1. Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be.
  2. Jesus makes David’s words his own, because David’s words were Christ’s to begin with.
  3. The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
  4. This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  5. This is the prelude of Easter. Is a dead Jesus still resting in the tomb? No!
  6. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  7. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  8. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  9. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  10. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  11. Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
  12. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.