Lectionary Homilies from Confident.Faith

Confident.Faith
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Gottes Wort und Luthers Lehr', vergehet nun und nimmermehr.

  1. 4d ago

    Lectionary Homily for 01 November 2026 (All Saints’ Day)

    Readings Revelation 7:2–17 Psalm 149 1 John 3:1–3 Matthew 5:1–12 Homily Transcript What sort of a God and what sort of a faith do you have? If your god would never kill anyone, then you do not have the Lord God. If your faith would never take up the sword, then you have a dead faith. At the end of all things, the Lord God will destroy all of His enemies; He will slaughter every man or woman who opposes Him and cast them all into the fire that does not consume; and it will be the glory of His Elect to rejoice in this destruction. If you would prefer not to see such an end, then I would encourage you to ask yourself if you are wiser than God. Certainly, you may (and should) desire that all come to saving faith, for God Himself desires this and plainly states so in Scripture, but you may not do so at the expense of God’s infinite and perfect justice: The wicked will be destroyed and this is good and godly; all men will live to see this, as spectator or participant. And yet do not make the crass error of the Deists (and others) who deny that God intervenes in His world. Such men are the fools who contend for a so-called ‘clockwork universe’; they contend that God designed the universe, ‘wound it up’, and then ‘walked away’. Such is not our God, for such is not the Lord God. Ours is the God Who walked with Adam in the Garden; ours is the God Who preserved righteous Noah and his two righteous sons in the Ark; ours is the God Who struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians and parted the sea; ours is the God Who made the Sun to stand still in the sky and commanded and oversaw the slaughter of those who worshipped demons; ours is the God Who walked the shores of Galilee and then, forty years later, brought down the might of the Roman military upon the wicked Jews, destroying them along with His former Temple; and ours is the God Who will come again with sword and fire and blood. We are not wrong to depict Christ Jesus as a caring Shepherd Who seeks His lost sheep, for He is, indeed, the Good Shepherd, but that is not all that He is, for He is also a dread warrior, a terror to His enemies, and Master and Creator of all things. Do not curtail, narrow, or corrupt your view of God. He created, maintains, upholds, and intervenes in this, His Creation. Many false teachers have arisen over the centuries and a great many of them found their errors upon a false and perverted understanding of God’s nature. The Romanists over-emphasize the Christ’s role as judge, and so they run to ‘Mary’ and ‘the saints’ to seek the comfort that can be found and is promised in the Christ alone, for He is our Good Shepherd; the Eastern ‘Orthodox’ over-emphasize the love of God (or at least their misconception of it), and so they attempt to allegorize away the Old Testament, which speaks of a jealous God Who will surely destroy all who oppose Him; and the Reformed over-emphasize God’s sovereignty, and so they go so far as to deny the plain words of Scripture (in this, the Baptists surely join them), which plainly teach that God desires that all should be saved. We, Lutherans, have fallen off neither side of the horse, but this is not cause for arrogance or (sinful) pride. Yes, we are proud of our heritage and our forefathers in the faith, but with humble recognition that our preservation and restoration were wrought by the hand of a merciful God. We did not fall off the left side of the horse when the East followed Palamas and his demons into apostasy, for God preserved us; we did not fall off the right side of the horse when Rome wandered from the faith and chose a mere man over the Christ, for God preserved us; and we did not jump off the cliff instead of getting back on the horse when the radical ‘reformers’, in rejecting Rome, rejected also God’s Word, for God preserved us. Our Lutheran fathers were surely wise and learned men, and yet God clearly preserved them from errors they surely would have made — sometimes did make in their private lives — when they were drafting our Confession. It is my firm belief that the Lutheran Reformation was inspired, guided, preserved, and protected by our God’s gracious hand. Many of our Lutheran fathers believed in the so-called ‘perpetual virginity of Mary’; our Confession is silent on the issue. Some of our Lutheran fathers were proud of their mastery of ‘Hebrew’ (so-called); our Confession (unlike many of those produced by the radical reformation) does not define the Old Testament as being ‘Hebrew’. The list goes on. It seems clear to me (and, for context: I have recorded nearly the entire Book of Concord every year for seven years now) that our Lutheran forebears were guided by God, for they, in their own capacities (no matter how substantial) would surely have committed errors that they did not when drafting the Confessions. It is my firm belief that the Book of Concord stands alongside the Creeds as a symbol of the Christian faith. It is good (perhaps another gift from Providence) that Reformation Day coincides with Allhallowtide on the calendar. During a period of the Church year when we recognize both the faithful and the faithful departed we recognize also our Lutheran forebears who pledged their lives and their honor, their lands and their families, their wealth and their titles, and even their very souls both to advance and to defend the restored Gospel. We generally lack good comparisons today, for the pope has minimal temporal power and we have no emperor (and the president hardly cares what you do or do not believe about God or Scripture). You are unlikely to be persecuted (at least by the State) regardless of what you believe or teach about Baptism, the Real Presence, or Justification. There are, of course, truths for which you will be persecuted (a topic for another time), but our society simply does not take Christianity seriously anymore. These days, open and obvious blasphemy is not only permitted, but even encouraged and rewarded. We live in godless times among godless men under a godless government. Our fight is not identical to that of our forefathers, but it is certainly similar, for the sides are the same as they have always been. During the Reformation, Satan attacked Justification (Article II); today, he attacks nature (Article I). In many ways, Satan’s attack on Article I is more subtle than was his attack on Article II. The denial of the Christ as the sole Mediator and the substitution of our imperfect works for the Christ’s perfect and complete work was rather blunt, and yet many fell for it for centuries. It is no wonder that so many today fall for the relatively subtle attack on Article I, particularly given how many pastors and teachers fail to teach rightly on these issues. Satan conquered the seminaries years ago — in some cases decades ago. And these false teachers who deny or pervert Article I will quite happily murder you for the sake of their false god; they are no less murderous than the Medici pope who excommunicated Luther and sought his head. Even Herod was more righteous than such men, for at least he did not truly desire to murder John the Baptist. And yet our God is still on His throne and His promises never have and never will fail. When the Church went astray in the past, God sent prophets and teachers, and He still sends her teachers when she goes astray today; when His people go astray, He sends teachers and leaders. Some hear God’s truth when it is spoken by the men He sends, and then they rightly repent and turn from their former wickedness, but some men hear the Word of God and reject it, doubling down on their evils and being thereby doubly damned. We face today the same sort of choice presented by both Moses and Joshua: On the one hand, the path of faithfulness, life, and blessing and, on the other hand, the path of wickedness, death, and curses. Our Lutheran forefathers chose faithfulness; our more recent forefathers largely chose wickedness, and it has brought death down upon us. We must reject the ways of the wicked generations that came before us and preserve, instead, the things and the truth of God, including the truth about Creation and His good design of it. There are no optional truths, for all truth is One. To accept the truth about Christ, but reject the truth about Creation, is not, in the end analysis, even possible. Sure, an individual may pursue such a foolish and wicked worldview and be saved by felicitous inconsistency, but he will only be damning his children and grandchildren, for they will surely become apostates if they follow in the foolish footsteps of their father. Rome did not start off worshipping Mary and relying upon human works to save, but that is where they are today. Our grandparents and great-grandparents did not deny the reality of biological sex, but many of them did stop believing in the truth about race, and now most among the younger generations believe in virtually nothing. Deny or reject any truth and you (or your line) will eventually deny and reject all truth. »‘For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction… but the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.’« What does it matter if popes, princes, or even, indeed, the whole world loves you if it comes at the cost of your eternal soul? In the words of Christ: »“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear Him Who can destroy both soul and body in Hell.”« And so we come to the second topic that we must surely address on this Sunday: Death. All men are mortal, and so all men who are born of the materia of this fallen world must some day die. Even the Christ, born of the fallen substance of His mother here in time, had to die. This entire Universe, separated — severed — from God by the Fall is winding down, is dying. All that exists is slated to be destroyed by fire, and only that which or those w

