The Shepherd tends His sheep, no matter what

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Only audio of the sermon is available for today’s service. The sermon text is provided below. To download the sermon, click here.

 Sermon for Easter 2

1 Peter 2:21-25 + John 10:11-16

During the season of Lent, and even into Holy Week, we walked through Matthew 23 together, you remember?, where we heard what I called the harshest sermon ever preached by Jesus, against the scribes and Pharisees. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! Do you remember why He was so angry? It wasn’t because He was being personally attacked by them or personally targeted by them (though He was). It was because of the terrible, tragic damage they had been doing to God’s beloved people, to the precious sheep of the Good Shepherd, as worthless shepherds, doing grave harm to the flock entrusted to their care.

For those of you who were here on Wednesday, you heard the Good Shepherd again, tasking the apostle Peter, representing all the ministers of the Church, with “feeding His lambs, tending His sheep, feeding His sheep.”

In today’s Epistle, the same Peter was fulfilling that task Jesus had given him when he wrote to the scattered Christians and spoke of them as sheep who had once been going astray, but who had now returned to Jesus, the true Shepherd of their souls—the true Shepherd who, Peter says, bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, should live for righteousness.

All this talk about Jesus as a Shepherd and about His people as sheep and lambs is nothing new; it was pictured just this way in the Old Testament, from the 23rd Psalm, to the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. And so, when Jesus refers to Himself as that Good Shepherd in today’s Gospel, He is just connecting all those prophecies to Himself.

And, in the same way, the harsh things Jesus said about the bad leaders of Israel, like the scribes and the Pharisees, comparing them to hirelings and worthless shepherds, were already there in the Old Testament, where God also spoke angrily against those who were misleading His precious sheep. Behold, says the LORD God, I am against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand; I will cause them to cease feeding the sheep, and the shepherds shall feed themselves no more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouths, that they may no longer be food for them.

Instead of letting the worthless shepherds tend His flock anymore, God promised to come and shepherd His sheep in person. And that’s exactly what He did in the person of Jesus. And so we consider again today His comforting words about how He tends His own sheep, the ultimate example of the saying, “If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.”

The first thing Jesus did for His sheep, which He mentions elsewhere, but not here in the Gospel, was to gather them around His preaching and teaching. He once lamented to His disciples that the people of Israel were like sheep without a shepherd, without anyone to teach them well, and guide them to the truth of God’s word, and lead them to believe and to act rightly—because of what terrible leaders the scribes and Pharisees were. He didn’t gather the sheep by force, or by bribery, as with a shepherd’s crook, pulling and tugging them along. He simply gathered them with His word, and God the Father drew them, by the working of His Spirit.

The next thing Jesus mentions is where our Gospel actually begins: The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. But the hireling, who is not the shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and flees. And the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees, because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. The hireling represents the scribes and Pharisees, and all the worthless leaders of Israel who claimed to be leading the people toward green pastures, but were, in reality, leading them over a cliff. Those hirelings, those worthless shepherds, only cared about themselves, and their reputations, and their riches. They didn’t care about the souls they were supposed to be leading, or about God, either.

Jesus, on the other hand, was not a worthless shepherd, but a Good Shepherd—good for many reasons, but most of all, because He cared enough about His sheep to lay down His life for them. This is love, John writes, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son—gave Him into death. Or as Paul writes, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. And again, Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

That was the purpose of Jesus laying down His life, to be a sacrifice for our sins, to atone for our wrongdoings against God’s holy law. The wolf—the devil—was coming for us, and had every right to come for us, because of our transgressions of God’s Law, because we had violated God’s standard of right and wrong. Because of our sins, we were in the devil’s power, and we would have died eternally, subject to the devil’s torture. But the Father loved us, and the Son of God loved us. And not just loved us in theory, or in His heart, but loved us to the point of suffering for us and laying down His life for us as the sacrifice that enables all who believe in Him to escape from the dungeons of death.

