuted there. And in many ways, he was probably the right man for that job, both as a Jew and as a Roman citizen, and an educated one at that. He was able to play in both parts of that political system, and to his own evil ends. St. Paul understood that yes, there can be evil actors in civil authority, and they may do things and command things which are unrighteous, and yet St. Paul is convinced of this fact that they are all in that authority by the power of God, and their exercising of evil is contrary to the will of God, which God’s will is to bless us by means of their authority, which brings us to our second point. Civil Authorities Are to Be Obeyed Insofar as They Do Not Command Anything Contrary to the Will of God The civil authorities are to be obeyed insofar as they do not command anything contrary to the will of God. So God has established authority for a very clear purpose, that it may go well for us. We see this in His institution of authority, for example, in His discussion of authority in the fourth commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” We’ve always understood that, by the way, to, yes, talk about the authority that father and mother have, but we also understand that this applies as well to all other forms of authority on Earth. And that’s the first command with a promise. Honor your father and mother, honor authority in order that it may go well with you all the days of your life. And I’m convinced Saint Paul has this in mind in part as he discusses the civil authorities, where he says this, that “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.” And so therefore, we are called to obey civil authority externally in part so that things might go well. Things might go well for us, things might go well for those around us as well. Through civil authority come things like traffic laws, which order our traffic so that we don’t go running into each other willy-nilly. Through civil authority comes the various laws by which we’re able to hold up a contract so that we can do business one with another in ways that are predictable and expectable and are down to our mutual wellbeing. Through civil authority comes protection from all kinds of powers which would seek to undo us. Through civil authority, for example, comes protection from fire which might consume our homes if it’s not suppressed, protection from criminals who would rob us and deprive us of the things that the Lord has given us for the upkeep of our bodies and for the wellbeing of those in our households as well. And it is for this purpose in part that Saint Paul encourages Christians to be obedient to authority. And notice St. Paul doesn’t really give, once again, much of an exception. Now there are ways in which clearly Christians are not called to obey civil authority in some matters. We’ll get to that in a minute. But that’s a very high bar that is there, right? It’s a very high bar. St. Paul doesn’t say, “Obey civil authority insofar as you like the person who is in authority.” Saint Paul doesn’t say obey civil authority insofar as you agree in your personal judgments with the various laws. He says, “Obey so it might go well with you, and as well so it might go well with others.” It’s been a little concerning to me, quite frankly, that many Christians are appealing to various kinds of unscriptural things to work out for themselves various easings of conscience with regards to their relationship with the civil authorities, and with law. God’s Word will have none of it. God calls us to be obedient insofar as what we’re called to do does not expressly violate the will of God. And there’s precedent for this as Christians as well. In the time of the early church, there were things that were being commanded by the civil authority, which clearly did go contrary to the will of God. So for example, it was commanded by the civil authorities in the early Christian times, at various times and various places, to render pagan sacrifice, to sacrifice to the pagan gods, or to make an allegiance to Caesar as if he is God. He certainly claimed at times the title of the Son of God. And Christians refused to do this, and they refused to do this oftentimes to the shedding of their own blood. It’s a big reason why Christians were persecuted, were rounded up, were taken and were put in front of gladiators and wild animals in the various circuses, in the coliseums around the Mediterranean world. Christians refused to render unto Caesar what is God’s, even while they gladly rendered unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, including tax, revenue, honor, respect, and so on. And as Christians, we are called in like manner to do the same thing, to render these things to the civil authorities, but to never render to them anything that belongs to God alone. And the greatest thing that is owed to God above all is our hearts. We love the civil authorities and render them honor and respect, but we do not allow them to take a place in our hearts where only God ought to be. We do not make a God out of civil authorities, but instead we recognize that they stand under the one true God. God Rules His People by the Gospel And God rules over us therefore as Christians, yes, through civil authority, through the stick and the carrot of the law. And St. Paul talks about that, right? So he gives approval to those who do good. There is your carrot. And then he says, “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.” And there is the stick. But as Christians, we render obedience to the civil authorities for a far greater reason and a far greater purpose, not simply externally, of external compulsion, but rather out of internal desire to honor and to love God, who has established the civil authority. God rules over us Christians above all, not through the external compulsion of stick and carrot, but rather through the internal formation of the heart. God transforms our heart

  6. Aug 24

    Office of the Keys: The Heart of the Church [Sermon]

