Jesus had just told His Apostles that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit would descend on them. The Spirit would empower them to speak of what their eyes had witnessed when they were with Jesus. The Ascension Read Acts 1:9-11 What takes place with Jesus? The Significance of the Cloud […]
1 Peter 3:13-22: Confessing and Defending the Faith
May 25, 2014 by
In today’s Church, probably for about the last 200 years, we’ve often heard about Christian “witnessing,” telling others about Jesus, and how every Christian is supposed to be a witness. Yet, that’s not true. But hear me out before you brand me a heretic. For what I’m going to share with you comes from the […]
Augsburg Confession, Articles 10-11: The Lord’s Supper and Private Confession
May 25, 2014 by
AC X: The Lord’s Supper Our churches teach that the body and blood of Christ are truly present and are distributed to those who eat the Lord’s Supper [1 Corinthians 10:16]. They reject those who teach otherwise. Rome’s Response: The tenth article does not offend us, for it confesses that in the Eucharist, after the […]
Acts, Lesson 1: Introduction and Acts 1:1-8
May 22, 2014 by
Overview Author: St. Luke. Within the book of Acts, the author does not state who he is. Church tradition, reaching back to the 2nd century, identifies the author as Luke, the Gentile medical doctor and traveling associate of the Apostle Paul (2 Timothy 4:11; Philemon 24). Explicit testimony for the Lukan authorship of Acts comes […]
Tradition in Christ’s Church, Part 2
May 20, 2014 by
This is our pastor’s newsletter article for June, 2014. In last month’s newsletter article, we learned that tradition is not a bad word. In truth, we learned the opposite: Tradition is a good word. However, what matters about tradition is whose tradition we are following. The Apostle Paul wrote to the congregation at Thessalonica: “So […]
Exodus 29, 1 Peter 2:9: You are a Royal Priesthood
May 18, 2014 by
If you and I were living when Jesus still walked the earth–and if we were Jews, we could go into the Temple. Now, Gentiles couldn’t, but Jews could. Yet, even being Jews, we still couldn’t go all the way into in the Temple. We’d have to stop halfway through the Temple, where we would come […]
Augsburg Confession, Articles 8-9
May 18, 2014 by
AC VIII: The Church (Part 1) Properly speaking, the Church is the assembly of saints and true believers. However, since in this life many hypocrites and evil persons are mingled with believers, it is allowable to use the sacraments even when they are administered by evil men, according to the saying of Christ, “The scribes […]
Augsburg Confession, Articles 6-7
May 18, 2014 by
AC VI: New Obedience Our churches teach that this faith is bound to bring forth good fruits [Galatians 5:22-23] and that it should do good works commanded by God [Ephesians 2:10], because God so wills it. We should not, however, rely on those works to merit justification before God. For forgiveness of sins and justification […]
1 Peter 1:17-25: Loving Others with a Pure Heart
May 4, 2014 by
What is love? How would you define it? If we were to ask people that question, many, maybe most of them would say, “Love is a feeling,” and then go on from there. But with God, love isn’t a feeling. With God, love is a verb, an action. For “God shows his own love for […]
Augsburg Confession, Articles 4-5
May 3, 2014 by
Last week, we didn’t finish Article 4 as we discussed some related topics and chose to spend time on those. AC IV: Justification 1Our churches teach that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works. 2People are justified as a gift because of Christ, through faith, when they believe […]