What else is involved in Jesus’ tending of His sheep? He says, I know my sheep, and I am known by my own, as the Father knows me and I know the Father. That means He both knows who they are, and what they’re like, inside and out, and what they need, for this life and for the next. Every believer in Christ is known by Christ perfectly and completely. If He already laid down His life for you, before you ever knew or believed in Him, what won’t He do for you now, to make sure you get through this life safely—to get through this life and make it to the Day of Resurrection with your faith still intact, so that you can spend forever in the green pastures of the Good Shepherd?

And it goes the other way, too. Christ is known by His sheep, by those who believe in Him. You need someone, sent by Christ, to lead you to Christ through His Scriptures. You can’t know Him apart from His word. You need someone to baptize you into Christ; you can’t baptize yourself. But once you know Him through His word—the Jesus who is revealed to you from Genesis through Revelation—once you are baptized and believe in Him as true God and Man, as your crucified and risen Savior from sin, and as your Lord and Master, you don’t the leaders of a church, or a council of the Church, to tell you who He is. You know don’t need strangers on Facebook or Instagram to tell you who He is, and you certainly don’t need someone who doesn’t know Him rightly to tell you who He is. You know Him, and are able to know Him, from His word, because His Spirit lives in you and is always working through that word to show you your Shepherd, Jesus, and your Father in heaven who sent your Shepherd into the world in the first place.

And yet, just because you know Jesus, doesn’t mean He hasn’t left you in someone’s care until He returns for you on the Last Day. He knows you, after all, which means He knows the care that you need for your soul.

He says, And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. Here Jesus is looking forward, past the time of His crucifixion and resurrection and ascension. He’s looking out into the first century, and the second, third, and fourth, all the way to the present time, all the way to the end of the world. And He sees and knows those who will believe in Him. And so, He must bring them into His flock! How will He do that? He’ll do it through the little shepherds He sends along the way, through the pastors and ministers of the Church, who aren’t sent to gather people around themselves, and their ideas, and their visions, and their great gifts and personalities—although far too many try. No, Christ gave some to be prophets, and pastors and teachers, to speak for Christ, to reveal Christ through His word, to baptize in the name of Christ, to call out, as Christ’s ambassadors, Be reconciled to God! God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that, in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. And then, as people are brought into the one flock, under the one Shepherd, into the One Holy Christian and Apostolic Church, the Shepherd doesn’t just sit back in heaven and watch. No, He’s there, doing the calling, and He’s there, tending to His flock through the ministry of those whom He has sent.

Now, as you know, those whom He has sent are all imperfect, and some are as worthless as the scribes and Pharisees were. But we have Jesus’ promise in this Gospel that He will not abandon His sheep. If anyone loves the truth, if anyone seeks the pure Gospel and begs the Lord to provide the ministry of it, even in the wilderness of this world, He will find a way. He will find a way to shepherd His flock, all the way up to the Last Day. He will tend His sheep, no matter what. And then, in the end, through the care the Shepherd provides, you and I will follow Him, together with all the faithful, into the greenest pastures you could ever imagine. Amen.

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As for you, follow Me

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the week of Easter 1

1 Peter 1:17-2:3 + John 21:15-22

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all dedicate the last chapter of their Gospels to the account of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, summarizing His final instructions to His apostles in the rest of that chapter. But the last chapter of John’s Gospel is different. He devoted chapter 20 to Jesus’ resurrection, and to Jesus’ appearance to the apostles on Easter Sunday, and on the following Sunday, with Thomas there. But John devotes another whole chapter to the things Jesus did after His resurrection, including the beautiful interaction you heard a moment ago between Jesus and the apostle Peter.

John 21 begins with a miracle account. The apostles had gone to Galilee, as Jesus had instructed them, and while they were there, waiting for Jesus to appear to them, the fishermen among them (which was most of them) decided to go try to catch some fish. They fished all night and caught nothing, just like that one time a few years earlier, before they were called to follow Jesus full-time, after which Jesus went out in the boat with them and told them to let down their nets, and they caught a ton of fish. Well, this time, Jesus wasn’t in the boat with them. Instead, He appeared on the shore and called out to them, telling them to let down their nets on the other side of the boat, and, again, they caught a ton of fish. When they realized who it was who called out to them from the shore, Peter jumped out of the boat and waded to shore, excited to see Jesus again. Jesus had breakfast waiting for them, but He told them to bring some of the fish they’d caught and add it to the meal. That’s where this evening’s text picks up the story.

