Trinity Lutheran Church Sermons

Advent 2 2025: Rise Up, My Love: Two Visions of Judgment and Resurrection

In this sermon the Holy Spirit leads us into two parallel visions of the same morning: a sunlit Judean hillside where the bridegroom’s voice calls the beloved away, and a dark, trembling world where the heavens shake and hearts fail. The contrast shows how Christ’s coming can sound like judgment to some and the sweetest rescue to his bride.

Through images of fig trees, roaring seas, and the cross, the preacher reminds listeners that redemption is a person—Jesus—who has already conquered death. In the sacraments and the promise of resurrection we are given certain hope, called to lift our heads and trust the bridegroom’s voice amid life’s winter and final storms.

Advent Midweek 1 2025. Jesus the Prophet

This episode traces God's prophetic covenant from Eden through the prophets to the fulfillment in Jesus, showing how promises were declared, fulfilled, and now continue through believers empowered by the Spirit.

Advent 1. King of the Lowly: Advent's Righteous Branch

Advent begins with Jeremiah’s promise of a righteous branch — Jesus, our righteousness — who comes in humble means to dwell with exiles. The sermon traces the prophecy to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, then applies it to ordinary life: marriages, families, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. It urges simple practices — Advent wreaths, shared devotions, daily forgiveness, and worship — so the King may ride into our homes and bring salvation to our everyday struggles.

Thanksgiving 2025. The Thank-Offering: Christ, the Perfect Sacrifice

This sermon explores thanksgiving as the continuous life of the redeemed, tracing God’s original design in Eden through sin’s disruption to Christ’s perfect thank-offering on the cross.

It explains the Eucharist as participation in Christ’s self-giving, urging believers to live as daily sacrifices of praise and service, poured out for others until Christ returns.

Last Sunday of the Church Year 2025. Keep Your Lamp Burning: The Parable of the Ten Virgins Explained

This episode explores Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins and urges Christians to remain watchful and prepared for the Lord’s return. It explains the wedding customs behind the story and shows how the “oil” symbolizes living faith sustained by the gospel and the sacraments.

Through pastoral reflection and biblical insight, the message calls listeners to hold fast to faith, repentance, and the means of grace so their lamps will burn brightly when the bridegroom comes.

2nd to Last Sunday. Sheep and Goats: The Righteousness made known in the Last Judgment

This sermon unveils the Last Judgment from the parable of the sheep and the goats, showing Christ returning in glory as the righteous judge who is also the one who suffered for our sins.

It explains that good works do not earn salvation but are the fruit of justifying faith — the sheep are those clothed in Christ's righteousness and who compassionately serve their neighbors. The goats reveal sins of omission and the danger of missing Christ in the least of these.

The preacher calls believers to live now as those already judged and forgiven, receiving Christ’s righteousness in the sacraments and responding in love: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and prisoner, and serve without seeking reward.

Trinity 24. Christ in our Suffering

In this sermon Jesus meets two desperate souls: Jairus, whose daughter lies dead, and a woman long afflicted. Through delays, crowd, and despair their faith is tested and refined, and Christ proves his power by restoring life and healing the broken.

These linked stories show how our Savior enters the furnace of suffering, turns death into sleep, answers hidden faith, and gives lasting hope in resurrection and forgiveness.

All Saints' Day 2025. The Beatitudes: Blessings of the New Creation

On the mountain Jesus speaks the Beatitudes as the dawn of a new creation: the Word who called light now stands among us, bringing comfort, mercy, meekness, and the promise of the kingdom. These blessings reveal how Christ’s life, death, and resurrection make believers heirs of a renewed world.

The episode walks through each Beatitude—poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger for righteousness, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and persecution—showing how they are both present realities and future promises, uniting believers with the church and the saints in hope and joy.

Reformation Day 2025. The Everlasting Gospel: Luther’s Revelation of Righteousness

This sermon reflects on Psalm 46 and the story of the Reformation, recounting Martin Luther’s struggle with guilt and his discovery that righteousness is a gift received by faith in Christ, not earned by works or purchased indulgences.

It emphasizes that Christ is our refuge and strength, proclaims the gospel of grace alone through faith alone, and calls believers to hold fast to the finished work of Christ amid opposition and the shifting comforts of the world.

Trinity 18 2025. The Greatest Commandment: Love Fulfilled in Christ

After Jesus’ triumphal entry, religious leaders test him in the temple, hoping to trap him. Jesus answers by summing up the law: love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The sermon explains how the law exposes our sin and drives us to the gospel, showing that Christ alone fulfilled the law by his perfect love and sacrificial death. His work and the Spirit enable and renew our love, giving practical guidance for living out Christian love amid trials and questions.