“The Only Requirement is Thirst”

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“The Only Requirement is Thirst” (John 7:37-39)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

The Festival of Pentecost, 05/24/2026

            Happy Pentecost!  Today we celebrate the birthday of the Christian Church.  It’s a day that gets us thinking about the church growing with all those amazing events in our reading from Acts.  It’s a day that especially gets us thinking about the work of the Holy Spirit…  How does all of this compare to us and to our lives?  How does it compare to Eastside and whether our church growing like it should be?  Finally, how can we be sure we have the Holy Spirit, and that our faith is in the right place? 

            In answer to those questions, some churches pour everything into programs that promise to transform your life, or into numerical growth, or into miraculous signs like healings or tongue-speaking.  It’s a tangible way to say, “My faith is solid! We’re doing something right as a congregation! We’ve got the Holy Spirit!”  It’s why some of these churches even emphasize that they are “Holy Spirit”-driven, or “Pentecostal” churches.  But what’s really important for our faith?  What are the true requirements for faith? 

            Today in his Word, God shows us that faith isn’t really about what we see physically in our lives or in our church.  Nor is it even about some obvious, outward way we can see the Holy Spirit at work.  We certainly adore and worship the Holy spirit as a member of our Triune God—it’s why we have a special day like today to focus on him!—but at the same time, we don’t focus on him like some churches do, often to the exclusion of other members of the Trinity.  In fact, today we hear something curious from Jesus himself: the only requirement for our faith is thirst.

            That’s what Jesus effectively says in our sermon text from John chapter 7.  Like he often did in Parables, here Jesus uses physical images to describe spiritual realities.  Particularly, Jesus uses “thirst” as picture of spiritual need.  And did you notice how Jesus encourages us to resolve our thirst?  It’s not a matter reforming your behavior or doing things a certain way, nor is it a matter of how your life looks.  Instead, it’s simply a matter of drinking deeply from Jesus, and that’s where Jesus also says you can find the Holy Spirit is at work.  Granted, by this point Jesus hadn’t yet sent the Spirit to the Disciples—that’s because he was still with them at this time, and they didn’t yet require additional help from the Holy Spirit—but Jesus was prophetically looking ahead to that time after his Ascension when the Holy Spirit would come upon the church at Pentecost.

            As for us, we tend to think of thirst as a bad thing, because thirst is a lack of what you need.  It’s why we naturally long to resolve the thirst of our souls.  But how do we do that?  Some people look for “signs of the Spirit” – something big or powerful to assure them they’ve done so.  Others try to work harder to be better people and overcome their problems – all in an effort fill them up! But does that fill us with the right thing?  For example, when you’re thirsty there’s nothing quite like water to quench your thirst. Sure, you can get out of the heat and stop sweating, but you’ll still be thirsty.  Or you can have a drink of iced coffee or a cold beer as a substitute to quench your thirst, but you’ll only end up dehydrating yourself further in the end. Or you can try to work even harder to overcome your thirst and push through it, but you’ll just get thirstier… OR you can drink water and actually quench your thirst.

Don’t miss the simple lesson in that picture. Jesus offers the only thing that overcomes the thirst of sin.  Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  We can be so quick to move past thirst that we don’t realize there’s blessing in it.   That’s what we mean today when we say the only requirement is thirst. Spiritual thirst leads us to the one thing that will satisfy our spiritual needs: Jesus, the “water of life.” Because you can have the biggest, best church yet still have problems.  Or you can avoid all sorts of sins yet still struggle under the burden of sin.  Or you can enjoy all sorts of gifts & blessings yet still face depression because it’s never enough…  That’s because you’re still dehydrated.  You still need forgiveness as only Jesus provides it from the cross, meaning that is uniquely found in the resurrection of the dead that will be ours someday as well, and a sense of contentment like no other that is found in Word & Sacrament in a restored relationship with the Lord Almighty of the Heavens. 