Jesus takes Peter aside to talk to him, not for the first time since He rose from the dead. He appeared to him alone on Easter Sunday afternoon. He appeared to him with the others on Easter evening, and again the following Easter evening. Now He’s just had breakfast with him. Still, there’s an elephant in the room, something that needs to be addressed.

Remember what happened just a couple of weeks prior to this—just a couple of weeks! Peter had stood in the high priest’s courtyard and loudly, willfully, and stubbornly had denied His Lord, in order to save his own skin. Remember that terrible moment when Peter was called on to confess Christ—simply to admit that he was a disciple and a friend of Christ—but he shrank back at that moment and refused to bear the cross.

Three times Peter had denied Jesus. So three times Jesus asks him: “Do you love me?” Three times, just like Peter had denied Him three times. But this time, each time, Peter confessed his love for Jesus, and received three times from Jesus the important command to “Feed My lambs, tend My sheep, feed My sheep.” “If you love Me, then I have a task for you, which will demonstrate your love for Me. Take care of My loved ones after I’m gone. Be a shepherd for them, as I am the good Shepherd. Be a pastor for My precious flock of Christians.”

But connected with that pastoral office was also a personal prophecy, given directly to Peter by Jesus: Truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.

John explains what Jesus was talking about. He said this in order to signify by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. And after He had said this, He said to him, “Follow me.” In other words, “Peter, you will get another chance to confess Me before men, and you will suffer for it, a death like Mine. But still I call on you, still I invite you, still I command you: Follow Me. Yes, you stopped following Me once. You wouldn’t follow Me to the cross on that Good Friday, as you so boldly (and arrogantly) proclaimed you would. But now I have restored you to My path, to that narrow road that leads to life, to repentance and faith. Now, if you are willing, shepherd the flock that I am entrusting to you and to your fellow apostles and ministers. Follow Me. And don’t turn aside anymore.”

It was at that moment that Peter turned around as they were walking along and noticed, walking behind them, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” which is how St. John refers to himself throughout his Gospel. With Jesus’ prophecy of Peter’s eventual death by crucifixion still ringing in his ears, Peter looks at John, and then turns to Jesus and asks, What about him?

There seems to be, perhaps, a sense of jealousy coming from Peter. What about him? Will the “one You love” not have to suffer? Will You let him off easy? What will be required of him?

Jesus answered, If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? As for you, follow Me. In other words, “It’s none of your business what I have planned for him. My plans and desires for each one of My followers belong to Me, not you. I know what My plans are. That’s all that matters. I will do what I see fit for each one. It’s not your place to compare your path with anyone else’s path, or even to know anyone else’s path. Your path is to simply follow Me where I lead you.”

This applies to so much in life! All our society can do today is compare one person’s plight with another. “You have privilege because of your race, or gender, or upbringing! You have privilege because you were born with more money than another, or with better parents, or a better home life. If I have to suffer, what about them?” Of course, that’s the way of socialism, and Marxism.  But it isn’t the way of God.

God determines the role of each one—even the role of unbelievers, but especially the role of His children. He has His good plans and designs for each one, and they will not be the same for everyone. Oh, His love is the same, and His desire that everyone be saved applies to everyone. But some will have more here on earth, some will have less. Some will suffer more, some less. Some will be called to the glory of martyrdom, some will have to trudge longer through this vale of tears, suffering the slow death of old age and of witnessing the wickedness of the world as it spreads and flourishes.

That was to be John’s fate. He would watch his brother James be the first apostle to be put to the sword. He would watch the Church grow over the next sixty years, but he would also watch many of his Christian brothers and sisters be persecuted, tortured, imprisoned, and killed. He would watch false doctrine begin to creep into the Church. And he himself would be exiled to the island of Patmos in his old age for his preaching about Christ. Is that a better fate than being put to death at a younger age? Who are we to say?