  2. Sep 5

    Lectionary Homily for 06 September 2026 (15th Sunday after Pentecost)

    Readings Ezekiel 18:1–4, 25–32 Psalm 25:1–10 Philippians 2:1–18 Matthew 21:23–32 Homily Transcript I do not make a habit of bringing other work I have done into these homilies, but I also make zero effort to hide such other work (it is all readily discoverable if anyone searches my name); however, I will make an exception for this Sunday, which is, at least to my mind Stone Choir Sunday. Before we had recorded a single episode, even before (if memory serves me) we had acquired all the necessary audio hardware and software, I brought a very basic website online as a sort of placeholder, and it included in the footer Ezekiel 33:1–9 (an expanded version of our Old Testament reading for today): And a word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, speak to the sons of your people, and you shall say to them, A land—if I bring a sword upon it and if the people of the land take one person from them and give him to themselves as a sentinel and if he sees the sword coming against the land and if he trumpets with the trumpet and if he signals to the people and if the one who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take heed and if the sword arrives and overtakes him, his blood shall be on his head! For after hearing the sound of the trumpet, he did not take heed, his blood shall be on him, and he, because he took heed, delivered his soul. And the sentinel, if he sees the sword coming and does not signal with the trumpet and the people do not take heed and the sword comes and takes from them a soul, this one was taken on account of its own lawlessness, and I will seek the blood from the hand of the sentinel. And you, son of man, I have given you as a sentinel to the house of Israel, and you shall hear a word from my mouth. When I say to the sinner, “By death you shall be put to death,” and should you not speak so that the impious might take heed from his way, the lawless one himself shall die by his lawlessness, but his blood I will seek from your hand. But you, if you announce to the impious his way, to turn back from it, and he does not turn back from his way, he shall die by his lawlessness, and you have delivered your own soul. Perhaps more than any other Scripture passage (yes, even more so than the one found on the challenge coin), it was and is this passage from Ezekiel that guided our mindset regarding and even our purpose with the Stone Choir podcast. With some men in the pages of Scripture, God placed them into the office of watchman in no uncertain terms, and employing means that left no room for doubt (one suspects that Ezekiel had a pretty clear picture of matters); other men, God calls to such offices more subtly (e.g., by equipping them for it and then inclining them toward it), and this is certainly far more common than the other method. And yet many men (and, yes, even women, in a much more limited way) are clearly and unambiguously called to offices that have a watchman component. Are you a husband? You are a watchman over your wife. Are you a father? You are a watchman over your children. And, yes, you mothers are watchwomen over your children. God will require from your hands the things He has entrusted to them. And yet your duties are not unlimited and your responsibility is not unbounded. What does God command in Ezekiel? We are to issue the warning, but we cannot always turn the foolish and the perishing from their chosen path. The wise will seek the protection of the stronghold when the horn is sounded, but the foolish will ignore the warning or even seek to go see the danger for themselves. We are certainly commanded to seek and to guide the lost, but it is just as certain that some have seared their consciences and hardened their hearts. What does Christ Himself say of the wicked Jews in the pages of Matthew? “Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.” — Matthew 13:14–15 (ESV) If you do not warn those entrusted to your care, then they will not hear and God will require them from your hand, but not all those whom you warn and therefore and thereby hear will understand, for some have closed eyes, deaf ears, and dull hearts. I can tell you that I saw a bear on the trail, but I cannot reasonably stop you from ignoring me — or even trying to pet or feed the bear. It is not wrong to lament the impenitence of those who refuse to heed words of wise counsel — certainly many (most) of the prophets lamented over Israel and her kings, as they were nearly all and nearly always wicked and seldom listened to the words of God spoken by those prophets —, but there is a limit: Samuel was not wrong to lament Saul, but God made it very clear such mourning should not exceed a threshold of reasonableness: And the Lord said to Samouel, “How long are you grieving over Saoul? And it is I that have set him at naught not to be king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil, and come, let me send you to Iessai as far as to Bethleem, for I have observed among his sons one to be king for me.” — 1 Kingdoms 16:1 (NETS) A man God has sent to rebuke another may be an agent of deliverance or an agent of judgement, and the man himself will not necessarily know which one. A message that is received as wisdom and comfort by one man may be seen as foolishness and rejected by another. If you have been tasked with doing so, then you must deliver the words, but God alone may infallibly see into and change the hearts of men. But let us talk about government for a while, for our Epistle surely demands it. Some read Romans 13 and take from it a blanket requirement that Christians submit to whatever entity claims to be the ‘rightful’ governing authority of the place where they live. Well, let us examine that claim. Under the various Soviet regimes before, during, and after World War II (which the United States helped the anti-Christ Communists win), many thousands (in fact, tens of millions) of Christians were murdered, and many were tortured in ways it would be inappropriate merely to repeat here. If you were living under one of those evil regimes and an official, even say Joseph Stalin himself, commanded you to torture and murder Christians, would you have been required to do so as a Christian? Of course not. We all know the correct answer, here, and so we all recognize that there is more to Romans 13 than the bare, literalistic surface reading. If your initial instinct was ‘We must obey God rather than men.’, then that was certainly correct, as that is part of the equation or answer, but it is not all of it, for Romans 13 itself gives us another piece: 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, 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. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. — Romans 13:3–4 (ESV) Most miss what Paul is doing here, so we must be sure to read and listen carefully: 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, 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. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. — Romans 13:3–4 (ESV) Paul is not merely saying (in Romans 13) that we must submit to the governing authorities, he is also defining rightful authority and engaging in a polemic against wrongful authority. Look carefully at the logic of what Paul is saying: The one who rightfully wields authority is the one who carries out God’s good ordering of this world; the man who punishes the good and rewards the wicked is, therefore, not a rightful authority. In fact, you must not only not obey Stalin as a Christian, but you have an affirmative duty to God (and to your fellow man) to resist such a wicked usurper. Paul further teaches (verse 5) that we must be in subjection to 1) avoid God’s wrath and 2) obey our own conscience. I would hope that your conscience would have compelled you to resist, rather than obey, the murderous anti-Christ Communists, and I would hope that your conscience does similarly compel you today to resist their intellectual (and, in some cases, literal) descendants. Of course, there is much that could be said about the Christian duty to resist evil and the contours of that duty, but that will have to wait for another time (and likely another place). The bottom line for the Christian is that there exists a hierarchy of duties with regard to the kingdom of the left hand of Christ — God trumps the king — and there are times when and conditions under which the Christian must be ready not merely to refuse to submit, but to actively resist. But let us turn back to Ezekiel and then to our Psalm. First, I would highlight that our passage clearly teaches that we should have watchmen — both in the kingdom of the left hand of Christ and in the kingdom of the right, for there are wolves prowling in both. We are, of course, familiar with many sorts of watchmen, in both kingdoms. On the left, we have kings, princes, et al., even if we give them different names today and pretend they are something else; on the right, we have pastors, bishops, and theologians, again, even if we do not always give them those names today. For any of you who now holds or one day will hold any of these