            That’s what Pentecost is all about. And that’s what the Holy Spirit is all about.  He’s all about leading people to Jesus as the water of life.  Or, to put it another way, think of the Holy Spirit like the operator behind the spotlight in a big Broadway production.  If he’s doing his job, he doesn’t want anyone looking at him–in fact, he doesn’t want anyone thinking about him at all!–he only wants people looking where he directs their attention. Similarly, the Holy Spirit intends to make a difference in our lives, just maybe not the one we think.  Sure, on Pentecost that resulted in tongues of fire and miraculously speaking in languages.  But if we read farther in Acts 2 we realize it was all about putting Jesus in front of others.  Peter used all these miraculous signs to call the Pentecost crowd’s attention to Jesus.  And today, the Spirit makes that same difference through whatever means ot may be–miraculous or mundane–all to connect more people to Jesus.

            Thirstis the only requirement.  You lack nothing if you have a thirst that drives you to Jesus as the water of life. As Jesus said in our sermon text, that’s where the Spirit is at work.  The Spirit is not found in those obvious things that fill our lives (that’s just the spirit of this world).  He’s found absence of something so important in our souls that we’re driven to the only one who can fill it (that’s truly a Spirit that comes from God).  Yes, he may be accompanied by other things too—the disciples were able to speak in tongues and perform miracles–but in the end it’s all about more people finding good news in Jesus.  Then, like Jesus said in our sermon text, we become springs of water: where these things in our lives point other people to Jesus as the water of life.  On the other hand, when the focus turns to those gifts and those signs and the measurables themselves, it’s no longer about Jesus and we’ve completely lost his Spirit.

            As we return to our sermon text once more, I want you especially to consider the background of these words.  Jesus is celebrating the Festival of Tabernacles for the last time during his life on earth.  It was a holiday that recalled how the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years after the Exodus, relying on God to care for them while they dwelled in tents.  Additionally, by Jesus’ time the priests celebrated each day of the festival by going down to the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem and drawing water, which they would then return to the temple and ceremonially pour out.  It became a powerful image of God providing for his people as they were about to enter the rainy season and prayed that God would bless the crops they had just sown…  Now, can you imagine Jesus watching all of that, then crying out—as our sermon text describes him doing on the final day of the festival—saying something like, “Don’t you see?  This is all a picture of me and what I can do for you!  I am the water of life!”  So also, Jesus cries out to us in his Word and says, “Don’t you see?  As you sojourn on this earth, as you thirst for something more, as you pray that the Lord to bless your labors as a congregation… it’s all about me and what I can do for you!  I am the water of life!”    Never forget that.  Your lives, the work of this congregation, everything about our faith… it’s about Christ filling us up.  If we have that, we’re doing everything right.  If we have that, we have the Holy Spirit in full measure.  Amen.

“The Ascension Difference”

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Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

Seventh Sunday of Easter (Ascension), 05/17/2026

            Today we celebrate that Jesus ascended into heaven 40 days after rising from the dead.  It sounds pretty important!  We’d probably all agree this is a significant event… But why?  Yes, Jesus is in heaven, that’s great!  At the same time, what different does his Ascension really make for our lives here on earth? 

            It’s interesting that Ascension always used to be celebrated with a special Thursday night service, 40 days after Easter – separate from our regular Sunday service, which would have a different focus.  These days we’re still willing to go to extra midweek services during special seasons, but like us most churches don’t really have a dedicated Ascension service anymore.    By the way, that’s OK.  We don’t have to worship on any particular day, Christ has given us that freedom in these New Testament times!  Yet if we’re honest, we might admit this has happened because Ascension feels like a lesser holiday.  Lesser certainly than those great festivals like Christmas or Easter.  Probably even less significant than something like Pentecost, which we’ll celebrate next week when the Holy Spirit came upon the church.  Perhaps even less significant than something like “Good Shepherd Sunday” a few weeks ago.  After all, at least that’s practical, we can relate to it as we think about our needs on earth and how Jesus meets them as our shepherd.  But how can we relate to Jesus going to heaven while we are left behind?

