Pastor Mark was away this weekend. And because he was in town, Pastor Russ Lackey, who is Senior Campus Pastor at Grand View University, Des Moines, Iowa, graciously presided over our worship service for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost.
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Pastor Lackey announces to us the Good News that because Jesus didn’t need a bucket to draw the Living Water that we really need… we don’t need one, either.
The Founders of our country were fighting for a particular kind of freedom. Different than the kind of freedom that our Lord has won for us, but the same in the respect that both types of freedom are for something…and not for our willfulness.
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Pastor Mark’s sermon explains how Christ’s freedom, won for us, is from something…and yet is for something:
This same sermon could be preached in any Catholic church or Baptist church. Or any Reformed church, or Pentecostal church. It could even be preached in other Lutheran churches.
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All that it would take is for a preacher to read and understand the Galatian letter and Paul’s intent to bring the Galatian churches back onto the rails of faith in Christ, alone, for our justification before a righteous God who demands from us nothing short of perfection.
The power and authority of the Word of God to do what it will do…for sinners. That same power and authority and action is at work in Will’s Baptism…and in yours and mine.
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Listen to Pastor Mark’s sermon on Jesus, the centurion, and the healed slave: