Here’s what you must give up for Lent

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the First Day of Lent

Joel 2:12-19 + Matthew 6:16-21

We’re going to focus on the Gospel this evening, but first, a word about Lent and the Lesson from Joel 2. The prophet Joel wrote to warn the people of Israel about the coming “day of the Lord,” which, as is often the case in the Old Testament, had a double fulfillment. The first “day of the Lord” would be the judgment brought upon Israel through the Assyrian armies—a judgment that would come upon the northern kingdom because of their stubborn idolatry and their insistence on living for the things of this world instead of living for God. The final, great and awesome “day of the Lord” is still coming, in the future, at the end of the world, when Judgment Day will come upon all flesh.

But in between these two “days of the Lord,” there would be a time of repentance, and renewal, and expansion for Israel. You heard Joel call Israel to earnest repentance this evening, but it’s later in the same chapter where Joel prophesies the Day of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the renewal of Israel before the final Day of the Lord comes—not the Israel that rejects Jesus as the Christ, but the true Israel that embraces Him, the Holy Christian Church.

And so, as the true Israel of God, we take Joel’s call to Israel and apply it also to ourselves. Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. Rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God! For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in mercy, and he relents from sending disaster. A fitting word for the first day of Lent.

In many ways, the Lenten season is like every other season in the Church Year. We hear the Word of God, both Law and Gospel, and we rejoice in God’s goodness to us in Christ. But this season does have an emphasis on the call to repentance, to perform an ongoing, sober evaluation of your heart and your life. And wherever your thoughts, words, deeds, and the attitudes of your heart have strayed from what is good and right, wherever your sinful flesh has begun to tug at you to lead you astray, take this opportunity to recognize it, to turn from it, and to turn to God for forgiveness for Christ’s sake, before the Day of the Lord arrives.

Turning to our Gospel, we see Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, doing that very thing, teaching His disciples to recognize where their sinful flesh may easily go astray, to give up their bad behaviors and to pursue better ones. Some people think Lent is about giving up harmless things, like certain foods, or certain pastimes. In reality, Lent is only about giving up sinful thoughts and behaviors and beliefs. It’s about wrenching your heart away from its attraction to this passing-away world and setting your mind on God, and on the heavenly things that last. According to today’s Gospel, here is what you must give up for Lent: Seeking the praise of men, and storing up treasures for yourself on earth.

When you fast, Jesus says, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sullen look on your face. For they disfigure their faces, so that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

Jesus mentions fasting here, which is probably why this text was chosen to initiate the Lenten season, with its traditional focus on fasting. But in reality, it isn’t fasting itself that Jesus is teaching about. He’s using fasting as a example of a common practice among the Jews that was meant to serve a spiritual purpose—to focus their hearts on God—but that many had turned into a way to show off before men, to get people to look at them and marvel at how spiritual they were, how devout, how religious. How would you know that anyone is fasting? You wouldn’t, unless they made sure you knew. In the example Jesus gives, some Jews would put a sour, sullen, gloomy expression on their face as they went around town, to get people’s attention, to show people that they were fasting. “Oh, look at his face! He must be fasting today. What a devout, religious person he is!” They were seeking the praise of men.

Notice what Jesus says about such people: They have received their reward. In other words, God has no praise, no reward, no approval for such people. The praise they have received from the people around them is all the reward they’re going to get.

Don’t do that! Jesus says to His disciples. Don’t be like that, going around doing religious things, doing virtuous things in such a way that you draw people’s attention to how religious you are! Today we call it “virtue signaling,” where you have to make sure everyone around you knows that you don’t approve of someone else’s behavior, because you’re better than that—and you want to make sure everyone knows it. No, seeking the praise or the approval of men, of other people, is an ugly thing, in God’s eyes. But that’s exactly what your sinful flesh wants to do—to please other people, to get other people’s attention, and approval, and praise. The sinful flesh craves those things. And the more you live to please men, the less you will end up being pleasing to God.

