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RADIO SERVICE: Listen to Jesus’ Pep Talk, Matthew 10:16-23, Pastor Dorn

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Pastor: Pastor Seth Dorn

St. Stephen's Lutheran Church and School

7 hours ago

From ssbdwels.com: Find a Reason to Believe – April 22, 2019On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
Luke 24:1-3

Find a Reason to Believe

Daily Devotion – April 22, 2019
Devotion based on Luke 24:1-3

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Easter Sunday morning was difficult for the women who went to visit Jesus’ tomb. It was just a few days earlier that they had seen their friend die. The image of Jesus hanging on a cross was still fresh in their minds. The rapid pace at which it had all happened was still stunning.
Have you ever felt like these women would have on their way to Jesus’ tomb early that Sunday morning? Have you ever gone nights without sleep because your sorrow is so deep? Has your heart ever tried to carry a heavy burden you did not see coming? Have you ever sat for days in the dark valley, wondering if the recent death of someone you love really happened? Have you ever mourned deep in your soul because of someone or something that suddenly went missing? And if you have felt any of those things, have you ever felt like that feeling is never going to change?
It seems the first women to the grave on Easter morning did. You wouldn’t bring burial spices to a grave if you were looking for the living. They weren’t expecting to see life. They were expecting to see death. But what they found instead was enough to give hope, peace, and joy to anyone who has ever been convinced they will never again feel those wonderful things.
They saw the emptiness of Jesus’ grave. They saw proof that Jesus was risen and that his sacrifice for our sins was accepted. They saw God’s ability to keep a promise to love us and give us the greatest victory of all. They saw, just as we do as we consider the empty tomb, the glorious significance of Easter morning.

Prayer:
Father in heaven, thank you for the gift of Jesus’ resurrection, by which you have given us the victory over death and sin. May we live in that victory each day and so overcome our daily enemies of guilt and discouragement. Amen.

Daily Devotions are brought to you by WELS and www.WhatAboutJesus.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

www.ssbdwels.com/find-a-reason-to-believe-april-22-2019/ ...

Find a Reason to Believe – April 22, 2019 - St. Stephens Evangelical Lutheran Church and School | Beaver Dam, WI | 920.885.3309

ssbdwels.com

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. Luke 24:1-3 Find a Reason to Believe...

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St. Stephen's Lutheran Church and School shared an album.

11 hours ago

From WELSNews: WELS/ELS churches decorated for Easter. (We submitted a picture, too.)He is Risen! ...

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19 hours ago

Bible Gateway passage: Romans 1:20 - New International Version

biblegateway.com

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

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St. Stephen's Lutheran Church and School

1 day ago

From ssbdwels.com: Easter Up Close – April 21, 2019For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
1 Corinthians 15:3,4

Easter Up Close

Daily Devotion – April 21, 2019
Devotion based on 1 Corinthians 15:3,4

wels2.blob.core.windows.net/daily-devotions/20190421dev.mp3
See series: Devotions

It may be easy to dismiss Easter at a distance. When Easter is a faraway object, it may be easy to label it as a fanciful story with lots of drama and a happy ending.
But to confront Easter up close is to wrestle with some pretty stubborn facts. The facts are these: By late Friday afternoon, Jesus of Nazareth was dead. A Roman soldier pierced his corpse to confirm it. The centurion in charge of Jesus’ crucifixion reported his death to Pontius Pilate. With Jesus’ execution complete, Pilate gave the body over to people who took it down from the cross and who buried it in a nearby tomb. Jesus’ disciples, paralyzed by fear and grief, kept themselves behind locked doors and did nothing.
Then, on Easter Sunday, something happened; something so extraordinary that it transformed Jesus’ disciples forever. It transformed these men from hiding in terror to men willing to spend the rest of their lives facing persecution, prison, and death just so they could tell others about Jesus.
The transformation of Jesus’ disciples is a matter of record. One day they were cowering in a locked room, grieving the death of their Master. The next they were changed men, men who possessed a bold, resilient courage no one would ever take away.
Let’s face it. A room full of terrified men does not suddenly change into lifelong courageous men based on some collective whim or wishful thought.
We know what happened. The Bible gives the account. Jesus had been dead and buried, sacrificed to pay for all sins of all people of all time. Then he rose from the dead to prove that his payment for sin was accepted and that he had conquered death for everyone who puts their faith in him.
That one stubborn fact has been changing hearts and lives ever since.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, bring me up close to the reality of Easter. You were dead, and now you live. Empower me with your Spirit. Let your resurrection refresh my courage to live for you. Amen.

Daily Devotions are brought to you by WELS and www.WhatAboutJesus.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

www.ssbdwels.com/easter-up-close-april-21-2019/ ...

Easter Up Close – April 21, 2019 - St. Stephens Evangelical Lutheran Church and School | Beaver Dam, WI | 920.885.3309

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For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15:3,4 Easter Up Close Daily Devotion – April 21, 2019 Devotion based on 1...

