Sermons

The Pharisees took issue with the disciples for eating without washing their hands, placing human tradition above the commandment of God. Fixed on outward rites of purification and the keeping of rules, they had lost the very essence of the law: love for God and love for one’s neighbor.

Jesus rebuked their hypocrisy, for they honored God with their lips while their hearts were far from him. Worship that teaches the commandments of men as doctrine is in vain. True faith is found not in formal ordinances but in a pure heart and in love.

To evade the duty of supporting one’s parents under the pretext of Corban is to make the commandment of God void. Faith does not merely change outward conduct; it must be a life that loves God, cares for souls, and grasps the essence of the Word.

In a deserted place, a hungry crowd of tens of thousands followed Jesus. The disciples counted how far the bread and fish would fall short and looked for a practical solution, but Jesus was testing their faith and the way they saw the situation.

The five barley loaves and two fish that a boy offered were, to human eyes, too small to be of any help. Yet when that small gift was placed in Jesus’ hands, it became a miracle that fed thousands, with food left over.

God desires not those who have much, but a pure heart that gives in faith whatever it has. When we look beyond the limits our eyes can see and obey the word of Jesus, God fills up what we lack and pours out abundant grace upon us.

For rebuking Herod’s immorality, John the Baptist was thrown into prison and put to a cruel death. While he was there, word reached him that Jesus was working miracles and preaching the gospel. Uncertain whether his devotion had been in vain, he sent his disciples to put the question to Jesus.

Jesus made John no promise of rescue. Instead he told the messengers to report the signs that announce the Messiah’s presence: the blind see, and the dead are raised. This means that John’s calling had already been completed. He was no longer to be the one crying out, and now he had to prepare to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the eyes of the world John’s death may look empty and wretched, yet he bore his calling to the very end and completed the course God had set before him. The sermon declares that true faith means faithfully fulfilling the task God has entrusted, even in suffering and persecution, and that the hope of the Kingdom of Heaven that comes of it matters more.

The people of the world look on miracles with curiosity, or fall into unbelief once a miracle costs them something; the people of God, however, must have their hearts set firmly on the Word. Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, laid aside his position and his pride to plead with Jesus to save his dying daughter. The woman with the discharge of blood was unclean, and she came forward in fear, yet she believed that if she only touched his clothes she would be made well.

Jesus rose above both the eyes of the crowd and the purity regulations of the law. The touch of an unclean woman could not defile his power; instead, he gave her life. When he sees faith that clings to him earnestly and a heart that is sincere, he answers, and in answering he reveals his glory.

Yet when word came that his daughter had died, the gratitude in Jairus’s heart turned to anger, and his faith was shaken. To show that he is the Lord of life, who raises the dead, Jesus commanded the girl, “Talitha cumi! Girl, get up!” Even where despair looks like death, the place becomes a place of life once the word of Jesus is proclaimed, and so the faithful must hold to faith instead of fear.

As Jesus and his disciples stepped out of the boat, a demon-possessed man came running at them with a terrible cry. He was strong enough to snap chains, and no one could subdue him. Night and day he roamed among the tombs and in the mountains, cutting himself with stones.

The demon that ruled him was called Legion, an army in itself. When Jesus ordered them out, these many demons saw that they could no longer keep the man as their slave. So they begged Jesus to send them into a nearby herd of pigs. To save one soul, he allowed it, and the whole herd rushed into the lake and perished.

The people who had lost their pigs counted their own loss greater than one man’s life, and they pleaded with Jesus to leave. The man who had been restored wanted to follow him. Jesus told him instead to go home and tell what God had done, and from then on he proclaimed the gospel to his own household and throughout the Decapolis.

Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed. Just as a seed that looks exceedingly small becomes a great tree, he knew beforehand that the small and wavering faith of his disciples would also be sown in good soil and grow. Even after hearing his words, the disciples were not fully convinced that the Kingdom of God truly existed, or that Jesus was the Messiah.

A seed buried in the ground frets over whether it must break through, yet once it puts down roots and comes up, it meets the sunlight, the rain, and the God who brings all of it about. Even amid fear and doubt, the truth grew within the disciples, until at last they became a mighty tree that bore witness to Christ, even to the point of martyrdom. Those who hear the word with prejudice and a crooked heart, however, turn back like Judas Iscariot and never fulfill their calling.

Caught in a great windstorm on the boat, the disciples woke Jesus in their fear, and he rebuked them for their lack of faith. The work of God is accomplished according to his plan, not by human ability or circumstances. So when the faithful do their utmost where they now stand and believe that the Holy Spirit is with them, even faith like a mustard seed will without fail grow great.

The crowd that gathered by the sea had come looking for miracles and for answers to their troubles rather than for the truth. So Jesus brought them the word through a simple story of a farmer sowing seed. Some seed fell by the road, some on rocky ground, some among thorns, and some on good soil, and only the seed on good soil bore fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundred times as much.