Instead, Jesus says, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting is not seen by men, but by your Father, who is in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you openly. If you’re going to perform some spiritual exercise or discipline, like fasting, or praying, make sure not to let people see or know about it. If you’re doing anything to honor God, to worship God, to devote yourself to God, then keep it a secret, and let God be the only one who sees it. Give up seeking man’s approval and turn your longing for approval entirely over to God, and you will have the reward of His approval and praise, for the sake of the Lord Jesus, who makes believers pleasing in His Father’s sight.

Another thing to give up for Lent is mentioned in the second part of today’s Gospel, where Jesus says, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. He isn’t commanding His disciples to get rid of all their possessions. He isn’t telling people to empty their closets, or their pantries, or their barns, or their bank accounts, where they store their food or their money. What is He warning His disciples not to do? He’s warning them not to order their lives around filling their closets, or their pantries, or their barns, or bank accounts, as if having a healthy bank account or retirement account were the goal of life. Remember, everything you have here on earth can be gone in an instant, whether destroyed by moth or rust, or stolen away by thieves. And even if your possessions aren’t destroyed or used up or stolen during your lifetime, at the moment of your death, they won’t do you any good at all, when you have eternity staring you in the face. If you lived your life to store up things for yourself, you will be shocked to find out that your short life was wasted, and horrified to learn that there is nothing waiting for you but the everlasting torment of hell.

Your sinful flesh is always seeking earthly comfort, earthly security, earthly success, and earthly glory. But the more you seek those things in this life, the less you will have after this life. So give up storing up treasures for yourself on earth.

Instead, Jesus says, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. What are the treasures one can have in heaven? And how does a person store them up there? The treasures that await in heaven are the great blessings God has promised after this life: eternal life and joy in His presence, seeing Him face to face, knowing fully, even as we are fully known, eternal dwellings that Jesus is right now preparing for us, perfect fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more loss. Beyond that, there will be rewards of grace for each and every deed of love, done in faith, and many more treasures than that—treasures we can’t even conceive of now. As the Scripture says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”

But in order to have all those treasures in heaven, you need to reach that heavenly inheritance.

So give up storing up for yourselves treasures on earth. Give up seeking the praise of men. And focus on Christ and on the things above. As the writer to the Hebrews say, Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Consider Him, the Lord Jesus, throughout this Lenten season. Consider the things He suffered and the opposition He endured from sinful men during Holy Week. Fix your eyes on Christ, and on the things above. And so prepare, O Israel, for the great and awesome Day of the Lord. Amen.

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Faith, though imperfect, is powerful

Posted on February 15, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Quinquagesima

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 + Luke 18:31-43

I’d like you to think about the story of Abraham for a moment. Think of all the things God told him that made no sense. Get up, leave your home and your country and go to the place I’ll show you! It’s true, you have no children, and you and Sarah are old, and she is barren, but you will have offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky. Yes, I told you your offspring would be reckoned through Isaac, but go and sacrifice him anyway! None of those things made sense, even to Abraham. And yet he clung to the word and the promise and the faithfulness of God. Not perfectly, as we see in many examples, but persistently. We call it “faith,” this clinging to the word and promise and faithfulness of God. Hebrews 11 gives us a classic definition of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. In other words, to have faith is to cling, already now, to the things you hope to have in the future, because, even though you don’t see those things now, you know for certain that, one day, you will. Now, Abraham’s faith was strong, but still imperfect, as was the faith of every Old Testament and New Testament saint. But in reality, even the strongest faith is still imperfect in this life, because perfection lies in seeing, in actually having and experiencing the things we hope for. Paul described it in today’s Epistle like this: Now we see through a mirror, darkly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I am also fully known.

That describes well the situation that Jesus’ apostles found themselves in in today’s Gospel—seeing through a mirror, darkly, knowing only in part. And, as Paul makes clear, that also describes our situation. We see and we know imperfectly when it comes to the things of God. But, as we see in the example of the blind man in the second part of the Gospel, even imperfect seeing can achieve amazing results, because, even though faith isn’t yet perfect in this life, when faith is placed in Jesus and His Word, it does have a perfect object—something perfect in which to believe. Faith, though imperfect, is powerful, because the object of faith, which is Jesus and His word, is perfect, and perfectly reliable.

