1. This ministry of the Gospel, this standing in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, is demanding business and is entirely unsuitable for the weak-willed or those who compromise with the zeitgeist of the day.
  2. Hymns were a means by which people were brought into direct contact with the Gospel that brought justifying faith. Set to music, they could readily memorize it, take it home with them, and rehearse its messages around the hearth and at work.
  3. St. Paul extends to us the call to arms. In particular, there is one weapon which is effective against so elusive an enemy. The weapon is prayer.
  4. Jesus is the ultimate, endearing, and definitive answer to the world’s problems, not any political party or ideology, nor any religion or the combination of the two.
  5. As the Spirit does His work, He produces new ways of living for individuals, households (like Philemon’s) and communities, that is, the Church.
  6. Love for the brethren should be the hallmark of the Christian Church. It is basic to our witness to an unbelieving world .
  7. We need to know the Christian faith—such as it does not capitulate with Zeitgeist—always comes with a price of being maligned, persecuted, marginalized, blamed, you name it.
  8. The battle is not so much recognizing sins as admitting them. It is also not so much confessing them as repenting them or laying them aside. But we can do it. Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith...
  9. To base and entrust your life on what can be seen in this world is to commit oneself to unreality. The reality of things, indeed, the way, the truth and the life of the world is in what is not readily seen: Christ as Lord.
  10. The pastor, then, possesses the prerogative of calling the children to himself, in the stead of Christ and after the manner of Christ, to particularly bless them with the Word.
  11. Preaching the Word made flesh liberates the imagination from this world’s false and crippling vision of reality, and once again brings the imagination into an encounter with the one and only true and living God through Immanuel: “God with us.”
  12. According to the Law, everyone will be judged by their own deeds, on his own work. So, before the judgment of God we only have our own works to boast in and not our neighbor’s. But the Gospel shows us a wonderful exception.
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