    Title: Office of the Keys: Heart of the Church [Sermon]Text: Matthew 16:19Liturgical Date: Pentecost 13, Proper 16 ACalendar Date: August 23, 2026Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. JacksonLocation: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County. 316 W. Main St., Forestville, WI 54213. 920-856-6420. Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County serves Luxemburg, Wisconsin, and other areas around Northeast Wisconsin. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we heard these words from Christ Jesus, our Lord: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” And on the basis of this passage, we’re going to be taking up the theme of the heart of the church. My Grandmother’s Home As many of you know, last weekend I was out of the pulpit here at St. Peter’s as I traveled to Greeley, Colorado for two purposes. I’ll talk about one of those purposes in a little bit. But the first purpose was to lay my beloved grandmother to rest. A lovely, fine Christian lady. Lived to the age of 98, a blessed end, and really a very beloved woman to me and to our whole family. We laid her to rest last weekend. And when I think about my grandmother, I think about many things. One of the things I think about is her home in Warsaw, Missouri. This was her retirement home with my grandfather, Hugh, who himself had been ordained into the ministry, was a pastor as well. And their retirement home there in Warsaw, Missouri, to me was a palace. It was maybe one of the greatest houses on the planet. It was just a really special place. No better place than my grandmother’s home. Now, I started to look at it in a little bit different light, however, when she was getting ready to move away from there. After my grandfather died and she wanted to move closer to my mother, her daughter in Greeley, Colorado, and she was getting it ready to sell, and I was there in my last visit to that home, looking around. Seeing with Different Eyes And the way I perceived things was a little bit different because I started looking at it not from the eyes of an adoring grandson, but rather from the eyes of a potential buyer, and what I saw was shocking to me. So I looked into the kitchen, the source of so much love from her, right? And I think the house had been built in the ’70s and, go figure, that linoleum was straight from 1974. Countertops, same deal, and cheap ones at that. Cabinets, really nothing special. Pretty cheap and crummy. Really not a nice kitchen at all. And then I went and looked at the dining room. This source of great joy as we gather around the table to eat that delicious grandmother food. And I looked down at the floor and my grandfather Hugh was a big man. I mean, he was 6’6” in his prime, muscular, and had other forms of body mass as well due to my grandmother’s good cooking. Huge man. And I looked down at the floor and I realized, oh my goodness, the place where he had scooted his chair in and out at mealtime over the years, he had worn grooves down to the subfloor, right straight through the carpeting and the padding because he was such a big man and just had put that pressure on there. Holes in the carpeting. I looked up at the ceiling. This is a Christian home, so we prayed up to the Lord, right? And I looked at the ceiling and realized popcorn ceilings from 1974, but misapplied and therefore really pretty splotchy. A lot of that popcorn had come down. And I looked at the walls and, for a few years there my grandfather was in a motorized wheelchair, and I looked at the walls about four inches up from the ground and well, he had rubbed grooves in many of the walls where the wheels of his wheelchair had hit the walls, right? Cheap doors. Just a really honest-to-goodness kind of a crummy house. And I never realized it before. I had been completely oblivious to it. Why was it a palace in my view? It’s because while the externals weren’t amazing, the internals were all correct. She had attended to the heart of the home. It was a place of love, affection, good food. It was a restful place. One of the few places on Earth where I’ve ever felt truly at ease, and above all, centered on Christ Jesus the Lord. And because of that, to me, it was a palace. Our Spiritual Home Our home, brothers and sisters in Christ, is in heaven. And that’s a palace beyond compare. And we all look forward to that and anticipate that, but until we get to heaven, the Lord has granted us a home, a spiritual home here on Earth in the Holy Christian Church and in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. And what our sermon is about today is remaining attentive to the heart of what it means to be a spiritual home here on Earth. That we remain attentive to the heart of what it means to be the church. And it’s all tied in to what you probably learned back in catechism class, the Office of the Keys. Let’s review it. I’d like for you to open up your hymnals to page 326. Open up your hymnals to page 326. The Office of the Keys On the left-hand column, about three quarters of the way down, there’s a question there: What is the Office of the Keys? I’m going to ask you to read the answer along with me. What is the Office of the Keys? The Office of the Keys is that special authority which Christ has given to His Church on earth to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, but to withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent. All right, so now the Office of the Keys actually has three primary texts that we draw it from in Scripture. In our gospel lesson, we read one of them in Matthew 16, and another very important passage which addresses the Office of the Keys is John chapter 20. Let’s read that together. Where is this written? This is what Saint John the Evangelist writes in chapter 20: “The Lord Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’” In a way, there we see the carrying out of what Christ promised in Matthew 16. Christ promised, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” Here in chapter 20, He actually does the deed and gives the disciples the keys. All right. Now let’s take a look at the final question regarding this. What do you believe according to these words? I believe that when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain—even in heaven—as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself. The Loosing Key and the Binding Key Now, when we usually think of the Office of the Keys, and it is in the Small Catechism written in the section dealing with confession and absolution, we usually associate it just with confession and absolution, but really it applies to all the means of grace. It applies to all the ways the Lord opens up the kingdom of heaven to us by means of His grace and mercy, which Christ so lavishly won for us on the cross. Through His blessed death, through His holy resurrection, Christ Jesus has opened the kingdom of heaven to us. And the Lord extends that grace to us through means, through the means of, well, we actually just sang about it in Built on the Rock, through the Word of God as it’s proclaimed, through holy baptism, through the Lord’s Supper. These are the means the Lord has given us to extend that grace and mercy, and that’s the loosing key. And that’s the key, the loosing key, to release us from our sins and from our bondage to death, and our bondage to the devil, and on the one hand to close the gates of hell to us, but on the other hand to open the doors of heaven to us. That’s the key that the church wants to exercise, and that’s the key that ultimately God wants to exercise as well. We have fancy theological terms for this, like the proper work of the church, and so on. But this is, to put a short explanation, this is what we want, right? This is what all our ministry leads up to: to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through that forgiveness. Now, on the other hand, we have the binding key. So on the right hand is the loosing key, the key of the gospel. In the other hand is the key of the law, the key by which we bind sins to those who are unrepentant. And we do this through the proclaiming of the law sometimes, unfortunately, as well through Christian discipline within the congregation. And when we boil it down, the Office of the Keys is really the one work proper to the church. It’s really the one thing that separates the church from every other organization on Earth. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that the church does or should do. We should do a lot of different things, right? Office of the Keys: What Is Proper to the Church So, and I praise God for all of these other things that the church gets involved in. For example, our sister congregation, St. John’s, last two weekends a group of men went with Lutheran Emergency Response Teams, or Early Response Teams, to help clean up after the tornadoes down in Menasha. So friends of yours that I’m sure you know, Glenn Smith, Randy Klott, and Todd Althoff rode went down to do that. Praise be to God for this. The church should be doing this. It’s an outgrowth of who we are in Christ. We who have received a heavenly home therefore are glad to serve others when it comes to their earthly homes. Praise be to God for this. But here’s the thing: you don’t need to be a part of a church to do that kind of work, right? Now, it’s good that w