            What’s not OK is if we’ve lost the striking difference Christ’s Ascension makes for our lives.  That’s the blessing of our sermon text today from Ephesians 1.  Paul wrote these words while he was in prison in Rome, awaiting trial for testifying about Jesus.  Yet, what’s remarkable about these words is that they contain a joyful (almost hymn-like) tone. Why?  It’s because Paul saw that Jesus’ Ascension made that kind of difference in his life.

We see that in a number of ways in our sermon text, which focuses on Christ’s Ascension, and notice that it is something Paul wants his readers (us!) to experience as well.  It’s why in verses 17-18, Paul prays that we would understand what our Savior has done more fully.  That’s no easy task.  As Paul describes Jesus’ power in verse 19, for example, he uses words that contain the idea that all of this is beyond our ability to measure it.  To put it in another way, Paul says that God’s power is “off the charts!”  Our translation makes an effort at saying that: “Just how surpassingly great his power is for us who believe…”  In fact, it’s so powerful that, verse 21, “God worked (his mighty strength) in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.”  What Paul pictures for us in Jesus is a human body that not only rose from the dead, but which rose to heaven to the highest seat at God the Father’s right hand.  In a few minutes we’ll talk about the difference it makes to have someone like that on the throne.  Especially when, notice in verse 22 where his attention is focused from his throne: not on kings, nor is it on nations; rather, he’s focused on the church, on us!  If all that weren’t enough, notice what Paul calls us in verse 23:  “The church is his body—that means we’re connected to him; again, that will make a difference for us—and then notice what else we’re called: the fullness of him who fills everything in every way…” Let that sink in…  The one who fills all things—the one who requires absolutely nothing from us—is the one who chose to be filled by us. Which doesn’t make any sense.

            Not when, at our best, we’re still so far below God.  I mean, our understanding absolutely pales in comparison to his!  Us trying to understand the Trinity, for example, is like our Preschoolers trying to understand Calculus.  Meanwhile, he’s in charge of all nations, and he does that so capably, which must make our concerns seem so trivial by comparison.  Yet he focuses his attention especially on us, his church?…  Again, that’s looking at it from our best.  At our worst, we throw God’s affection for us in the garbage with every sin we commit – with every regrettable outburst where we cause our kids to shut down, with every time we see pain in the eyes of someone we have just pierced with unfair comments, with every excuse we make for our pathetic sin… Why would the Lord of the Universe want to be filled by that?  And then, as we heard in our other readings, why would Jesus additionally leave his beloved church behind in the hands of sinful men like the Disciples—sinful people like us—and entrust the most important work there is (eternal work that gets souls to heaven) to people like that!? 

It doesn’t make sense.  It’s not meant to make sense.  In fact, it’s precisely what makes Jesus’ death and resurrection so meaningful.  Because this really is love, unconditional & unearned.  Because it wasn’t just enough for Jesus to stand supreme, he genuinely longs for a real relationship with you.  And that explains everything Christ did for you.  It’s why Jesus lived for you on a sin-torn planet, even though it meant leaving the perfect comforts of heaven.  It’s why Jesus suffered for your sins on the cross, including hell itself – think of it, the God who created hell for the opposite of everything he stands for, he suffered everything he detests for you!  It’s also why Jesus died for you on that cross – think of that, the Living God (who had never not existed) actually died for you, never cease to marvel at that!  And finally, it’s why he ascended, to direct all things—to make a real difference—for you and for others.