  3. Aug 29

    Lectionary Homily for 30 August 2026 (14th Sunday after Pentecost)

    Readings Jeremiah 15:10–21 Psalm 25 (MT 26) Romans 12:9–21 Matthew 16:21–28 Homily Transcript Καιρὸς τοῦ φιλῆσαι καὶ καιρὸς τοῦ μισῆσαι· καιρὸς πολέμου καὶ καιρὸς εἰρήνης. You will usually see this rendered into English as ‘There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.’, which is not inaccurate, but it is misleading for the reader who does not know the difference between English “time” and Greek “καιρός” (a term we have actually just imported directly into English). Greek certainly has a word that is truly the equivalent of our time, but it is not καιρός; it is χρόνος, from which we get such words as chronological and chronometer. Καιρός is something more than mere time. And so, permit me to provide a better English translation: ‘There exists a due season for (or to) love and a due season for (or to) hate; a due season for war and a due season for peace.’ I trust we are all familiar enough with English to recognize that “due season” is a set term that may mean anything from a moment up to an era, or even eternity; “due season” is simply our notion of καιρός, and it is, in fact, used to translate καιρός in some translations of Scripture: And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. — Galatians 6:9 (that is, indeed, καιρός there rendered “due season”). Love and hatred are centrally important concepts in Scripture, and few things are more abused by modern pastors and ‘exegetes’. In the false conception of Christianity that so many advance or defend these days, we have no enemies and we are to love everyone and hate no one. What would these moderns say to Jesus Who called Peter “Satan” in today’s Gospel reading, or to Paul who instructs us in today’s Epistle reading to “abhor what is evil”? You cannot have love without hate (at least not in this world). If you do not hate that which threatens that which and those whom you love, then you do not truly love. The Lord God hates the devil, sin, and sinners. Would these ‘moderns’ accuse God Himself of error? And it is abject nonsense to contend that something that is sin when men do it is not sin simply because God is doing it instead; moral relativism corrupts the soul and the mind. The truth is far different from what these men would like to get you to believe. In truth, you do have enemies and you are commanded to hate. One of the tricks employed most frequently by the enemy is conflation. If his minions can convince you that two unlike or distinct things are identical or that a term with multiple senses is univocal, then he wins a great victory without having to alter a single letter of the text; equivocation and eisegesis are powerful weapons indeed. Conflation is exactly what we have here with “enemy”. English, for better or worse, does not distinguish (at least not by using a different word) between different kinds of enemies. Latin has inimicus and hostis: I am to forgive inimici mei — my personal enemies. Greek has ἐχθρός and πολέμιος: I am to forgive ἐχθροί μου — my personal enemies. I cannot forgive the hostis, the πολέμιος — the public enemy —, for he is not my enemy in the personal sense. We are commanded to forgive our personal enemies, not public enemies. It takes only one example to both make this obvious and destroy all opposition to such clear truth: ‘Have you forgiven Satan?’ If the opponent says no, then he has agreed that some enemies must not be forgiven (and thereby cedes the entire argument); if your opponent says yes, then you ask him if he believes himself more merciful and loving than God (Who has most certainly not forgiven Satan). Our enemies’ positions are so very easily defeated, and yet many fall for their lies and their tricks. Ultimately, these enemies are antinomians or even nomoclasts — haters, despisers, and destroyers of God’s perfect Law. If God commands you to hate, then who are you to tell Him that He is wrong? Do you know better than God? Are you more just than He? You may gain the approval of the world if you deny that Christians must hate, but perhaps our Gospel reading has something to say about the man who gains the world by compromising the things of God and a related thing about what that will surely cost him. When the Christ returns in His glory with the angels He will recompense all for their deeds in this life. What do you suppose He will do to those who lied about His Nature and attempted to lead His sheep astray? There exists an outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Our Epistle reading for today could not be more clear about this matter: Let love be genuine: Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. — Romans 12:9 The Greek, of course, has no punctuation, but, in English, there should surely be a colon after the command “Let love be genuine”, for the balance of the verse is how we are to do this: We must not only “hold fast to what is good”, but we must also “abhor what is evil”. The Greek word there that is translated “abhor” does, much the same as the English, mean hate. This verse does not merely command you to hate; it also tells you that you cannot love if you do not hate. Our English translations rightly employ a semicolon here: These are two parts of, or even two ways to express, the same thought. I personally find it extremely unlikely that Paul was not thinking of Ecclesiastes when he wrote this part of his letter. Our ESV editors added a number of footnotes: Seek out what is fine and honorable, and not what is base, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God who rules all, shall be with you, even in the manner you yourselves have declared: “We have hated the base things and loved the good.” Restore judgment in the gates, that the Lord, the God who rules all, may show pity to those who remain of Joseph. — Amos 5:15–16 I did not set before my eyes a thing beside the law; those who do transgressions I hated. A crooked heart did not cling to me; as the evil one was turning aside from me, I did not know him. — Psalm 100:3 [LXX] You who love the Lord, hate evil. The Lord guards the souls of His pious ones; He will draw them out from the hand of sinners. — Psalm 96:10 [LXX] and these are good, but they should have also included Ecclesiastes 3:8: There is a due season to love and a due season to hate; there is a due season for war and a due season for peace. If the Ecclesiast can say, in the Spirit, that there is a time for war and hatred, then Christians surely cannot assert in good conscience that we are to love, forgive, and be at peace with all men. What does Paul say in our Epistle reading? If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. — Romans 12:18 If we were intended to live at peace with all men, then Paul would not have included a caveat; if it is necessary to include “if possible”, then there exists at least the possibility that it will prove impossible to live at peace with some men. Tell me: Has it proven possible to live at peace with all men? Was peace possible with the Jews that persecuted the Early Church? Was peace possible with Sodom and Gomorrah? Was peace possible with the Mohammedans that invaded Europe and plagued the Medieval Church? Was peace possible for Abraham when barbarians kidnapped Lot? Is peace possible today with the wicked Jews, Muslims, and Hindus? God commanded His people to exterminate His enemies in Canaan. They failed and ceased to be His people. God does not change. Incidentally, when the Ancient Israelites failed to obey God and destroy the peoples He commanded them to destroy, He let their lands be overrun by foreigners, including those they had failed to destroy. Again: God does not change. And so let us return to Ecclesiastes: There is a time for love and peace, and there is a time for hatred and war. You must ask yourself if you believe you are in the former or in the latter. When you look around, does it seem like we are in a time of love, unity, and peace or does it seem like we are in a time of hate, division, and war? Do you think that if we were to throw down our weapons, our enemies would choose to live with us in peace? Where peace is not possible, you must prepare for war. To the Greek reader, καιρός did not simply mean ‘a good time’ to do something; rather, it implied something much greater: A kairotic moment was not merely the right time to act; it was a moment that demanded action, and to fail to act was seen as foolish, disastrous, or even wicked. A wise man is one who understands the times, one who neither forces an action out of season nor fails to seize the kairotic moment when it arrives. Speeches, campaigns, battles, and much else are governed by kairotic moments that are seized or missed. In the words of the Psalmist: Every pious man will offer prayer to You [for this] in a season that is fitting; / yet in a flood of many waters they will not come near him. — Psalm 32:6 The prayers of the pious man shield him from disaster. In the words of Paul (and Isaiah): “In a kairotic moment, I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, today is the kairotic moment; behold, now is the day of salvation. — Isaiah 49:8; 2 Corinthians 6:2 God offers to men the free gift of salvation — behold, the kairotic moment! — and He does so according to His good time and plan — behold, the day of salvation! —, and some men seize this lifeline and are drawn into the Ark that is the Church and some men reject Christ’s outstretched hand and are swept away by the floodwaters. Death waits for no man, and men who ‘plan’ to confess on their deathbeds often find