  7. Aug 3

    Sermon: Spiritual Pride & Spiritual Humility

    Title: Spiritual Pride & Spiritual HumilityText: Romans 9:1–13Location: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County; 316 W. Main St., Forestville, WI 54213; 920-856-6420Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church serves Luxemburg and other areas in Northeast Wisconsin. TranscriptToday we are taking up the theme of spiritual humility, and in contrast to spiritual pride. And there’s a great story from the life of Martin Luther that I think really illustrates our true position under God. After Martin Luther perished, there were many efforts by people to make sure that his dying faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and his commitment to the doctrine of justification, remain established, that nobody could say that he recanted on his deathbed or took back anything that he had taught. And one of the most fascinating pieces of evidence they found was on a little scrap of paper. And on this little scrap of paper, some curious writing there. Writing in both German and Latin, by the way. Lutherans love to do this. They love to mix up their languages. Our cornerstone, by the way, has both German and Latin on it back from the 1800s. And on this little piece of paper was a little bit of German and Latin. The German said, “Wir sind alle Bettler.” And then the Latin said, “Hoc est vere.” What does that mean? We are all beggars, wir sind alle Bettler. It is true, hoc est vere. Today, in our Old Testament lesson, Jesus, the Word of God in his pre-incarnate state, the Word of God is inviting us to be beggars. To receive food without payment and drink without money. And that certainly is a position of spiritual humility. That’s my prayer for us today, that through this sermon we would more and more put aside spiritual pride, but instead embrace spiritual humility and receive the gifts that Christ has humbly won for us. Spiritual Pride Spiritual pride—it’s a terrible malady, and it’s one that’s incredibly common all across the church and those who claim the name of Christian. Right now, there’s a really big movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, for example. What is the New Apostolic Reformation? It’s one of the most powerful, popular spiritual movements going on in the United States of America and across the world. How powerful is it? Guess what? The leader of the White House’s faith office is an adherent to the New Apostolic Reformation. And what does it teach? It teaches that God is appointing new apostles for this time, with an authority almost bordering on the apostles that were appointed by Christ himself. Now how do you know that the Lord has appointed you an apostle, or how can you know that someone has appointed someone else to be apostle? It’s a little bit hazy to me. But certainly you must come yourself to this idea that the Lord has granted you special authority over others. It’s a form of spiritual pride. There are other forms of spiritual pride. A few years ago, I was watching some TV show. I can’t remember what it was, but some lady was having various kinds of personal problems, and she was kind of depressed and hanging out in her apartment. And Sunday morning comes along, and her friend comes, bursts into the apartment and says, “Get yourself ready. We’re going to church.” The lady says, “I’m not going to church.” And the friend says, “What? Do you think you’re too good for church?” And she thinks for a moment and says, “Yeah, I do think I’m too good for church.” And isn’t that the case? The church—it’s a hospital for those who are sin-sick. And there are many people who don’t think they have that sickness of sin, and so therefore they see no need to receive God’s grace and mercy as he offers it in word and sacrament. There’s other forms of spiritual pride. So most of us, we probably don’t fall into that category that would consider ourselves to be apostles. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, prime climactic real estate in Northern Wisconsin, and you’ve all chosen to be here instead of out on the lake or whatever it is. Certainly there’s some evidence there that you know that you need what the Lord offers here. And so maybe you might be thinking to yourself, spiritual pride, that’s not my problem. That’s the thing about spiritual pride. If you don’t think you’re spiritually proud, guess what? You have spiritual pride. How many of us, when we really get down to it, can say that we utilize the Lord’s gifts as we ought? How many of us can say that we pray as we ought, that we read the Scriptures as we ought, that we allow our speech to be salted with the Word of God to each other as we ought? The plain fact of the matter is, none of us can. In a sense, all of us turn up our noses at the gifts of God in one way or the other. All of us have spiritual pride. It’s one of the great