Each of you here have your own calling to follow Jesus. You get on the path by admitting your sin, by confessing it, and then you need Baptism and the forgiveness that accompanies it to get on the path. You stay on the path by walking in daily contrition, and repentance, and faith, by continually confessing your sins to God. And that water of your one-time Baptism keeps washing and cleansing you every day. You follow Jesus by hearing and studying His word, by obeying His commandments, by loving your neighbor, and by confessing Him before men. You follow Him by hoping in Him, trusting in Him, and, yes, by enduring the world’s hatred, by suffering other earthly woes with patience, and by not shrinking back from the blessed cross, when you must choose between faithfulness to Jesus and saving your own life. You follow, wherever Jesus leads. And when it gets hard, you just take another step. Then another. Then another. And when you think you can’t take another step following behind Jesus, you pray for His strength, and He will give it. You cling to His Word, and it will hold you up. You run to His Sacrament, and He will feed you. And then you take another step. And when you’re tempted to stop following, tempted to forge your own path, then you remember how terribly that went for Peter, and you resist the temptation, and you stay on the path, and you take another step.

As for you, follow Me, Jesus says. Because no matter how exactly that following plays out in this life, you know the One whom you follow, and you know the place where He leads. Yes, He leads to the cross. But He also leads to resurrection, to light, and to life. He will light your path as you follow Him, and if you follow Him, you will never walk in darkness. Amen.

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In a world of liars and lies, believe Jesus!

Posted on April 12, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Easter 1

1 John 5:4-10 + John 20:19-31

You may have noticed that it’s increasingly difficult to know whom to believe in this world. Propaganda floods the news and social media. There are competing stories about just about everything that happens in the world. Even among those who call themselves Christians, there’s plenty of spin and, sometimes, outright deceit. The truth is, there is, truly, only One person you can and should trust blindly, trust completely. In a world full of liars and lies, believe Jesus!

In today’s Gospel, the apostles still had to learn that lesson. Put yourself back in the setting of that first Easter Sunday. The women came back from the tomb early in the morning and told the disciples what they had seen. Peter and John ran to the tomb and found it empty, and we’re told that John saw the empty tomb and believed. Sometime during the day Jesus appeared to Peter, and when Peter saw Jesus, he believed. That left nine out of the eleven remaining apostles who still had not seen any evidence for themselves, and were, therefore, still unconvinced, still unbelieving of all the reports. Now it was evening, and they were all gathered together in that same upper room where they had celebrated Passover and the Lord’s Supper with Jesus three days earlier—all except for Thomas, who had stepped out. The rest were shut in tightly, afraid of and hiding from the murderous Jews who had crucified their Lord.

And then, in the midst of the room, in the midst of their sorrow and fear and confusion, Jesus just appeared out of nowhere and said, “Peace to you!” He said it twice, so that there would be no doubt. Not only was He alive after being crucified, dead, and buried, but He offered them peace instead of the scolding—instead of the condemnation they deserved. “Peace to you!” He said, and He showed them His hands, where the nails had been driven through two days earlier, and His side that had been pierced with a spear, where the water and the blood had flowed out, leaving Him utterly drained of life. Not anymore. Now those “glorious scars,” as an Advent hymn refers to them, are there as signs of His victory over the cross and over the grave.

Then Jesus said something important to His apostles. As my Father has sent me, so I also send you. Now the sending of the apostles wasn’t exactly the same as the sending of Jesus. He was sent to be the Redeemer. They were sent to point people to the Redeemer. He was sent to be the one and only High Priest in the house of God, who would offer up the one and only true sacrifice for sins. They were sent, not to be priests at all, because all believers in Christ are now priests, authorized, not to make sacrifices to atone for sin, but to offer up our praises and our very lives as thank-offerings to God. No, the apostles were sent, not to be priests, but to be ministers of the High Priest, to speak for Him to the world, and to the Church, and to care for the precious flock of the Good Shepherd until He returns.