  4. Aug 15

    Lectionary Homily for 16 August 2026 (12th Sunday after Pentecost)

    Readings Isaiah 56:1, 6–8 Psalm 67 Romans 11:1–2a, 13–15, 28–32 Matthew 15:21–28 Homily Transcript I suppose it is about time we deal with Romans 11 — not in the sort of fragmentary way of today’s reading, but in its totality. In fact, as none of you is watching or listening to this live, I highly recommend you pause here and go read Romans 11, or even Romans 9 through 11. I will leave a pause here to make that easier. … Now that you have read part of Romans, we will turn to Galatians. Galatians 4, starting with verse 21: 21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.” 28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.« Why do we need Galatians to read Romans? In truth, we do not, for Romans is clear on its own to the Christian reader, but this passage from Galatians certainly makes some of the explanation of Romans easier. Also, lest we forget our maxims: Scriptura Scripturam interpretatur — Scripture interprets Scripture. Now, back to Romans. We will, today, we treating three key verses and three key concepts or terms. The verses are Romans 9:6, 11:20, and 11:26. The concepts are ‘Israel’, ‘nation’, and Election (with, perhaps, a little digression into jealously). We will take these in turn. Passages Romans 9:6 Really, Romans 9:6b. Frequently, false interpretations, false doctrines, even entire false theologies are built upon pulling individual verses out of their context and then contorting them to fit some preconceived idea. Among the Judaizers, this often happens with this verse: For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. They try to contort this verse to fit into their schema in which all ‘Jews’ are saved, despite the extremely clear Scriptural evidence to the contrary. Worse, the very next verses give the necessary interpretive context: … and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. Romans 9:6b is not even a complete thought from Paul, because the thought runs through the end of verse 8, and even the sentence itself (once punctuation is added) runs through the end of verse 7. There are two Israels in our verse, and verse 8 explicitly gives us the two categories Paul had in mind when he dictated verse 6: “children of the flesh” and “children of God”. Before we go deeper into this, let us abstract the logic of the verse: \neg \forall x\, (I_1(x) \to I_2(x)) ‘Not all individuals (x) who are part of Israel 1 (I_1) are necessarily part of Israel 2 (I_2).’ or \exists x\, (I_1(x) \land \neg I_2(x)) ‘There exists (at least in theory) an individual (x) who is not part of both Israel 1 (I_1) and Israel 2 (I_2).’ This is the actual logic of what Paul is saying. A simple application of the law of noncontradiction tells us that an individual cannot both be a thing and not be the same thing simultaneously, so we cannot have an Israelite who does not belong to Israel if being an Israelite is defined as belonging to Israel, for that would be to declare that our individual (x) is both I and ¬I simultaneously. (We could arrive at the same conclusion using the law of the excluded middle, of course.) That being said, the two Israels are ethnic Israel (“all who are descended from Israel [i.e., Jacob]”) and true Israel (i.e., the Church, the Elect). There are (or at least there were) some ethnic Israelites who were also elect, but not all of them are elect. The passage is actually quite easily understood when read in context. Incidentally, Paul’s words apply to every race, not just to the Israelites: There exists a Germany, comprised of those descended from Ashkenaz, and some portion of that Germany is Israel (i.e, Elect members of Christ’s Church). Romans 11:20 Really, Romans 11:20b. This verse is the key to the whole of Romans: They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. Set aside, for the moment, all the figures of speech — the allegory, the simile, the metaphor — what does Paul actually say here? Faith is what matters. Faith is what distinguishes the elect members of every nation from the unbelieving members; faith is what makes one a part of the only Israel that matters: the Israel of God, the Church. Did physical descent from Abraham or Jacob save the Israelites? No. And neither will descent from Japheth or Ashkenaz save you. To be a member of the true Israel, you must have faith, for it is faith alone that saves you, declares you righteous for the sake of Christ, and will preserve you from the fiery end of this Creation. If you understand this one verse, you will understand the Book of Romans, a great many passages in the Old Testament, and many core doctrines of the faith — more, you will be preserved from many errors, but we will get to Election soon. You stand in the faith, as did our righteous ancestors, or you depart from the faith and fall, as did the wicked Jews. It is that simple. Romans 11:26 Really, Romans 11:26a. The Dispensationalists and other Judaizers love this verse. Well, they think they do. If they could read or if they had the Holy Spirit, then they might reconsider. At any rate, what does our verse actually say? And in this way all Israel will be saved. Does this mean, as the heretics claim, that all ‘Jews’ will be saved? Well, it certainly cannot mean so in the sense of all Israelites; read the Old Testament: Most of them were damned. What of all of them going forward in time? Certainly not. Look at Paul’s anguish in the introductory verses of this very chapter: I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Paul knows full well that most of his brothers were damned. And look at their state today: They still reject the Christ and they are still damned. What then does it mean that “all Israel will be saved”? Well, which Israel is in view here? You all know the answer without my saying it. The only Israel comprised exclusively of the saved (i.e., the Elect) is the Israel of God — the Church. And the immediately prior verse confirms this: Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the nations has come in. There are Elect from every tribe and nation and language, as Revelation clearly teaches. God has used the stubbornness of the Jews to ensure the Gospel spreads to all nations and He inflamed the jealousy and the envy of the Jews to ensure that they were not all damned. He has ensured that all of His Elect will be brought to saving faith by the means (and Means) that He knew would be effective. With Paul, we should most certainly exclaim: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! Terms/Concepts Israel Now, our three terms or concepts. First, Israel. We have already covered much of this one, and so we can be relatively brief here. There are four ‘Israels’ in Scripture: the man (Jacob renamed) the Old Testament nation descended from the man the elect subset of those descended from the man the Church (i.e, all the Elect). (There is also a fifth sense in that the Christ Himself is the true — or even truest — Israel, but we will leave that for another time). The third category can generally be ignored, but the other three must be carefully distinguished. Thankfully, they are easily distinguished. For the first category, seldom will it be difficult to distinguish an individual man from a nation or a conceptual grouping. The second and fourth categories are where problems typically arise, and yet Scripture provides us an easy answer: As already examined, it is faith that defines the Israel of God, the true Israel, so those without faith cannot be found in the fourth category; more, we know that all the promises of God are ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ in Christ. Well, who are those who are in Christ? Only those in the fourth category, so the promises of God pertain only to the Elect. Nation Second, nation. More accurately, εθνος, for we are dealing with Greek when we are dealing with Scripture. The Greek does not map perfectly onto English nation or race, but that is so only in one specific way (that is relevant for us here): The Koine Greek speaker or reader could use εθνος of bees or similar (as Home

  5. Aug 8

    Lectionary Homily for 09 August 2026 (11th Sunday after Pentecost)