enemies of true authentic Christian faith. The kind of faith that shows up to Christ as a beggar saying, “Lord, please give me your good gifts.” Predestination and Spiritual Pride And because of that, the Scriptures deal abundantly with this. Paul deals with this in the early church. He was dealing with this in Romans. We’ll get to that in a second, but as we talked about the kind of spiritual pride that would hold itself up above others on account of various kinds of spiritual gifts, Paul addresses that too. The same sort of thing where people were holding themselves up as super Christians with a special kind of authority, spiritual authority over others. That happened in the church at Corinth. So Paul said, “Look, the gifts of the Spirit are there for the sake of service of others. And even if you have incredible spiritual powers but have not love, then it’s all pointless,” in 1 Corinthians 13. And here in Romans, he is talking about another kind of spiritual remedy to spiritual pride, and this is the knowledge of the predestination of God. So last week we talked about predestination, and we talked about the wonderful blessing that the knowledge of predestination is. And here Paul continues on that. In the extended reading, which I had Arnie read, which went beyond what’s printed in the bulletin there, Paul uses predestination to address spiritual pride in the Roman congregation. Now, what kind of spiritual pride was going on among the Romans? At the Roman congregation, there were those who were holding themselves up above others within the congregation on account of their ethnic background. So there were those who were Jewish by birth, who could trace their lineage generation by generation back to Abraham, and not only this, but also observed the Old Testament law. All the various kinds of laws and strictures that were given to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, they continued to practice, and they held themselves in a higher status over those who couldn’t trace their background back to Abraham, what we often call the Gentiles, and who themselves as well didn’t live according to those Old Testament principles. And Paul’s trying to cut them down a little bit. Trying to cut them off at their knees in a couple different ways. So first of all, Paul undercuts them here in this passage by talking about what it means to be descended from Abraham. What that does and doesn’t mean. And he references, first of all, Isaac, and says, “Think about Isaac.” Abraham had two wives. He had Sarah on the one hand, and he had Hagar on the other. From Sarah, he had Isaac. From Hagar, he had Ishmael. Why was one son chosen over the other? And St. Paul argues there is really, in a sense, nothing to commend Isaac over Ishmael. It was God’s sovereign choice. Now, there might be a little bit of a weakness in that argument, because someone might say, wasn’t Sarah a free woman and Hagar a slave? Therefore surely Isaac would receive the promise instead of Ishmael. Paul says wait. Just a second. Think about the sons of Isaac. Esau on the one hand, Jacob on the other. They had the same mother, Rebecca. And according to the ways of the world, it might be thought that Esau would be the favored one. He was the firstborn after all. He was as well his father’s favorite. And yet, it wasn’t Esau, but it was Jacob who inherited the promise. And this was determined by God before either of them had even come to be. So surely it wasn’t that God looked ahead and said Esau is going to be this incredible person, or rather, Jacob’s going to be this incredible person, so I’m going to give him the promise. No, it was entirely God’s providential decision and choice before any of them had even come to be. It had nothing to do with them, but it was purely about God and his decision and his choice. And so yes, you may be descended from Abraham according to the flesh, and there is much benefit to that. And he lists many of these benefits after all. He says, to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises, the patriarchs, and the greatest blessing that from their race according to the flesh, Jesus Christ would be born. But even all these things, they aren’t deserved. Pure blessing. Pure gift. Didn’t earn it. God just saw fit to give it to you. So because of this, there is no room for spiritual pride. If anything, you ought to acknowledge how humble your situation is, that God would simply give these things to you out of His grace, out of His mercy. And that point applies to us in a slightly different form, but it still applies to us today. Our status with God has nothing to do with our abilities, with our works, with our virtue, with our knowledge. But instead, our status with God has everything to do with Him, with His sovereign choice. And the flip side of that doctrine of predestination, God’s sovereign grace, is the doctrine of justifica