Our Gospel begins with Jesus taking His twelve apostles aside and telling them plainly, Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that were written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be finished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon. And they will scourge him and put him to death. And on the third day he will rise again. It’s very close to Holy Week. They’re heading toward Jerusalem. And Jesus, as the Son of God, sees perfectly the path before Him. He sees it. He understands it. He knows exactly what will happen to Him, and He even knows why. He will be unjustly accused, attacked, arrested, tortured, condemned, and crucified, as the atoning sacrifice that pays for the sins of the world, so that sinners might look to Him in faith and have our sins blotted out before the judgment seat of God. Our forgiveness would come at the price of Jesus’ suffering and death. He saw the path forward perfectly.

But His apostles didn’t, even after He explained to them what had to happen, even after telling them that He would rise from the dead on the third day. They understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not understand the things that were said. And that’s okay. They weren’t supposed to understand everything perfectly yet. They weren’t supposed to see clearly at this point. All they were supposed to do was listen, remember, and trust. Trust Jesus, who always saw everything perfectly, even though their faith was imperfect. Jesus, the object of their faith, was not imperfect.

And they did trust Him. Not a single disciple walked away after hearing the dreadful things Jesus said would happen to Him, even though they didn’t understand what He meant, or why these things had to happen. They all kept following, except for Judas Iscariot, who kept following physically but, by this time, in his heart, was no longer a believer. The rest of them stayed with Jesus, and would eventually see everything play out with their own eyes, and would eventually understand what it had all been about. Their faith, though imperfect, was still powerful.

Then, on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus and His apostles, along with a great multitude accompanying them in a great procession to the Passover feast, encountered a blind beggar. His sight was certainly imperfect, non-existent, even. He was, physically, in about the same shape as Jesus’ apostles were spiritually, when it came to their understanding of Jesus’ prediction about His suffering: unable to see.

But this blind man showed a faith that went beyond that of most people. Blind as he was, he still heard the crowd approaching and asked what the commotion was all about. They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. Hearing that, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those simple words tell us quite a bit. To call Jesus the Son of David was to acknowledge Him as the Christ for whom Israel had been waiting for two thousand years. Even the crowds weren’t claiming that. Even Jesus’ apostles had not yet publicly proclaimed that, though they had in private. But faith in Jesus, and in the word of Jesus, doesn’t know any boundaries of social class or religious education. Faith comes from hearing the message, not from anywhere else. What’s more, the beggar cried out to Jesus for mercy. That tells us that he had heard that the Son of David had both the power to help him and the reputation for showing mercy to those who sought it from him, whether they were lepers, or tax collectors and sinners, or beggars on the street. This beggar hadn’t heard everything Jesus had ever said or taught, didn’t know as much doctrine as the apostles did, but he had heard that Jesus, the Christ, was merciful. And he believed it.

And what did this beggar want from Jesus? Not a handout. Not a meal. Not wealth or comfort. He wanted one simple thing (which no one else on earth could provide): Lord, I want to see. And Jesus granted his request. Receive your sight! Your faith has saved you! Your faith has saved you. See what power faith has! Not because it’s perfect. Faith isn’t powerful because of its perfection, but because of its object, which is Jesus, and His word, and His faithfulness. When the beggar first came to Jesus, he didn’t yet have the thing he hoped for—to be able to see. But, by calling out to Jesus in faith, by holding onto his hope in Jesus in spite of the scoldings of the crowd for him to be quiet, he showed that he already had the substance of what he hoped for. By believing the word about Jesus, he already had the evidence of the things not seen. And his faith, though imperfect, proved to be a powerful thing, because it held onto Jesus, who is both powerful and perfect. As the Scripture says, No one who believes in Him will ever be put to shame.

For those who have no faith in the Lord Jesus, it’s not too late. You stand condemned before a righteous God because of your sins, including your sin of unbelief. But Jesus, the Son of David, is merciful and good. He knowingly faced suffering and the cross to atone for your sins. Repent and believe in Him, and you will be saved!