The roadside is the person whose heart has grown hard, who hears the word yet has no desire to let it take root. The rocky ground is quick to give thanks and quick to make resolutions, but it soon grows cold when hardship comes. Among the thorns the seed does take root, but the cares and desires of the world choke it so that it can grow no further and rots where it stands. Such people seem outwardly to have faith, so they do not see their own limits, and this is the greatest danger of all. The parable of the weeds that follows is not about the heart. The field is the world, the good seed are the children of the Kingdom, and the weeds are the children of the evil one. Though the two grow together in one world, people do not separate them; God does that at the harvest.

The sermon taught that what matters is not how much has been given but how faithful one has been with it. The way to become good soil lies in laying down one’s own righteousness and obeying with patience. It closed with the word that hardship is not something to flee but an occasion to hear God’s voice, and that a life which endures in this way becomes at last the fruit gathered into the barn.

Jesus’ mother and brothers said he was insane and tried to take him away by force. The scribes accused him of casting out demons by the prince of the demons, and he answered that Satan cannot cast out Satan.

Not even his own family recognized him as the Messiah. They treated him with disrespect, and so the truth could not gain strength among them. In all this Satan was using the scribes, and even Jesus’ family, to hinder his ministry; the sins people commit become the food that gives Satan his strength. The king of Tyre and the fallen angel had also received God’s love in abundance. Yet they grew proud, tried to make themselves like God, and were cast off.

Slandering pastors, sowing discord, complaining: every word and deed that hinders the church is the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Every other sin people commit can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. God’s people must remember that his true family are those who take the lowly place in humility and do the will of God, and they must live by it.

When the disciples pick ears of grain and eat them, the Pharisees protest that they have broken the Sabbath. Jesus heals a man with a withered hand and asks whether it is right on the Sabbath to do good and to save life, but they have no answer.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. When Jesus declared himself Lord of the Sabbath, he meant that he would give not a rest kept only in outward form but true rest. It was hardness of heart, hearing the truth and still refusing to change their minds, that kept the Pharisees and scribes from going any further along that way.

Jesus called the disciples to be with him, to send them out to preach, and to give them authority to cast out demons. Judas Iscariot did not repent and lost his place; Peter, after denying him three times, wept bitterly and turned back. Sin is not forgotten, but repenting of it or refusing to bears entirely different fruit.

A paralyzed man’s friends broke open the roof and lowered him down before Jesus. Seeing the faith of those determined to save him, more than the sick man himself, Jesus declared his sins forgiven, and the Pharisees nearby took his words as blasphemy. He then called Levi the tax collector, who rose and followed at once, and who invited tax collectors and sinners into his home so that they might share a meal with Jesus.

As it is the sick who need a physician, so Jesus came to call not the righteous but sinners. Wedding guests do not fast while the bridegroom is with them; in the same way, with Jesus present, this is no time to keep up the outward forms of mourning but a time to feed on the Word. No one sews a patch of new cloth onto an old garment or pours new wine into old wineskins, and neither can the gospel be confined within the worn-out forms of legalism.

To forgive sins is to wrest his weapon from Satan, and that grace is given freely, whatever a person’s condition or circumstances. The church must be built not on laws and forms of human making but on the words of Jesus alone. Those who grasp his purpose in coming to call sinners will go on to proclaim the gospel boldly to the world.

On the shore of Galilee, Jesus tells Peter, who is washing his nets, to let them down once more. Peter has caught nothing all night, yet he obeys the word, and the catch is so great that the nets begin to tear. Later, in the synagogue at Capernaum, a man possessed by a demon recognizes Jesus and sets himself against him, but Jesus rebukes the spirit and drives it out of the man.

The miracle came when Peter laid aside his experience as a fisherman and his pride, and relied on the word. The demon, by contrast, shows that Satan does not seize control of people by force. When a person will not decide whether to serve the truth or what is false, that person gives up the ground of their own accord. Just as he did with Eve, Satan still leads people to doubt God and whispers lies as though they were truth, and so brings them down.

The word of God makes no compromise. The faithful must not fear Satan; they must discern by the word and fight boldly, leaning on the Holy Spirit. Those who do good and hold fast to the truth will dwell under God’s absolute protection.

John keeps trying to dissuade Jesus from being baptized by him, but Jesus says it is a baptism he must receive in order to bear the sins of all humanity. After the baptism the heavens are torn open, the Holy Spirit comes down like a dove, and the voice of God is heard: “You are my beloved Son.”

By baptizing Jesus, John the Baptist took the place of the one who transferred all the sins of humanity onto him. Afterward the Holy Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness, and Satan tempts him with the test of turning stones into bread, the test of throwing himself down from the top of the temple, and the test of being offered all the kingdoms of the world. Each time, Jesus drives Satan back with the word.

Satan knows that in the end he will have to yield to Jesus, yet he still tries to make believers stumble. Those who believe have no strength of their own to overcome the devil, but when they rely on the Holy Spirit, they can stand without giving in and give glory to God. They must not believe everything they see, but must rely on the truth alone.