  8. Jul 6

    Sermon: The Blessing of the Nation

    Title: The Blessing of the NationLiturgical Date: Pentecost 6 Proper 9 ACalendar Date: July 5, 2026Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County, 316 W. Main St., Forestville, WI 54213. 920-856-6420.Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County serves Baileys Harbor and other areas in Northeast Wisconsin. TRANSCRIPT In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Today, we celebrate with great thanksgiving the 250th anniversary of our great nation. We praise and thank the Lord for the blessings that He’s given to this great nation, the blessing that He has given us through this great nation. To think that we stand as the most prosperous, most powerful nation that the world has ever seen. It truly is something from the hand of God, and something for which we ought to give Him thanks and praise. That’s the theme of our sermon today, the blessing of the nation. We’re going to be talking about how, first of all, it is God who caused our nation to arise. Second of all, we’re going to talk about the fact that the Lord blesses us through our nation. Third of all, we are going to talk about the fact that we are called to actively work for the wellbeing of our nation. Finally, we’re going to talk about how above all we belong to another nation, another kingdom, another city: the kingdom of heaven, which has been won for us through Christ Jesus, our Lord. God Who Caused Our Nation to Arise I’d like to start off today by reading from the Book of Acts, in chapter 17. There, St. Paul is addressing the Athenians in what we now call Greece. And he says this: God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. In this passage, St. Paul relates the fact of what we as Christians know, that it is only through the hand of God that any nation arises. It is only through the hand of God that any nation prospers. It is only by the hand of God that the borders of the various nations are set. 250 years ago, our nation came about through ink on paper, through the writing of Thomas Jefferson and the endorsement of all of those who signed the Declaration of Independence. Our nation has been preserved ever since then, through its tender early years as a tiny upstart nation among these great superpowers France, England, Spain. As we continue to grow in power still we faced other kinds of obstacles and other kinds of threats. We had the Civil War, and God saw us through that. And then finally, the two great wars, World War I and World War II. Wars, in a sense, of existential import. And God saw us through these as well. Then finally, in the last 70, 80 years, the Lord has caused our great nation to grow into a hegemonic superpower. The most prosperous, the most powerful nation that the world has ever seen. Now, to the unbeliever they look at this and what do they see? They see pens writing on paper and the Declaration of Independence. They see guns firing in the War of Independence. They see, once again, guns firing through the various other wars. And in our final period here, they see economic systems at work. Certainly all of that is the case. But as Christians, we understand the truth that behind all of these things, it is the hand of God who has been working. And because of this, we lift up our praise and thanks to Him on account of these great blessings. Turning Blessings into Gods Speaking of the praise and thanks to Him, this is a place where perhaps I feel a little despairing about our nation. Acts chapter 17, as we just read, why did God do this? God did this that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. What ought to be the reaction of our people to these incredible blessings? We ought to be a people marked above all by greatness of faith. There should be more people in pews this Sunday morning than there were at fireworks displays last night. And yet the opposite is the case, is it not? And here we come to a great trouble on account of our sinfulness. The Lord gives us blessings. He gives us great goods, and we are to receive those goods from the Lord as the blessings that they are. We ought to steward those blessings towards His purposes, and we ought to give thanks to the Lord for these blessings. And yet, on account of our sinfulness, we have this tendency to turn goods into gods, little “g” gods. And certainly this is the case with even the great good of a nation. Instead of receiving this gift from the hand of God and therefore causing their hearts to rise up to God in thanksgiving, instead people end up worshiping the gift rather than the giver. Let it not be for us, we Christians. But instead, let us recognize the blessing that our nation is from the hand of God and how God continues to bless us through our nation. The Lord Blesses Us Through Our Nation This comes to our second point today, that the Lord blesses us through our nation. I’d like to read to you from Romans chapter 13. Another writing of St. Paul. And he starts off here in Romans talking to the Romans in a very similar way that he does to the Athenians. Talking about the fact that it’s the Lord who established civil power. He says this, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” So we just heard that point from Acts when he was talking to the Athenians, that every authority in this world is established by God. He then goes on to say this, “Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval.” Now, I want you to listen to this, “For he is God’s servant for your good.” He’s God’s servant for your good. The Lord brings us great blessings by means of our nation. And because the Lord brings us great blessings by means of our nation, therefore it is our duty to render obedience to the nation, to the state, insofar as it doesn’t ask us to do anything contrary to the Word of God. Now, I’m gonna take you back to catechism class. Many of you might remember the explanation to the fourth commandment as you studied the Small Catechism. The fourth commandment is about honoring father and mother, but it’s more than just honoring father and mother. It’s about honoring all authority that the Lord has given into our lives, whether that’s our employers, our teachers, our government, or our fathers and mothers. It says this is the first commandment with a promise. The promise is this: That if we honor father and mother and every other authority, including our civil government, it will go well with you, God says. It will go well with you. In what way? The Lord grants us many blessings through our civil government. One of the ways that the Lord blesses us is through a system of laws, for example, that allows us to conduct our affairs with each other in ways that are fair, in ways that are equitable, in ways in which we don’t have to have recourse to violence because the state will enforce these things for our sakes. Why are people not able to come and just take our home from us or to take this church property from us? Because the laws of our nation establish what it means to have title to a property. Why is it that businesses want to do business in the United States of America? A big reason for this is on account of our laws. That if you violate a contract, there will be recourse to the courts, and the courts will enforce the terms of your contract as long as the contract itself is lawful. The government protects us as well from those who would do ill. If I drive recklessly in a way that endangers the community, there’s a good chance I’m gonna get pulled over, slapped with a fine, maybe even thrown in jail. This acts as a deterrent against those who would put us in harm’s way on account of their recklessness. The Lord grants us many great goods by means of our government, and therefore we are called to obedience to it. Actively Work for the Wellbeing of Our Nation But not only obedience, but also we are called to actively work for the wellbeing in turn of the nation. Even as the Lord grants us wellbeing through the nation, we are called to work for the wellbeing of the nation. Last week’s sermon, we discussed Jeremiah and how he confronted a false prophet by the name of Hananiah. Hananiah was a priest, but was attempting to give prophecy and ended up giving false prophecy. Hananiah prophesied that even while God had allowed Babylon to exercise authority over Judah, and therefore take away a number of the precious implements and instruments of the temple worship, and as well take away Judah’s great leaders, their great people of commerce, their great generals and aristocrats, and as well even the king himself. Hananiah said within two years, everything’s gonna go back to the way it was. Those temple instruments are gonna come back. These people who are exiled are gonna come back. Jeremiah had a much darker message. He said, “No, Hananiah, you’re wrong. In fact, actually, it’s gonna get worse than it currently is.” But still, Jeremiah had a word of encouragement to those who were caught up in the deepest, darkest aspect of all of this, those who had been ripped away from their homeland and exiled to Babylon itself. In Jeremiah chapter 29, Jeremiah pens a letter to these exiles. And it’s a fascinating thing ’cause here are people who are living in a state which is not their own sta