As for you Christians, you know there are many things you don’t fully understand when it comes to God and His word. Whether it’s sayings in Scripture that make you scratch your head, or, just as likely, things going on in the world, or in your life, that just don’t make much sense. So often it’s hard to see what God is doing, or why He’s doing the things He does. And even on its strongest day, your faith is not perfect. We’re still waiting for perfection, still waiting for the full explanation of things, which only comes at the end. But that’s okay. Cling to Christ, the Son of David, who suffered for you, willingly and knowingly, that you might live with God forever! Cling to His word, and know for certain that God’s Word is always dependable—more so than anything on earth. And trust that God Himself is faithful. He would never lie to you. He would never lead you astray. Your faith doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it will never be. But God is perfect, and so is His Word. As long as your faith is placed in Him, it’s powerful enough to save you and to make you eternally blessed. Amen.

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This is how God’s kingdom comes

Posted on February 11, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the week of Sexagesima

Isaiah 55:10-13 + Mark 4:26-32

Every time you say the Lord’s Prayer, you make this petition of your Father in heaven: “Thy kingdom come.” What do you mean? What are you really asking for? How do you want it to come? I think some people are thinking, “Father, may Your kingdom come and replace all the evil, violent, deceitful and unjust kingdoms of this world! May Your kingdom come and rescue Your children, the subjects of Your kingdom, who are suffering here below!” In other words, people are asking for God’s kingdom to come visibly, either now, before the end of the world, so that God gets rid of all evil and makes the world a better place—which is a faulty prayer, because that’s not how God’s kingdom comes. Or, people are asking for the Last Day to hurry up and get here, like, “Come, Lord Jesus!” which is a good prayer, but only a small part of what “Thy kingdom come” is supposed to mean.

How does the kingdom of heaven come? Jesus answers that question through the parables He told. Most of them, if you’ve noticed, are about the kingdom of heaven—what it is, what it looks like to live in it, and how it comes. And while the Last Day is often included in those parables, at the end of them, the parables also teach us how God’s kingdom comes now. For example, Sunday’s parable of the sower and the seed showed us how the kingdom of God comes as the Word of God is preached in the world, like seed that’s scattered on different kinds of soil, and how its coming is often thwarted in the hearts of those who don’t really listen to the Word they hear. We heard that parable from Luke’s Gospel on Sunday, but Mark also records it in chapter 4 of his Gospel, followed almost immediately by the two short parables you heard this evening, also talking about the kingdom of God, and also talking about it in terms of seeds and growing plants. Each little parable teaches us a simple truth about the kingdom of God and how it comes. Let’s take a look at them again.

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.

The kingdom of God is where Christ reigns in the heart of men. The seed is still the Word of God. Preachers preach it, non-preachers speak it, and then the work of the preacher or the speaker is essentially done. The seed is sown, and the power of the Word of God does the rest, producing faith, sustaining faith, and changing a person’s life, so that Christ does indeed reign in the hearts of believers. The kingdom of heaven comes by its own power, automatically, inevitably, without our help, without our planning, without our worrying, without our understanding. The power is all in the seed, in the Word of God itself, because the Holy Spirit is at work in the Word. The plant will ripen. The plant will produce its fruit, all by the power of God’s Word. And then, at the Last Day, the kingdom of heaven will be harvested and brought into God’s heavenly barn.

That’s essentially what God said through the prophet Isaiah, whose words you heard earlier: For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

Martin Luther also referred to this, five years or so after he posted the 95 Theses. He wrote, For the Word created heaven and earth and all things; the Word must do this thing, and not we poor sinners. In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.

The Word did everything, does everything. So just be content to have it preached among us, and to invite others to come and hear it, and to speak it to the people you know, whenever you have the opportunity. Speak, not just any part of God’s Word, but the parts that center on sin and grace, and on the Lord Jesus Christ, specifically, who died for our sins and rose again, to call all men to repentance and faith, and to give believers the right to become children of God. There’s more to the Word of God than that, but to speak that is to sow the seed, that grows without your help, where and when the Spirit pleases.