Jesus summarizes this sending with these important words: He breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. That was a promise of the gift of the Spirit that they would receive fifty days later, on the Day of Pentecost. And then He added, If you forgive the sins of any, their sins are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

Now, some people think that truth, objective truth, doesn’t exist, which means that there is no right and wrong, which means that there is no such thing as sin. But you know better. All people are born in sin, because of the sinful nature we inherit from our parents. And all people commit sins against God’s holy law, which sets the objective standards of right and wrong, and which objectively accuses all people of sin against God. All men are trapped in sin and death from the moment we’re conceived. But because Jesus was sent to pay for the sins of the world with His innocent suffering and death, and because He made that payment, in full, His ministers—those whom He sends—are now authorized to forgive sins in the name of the One who paid for them with His death.

Now, Jesus sent those men directly and authorized them to forgive sins in His name. After His ascension, it’s the Church that sends men to carry out the same ministry, still in Jesus’ name, and still with His authority. But the One who authorizes the forgiving also instructs His ministers whom and how they are to forgive. We are to forgive exactly as Jesus did, by calling sinners to repentance and to faith in Him, and by freely forgiving the sins of the one who looks for mercy through Christ, that is, of the one who believes. And the opposite authority is also given, to retain sins just as Jesus retained sins to those who disbelieved. The unbelieving Pharisees thought they were righteous apart from Christ, but time and time again, Jesus spoke judgment upon them: Your guilt remains.

Ministers have to do the same thing at times, telling people outside the Church that, even though they think of themselves as decent people, their guilt remains while they remain outside of Christ. And even to individuals within the Church, ministers must sometimes pronounce the awful sentence: “Because you refuse to repent of your sin, your guilt remains. Your sins are retained against you.” And according to Jesus, that terrible pronouncement is coming from God Himself, by His own authority.

But so is the forgiveness! So is the absolution! When the minister hears your confession of sins, including your sorrow over those sins and your intention to turn away from them, and then hears also your confession of faith that God will forgive you your sins for Jesus’ sake, the forgiveness he pronounces is valid before God in heaven. The same is true when he baptizes, as the apostles first used this authority from Jesus to baptize all who came forward to be baptized on the Day of Pentecost, who heard and believed Peter’s preaching, calling them to repent and be baptized in Jesus’ name for the forgiveness of sins. Those who have been sent by Jesus have the authority to act officially on His behalf, as His ambassadors, to forgive sins to the penitent and believing.

But Thomas missed out on all that on that first Easter Sunday. By the time he returned to the upper room that night, Jesus was already gone. And he immediately put a damper on the celebration of the other ten apostles. “We have seen the Lord!” they all told him. But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail prints in his hands, and put my finger into the nail prints, and place my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Now, we can’t blame Thomas too much, at least, not more than we blame the other apostles. They all had to see before they believed, too, although, to be fair, John believed before He saw Jesus Himself, seeing only the empty tomb that morning. But Thomas was stubborn in his unbelief, wasn’t he? Angry, even. It was a classic example of putting the Lord to the test. I will not believe in Him; I will not believe those whom He has sent; I will not believe what He promised, until He proves it, until I can experience it with my sense of sight and with my sense of touch.

How foolish, how ashamed he must have felt one week later, on the following Sunday, when Jesus finally appeared again, out of nowhere, and turned immediately to Thomas and said, Put your finger here. Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your hand here and place it into my side, and do not be unbelieving any longer, but believing. Yes, Thomas, in his weakness, in his despair, in his fear, had tested the Lord. But the Lord took pity on him and gave him what he needed—what he needed, not only to believe in the resurrection, but to become an eyewitness of it. That generation of believers, who witnessed the Lord’s resurrection from the dead, would form the foundation of the Christian Church, by God’s own design. They should have all believed before seeing, because of Jesus’ own promise that He would rise, and because of the testimony of the faithful who had seen. But it was still essential for all of them to see.

It’s not essential for anyone else, though. Jesus said to Thomas, “Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.” But, if the apostles all needed to see to believe, why doesn’t anyone else? Because, throughout the coming millennia, the word of God, the word of the apostles, and the Holy Spirit working through that word, would be, as Paul calls it, the power of God for salvation to all who believe. The word of God is living and active, it says in Hebrews 4. My word will not return to Me empty, says the Lord, but will accomplish what I please, He says through Isaiah. That’s why John could so confidently write: To be sure, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, by believing, you may have life in his name.