    Readings Job 38:4–18 Psalm 18:1–16 Romans 10:5–17 Matthew 14:22–33 Homily Transcript What sort of a God do you have? In one sense, the question can have only one answer, for the Lord God is and remains your God, whether you reject Him or not. The Ancient Israelites rejected God time and time again, and yet He remains on His throne. In another sense, the question is, perhaps, more interesting. What is your conception of the God you claim to worship? If your god would not flood the world and destroy nearly all life, then you surely have another god, not the Lord God. If your god would not command the genocide of a wicked race — to include the women and the children — then you have another god, not the Lord God. If your god will not bring this Creation to an end in flames and then consign His enemies to the same for eternity, then you have another god, not the Lord God. The Reformed go too far in emphasizing God’s sovereignty and glory, for they do so to the extreme of effectively denying His mercy and His love — they fall off the right side of the horse. In a very real sense, Lutheranism has simply been the ship — the Ark, if you will — that has successfully navigated between Scylla and Charybdis, fallen off neither the right nor the left side of the horse, and we must be careful to do the same here: We must not so emphasize our Father’s other attributes that we — actually or effectively — deny His sovereignty or His glory. The Lord God is Master and Creator of all things. He is the Absolute Infinite, and all else is as nothing before Him. He made and named every star and He formed you in your mother’s womb and He knew your name in eternity past before your grandparents had even met. There is nothing that can contain God, for He contains all things. We could never fully describe God, for He describes all things. He is infinitely above and beyond us, and yet He also knows each and every one of us better than we shall ever know ourselves. We cannot, in absolute terms, overstate the magnificence, the awesomeness, or the glory of God. The point of the Book of Job is the absolute transcendence, knowledge, power, and control of God over all things. At no point did anything happen to Job — and at no point has anything happened or will anything happen to you — that was not entirely within God’s control. Now, God did not personally inflict any evil on Job, but the devil is God’s devil and he has never ‘slipped his leash’. Whatever the devil did, God permitted; whatever the devil wanted to do, but did not, God prevented. The God Who set the boundaries of the sea, telling her ‘this far and no further’, also set the boundaries the demons cannot transgress. You will never suffer temptations or trials beyond what you can, by the grace and power of God, endure; even Job, the great patron saint of those who suffer for the sake of righteousness, was not tempted or afflicted beyond what God knew he could and would bear. Satan himself could not break righteous Job; whatever lesser tempter has been assigned to you will surely have even less success. This is not to minimize or downplay the suffering and trials of the average Christian; rather, it should be taken as a source of strength: God did not permit the archfiend who led angels astray and ushered sin into the world to break righteous and elect Job. The Good Shepherd will lose not one of His sheep to the wolves. But let us return to today’s text. When God speaks to Job, does He justify Himself? Does He explain Himself? No. The first reply of God to Job is actually two verses before our reading: “Who is this who darkens counsel / by words without knowledge?” God’s first words to Job are a condemnation of Job’s complaint and lament, and they set the stage for the rest of God’s speech: “Where were you when I was laying the earth’s foundation? Now tell me, if you are endowed with understanding. Who determined its measures, if you know? Or who was it that stretched a line upon it? On what have its rings been fastened? And who is he that cast a cornerstone upon it? When the stars were born, all my angels praised me with a loud voice. “Again, I shut up the sea with gates, when it quivered with eagerness, as it issued from its mother’s womb, and I made the cloud its clothing, and with mist I swaddled it; yes, I prescribed bounds for it, setting bars and gates around it. And I said to it, ‘Thus far you shall come, and you shall not go beyond; rather, your waves shall be broken up within you!’ “Indeed, was it in your time that I instructed the morning light and that the morning star saw its post, to take hold of earth’s wings, to shake the impious off it? Indeed, was it you that took clay soil and formed a living creature, and, able to talk, set him on earth? Again, did you remove the light from the impious and crush the arm of the proud? “And did you go to the source of the sea and walk in the tracks of the deep? Again, do the gates of death open to you out of fear, and did the porters of Hades cower when they saw you? Again, have you been advised of the breadth of what is under heaven? Do tell me how much it is. “As well, in what kind of land does the light dwell, and of what kind is the place of darkness? Might you perhaps lead me to their borders? And perhaps too you know their paths? Thereby I know that you were born then, and the number of your years is great! “And have you gone to the storehouses of the snow, and have you seen the storehouses of the hail? But it is at your disposal for a time of enemies, for a day of war and battle. And from where does the hoarfrost come, or from where is the south wind dispersed to what is under heaven? “And who prepared a course for the driving rain and a way for the tumults, to bring rain on land, where there is no man, wilderness, where there is no human in it, to feed the untrodden and uninhabited and to cause it to grow an effusion of greenery? “Who is the rain’s father? And who is it that has given birth to the dew’s nuggets? And from whose womb does the ice come forth? And who has given birth to freezing rain in the sky that descends like flowing water? And who froze the face of the deep? “And did you understand the bond of Pleiades, and did you open the barrier of Orion? truly, will you open Mazouroth in its season, and the Evening Star with its luminous tail—will you lead them And do you know heaven’s changes or the corresponding events under heaven? “And will you summon a cloud by voice, and will it obey you with a violent burst of water? And will you send out thunderbolts—and will they go? And will they say to you, ‘What is it?’ And who gave to women skill in weaving or knowledge of embroidery? And who is he that numbers the clouds in wisdom and inclined the sky to the earth? And dust has been poured out like soil, but I have cemented it, like a block to a stone. “And will you hunt prey for the lions and satisfy the appetite of dragons? For they are in a state of fear in their lairs, and they crouch in the woods, lying in wait. And who prepared food for the raven? For its young have cried to the Lord as they wander about, searching for food. Job responds correctly: Why do I yet contend—being rebuked even while confuting the Lord, hearing such things—when I am nothing? And I, what answer shall I give to these things? I will lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, but I will not add to a second time. But the Lord continues His speech: No, but gird up your loins like a man, and I will question you, but as for you, just answer me! Do not shrug off my judgment. And do you think I have dealt with you in any other way than that you might appear to be right? Do you have an arm like the Lord, or do you thunder with a voice like his? “Go ahead take on loftiness and power, and put on glory and honor. And send forth messengers in wrath and every insolent person humble. Yes, extinguish the proud, and at once make putrid the impious. And hide them outside together in the earth, and fill their faces with dishonor; then I will acknowledge that your right hand can save. “But look now, you are familiar with ‘monsters’; they eat grass like cows. Look now, its strength is in its loins, and its power in its belly’s navel. It stood up its tail like a cypress, and its sinews have been interwoven. Its flanks are flanks of copper, and its spine is cast iron. “This is the chief of what the Lord created, made to be mocked at by his angels. But when it went up on a steep mountain, it brought gladness to the quadrupeds in Tartarus. Under trees of every kind it lies down, by the papyrus and reed and sedge. And tall trees find themselves in its shade, with limbs, as do the chaste-tree’s branches. If there is a flood, it will never notice. it trusts that the Jordan will tumble into its mouth. Will he catch it in his eye; while bent back, will he pierce its nose? “And will you catch a dragon with a fish hook and put a halter around its nose? if you will fasten a ring in its nostril] And will you pierce its lip with a ring? And will it address you with a petition, with a supplication, softly? And will it make a covenant with you, and will you take it as your perpetual slave? And will you play with it as with a bird, or tie it up like a sparrow for a child? And do nations feed on it, and do the Phoenician races divvy it up? And a whole fleet, gathered, cannot carry the mere skin of its tail. and its head in fishermen’s boats. But you will lay a ha

  6. Aug 1

    Lectionary Homily for 02 August 2026 (10th Sunday after Pentecost)