That’s the first parable, in a nutshell. The power to grow the kingdom of heaven is in the seed, not the sower, in the Word of God, not the one who speaks it. Now for the second parable: With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

The Word of God, when it’s proclaimed, looks so tiny, so small, so insignificant, and those who believe it are so few compared with the rest of the world. That was true at the beginning of the New Testament, and it remains true today. Imagine going out into the pagan world, as the apostles did, and preaching this message about a man who is also God, who gave His life on a cross and rose again from the dead to save us from our sins. Imagine telling the world that the little nation of Israel alone, out of all the nations of the earth, had been given the Word of the true God, and that His Word had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. How could such a message compete with the Roman Empire and and the Greek culture with their well-established religions? But the kingdom of heaven came, all by itself, and grew, and has been growing and spreading throughout the world into something enormous, something that has lasted 2,000 years, and that will last until the end of the world, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

So don’t worry about how small a certain church appears, or how insignificant a conversation may seem where you plant the Word of God, centered on Christ Jesus. The kingdom of God comes through such little conversations, and through sermons heard only by a few, and maybe uploaded to the internet, where a few more are able to hear. The kingdom of God will continue to grow until it reaches its full height. God will see to it. It will come by itself, by its own power, and will grow into something magnificent. And neither the devil nor his children in the world will be able to stop it.

But Jesus still teaches you to pray for it: Thy kingdom come. So pray. Pray that God will bless the preaching of His Word, and know that He most certainly will. The kingdom of heaven has already come to you who believe. Now may it continue to come, to us, and to others, until the Last Day, when we will see God’s kingdom come in all its glory. Amen.

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Things to watch out for when God’s Word is preached

Posted on February 8, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Sexagesima

2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9 + Luke 8:4-15

During His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus preached to all sorts of people, as illustrated in His parable of the Sower and the Seed.

Some people who heard Him preach the Word of God, calling all men to repentance and to faith in Him, the Savior sent from God to redeem mankind from their sins—some of them just dismissed His words out of hand. His words fell on deaf ears. They didn’t care enough to think about what He said, or to compare His teaching with the Old Testament Scriptures. They didn’t take Him seriously. They never applied His words to themselves.

Others who heard Jesus preach the Word of God were excited, at first. They latched onto Him immediately. They liked the nice things He said, about love and peace. They believed He was some kind of Messiah, that He was going to save them (somehow). They started out following Him gladly. But their excitement didn’t last long. The more He preached, the more it became apparent to them that actually following Him and putting His words into practice wouldn’t be very easy, or exciting. It would require effort on their part. It would come with persecution attached. And some of the things He said were just so extreme. It wasn’t all love and peace, actually. And so those hearers would follow Him for a while, but then whatever faith had begun to grow in their hearts would soon wither away, and they would abandon Him.

Others who heard Jesus preach the Word of God nodded in agreement with what they heard. They believed in Him. They went along with Him for a while. They kept listening, kept following. The Word of God was starting to make more and more sense to them. Until, you know, politics is also really important to follow, and there’s work, and friends, and fun, some opportunities to make some extra cash, to have some nicer things. They got too busy with day-to-day things to keep listening to Jesus, and to keep growing. They eventually, slowly, drifted away.

But there were always a few hearers—at certain times, no more than a handful—who heard the Word that Jesus preached, and believed it, and took it seriously—took the warnings seriously, took the comfort seriously, understood that they needed to keep hearing, keep pondering what they heard, keep praying for God’s help, not allow themselves to be distracted and drawn away by less important things. These hearers knew that they had found a treasure in the Word of God, and in the Person of Jesus—a treasure that was worth more than anything in this world, more than life itself. And so they remained with Him, learned to practice His Word each day, bore up under the hardships that came with the Christian life, and produced a life full of faith and love, for God and for their neighbor. Four different reactions to the hearing of God’s Word, but only one that had a happy ending.