            Let me ask you, what difference would it make if your dad were the president of the United States, or if your best friend were the richest person on earth?  I asked my 10-year-old those questions, and he quickly said we’d probably get someone to drive us everywhere and we could just order people to finish our basement project – though, he quickly added, I’d still find something else to stress about.  How well he knows me!  Likewise, can you imagine the difference it would make for you if someone close to you were the president or that rich?  You would get the best protection from the secret service, you would eat the finest foods prepared by a personal chef (and it would probably be good for you too!), and you would get world-class medical care for whatever situation you’re facing (can you imagine not having to wait months for a test?)!… Now, let me ask you this, what difference does it make that Jesus Christ, your brother, is the king of the universe? Yeah, no matter what I’m going through, I’ve got someone on it – literally directing all things in all creation for my good.

            The Ascension Difference.  Get used to thinking in those terms.  Maybe it helps to think of it like this: the Ascension means there is literally human flesh and bone on the throne in heaven right now.  You see, where other religions talk about casting this flesh off—freeing ourselves from our bodies in death, which ultimately makes them and what we do with them meaningless—Christianity is meant to make a difference for our whole selves–body & soul alike–including our real lives and real struggles here also.  Jesus didn’t ascend to distance himself from all of this, but to bring it closer to God and to his own control.  So much so that he’s filled by it; He’s filled by you.  Finally, you are as much a part of Jesus as your own hand or your foot belong to your own body.  And just as we will instinctively, without question act in self-preservation for our body and seek to remedy its maladies – longing to get that splinter out, seeking medicine that will sooth us, curling up and covering our heads in a moment of danger – Jesus will instinctively, without question act in our interest as the members of his body.  It’s not a matter of us being worthy or being good enough.  Rather, just like your arm is attached to your torso or your leg to your hip and that’s why you care about them, it is a matter of being connected to Christ our head by faith.   That’s why we can live with joy every day, knowing Christ will take good care of us here.  (How will he not when he is attached to us?) And it’s why we live with hope every day, knowing the best is yet to come.  (He’s not just going to forget someday that we’re attached to him!)

            So… what a Sunday!  What a celebration!  What a great day to sing rich praises to God, as we do so in orchestral form today!…  Granted, we will still face stress when we leave this joyful celebration behind, just like I would still stress even if my dad were the president or my best friend were rich.  But in those moments, keep going back to the truth we heard today.  We don’t have to solve all of our problems, not when our Savior is in a unique position to do just that.  It’s the Ascension difference he wants for you too.  Amen.

“The Answer is Always Jesus”

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(1 Peter 3:13-21)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

Fifth Sunday of Easter (Confirmation), 05/03/2026

“13 Who will harm you if you are eager to dowhat is good? 14 But even if you should happen to suffer because of righteousness, you are blessed. Do not be afraid of what they fear, and do not be troubled. 15 But regard the Lord, the Christ, as holy in your hearts. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you. 16 But speak with gentleness and respect, while maintaining a clear conscience, so that those who attack your good way of life in Christ may be put to shame because they slandered you as evildoers.  17 Indeed, it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil, 18 because Christ also suffered once for sins in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in flesh but was made alive in spirit, 19 in which he also went and made an announcement to the spirits in prison. 20 These spirits disobeyed long ago, when God’s patience was waiting in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In this ark a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. 21 And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the body but the guarantee of a good conscience before God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” 

            It’s the basic Sunday School answer.  Every child knows it. THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS JESUS…  As you get older, you realize there’s a bit more to it than that.  Otherwise there wouldn’t be any need for confirmation classes, nor would we need Bibles as thick as they are, and the catechism could just be a single page long!  Except, today as we think about what we confess as Christians, and as this week causes us to consider what adult membership in a church is all about – as we look to the past to our baptisms, and as we look to the future to what that has in store for us – we see that everything in a Christian’s life – as varied and as confusing and as rich as it may be at times – it does all boil down to Jesus in the end.

            That’s especially evident in our sermon text today from 1 Peter 3.  As we go back to our sermon text, there are lots of deep topics worthy of a confirmation Sunday.  There are the basic topics in the first few verses: There’s justification – that hope we have as Christians that we are righteous before God.  There’s sanctification too –this talk of living our life differently and doing good because we are Christians. There are more in-depth topics too: When Peter talks about Jesus being “put to death in the flesh” but “made alive in the spirit” in verse 18 – it is in reference to Jesus two states of humiliation and exaltation: his state of humiliation where he didn’t make full and frequent use of his divine powers in coming to earth, hence resulting in his death; but then his state of exaltation where he resumed full and frequent of his divine abilities, starting with the resurrection. There’s also reference to Jesus’ descent into hell, which we confess every time we speak the Apostles Creed.  When Peter says in verse 19, “(Jesus) also went and made an announcement to the spirits in prison”, this was language they used back then when a conquering general would march through a captured territory & announce victory over them – so also, this brings to mind quite a picture of Jesus marching down the streets of hell, alive & victorious even after his death!  Additionally in all these verses, there’s an emphasis on following the Word, which tells us these things.  In verses 20-21 there’s also emphasis on Baptism, which helps secure these gifts.  After all, when Peter talks about the “guarantee of a good conscience before God”,it reflects the fact that they understood back in those days that you couldn’t just come before a king whenever you pleased.  Rather, this was language they used to describe when a king sanctioned someone and granted them the right to come into his presence.  So also, God says that we are able to come into his presence through washing waters of baptism. 

            And yet, despite everything that is discussed in these verses, did you notice a common thread?  It’s ALL. ABOUT. JESUS.  Peter says that again and again.  Verse 21: Baptism saves us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Verse 18: Christ suffered for sin to bring us to God.  Verse 16: Our good way of life is always found in Christ.  Verse 15: The Lord, the Christ is the reason for the hope that we have…  In other words?  The answer is always Jesus!

            We forget that.  Too quickly for you confirmands – too quickly for the rest of us who were long ago confirmed – confirmation becomes a graduation where we think, “Now I can move on.” Statistically that’s a strong temptation for all young confirmands.  Whether it’s that they think, “I’m set, I’m saved; I know this stuff, I don’t need to keep coming!” – or it’s that life gets busy with school and coursework,  sports and extracurriculars, jobs and starting a career – many young confirmands will stop coming to church.  But that’s not good.  Every pastor has stories of people who have been out of church for just a couple of years (that’s all it takes), and when he reconnects with them and asks them about their faith and whether they still feel like they’re on the right path – the path to heaven! – they will almost always respond, “Oh thanks Pastor, but I think so, I try to be a good person.”  That’s what happens even after we spend so much time in confirmation class studying the Bible’s teachings that we cannot be good enough people for the Lord God Almighty.  It happens because our sinful nature is hard at work, and Satan is working furiously to snatch salvation away from us.  It can happen to you too!… By the way, that “graduation mindset” is not just a temptation for our young confirmands. It’s a temptation for us old confirmands too – yes, even if you have been going to church for decades!  Still, do we see the importance of being in Bible Study every week?  Do we see the need of being in Scripture & in devotion every day?  Or have we settled for the basic truth, “Jesus loves me this I know, and this is all I ever want to know”?  That’s not the kind of strong faith Peter describes here.  Then, is it any wonder that we can grow so loveless as we follow our loving Savior?  Sure, we may still hold to the teachings – maybe we even are in church and Bible Study regularly, we may be adamant about the Lutheran beliefs we confess! – yet do these teachings become a club to use that we wield against others, and then we lose Christ at the heart it of? 

            It’s why the answer must always be Jesus.  That’s because of the answer he uniquely gives to every situation:  Jesus became weak like us to deliver us from such weaknesses.  Jesus went to the cross to earn such a complete & total victory over the dominating forces of sin & Satan that he was able to go down to hell itself – body & soul alive reunited as a sure sign of victory over eternal death – then march down that street and declare, “I OWN THIS PLACE!” as a conquering general… Then he connected us to this new life in baptism.  He washed you of your sin through the working of the Holy Spirit, and he gave you that pledge of a good conscience so that you could come before God the Father, fully sanctioned as he extended his divine scepter to you.  That’s the hope Jesus gives us.  That’s what we confess.  That’s the life we now live.