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St. Stephen's Lutheran Church and School

1 day ago

From ssbdwels.com: Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory?Sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 for the Easter Day, April 21, 2019

Do you know what a rhetorical question is? It’s a question you ask without really expecting an answer. Public speakers ask them to try to get people thinking about the implied answer. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul has two rhetorical questions as the conclusion to everything he had said before: “Death, where is your sting? Grave where is your victory?”
“Look, I tell you a mystery.” “Mystery” really means something hidden or secret, something that no one could figure out on their own. Now Paul is going to reveal it. “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, 52in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet.” “Sleep.” Remember when Jesus was called to the bed of the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus? Friends and family had gathered at the house and they were mourning and wailing. Jesus told them, “Stop weeping, because she is not dead, but sleeping” (Luke 8:52). When Stephen was being stoned to death, St. Luke says that he looked up to heaven, said, “Lord Jesus, do not hold this against them,” and then he fell asleep. (Acts 7:60). In the New Testament, the holy writers often follow Jesus in calling the death of believers “sleep.” It hints that the person is going to wake up again. For those who are not “asleep,” Paul tells what will happen at the last trumpet. That means “at the end of the world.’ The Jews had a “Feast of Trumpets.” It was the New Year festival—just as we observe the New Year with noisemakers and fireworks, the Jews would welcome the new year with a blast of trumpets. “We will all be changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye.” In Philippians, Paul says, “he will transform our humble bodies to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Compare the picture on the left of the risen Christ to the picture that was here on the right during the weeks of Lent. Jesus’ body, beaten, whipped, pierced, bruised, bloody and dead, now raised healed, restored and new. St. John says the same thing, “Dear friends, we are children of God now, but what wewill be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he is revealed we will be like him, and we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2). I think of what we often bury. Bodies ravaged by disease or age. Sometimes we bury a box of ashes. In our earthly tragedy, we have eternal, heavenly hope. “We will all be chaned, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet.”
“For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” Paul says those words, again and again in the next verses. “Perishable,” “imperishable.” You know what “perishable” is. You experience it when you reach in the back of your refrigerator and you find the remains of the cucumber you bought six weeks ago. It’s nothing but a pile of squishy slime. It has perished. This resurrection is not like the kind of rising of the dead you would see in a zombie movie. That is really depicting “” Imperishable means “fresh,” “not able to decay,” “here for good and here forever.”
There is some “perishability” we deal with every day. Aches and pains. New ailments. We have a promise for that, too. “This perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” Imagine all the problems that come with age… gone. Imagine all the other problems that arise… allergy, stomach problems, chronic pain, mental illness, dark moods that just don’t lift… all of that gone. “This perishable body must put on immortality.”
“Once this perishable body has put on imperishability, and this mortal body has put on immortality, then what is written will be fulfilled: Death is swallowed up in victory.” 800 years earlier, Isaiah wrote, “He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The LORD has spoken” (Isaiah 25:8). The people of Judah were going to be sad because the Babylonians conquered their land. God gave a promise above and beyond getting back what they lost. “He will swallow up death forever.”
Now we get back to those rhetorical questions. “Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory?” “Sting” means something like a bee. A bee’s sting is its weapon. It’s the thing that hurts. But Paul asks, “Death, where is your sting?” It’s gone. Jesus took it away. Everything that death does and can do will be undone by Jesus at the resurrection. And so that means that the sting death still has is only a temporary one. That changes the spirit of a Christian funeral completely, doesn’t it. Instead of weeping over a tragic end, our tears are less bitter. “We will miss you, but we will see you again!” That’s the promise our Savior, Jesus, has given us.
“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” This is very much like what Paul wrote in Romans: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Death is what we deserve for sin. All die. All have sinned. But one rose. Paul also wrote, “The undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). And here he writes “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Easter is not just Jesus’ victory, it is our victory. It is our victory when we are baptized, baptized into his death and clothed in his righteousness. It is our victory at every Christian funeral we attend, because we are leaving with a promise. It is our victory when we suffer, because we know one day Jesus will wipe away every tear from our eyes. It is our victory when we face the end of life… the last days, hours and moments, because then we are about to go to the place he has prepared for us, that where he is, we will be also. “Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory?” In Morning Praise we sing, “You overcame the sting of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers” (Te deum laudamus). The victory is ours. Always. In good days and bad, all because of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

1 Corinthians 15:51-57 (EHV)
51Look, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, 52in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54But once this perishable body has put on imperishability, and this mortal body has put on immortality, then what is written will be fulfilled: Death is swallowed up in victory. 55Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!https://www.ssbdwels.com/th_sermon/death-where-is-your-sting-grave-where-is-your-victory/ ...

Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? - St. Stephens Evangelical Lutheran Church and School | Beaver Dam, WI | 920.885.3309

ssbdwels.com

Sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 for the Easter Day, April 21, 2019 Do you know what a rhetorical question is? It’s a question you ask without really expecting an answer. Public speakers ask them to try to get people thinking about the implied answer. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul has two rhetorical q...

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RADIO SERVICE: Listen to Jesus’ Pep Talk, Matthew 10:16-23, Pastor Dorn

RADIO SERVICE: Listen to Jesus’ Pep Talk, Matthew 10:16-23, Pastor Dorn

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Pastor: Pastor Seth Dorn

RADIO SERVICE: Listen to Jesus’ Pep Talk, Matthew 10:16-23, Pastor Dorn

RADIO SERVICE: Listen to Jesus’ Pep Talk, Matthew 10:16-23, Pastor Dorn

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Pastor: Pastor Seth Dorn