Now, it was to a very large crowd of people that Jesus told the parable of the Sower and the Seed, preaching the Word of God to them as a farmer walks alongside his field and tosses out handfuls of seed in every direction, knowing that some of His words would fall on deaf ears, while others would be quickly believed but soon abandoned, while others would be believed but eventually thwarted by earthly concerns, while still others would find fertile soil, and would be not only believed at first, but would grow, and grow, and grow, until they produced a bountiful harvest. And so He spoke, and kept speaking, knowing, always, that most of those who heard would not remain with Him to the end.

We have to assume that most of those who heard Jesus speak that parable didn’t understand what He was talking about—this seed falling along the path, and on the rocky soil, and the thorny soil, and the good soil. His own disciples may not have understood it, if they hadn’t asked what it meant, and if He hadn’t explained it to them. But thankfully, they did, and He did. And so, what those crowds heard on that day with confusion, you are privileged to hear with understanding—the understanding given to you by the Son of God Himself, and by His Holy Spirit, so that you can benefit from the story your Savior told, so that it can take root in your hearts and produce in you the kind of hearers who not only have ears, but who also use them to hear, believe, and put into practice the words and the warnings of your God.

The parable of the Sower and the Seed helps you to understand what happens when other people hear the Word of God, so that you’re not surprised when you see most people, even most Christians, turning away from God’s Word, either quickly or eventually.

But more importantly, the parable of the Sower and the Seed helps you to know what to watch out for, not only when you come to church to hear the Word of God, but also when you leave church to go back to your life in between church services. When you hear the Word of God—His commandments, His promises, how much He hates sin, how much He loved mankind, to the point of sending His Son, the Christ, to suffer and die for your sins, to make you into beloved children of God—When you hear that Word of God, don’t harden your hearts to it. That’s just what the writer to the Hebrews says, citing a Psalm that was written originally for Israel: Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as [the Israelites at the time of Moses did] in the rebellion. Be aware that, as you listen to God’s word, the devil is right there, wanting to snatch away the Word from you as a bird snatches away the seed that falls upon the hardened path. But, with God’s help, you won’t leave the word sitting on the surface. You’ll listen to what you hear and allow God’s Word to penetrate down into your heart.

When you hear the Word of God, receive it with joy, as when a seed that falls on rocky soil sprouts up quickly. That’s good! Because it really is good news, that God looked at us in our misery and in the filth of our sins, took pity on us, and sent His Son to save us. And it really is a joyful thing, that God has promised a happy ending to the story and the eventual wiping away of every tear. But don’t let your joy at hearing about those good things overshadow the reality that, as the apostle Paul said, We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God. Remember, Jesus never promised that the Christian life would be all sunshine and roses. It requires the deepening roots of a faith that is regularly watered with Word and Sacrament, and the roots of a knowledge of God that can only come from persistent study of God’s Word. Only by growing in these things, with the Holy Spirit’s help, can anyone hope to survive the burning heat of trials and persecutions.

When you hear the Word of God, let it take root in your heart, but remember that thorny weeds are dangerous things. As you go along through the Christian life, there will be one distraction after another. The cares, riches, and pleasures of this life will always be vying for your attention, tempting you to pay more attention to them and less to the Word of God, threatening to take over the field of your heart, to ensnare your fragile faith and to choke it out. But, with God’s help, you can watch out for those weeds and distractions and recognize them for the danger that they are, and you can clear them out before they choke you to death.

Yes, when you hear the Word of God, strive, with the Spirit’s mighty help, to be the good soil, the ones who hear the Word with good and noble hearts, hold fast to it, and bear fruit with patience, with endurance. This is your God speaking to you! Teaching you, guiding you, correcting you, upholding you, nourishing your faith and sustaining the eternal life that He planted in you when He first brought you to believe in His only-begotten Son. Take His warnings seriously. Take His comfort and forgiveness seriously. Take His commandments seriously, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Your life literally depends on hearing the Word of God, as the life of a plant depends on a continual supply of water and light. And God, your Father in heaven, knows that your faith needs sustaining, and has promised never to remove His Word from those who cherish it. This is the one on whom I will look, God says through the prophet Isaiah: On him who is of a poor and contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word. Tremble at it, as something sacred, as something precious, as that which gave you new birth into God’s family, and as that which will sustain your precious faith until the end. The voice of the Lord Jesus still calls out into the world: He who has ears to hear, let him hear! Amen.