  9. Jun 29

    Sermon: Dying with Regard to the Law

    Title: Dying with Regard to the LawText: Matthew 10:34–42Liturgical Date: Pentecost 5 Proper 8 ACalendar Date: June 28, 2026Location: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County. 316 W. Main St., Forestville, WI 54213. 920-856-6420.Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church serves Ephraim and other areas within Door County. Transcript In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Christ our Lord said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Today we’re going to be talking about death and the law in three different ways. First, we will talk about death through the law. Second, death to the law. And finally, death unto the law. We’ll tease out some of these fine distinctions. Living in the Past: The Example of Hananiah Have you ever met or known someone who kind of lives in the past? A lot of times it’s a guy who hasn’t updated his wardrobe since high school. Maybe he lives on his high school athletic accomplishments. He hasn’t gotten the notice that times have changed—that the man he once was thirty years ago no longer exists. He’s failing to live in the now because he’s failed to die to the past. We have something similar in our Old Testament lesson today. Jeremiah is confronting Hananiah, and Hananiah is a man who has failed to die to the past and is failing to live in the present situation. In what way? Hananiah has failed to die to the past because he does not recognize God’s judgment for what it is. As we meet Hananiah and Jeremiah at this point in the Book of Jeremiah, Babylon has already come. This great empire, with its headquarters in what we would now call southern Iraq, has overwhelmed Judah. In the process, they have carried off some of Judah’s greatest treasures. First, quite literally the treasures: you might remember the various items, implements, and vessels that God had instructed Israel to fashion for worship in the tabernacle and then eventually in the temple. Babylon had carried off a number of these. Not only that, but Babylon had also carried off many of the people—the highest among the people of Judah: their great merchants, their great generals, their nobles, and even the rightful Davidic king himself. They carted them off back to Babylon. In the king’s place, they installed their own puppet king, one the Judahites would have considered illegitimate. Hananiah is saying, “In two years, it’s all going to go back to the way it was. In two years those vessels are going to come back, and the king will be restored to his rightful place on his throne in Jerusalem. We will, in essence, be reliving what they thought was their golden age.” Jeremiah says, “Okay, that’d be great if that happens,” but actually (and this is beyond what we read today) he says it’s going to get worse than what we’re presently experiencing—and it’s going to get worse for you, Hananiah, because you are actually going to die within a year’s time. Both of those prophecies came true, by the way. Hananiah ought to have died to the past. He ought to have recognized the Babylonian takeover of Judah for what it was: God’s judgment over the fact that they were already dead in the past. They were dead because they failed to keep God’s law. They failed to love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and strength and mind. Instead, they allowed themselves to be led astray by idolatry. Not only that, but they had failed to show the brotherly love that the Lord had instructed them to show. So much of the Old Testament law exists to establish and maintain a brotherhood among the children of Abraham, and they had rejected this purpose of the law. People misused each other, abused each other, and violated God’s commands with regard to one another. They were already dead, and they ought to have recognized that death and died to the past. But Hananiah failed in this regard. Death Through the Law At the center of our sermon today, we understand that under the law we stand dead, and that we therefore die to the law by faith in Christ. But on the other side of that, we are empowered to live unto God and to live unto His gracious will for us—to live unto the law. St. Paul in our epistle lesson today has a really complicated argument. I’m probably going to oversimplify it, but I’ll simplify it for you to help us see two major themes. We’re actually going to take the second theme that he brings up first, which is that through the law we die. We die through the law. In what sense? The law arouses disobedience to God on account of our sinful nature. St. Paul goes on at great length about this. He says, “Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I once was alive apart from the law, but then the commandment came. Sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.” The law of God is certainly there for the sake of our life, for the sake of our wellbeing. If we obey the law of God, things would tend to go well for us and for our families. This is a big part of what God was indicating when He set the law before the Israelites and said, “Keep this and you’ll live, but depart from it and you’ll have curses.” But here’s the thing: because we are sinful, we take that opportunity to live through the law and instead die through it. We take it as an opportunity toward disobedience. I know I reuse my examples, but I love this one. You’ve heard it multiple times, but I think it’s a good example, so I’m going to say it again. When my little nephew Luke was two years old, I was watching him and told him, “Don’t touch the remote control.” I said that for his wellbeing, because if he touches that remote, it’s never going to work again and we’re never going to be able to get the cartoons up that he wants to watch. So, “Luke, don’t touch the remote control.” What did he do? He went and touched it with the tips of his fingers to show that he was touching it—not because he wanted to touch it, but because he wanted to rebel against me. That’s our situation as sinners. We are all spiritual two-year-olds who take the commands that the Lord has given us—good and righteous commands that are there for our wellbeing—and we take them not as an opportunity of obedience to Him and an expression of love toward Him and toward our neighbor, but instead as an opportunity to rebel. “Okay, God, you told me not to do this, so therefore I’m going to do it. God, you told me to do this, so I’m not going to do it.” That’s our situation under the law according to our sin, and therefore the law kills us. Under our sin it increases our sinfulness, and therefore we stand condemned and judged under God’s righteous rule. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the good thing for us is to recognize that—to not be like Hananiah and think things were fine before, so therefore God will return us back to that situation. No. Instead, what is good is for us to recognize the fact that we are dead, and therefore to die unto our sinful selves. In the book of Romans, a few chapters before our reading today (chapter 3), we find these words: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” We will not be justified in the sight of God according to the law, because through the law we become rebellious sinners according to our sinfulness, and therefore we understand our sinful nature. And we therefore do not even try to justify ourselves before God. That’s a good dying to the law. St. Paul goes on: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” Death to the Law And so this is the second dying with regard to the law we’re talking about. Through the law we die, but through faith in Christ we die to the law. And that’s actually the first point that St. Paul is taking up today: that through faith in Christ we die to the law. For by faith we are united to the work of Jesus Christ for us on the cross. As it says in Romans chapter 6, all of us who are baptized into the death of Jesus—so that even as Jesus Christ rose from the dead, so also through this washing of rebirth and regeneration we have the promise that we too will live. If by faith we die with Jesus—this death in which He died to take the consequences for our sins—therefore we die to the law as well. The law can no longer condemn us. The law can no longer stand in judgment over us, because in Christ we have already been judged. And through Christ we have also received His righteousness. And therefore we die to the law. That is gone and passed. Just like that guy who is still reliving his high school days thirty years on ought to die to who he was, so also in Christ we die to who we were. Once we were sinners, once we were condemned, but now we are righteous, we are holy, and we stand as God’s children. Die to the law by this means. Living Unto the Law And as we die to the law, we then live to God and live unto His will. And we live unto the law—not under the law, but rather fulfilling the law as God has always desired us to fulfill it. Not as external compulsion, but rather out of internal heartfelt desire. As it says, “I no longer live; I’ve died. Christ lives in me.” And as Christ lives in us, therefore we follow in His footsteps. As Christ says, take up his cross and follow Him. Now, as we take up the cross of Christ and follow Him, this cer

  10. Jun 23

    Sermon: Glad Confession

    Title: Glad Confession Text: Gospel: Matthew 10:5a, 21–33Liturgical Date: Pentecost 4, Proper 7 ACalendar Date: June 21, 2026Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door CountyPreacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson St. Peter’s serves Sturgeon Bay and other areas in Northeast Wisconsin. Transcript Introduction: A Glad Confession of Christ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Christ our Lord said these words in our Gospel lesson for today: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.” On the basis of this passage, we are going to be talking about making a glad confession of Christ Jesus, our Lord. Father’s Day and the Power of the Tongue Today is Father’s Day, and when we observe Father’s Day, it is hard for me not to think of that old classic country song. I love classic country music. The song is “Daddy’s Hands.” “Daddy’s hands were soft and gentle, and Daddy’s hands were hard as steel,” and so on it goes. Certainly, when we think of fathers, we might think of hands, right? The hands that provide, the hands that protect, the hands that guide, the hands that correct, and so on. There is a lot of truth to that. But really, when it comes to fatherhood, there is another member of the body which is even more powerful than the hands. And what member of the body is that? The day is going to come — and it has already begun in my household — when these hands can’t do that guiding and correcting and protecting anymore in a physical way. The day is even going to come when these hands can’t even do any kind of providing whatsoever. In a sense, these hands will, in time, become weak. And instead, I will need protection and provision and even guidance. It is the way the world goes. So what is going to help with that provision and protection and guidance when these hands are no longer able to? It is the tongue. When I think of fatherhood as a father, the tongue is probably the most important part of the body. I would not be a father were it not, for example, for the tongue. When, twenty-three years ago, I said, “I do,” that set me on the course of being a father. And as a father, even while these hands have been important, what has been even more important is the tongue — giving words of guidance, words of instruction, words that protect from even worse enemies than those who might assault the body: from those enemies which might assault the soul, the heart, and the mind. Even when I am long dead and gone and in the grave, and perchance if the Lord has blessed me and prospered me, those words will continue to guide and provide and protect even while I am in the grave. Our tongue is a powerful force. It is a way of guiding our lives. It shows who we are. And on account of this, therefore, it is good for us to gladly make confession of the faith that dwells in our hearts — to gladly confess in word that Jesus Christ is Lord, the Savior from the sins that we have committed, and the one who has earned us eternal life. That is what our sermon is all about today. What “Confession” Really Means Now, as we talk about this and about making a glad confession, that choice of words might be a little bit confusing to you. Confession? Isn’t that when you say that you did something wrong? Yes, that is one definition of confession, absolutely. But there are other ways that term is used, and we are using it in one of these other senses. Another sense of the word confession is simply giving voice to what you believe, and that is the sense in which we are using “confession” today. It is a very important word for our congregation here at St. Peter’s. We are what is often called a confessional Lutheran church. What does that mean? It means that we have bound ourselves to certain statements regarding the Christian faith. They are enclosed in a book called the Book of Concord. You are most familiar with the Creeds, which are part of the Book of Concord, and also with the Small Catechism, which is also in the Book of Concord. The church as a whole has dedicated itself to that. That is a confession. And also as individuals, we are called by Christ to make glad confession about what we believe regarding Him and the work that He has accomplished for our sakes. Life Is Led by the Tongue One of the most important reasons why we ought to be glad to confess our faith is, first of all, that life is led by the tongue. There are many passages which indicate this. In Proverbs chapter 18, verses 20 and following, we find these words: “From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied. He is satisfied by the yield of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” What Solomon is telling us in the Book of Proverbs is that the tongue has a way of shaping our life, and we will receive the fruits of what we speak. We have many other passages in Scripture which indicate this. We have, for example, James, which talks about the tongue being like a rudder which guides a ship. Now, here is not what I am saying. There is a whole bunch of talk out there, especially on social media, about “manifesting,” for example. That