    Readings Isaiah 55:1–5 Psalm 136:1–9, 23–26 Romans 9:1–13 Matthew 14:13–21 Homily Transcript To paraphrase Luther and Walther: ‘The sheep rightly judge their shepherds.’ To be certain, there is but one Good Shepherd and He is without error and beyond rebuke, but undershepherds — pastors and teachers — are mere men and are, thus, liable to err and are proper subjects of godly rebuke should they err. And yet not all sheep should rebuke their shepherds. Women, for instance, must not do so, for Scripture commands women to be silent in the churches and to inquire of their own husbands at home. Neither should all men endeavor to rebuke the shepherds, for the man who would offer a rebuke stands in the place of a teacher — more, a teacher of teachers —, and so he must be certain that his rebuke is grounded in truth, grounded in the Word of God, for then it is not truly the sheep who is rebuking the undershepherd, but the Good Shepherd Himself, speaking through the sheep. There is, of course, also the matter of rebuking a shepherd who goes astray with regard to matters of God’s first book (i.e., Creation), but the man who would undertake that sort of rebuke must rely upon the gifts God has given him and his conscience. The sheep are given qualifications in Scripture according to which shepherds may be judged, but there are also examples against which the sheep may judge their shepherds — and against which you shepherds should judge yourselves. One of the most powerful and important such examples is found in today’s Epistle reading: St. Paul not only expresses a desire to save the sheep, but above and beyond this, he expresses such a strong desire to save his own race that he expresses, as a hypothetical, his willingness to be cut off for the sake of his racial brethren. I would directly address other shepherds: You may be inclined to read St. Paul’s words as extreme or a sort of pinnacle; permit me to disabuse you of any such delusions: St. Paul’s words do not express the height or zenith of what it means to be a shepherd — at least not alone; rather, what Paul expresses is simultaneously the height and the bar — the minimum. If your desire to see your own people saved does not match that of St. Paul, then may I rather strongly suggest you take up digging ditches or some other honest work with your hands, for the man who would not give everything for the salvation of his own people is unworthy to hold the office or post of shepherd. But, of course, that is a matter that is between you and your conscience and God, a matter that will be perfectly and finally sorted at the Stricter Judgement. And, for the sheep: You are entitled to such a standard of care from your shepherds, not because you are worthy, but because that is the standard our Lord and Savior has set and which He demands from those who hold office under Him. There are many unworthy shepherds these days. Paul says that, were it a possibility (hence the hypothetical nature of his comments), he would be cut off — blotted from the Book of Life — for the sake of his people; many modern ‘pastors’ (and even more ‘priests’) could not even tell you who their people are, and many would even go so far as to deny that they have such a thing as their own people. Who is wrong: St. Paul or these moderns? They cannot both be right. If St. Paul is right to express so deep and profound a love for his racial kinsmen, then the moderns stand condemned — or even damned — by their refusal to echo the same of their own racial kinsmen. God is not the author of confusion or disorder or chaos, and the Gospel does not destroy nature. When you became a Christian — whether it was in your mother’s womb or as a full adult — who and what you are did not change. If you were American before your Baptism, then you remained American after your Baptism. If you went into the waters French, then you came out French. Soteriology does not destroy ontology. You are not less male or female, German or Scottish, or any other such essential category because of your justification and renewal; if anything, you are more what God made you, because the process of sanctification conforms you to what God always intended you to be. If you believe that the Gospel destroys, erases, removes, or even merely suppresses or limits realities such as biological sex and race, then you have listened to false shepherds and internalized their lies. Certainly, such false shepherds will receive their due punishment from God, but you must purge such false teachings from your own mind and they must never be found on your tongue. The shepherd will receive the stricter Judgement, but that does not mean that sheep will receive no Judgement or have some sort of ‘perfect’ or complete defense at the Judgement. A woman is not her own head, but, even though her head will receive the greater scrutiny, she is not thereby fully excused. Given the state of modern shepherds, perhaps more and greater admonition is due. Shepherd is not a mere job or occupation; to be a shepherd is to hold an office and to be subject to an attendant set of duties. If you think of your office primarily as a matter of privileges, rights, honors, or any other such things, then you are utterly unfit — resign and beg God for His mercy. Unlike the office of father, which one obtains naturally and holds for life, the office of shepherd may be relinquished. Surely, if God has prepared you for the office and called you to it, then you will be judged if you decide to neglect these gifts and refuse that call — ask the faithless servant who buried his talent or Jonah who got on a ship and sailed the wrong direction —, but it will go much worse for you if you hold such office unworthily or execute it faithlessly. The faithful shepherd is promised a crown; the false and faithless shepherd should expect only wailing and gnashing of teeth. God will not be mocked, least of all by those who claim to stand in His stead and to speak on His behalf, and yet care nothing for His sheep and seek only to fill their own bellies and service their own egos and thereby fill full their cup of wrath. In the words of St. John Chrysostom: ‘The road to Hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lampposts that light the path.’ I fear that, in desiring never to overstep, I have been insufficiently forceful, so let me be clearer: Every time you take up the pen to write or open your mouth to speak on behalf of God, you should be possessed of a holy terror, for to touch the things of God is to take your life — and your soul — in your hands. You should treat God’s truth — all of His truth — with no less reverence than the Ancient Israelites were instructed to treat the Ark. I encourage every shepherd to contemplate Oza (or Uzzah, if you are not yet familiar with the LXX). In a very real sense, Oza was dead before David even began to bring up the Ark; he was dead because his leaders — his shepherds — failed to do what God required of them. Or did you think that your wickedness or laxity would never affect others? Cursed is the one who does the work of the Lord with slackness. Oza surely died for his own transgression, but Oza also surely could have been saved had his leaders been faithful and obeyed God’s commands. And via Oza we come to an uncomfortable (for some, anyway) truth: The faithlessness of your shepherds will not excuse your transgressions. Certainly, there is a diminishment of fault, after a fashion, for those who act in ignorance, but you do have a duty not to be ignorant with regard to certain matters. Wives are to obey their husbands, which means they must know what their husbands have told them to do or not to do. Men are to obey Christ, which means that we must know what He has told us to do or not to do. Certainly, it is the duty of shepherds within the Church to lead the sheep truly and well, but the shepherds may lead the sheep with and only with the words and truth of the Good Shepherd, for His sheep know His voice. The sheep will follow the undershepherds who speak with the voice of the one true Shepherd, but they will just as surely — must just as surely — reject the many false ‘shepherds’ who do not speak with the Master’s voice. Should the sheep wander off after false shepherds, then we know that the Master, Who seeks the lost, will surely send other, faithful shepherds after those sheep, but the sheep must then choose to which voice they will listen, whether that of the true Shepherd in the mouths of the faithful undershepherds or the voice of the liar below in the mouths of the false shepherds, leading them into the wilderness to become goats instead of sheep. There is no way around this matter: The sheep must judge their shepherds. You, as sheep, must discern the faithful from the faithless. Some will tell you that you must simply submit to this or that authority, and that you will thereby resolve (or even avoid) the problem, but that merely abstracts the problem by a layer or two. If you submit to some authority, then you have decided that that authority is faithful, or at least that you will treat him or it as if he or it were. God has given us the only standard according to which undershepherds may be judged faithful or faithless: His unchanging and perfect Word. You may judge any shepherd by whether or not the things he says are consonant with the things God has said before him, for faithful shepherds speak with the Master’s voice. This does not, of course, mean that you must mistrust everyone in everything, for faithful shepherds prove themselves over time, much as false shepherds reveal themselves. God will never leave us without faithful men to teach His Word, to speak His truths after Him, but this remains a fallen world and Satan will continue to try to sneak his ‘prophets’ into the churches. It is the du