Through the powerful, living and active word of God, you who have never seen the Lord Jesus have believed in Him—that He is the Christ, the Son of God, that He suffered and died for your sins, that He rose from the dead, and that God, through His appointed ministers, forgives you your sins for Christ’s sake and has given you eternal life in Him. Though you have not seen Him, Peter writes, you love Him; and though you do not see Him now, yet, believing in Him, you are filled with unspeakable joy and glory, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. When doubts arise, when your faith is shaken, turn to the Word of Christ, where the risen Lord shows you His hands, and His side, and calls out to you, as He did to Thomas, “Believe!” Believe Jesus! And the Spirit of Jesus will see to it that you do. Amen.

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The joy of finally understanding redemption

Posted on April 8, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the week of Easter

Luke 24:13-35

The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter Sunday afternoon is one that every Christian should know, just as well as you know the story of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning. Let’s walk through it again this evening and have its lessons more deeply engraved on our hearts.

Early in the morning, the women who had seen the empty tomb, and Jesus Himself, had told the disciples in Jerusalem the good news. The eleven apostles were there, but so were some of that group of 120 or so believers in Jerusalem who were still counted among His disciples. Two of those men, one of them named Cleopas, had to leave Jerusalem that afternoon, to walk to the nearby village called Emmaus, about seven miles away, like walking from here to downtown Las Cruces. They were sad. They were confused. They were talking about everything that had happened with Jesus over the past week.

Suddenly, Jesus walks up beside them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not recognize Him. Did Jesus look different after His resurrection? Maybe a little, but not so much so that people wouldn’t recognize Him. When He met those women in the morning, they didn’t say, “Who on earth are You?” No, they rejoiced at seeing the Lord. So did the apostles later than day. This “restraining of the eyes” was a supernatural restraining; God wanted to convince them first through their ears, their minds, and their hearts that the Christ was supposed to suffer and die and rise from the dead.

And so Jesus didn’t reveal Himself to them immediately. He asked them what they were talking about, and why they were sad. They were surprised He seemed not to have heard about what happened to Jesus. Are You the only stranger in Jerusalem who has not heard about the things which happened there in these days?

What things? Jesus asked, like a teacher patiently guiding his students to the truth through questions and answers. So they told Him: The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. You can hear the grave, grave disappointment in their words. We thought Jesus was going to redeem Israel, but we must have been wrong, because instead of redeeming Israel, He was condemned and crucified by the leaders of Israel. How can a dead Messiah redeem anyone, from anything?

They were right to be disappointed, if, indeed, Jesus was still dead. A dead Messiah couldn’t help them, couldn’t deliver them from any enemies, couldn’t redeem them.

But they weren’t only confused by the death of the One whom they thought was the Redeemer. They were just as confused by the accounts of His resurrection. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Yes, and certain women of our company, who arrived at the tomb early, astonished us. When they did not find His body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said He was alive. And certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but Him they did not see. They knew about the empty tomb. They knew about the women’s report. But that knowledge didn’t make them joyful, or hopeful. It just left them confused. And their confusion makes sense, in a way, because, if they didn’t understand why the Christ had to die in the first place, what were they to make of the reports of His resurrection? They were missing the “why” of it all, so they also struggled to process the “what” of Christ’s resurrection.

Using the Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus guided them through both the “what” and the “why” of His death and resurrection. O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Remember, the Old Testament is pointing to Jesus, and not just pointing to Him as a great Prophet, but also as Priest, and King, as the Son of God, the only Redeemer of the world, who would suffer and die for mankind’s sins, and then be raised to life to carry out our redemption in the fullest sense, to save us, through faith in His name, from sin, death, and the power of the devil, first spiritually, during this New Testament era, and then bodily, when He raises us up at the Last Day and destroys all our enemies. All of that was not only there in the Old Testament, but was the theme of the Old Testament.