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The Lord has finally come to His temple

Posted on February 4, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord

Malachi 3:1-4 + Luke 2:22-32

42 days ago today (40 days ago, counting from this past Monday, February 2nd), we celebrated Christmas. Why do we count off 40 days from December 25th to make a holy day out February 2nd? We do it, because Mary and Joseph did it; they counted off 40 days from the day of Jesus’ birth, and then they took Him up from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, to the very Temple of which God had spoken through the Prophet Malachi, “And the Lord, whom you seek, Will suddenly come to His temple, Even the Messenger of the covenant, In whom you delight. Behold, He is coming,” Says the LORD of hosts. And finally, after 400 years from the time Malachi wrote those words, He did come. The Lord finally came to His Temple, 40 days after His birth.

Why 40 days? Because Mary and Joseph were godly Jews who paid attention to God’s ceremonial laws for the Jewish people, and the Law of Moses required that they perform two ceremonies: Purification for Mary, and the Consecration of her firstborn son.

In Leviticus 12, Moses gave the Israelites God’s command about purification after childbirth. Just like eating pork or touching a corpse made someone unclean, so childbirth made a woman ceremonially unclean. She was unclean for 40 days after the birth of a son, 80 days after the birth of a daughter. On the 40th day after the birth of a boy, the mother was to take two offerings to the Temple to be sacrificed: either a lamb and a turtle dove, or, if she couldn’t afford a lamb, then two turtle doves, which is the offering Luke indicates that Mary brought.

Purification was commanded by God, because every time a child is born, there is a flow of blood—a sinner’s lifeblood. And in the Old Testament, God used lots of symbols. A sinner’s blood was a symbol of sin—sin that needed to be punished with death. That’s why God gave them so many animal sacrifices in the Old Testament, to teach them that blood needed to be shed in order for sinners to stand clean and pure before God. But even the animals were just symbols. What was really needed was the blood of a spotless, sinless human being, and not just any sinless human being, but the very Son of God, sent to earth for this very purpose. The ceremonies and the laws about clean and unclean were shadows pointing to the Christ who would bring real, spiritual purification to sinners. And the much shorter time of a woman’s uncleanness after giving birth to a boy pointed to the coming of a male Child who would redeem us all. Well, now, finally, the Christ had been born, the sinless Son of God who, by His death, would make atonement for the sins of all people. Finally, all the pictures of the Law of Moses and the Jewish ceremonies were being fulfilled. Finally, and for the first and only time in human history, a clean, sinless Son had been born of a woman. And right there in Mary’s own sacrificial offerings for her purification, the future sacrifice of her sinless Son was being foreshadowed.

The second ceremony that had to be fulfilled according to the Law of Moses was the Consecration of the firstborn son. That goes back to the Exodus, to the first Passover, to the tenth plague God sent against Egypt, the plague of the firstborn. You remember, God sent the destroying angel against all the firstborn sons of Egypt, but He spared the firstborn sons of Israel by telling them to take a lamb and slaughter it, to take its blood and paint the doorframes of their houses with it. When the destroying angel saw the blood of the lamb, he passed over their houses. Then God put a claim on every firstborn son who would be born in the future generations of Israel. Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the LORD. Now, what does that mean? It means that, as an Israelite, either you present your firstborn son to God in His Temple and leave him there to serve God for the rest of his life (as Old Testament Hannah did with her son Samuel), or, as was usually the case, you had to redeem or “buy back” your firstborn son from God, for the price of a lamb.

Did Mary and Joseph actually buy Jesus back from God with a lamb? Luke makes no mention of it here, and that makes sense, because of all the sons born to men, Jesus truly was holy to the Lord. Jesus was the Son of Man who belongs to God the Father and cannot be redeemed from Him, but would dedicate His life to God’s service and to being the Redeemer whose blood was the redemption price of the world. We hear at Jesus’ Baptism how God claimed Jesus as His own, beloved Son. So it makes sense that Luke doesn’t record Mary and Joseph offering a lamb to buy the Lamb of God back from God.

