Do not disregard Luther’s early disputations, but appreciate their specificity and recognize their pastoral and theological continuity with his later works.
The heavens are neither geocentric, nor even heliocentric, but Christocentric. It is the cross and the crucified and risen Jesus who has the whole world, and each of us, in his nail scarred hands.
Humanity, despite our best efforts, cannot answer the question as to why God allows evil to occur.

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The LORD sends His Son who targets those who are trampled and downtrodden. He comes for all, but He specifically includes the less fortunate.
God commands we serve only Him. We serve Him with all we have and all we are, including the 90% of our income which does not go in the plates. What does it look like to serve God above money?
The LORD God declares He Himself will shepherd His sheep. He will seek them out. He will rescue them. He will save. He will gather them in. In other words, the Good Shepherd will take care of His own sheep.
The heart of your sermon is the promise that God, in Jesus, has sought and found each of us. He receives us sinners and invites us to eat with Him at His table.
These words direct the people of God how to live in their identity as God’s children. We would say, this is the reality of our baptismal identity!
The reason nothing can come before Jesus is because nothing endures beyond the grave except for Jesus.
All of this is interesting and useful in preparing a sermon, however, there are no explicit words of Gospel in this text. How does one preach without shoe-horning the Gospel into the message, perhaps in an inappropriate or confusing manner?
In the text, Jesus enters a Pharisee’s house for dinner. Between the invitation and the meal, however, Jesus transforms this man’s home into a place of God’s care.
When offering encouragement to His disciples to follow Him, Jesus did not promise a pain-free life in this world. Instead, He highlighted the struggle and the difficulty. Why?
As is often the case in Scripture, creation is about a renewed, restored, and redeemed relationship with the Creator.
To “trust in God in trial” means we fight our battles by kneeling and praying to “the Holy One of Israel,” who works out our deliverance by himself.
We bring nothing with us that contributes to the preaching or the hearing of God’s promise to us.