  7. Jul 25

    Lectionary Homily for the 26 July 2026 (9th Sunday after Pentecost)

    Readings Deuteronomy 7:6–9 Psalm 125 Romans 8:28–39 Matthew 13:44–52 Homily Transcript Scripture is full of metaphor, analogy, symbolism, and dozens of other such rhetorical devices and figures of speech. This is, of course, not to say that there are not parts of Scripture that are simply literal — we do not want to wander off into the desert with those who try to torture everything into symbolism — or allegory. And yet we must recognize symbolism when and where God has employed it and then endeavor correctly to exegete and understand it. And so we must discuss ‘Jerusalem’. First, there is not one Jerusalem — there are two: Galatians 4:21–31 (ESV): »21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.” 28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.« Second, the Jews are children of the slave woman, of the earthly Jerusalem, and we, the Elect, are children of the free woman, of the heavenly Jerusalem. Third, the heavenly Jerusalem is the eternal city, the city spoken of in Revelation; ultimately and truly, the heavenly Jerusalem is Paradise itself, for that is the eternal home of the Elect. We should expand these a bit. I want you to look at Psalm 125 in your Bibles. Unless you have acquired and are using a Septuagint (which you should do), then the second clause speaks of Mount Zion as being immovable, but that is not what God actually said, for the true referent, as we see in the Greek, is the same as that of the first clause: He who ‘inhabits Jerusalem’ is he who trusts in the Lord, is he who will never be shaken. This verse is comfort for the Elect; it has nothing to do with the earthly Jerusalem. In their great wickedness, the Jews altered this verse in their so-called ‘Masoretic Text’ and attempted to transfer a promise from the Elect to themselves. They truly are, as Christ called them, children of their father below, who is a murderer, a liar, and a thief. The earthly Jerusalem is just a city, like any other earthly city, and the earthly Mount Zion is like any other earthly mountain (really more a hill in this case) and both will pass away along with the rest of this Creation — they have no relevance to future prophecy or anything of that sort except for their use as symbols. All forms of Millenarianism are heresy. The issue of the Jews is certainly a tired one, but a patient with cancer cannot reasonably expect to stop hearing about that disease just because he is tired of it, and so we must discuss wickedness and heresy. It was the Jews that led the so-called ‘civil rights movement’ that tore our country apart and destroyed our national fabric. It was the Jews that spied for the Communists (and gave them nuclear weapons) and led the Communist groups in the US. It was the Jews that overturned our blasphemy, anti-sodomy, and obscenity laws. It was the Jews that pushed to legalize abortion, and they are vastly overrepresented as ‘doctors’ in that field. It was the Jews that pushed for the legalization of all manner of drugs. It is the Jews that own and promote the pornography ‘industry’. Hear the Word of the Lord: The Jews killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and they have persecuted His disciples; the Jews please not God, and are contrary to all men. And yet there are many who claim the name of Christ and rabidly support the Christ-killing Jews. And if you recoil in the slightest from calling the Jews Christ-killers, then I encourage you to examine yourself to know the state of your heart; hear the Word of the Lord: The God of our fathers raised Jesus, Whom you (Jews) killed by hanging Him on a tree. Was Peter speaking to the ‘Jewish leaders’ as modern eisegetes would tell you? No, he was speaking to a crowd of ordinary Jews. The Jews are Christ-killers and this enormous sin, this incomprehensible wickedness will follow their race unto eternity. We leave the eternal disposition of those who dedicate themselves to the Jews to the perfect justice of God, but we also surely know that He will not commend as faithful servant those who serve the very men who murdered Him. For our part, we might call that ‘aiding and abetting’. At least in some ways worse are those who rabidly — and heretically — insist that the Jews are ‘chosen’. Well, we should examine that term: What does it mean to be chosen? There are two senses; we will categorize them with two Greek verbs: προαιρεω and καλεω. The first verb appears in our first reading as ‘chosen’ and the second (in adjectival form) appears in our Epistle reading as ‘called’. Pharaoh was chosen, or, in the words of Romans 9:17: For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. in the waters of Holy Baptism, you were called — more, you were called by name, for the Good Shepherd Who numbered and named all the stars in the sky knows also all His sheep by their names (and so καλεω truly means). Would you rather be προαιρεω pharaoh or a καλεοω child of God (please forgive me the bad grammar for the sake of the point)? Perhaps I am somewhat partial because Romans 8:28 is my Confirmation verse, but I would strongly prefer, if asked to choose, to be chosen in the sense of καλεω (called) instead of merely chosen in the sense of προαιρεω (‘chosen’ for a specific purpose). This is, of course, not to even imply that these categories are mutually exclusive; pharaoh was chosen, but not called, but, to pick just a few, Moses, David, and Mary were all both chosen and called. The error that we must avoid here is the conflation of the Zionist and the heresy of the Dispensationalist: The Jews are not, by virtue of their descent from Abraham, chosen in the sense of called: For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. If anything, the unbelieving Jews are all the more damned for rejecting the Scriptures that God entrusted to them and the Christ Who came from their line; it is far worse to know God and explicitly reject Him than simply to be an ignorant heathen. The nation of Ancient Israel was chosen for the specific purpose of being the line from which the Christ would descend, but this affords them no advantage before God’s tribunal. We are bound to ask how any Christian would miss the clear heresy of any system that would even hint at another path to the Father. ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ The Jews do not have some ‘second way’. Adam was the first Christian, and he entered Paradise long before Moses, to whom God entrusted the Law to be protected and spread by Ancient Israel, was even born. It has only ever been by faith in the Christ that one may be called. May the Lord God erase both Zionism and Dispensationalism from the Earth and thereby defend His great Name. Amen. We do not look forward to the earthly restoration of any particular nation to any particular chunk of territory. We do not pin our hope on an earthly mountain, city, or hill. The only hill to which we (symbolically) assign any abiding hope is Golgotha, but our hope in Christ crucified exists because we believe in Christ raised. The existence of modern ‘Israel’ is a matter of geopolitics and corruption, not a matter of prophecy, for we know that it is only the Israel of God (i.e., the Church) and the heavenly Jerusalem (i.e., Paradise) that have any promises or ultimate meaning. The earthly Jerusalem will pass away in fire; the heavenly Jerusalem will endure for eternity with her lord and Savior as a light to all the Elect from every nation and language. None of this should be taken to diminish or demean and certainly not to denigrate the importance of the here and now. What you do in this life not only echoes in eternity, but decides your eternity. Certainly, we are saved — alone — by the free gift of faith in the forgiveness of sins won for us by the perfect work of the Christ Who lived and died for us, fulfilling the righteous demands of the Law that we could never fulfill, but there are two judgements: There is the Judgement, which asks if you are or are not in Christ, and there is the judgement of works. For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. — Matthew 16:27 \ For God will bring every work in judgment, in everything overlooked, whether good or evil. — Ecclesiastes 12:14 \ He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there

  8. Jun 20

    Lectionary Homily for 21 June 2026 (4th Sunday after Pentecost)