It seems that they planned to, they planned to redeem the Redeemer—to, as Luke says, do for Him according to the custom of the law. But they were interrupted by divine intervention. It was at that moment that God’s Spirit brought old Simeon over to Mary and Joseph.

Simeon was one of those Jews—one of the relatively few, it seems—who understood, by the gracious working of the Holy Spirit, that the Law of Moses was pointing ahead to someone, pointing to the coming of the Messiah. He was “waiting for the Consolation of Israel,” the consolation or comfort that Isaiah had promised long ago. Not the comfort of a cushy life on earth, but the comfort of the forgiveness of sins and peace with God. As Isaiah said, “Comfort, yes, comfort My people!” Says your God. “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, That her warfare is ended, That her iniquity is pardoned; For she has received from the LORD’s hand Double for all her sins.”

God’s Spirit revealed in the prophecies of Scripture that the Messiah had to be born right around that time, and God’s Spirit revealed to Simeon that he wouldn’t see death until He saw the Lord’s Christ with his own eyes. So at just the right moment, on just the right day, God’s Spirit brought Simeon to the Temple and brought him right up to the right family. And he took Jesus up in his arms and blessed the Lord with those Spirit-inspired words that we sing every Sunday and on many Wednesdays: Lord, now You let Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word. For my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a Light for enlightening the Gentiles, and for glory to Your people Israel.

Let’s take a brief look at this Nunc Dimittis. First, Simeon announces that he is ready to depart—to be dismissed from the Lord’s earthly service, to die, in peace. You hear some people say, “I’m ready to die, whenever.” Some of them even mean it! Some of them aren’t actually ready, though, even if they think they are. They delude themselves into thinking they’ve lived such a good life that God will surely let them through the “pearly gates.” Others think that death just has to be better than what they’re suffering here, as if hell didn’t exist. Still others delude themselves into thinking that God is so “nice” that He’ll just let everybody into heaven. But, no. Simeon’s readiness came from only one place—from faith in the God of Israel who had promised to send a Savior to Israel—the very Child whom he held in his arms.

For My eyes have seen Your salvation. This is such a basic truth: Sinners need salvation, an offering, a sacrifice that atones for their sins and rescues them from eternal condemnation in hell. And Simeon tells us that this salvation of God is found nowhere but in one place—in the Child whom he held in his arms. St. Peter says the same thing, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Only by the name of Jesus, the Son of God, true God and true Man, who would give His life on the cross as the redemption price.

The price for whom? “Prepared before the face of all peoples, a Light for enlightening the Gentiles and for glory to Your people Israel.” No one on earth, Jew or Gentile, no matter how sincere or religious they may be, will be saved, unless they believe in this Child, held by Simeon, in Jesus, the Christ, the Savior sent by God to save all men from their sins. God sent Him to bring the light of the knowledge of God to all the Gentiles. And He also sent Him to bring glory to Israel, the only nation on earth that already had the light of God’s salvation shining from the Old Testament promises of God, promises which centered on the coming Redeemer. The Lord Jesus was offered into death for all men on earth, and He is offered now as the One who defeated death—offered to all men on earth in the preaching of this Gospel, so that all might hear, and repent, and believe in Him, both Jew and Gentile.

So again today, on this Feast of the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Jesus, we celebrate the revelation of God’s salvation to us sinners in the Person of Jesus. And again today, we celebrate the great Sacraments that God has given us, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Why? Because Holy Baptism is our purification ceremony by which God washed us clean, through faith in Mary’s firstborn Son. And why Holy Communion? Because Holy Communion brings the Lamb of God to us with consolation, with salvation, with the promise of forgiveness, so that, just like Simeon, our eyes can see the very bread and wine to which Jesus has attached His promise, This is My body; This is My blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. As truly as Simeon saw with his eyes the Lord’s salvation, so we see Him with the eyes of faith every time we receive the Sacrament of the Altar, so that we, too, may depart in peace, at any moment, whenever the Lord is ready to dismiss us from His earthly service and bring us into heavenly glory. Amen.

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