is not what we are talking about. We are not talking about creating reality or manipulating God just simply by what we speak. But rather, what I am saying is this: what we speak certainly does yield in our lives certain ways of being and certain results. So for example, back in 1993, I took my confirmation vows. That was a really special day in which I confessed that I have a desire to live as a Christian my entire life, to believe as a Christian my entire life, and that has guided the choices that I have made in life. That is one example of how what we speak shapes our lives. Today in our Epistle lesson, St. Paul warned us and said, “Present your members in service to God,” because the way that you use your members will affect the way that your soul goes. And so it is with the tongue. If, for example, we in contradiction to this principle speak unwholesome speech — as it warns us against in the Book of Ephesians — if we speak unwholesome speech, it makes us more likely to engage in unwholesome behavior in other ways. All of a sudden now our hearts and our souls become a little bit more and more comfortable with sin. It is possible that all just rolls like a snowball to the point in which saving faith no longer abides in us. But what if we use our tongue in other ways? What if instead of using our tongue in unwholesome speech, it is salted with the Word of God? Not in a Bible-banger, holier-than-thou way, but rather in a way which seeks to encourage, to lift up, to give instruction and wisdom to those around us. This will be a blessing to those around us and a blessing to us as well. When we speak the Word of God, this helps to shape our hearts. What if instead of allowing unwholesome speech and curses to come upon our tongue, prayers and praises to God come upon our tongue? That is a way that God shapes and forms us as well. We learn this in the Small Catechism. There in the Lord’s Prayer, Luther constantly is making this point when he says that we pray, “Hallowed be Thy name.” It is not like God’s name isn’t holy if we don’t pray for it to be holy. It is already holy. Instead, what we are praying is that God’s name would be kept holy among us, that we would keep it holy. When we pray “Thy kingdom come,” it is not like God was not reigning on His throne before we prayed, and now He is reigning on His throne now that we prayed. That is not how it works. God already reigns. But instead, when we pray “Thy kingdom come” — which is itself a form of confession — the Lord uses this to shape us and form us so that His kingdom will be reflected in our lives as we lead lives of loving obedience to Him and lives of loving service to Him. Prayer ultimately is saying to the Lord God, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” This cannot help but shape and form us. And it helps as well to shape and form others around us. A Call to Fathers: Salt Your Words with God’s Word We, and I call upon the fathers this day in this regard: I believe the Lord has called fathers especially to salt their words with the Word of God. To daily open the Scriptures and to read the Bible with the young ones the Lord has entrusted to you. It can be very simple. It does not have to be this hard, onerous thing. What I encourage you to do, maybe if you are not in the habit, today would be the day to get in the habit. Pick one book of the Bible. A good book of the Bible to pick might be the Gospel of John. Open it up and start on chapter one, and just read from heading to heading with the young ones at your table. Very simple. That will take all of two to three minutes. And then after you have read that, teach them how to pray. Maybe you do not feel comfortable saying prayers in your own words in your household. I think that is a good thing to get to, but a good start would be just to simply pray the Lord’s Prayer together. I can guarantee you that as you read the Word of God as a family together — and I lay this at the feet of the fathers of the congregation to take leadership with this — and as you pray together, the Lord will shape you and form you and as well shape and form your household and the individuals within your household. It is a very powerful thing. We make glad confession because it is a way that the Lord shapes and forms us. We also make glad confession because it is also a reflection. This is not a contradiction but rather this is the wonderful cycle that the Lord has given us. We confess that the Lord would

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Sermons, Bible Studies, and other audio media from Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County, Wisconsin. Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County is located in the village of Forestville, Wisconsin. We are a congregation of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. We are a confessional and liturgical congregation. Saint Peter’s is located at 316 W. Main Street, Forestville, WI 54213. Phone: 920-856-6420. Email: info@doorcounty.church. Website: https://doorcounty.church. We welcome listener comments, questions, and feedback.

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