    Readings Jeremiah 20:7–13 Psalm 91 Romans 6:12–23 Matthew 10:5a, 21–33 Homily Transcript Persecution has not been the universal experience of all Christians at all times in all places; there have been periods of peace, prosperity, and tranquility. (That these have virtually always been under the aegis of a Christian State with an established Church should not go without mention, but it will have to be a passing one today.) And yet, persecution has often been the fate of Christians down through the centuries (or even ages, if we want to include such men as Abel and Noah). And the existence of a supposedly Christian State is no perfect guarantee against persecution — Luther was persecuted by an Emperor and a pope, both of whom claimed to be Christian. Today, our government would not be called Christian by any but the most delusional of men, but Satan is never content; having virtually complete his conquest of the various Western governments and their attached or aligned institutions, he turned his attention to the churches decades ago (centuries ago, in some obvious cases). This should surprise no one; hear the words of our Lord from today’s Gospel reading: »Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.« — Matthew 10:21–22 (ESV) Does our Lord speak of persecution by the State or some other such authority? No, not even (exclusively, anyway) in the portion of this passage immediately before today’s reading, where He speaks of being “dragged before governors and kings”. He speaks, instead, of a more personal sort of betrayal. Our Lord was certainly persecuted and murdered by the Jewish authorities (and the Jewish people generally), but He was also betrayed by Judas, His former friend; it is that sort of personal betrayal of which Jesus speaks in this passage. Despite the parallelism, we should not limit our understanding of what Jesus means when He says ‘brother’ (or ‘child’ and ‘parent’, for that matter) to the familial; what is in view here is every sort of intimate or personal betrayal, and that certainly includes all those who are brothers by ways other than blood — close friends, brothers-in-law, brothers-in-arms, brothers-in-Christ. And that last category is certainly Satans’s focus today. Mercifully, most of you are not in a position to hear many, and certainly not most, of the stories of all the ways our churches are betraying so very many men today (and it is mostly [relatively] young men who are being betrayed), but I am in a position to hear them. And I do not think for a second that the faithless men pushing for expulsion, excommunication, and blacklisting (among many other forms of persecution) would hesitate to use the State to literally execute (which is to say murder) the men they are persecuting, if they thought the State would cooperate. In fact, such persecutors and slanderers and blasphemers have engaged in attempted murder: doxxing and false reports to law enforcement. If such ‘men’ were not so cowardly (itself a grievous sin), then they would certainly have taken up arms themselves and murdered the men they have persecuted; and they would have firmly believed that they were rendering service to God in doing so. Of course, their assessment would have been half true: They would, indeed, have been rendering service to their god, who is most certainly not the Lord God. The very persecution of which Jesus warns in this passage is rampant in the churches. In fact, things are so bad these days that it would be accurate to say that we are in a period of widespread persecution, and — more importantly — we can ‘use’ that persecution as an indication of who is faithful and who is faithless: In times of faithlessness and persecution, those who are not persecuted are not faithful. If you have never suffered for the faith, then I encourage you to examine yourself — and particularly you men, for cowardice, which is to say a lack of courage or manliness, is damnable sin. For most, such suffering need not be the sort of ‘grand’ or high-profile persecution that has been inflicted on some of us; for many, suffering for the faith will take a more ‘mundane’ form: lost friends, estranged family, perhaps some other social or economic consequences. The point is that Satan, for the moment, controls the board, and a faith that he ignores is a faith that is in some way lacking. We do not live in a time of a Christian ruler and a faithful established Church under him; rather, we live in a time of a wicked government, a pervasively evil bureaucracy that invades almost every facet of our lives, and a nearly universal apostasy among the so-called churches; under such circumstances, the Christian should not — and the Christian will not — expect to escape persecution. You will suffer for the faith. You may not be martyred — even Luther died of old age, but both the Emperor and the pope sought his head for many years, and we, unlike Luther, do not have faithful German princes to hide, provide for, and protect us. We can certainly rely upon God, but not all saints escaped the lions. If you must go the lions, then to the lions you must go. The Christian proclamation is one of eternal comfort, not one of temporal comfort. Temporal peace relies upon having a righteous, competent, and powerful State; that is a valid and important consideration for Christian men, but it is not the core concern of the Christian faith. Whether the king is righteous or wicked, whether the culture is Christian or not, whether it will cost you nothing or everything, you must confess Christ and Him crucified in both your words and your deeds. A faith that produces no good works is a dead faith, and it is only a living faith that saves. Or do you think that the Christ so often employed plant metaphors idly? As any gardener (or keeper of houseplants, at least) will tell you: Living plants always grow, and healthy fruit tree always bear fruit. Learn the lesson of the fig tree: It was not the season for figs, which certainly ‘excuses’ the fig tree, but the Christ did not curse the tree as punishment of the tree, but as a lesson for you: There are no ‘seasons’ for the Christian faith; you must produce fruit in season and out. There will be no excuse or defense on Judgement Day that you lived under a wicked State or in a wicked culture or that you ‘had to’ do this or that. The Christians of the Early Church went to the lions rather than deny the Real Presence. That is the minimum to remain faithful. ‘But it was not the season for figs.’ ‘Depart from Me, for I never knew you.’ We can ask the Lord why us and why now — certainly righteous Job did so —, but after we pray or lament, we stand up and carry on. Here, perhaps, we should thank the Lord God that we are sons and daughters of Japheth, for it has always been in the nature of our race to rise from the ashes, to endure, to carry on, to rebuild. Our people have endured great hardships and suffered great calamities in centuries past, but we have, by the grace of God, always risen to the challenge and the occasion; we are here today because our ancestors did not fail and, one day, our far-distant sons and daughters will say the same of us. It is a tragedy and a crime that our forefathers in the preceding handful of generations squandered, failed to maintain, and destroyed so much that was entrusted to their care, but we cannot change the past — only the future is mutable. We must do what they failed to do; we must be like the tiny handful of faithful kings who ruled Old Testament Israel — we must repent in sackcloth and ashes. And yet repentance alone is not enough, for talk is cheap; yes, God demands our repentance, including of the sins of our fathers — ‘both we and our fathers have sinned’ —, but true repentance is not just words but also actions. We must not only denounce and turn from the evils both of the past and of our present, but we must also seek to destroy them. What does it even mean to renounce the worship of Baal if his high places and his priests remain? What does it mean to renounce the worship of Astarte if her perversions (such as prostitution and pornography) and her shrines (such as strip clubs) remain? What does it mean to renounce the worship of Moloch if abortion ‘clinics’ remain and abortionists go unpunished? What does it mean to denounce the worship of Saturn (Satan) if his synagogues, his mosques, and his false priests remain? “Who is with the Lord? Let him come to me!” We must put to death the weak and decadent and easy faith that has masqueraded as ‘Christianity’ for the better part of a century. The Christian religion is not weak; the Christian religion is not easy; the Christian religion is not passive or pacifist, cowardly or craven, supine or submissive, inactive or indolent or inconsequential; the Christian religion is not ‘tolerant’. Do you think God will praise you for your ‘tolerance’ or reward you for your ‘restraint’ if you restrain your hand from opposing His enemies or tolerate those who blaspheme His Name? »Maledictus qui facit opus Domini fraudulenter et maledictus qui prohibet gladium suum a sanguine.« — Jeremiah 48:10 (VUL) »Accursed is the one who does the work of the Lord carelessly, keeping back his dagger from bloodshed.« Jeremiah 31:10 In the waters of Holy Baptism you died to sin, death, and the devil, and you were raised to new life in Jesus Christ to fight sin, death, and the devil. You are part of the Church Triumphant with regard to eternity, coram Deo (with respect to God), and every time you participate in the Divine Service, but you are also part of the Church Militant with regard to the temporal, coram mundo (wi

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