As they arrived at Emmaus, the two disciples pleaded with this man who had joined them on their journey, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. So He went in with them, sat down at the supper table with them, took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight. Who knows when these men had broken bread with Jesus before? Maybe they had been in the crowd of 5,000 or in the crowd of 4,000, when Jesus also took bread, blessed and broke it, and handed it out? Maybe they had eaten with Him on another occasion. Regardless, this is when God opened their eyes so that they recognized Jesus. And then He just vanished. Now that He’s risen from the dead, Jesus no longer subjects Himself to the laws of nature. As the God and Creator of nature, He does as He pleases with nature.

And they said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” Finally! Finally they understood God’s plan of redemption! They had known Jesus as a Prophet and as a miracle-worker. But until now they had not known Him as the Redeemer from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Until now they had not understood their own Scriptures, which they had known all their life, but which had only then been finally opened to them, so that they saw the Scriptures pointing to that very Man whom they had been following, to that Man who had been crucified two days earlier, to that Man who had been talking with them and walking with them along the road, and who had finally revealed Himself to them in the breaking of the bread. Finally they understood what redemption was all about. And they rejoiced in it!

The same Jesus who appeared to those two disciples, alive, remains today exactly as they saw Him then, still alive, still eager to guide His people through the Scriptures, so that we may know Him there first, before we know Him in person. Christ, our Redeemer, lives, and walks along the road of this life with us, too, having redeemed us by His blood, and also about to redeem us from this world so full of trouble. Find joy in Christ and in His redemption, which flows from His resurrection! Amen.

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The Redeemer rose to come to our rescue

Posted on April 5, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Easter Sunday

1 Corinthians 15:12-22,47-49  + Matthew 28:1-10

Dear baptized believers in the risen Lord Jesus, my fellow redeemed:

Yes, redeemed. Redeemed in the fullest sense of the word. Or, almost the fullest. We’ll come back to that in a moment. First, let’s walk through the familiar Easter story again, because our redemption, in every sense of the word, hinges on this simple story, which we do well to ponder.

Remember the women who made their way to the tomb early on that first Easter Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene was there, and another Mary, and Salome, Joanna, and maybe others with them. The faithful women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, and who had worked so hard to serve Him during His ministry, weren’t done serving Him yet. They went to Jesus’ tomb to show reverence for their Lord’s body, to do a better job wrapping it in the burial cloths, with the extra spices they had bought, because the men had had to hurry to get Him in the tomb before sundown on Good Friday, when the Day of Rest began. They weren’t expecting this to be the greatest day of their lives, or to be a day that would be celebrated for the next 2,000 years, with these women playing a prominent role. They expected to find Jesus there, still lying in the tomb, still locked in behind the heavy stone that had been rolled across the entrance, still wrapped in His burial linens, still dead.

But, hadn’t He told them, often, that He would rise from the dead on the third day? Isn’t that why the Jews had placed a guard there, to keep His disciples from stealing His body, since He said He would rise on the third day? Yes, but those words of Jesus never sank in, not for them, not for the apostles, either, just as His predictions of His death on a cross never sank in, until it happened.

When the women arrived at the tomb, they found an awesome sight. The soldiers who had been guarding the tomb were unconscious, lying on the ground. The stone had been rolled away from the entrance—by an angel, we’re told, the same angel they saw sitting there on top of the stone now, in pure white clothing and with a shining face. He had rolled the stone away, not to let Jesus out, but to let the world in, to see that the Lord was no longer there, no longer dead. The angel told the women as much. Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Not where He “lies,” but where He “lay,” past tense. The only thing lying in the tomb at that moment were the neatly folded burial linens that the risen Lord had left behind.

The angel also gave them a message: Go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. So they started back to the city. But Jesus suddenly met them along the way. Greetings! He said. And they took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. And He didn’t stop them. If He accepted people’s humble worship before He was crucified, in His state of humiliation, how much more now, in His state of exaltation, now that He has demonstrated, by rising from the dead, that He is the very Son of God, at whose name every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus repeated what the angel had said. Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me. The last time the apostles had been with Jesus, in the Garden on Thursday evening, they had all abandoned Him. Peter had even denied Him three times. Yet, still, He called them “My brothers.” But, what’s so important about the meeting in Galilee? He had talked about it even before His crucifixion. Then the angel mentioned it to the women. Now Jesus says it again. I mean, He would see them later that same day, in Jerusalem, when He appeared to all of them except for Thomas, and then the next week to all of them, including Thomas, still there in Jerusalem. What would happen in Galilee? That’s where Jesus would begin the next phase of our redemption.

Matthew tells us what happened when they all finally met in Galilee. Jesus met with His eleven remaining apostles on a mountain, in Galilee, and commanded them to go and preach the Gospel to all creation, baptizing all nations and teaching them to observe everything He had commanded them. We sometimes refer to it as the Great Commission. But, what does that have to do with redemption?

We’ve been talking quite a bit about redemption this week. If you recall, Phase 1 of redemption—the incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh, so that He might save the human race from sin, death, and the devil—was complete. Phase 2, which included the perfect life of obedience on our Redeemer’s part, and His innocent suffering and death as the price or the cost that was necessary for mankind’s redemption—that was also complete, as of Good Friday. And with the resurrection, we have verification that Phase 2 was, indeed, complete. Without the resurrection, Jesus would have been a liar and a fraud, and you’d be on your own against the devil, and you’d still be in your sins, without any way to buy your way out of the devil’s kingdom, destined for an eternity in hell. But Christ has been raised from the dead. And that’s how we know that the world has been redeemed. That is, the cost for the world has been paid.

But redemption in the Bible includes more than paying a purchase price. In fact, the word is normally used in Scripture for actual deliverance out of danger, for rescuing someone from trouble, for bringing people into safety. The trouble, the danger we were in because of our sins was condemnation before God’s righteous throne, and being held in the devil’s kingdom, and being destined for death, and a death that would last forever. In order to rescue us, in order to deliver us and redeem us from that trouble, Jesus had to rise from the dead, for our justification, that is, in order to justify us before God, to make us righteous in God’s sight. How? By the Great Commission. By sending out His Gospel to be preached, and His Holy Spirit with the Gospel, to tell us the good news of God’s plan to redeem the world, and about the cost God has paid for our redemption, to draw us to faith in the Lord Jesus, who now stands as our living Mediator before God, urging us in the Gospel to seek the forgiveness of sins God has promised to all who believe in Christ, the risen Redeemer.

If you’ve been baptized in Jesus’ name, if you rely on Him to reconcile you with God, then you have truly been redeemed. As St. Paul says, God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. You Christians, you believers in Jesus, have been redeemed, delivered, rescued, made safe from sin, death, and the devil. You have been justified in Jesus’ blood. And if anyone came here today, or is listening to this sermon, who hasn’t yet known the Lord Jesus as the Redeemer, now is the time to believe in the Lord Jesus, and you, too, will be saved.

That’s Phase 3 of our redemption, and baptized believers live each day in the knowledge and the peace of God’s forgiveness, the peace of knowing that you have been redeemed by God, in the fullest sense of the word—almost.

There is one phase of redemption that still remains, the fourth and final phase, and it depends on the resurrection of Jesus just as much as the second and the third phase do. St. Paul says, talking about the trials we face in this life, We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. The Holy Spirit, Paul says, is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. He’s talking about the redemption that happens on the Last Day, on the Day of the resurrection of all flesh, unbelievers to the resurrection of condemnation, and believers to the resurrection of eternal life, when our bodies are raised and fixed and made perfect.

As you heard in today’s Epistle, If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. If our bodies don’t take part in Christ’s redemption, if they remain in the grave after we die, then there was no point to being a Christian at all. Death was victorious after all, because to be human is to be the body-and-soul creatures God created us to be! But now, Paul says, Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. That’s the part of our redemption we’re still waiting for, still hoping for.

And because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that He will also keep His promise to return for our bodies, to pick up the ones He once purchased with His blood and to take His purchased possession home with Him into a life we can’t even imagine yet. Then God’s plan of redemption, which He made already before the foundations of the world were laid, will be truly and fully complete, for all who have believed in the Lord Jesus and who remain in the faith until the end. The Redeemer rose from the dead to come to our rescue, and He lives to see that redemption through to the end. Amen.

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