            And that’s why we keep going to church.  In fact, it’s why we’re never done with catechism – that is, with studying God’s Word.  Because this isn’t a graduation.  How can we ever be graduated as long as we’re still in a struggle with sin and death?  That’s what heaven is for, we’re not there yet, let’s not pretend like we are!  No, this is confirmation – being confirmed in something – which is all about remaining in the Christian faith.  So stay in Jesus and remain in his teachings.  Confess it and live it, even when others speak against it or it isn’t easy.  As we do so we’re in really good company: the company of our Savior who confessed it and lived it perfectly, even when we didn’t.  Again, it’s all about Jesus even when we think it’s not.  In fact, it’s all about Jesus especially when we think it’s not. Because that’s when we need him the most.  And that never stops being true.  Amen. 

The Gateway to God

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Easter 4

John 10:1-10

Pastor Horton

The next time you are in Berlin, Germany, take a trip to the Pergamon Museum and marvel at the Ishtar Gate.  What is the Ishtar Gate?  It was one of eight gates that surrounded the ancient city of Babylon.  Even though it’s only the lower half of the gate, it stands about 50 feet high, and is made out of this glazed blue brick with gold trim, designed to make the gate and the giant walled entrance appear like shimmering jewels.  Lions, bulls, and dragons ordain its walls.  And the Ishtar gate protected a powerful city with its palace, temples, fortress, and famous Hanging Gardens (one of the 7 wonders of the world).  Can you picture this imposing gate in your head?  It would have been built during Israel’s 70 years in Babylon, and God’s people would have lived and worked in captivity under its shadow.  

Gates were critical points of access.  In Bible times they served as focal areas of trade and commerce.  Even kings would rule and administer justice at city gates.  And yet this morning we are introduced to a living gate, in the form of a shepherd.  Just as gates protected life, this shepherd protected his sheep.  And it was far from glorious work.  Here’s how a shepherd was described by a visitor to the Holy Land some 100 years ago.  “In such a landscape as Judea, where a day’s pasture is thinly scattered over an unfenced tract of country, covered with [misleading] paths, frequented by wild beasts, and rolling off into the desert, the shepherd and his character are indispensable. On some high moor, across which at night the hyenas howl, when you meet him, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, armed, leaning on his staff, and looking out over his scattered sheep, every one of them on his heart, you understand why… Christ took him as the type of self-sacrifice.”

So much for the warm and fuzzy Good Shepherd painting so many of us gazed upon in the Sunday School rooms of our youth.  This dedicated and determined shepherd is, in some ways, a more accurate description of Jesus and his work.  It is certainly true as we find Jesus in action in John chapter 9, right before our reading begins. 

John chapter 9 tells us about Jesus healing a man who was born blind – an incredible miracle.  And, this miracle was super frustrating to Jesus’ enemies, the Pharisees.  They had wanted to slander our Lord as some fraudulent madman….“but then how”, they wondered, “could he do miracles like that?”  So the Pharisees, this pack of wolves, hounded, not Jesus, but the newly-healed blind man.  They kicked him out of the Jewish synagogue for being made well.  And like a Good Shepherd, Jesus searched for and found this man.  Jesus announces that he is the promised Messiah.  And the former blind man bows and worships his Lord.  And then, at this tender moment, the Pharisees start chirping again in criticism of Jesus.  Jesus begins our reading with a double “Amen Amen,” calling attention to the sure and eternal truth he is about to say. 

Our verses: “I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.  The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.. and the sheep listen to his voice.  He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.  But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”  We are told that Jesus had some confused stares and that he clarified, hearkening back to God’s name for himself given to Moses at the burning bush.  The great “I am” is speaking.  Again and again in the gospel of John, Jesus calls attention to his connection with his heavenly Father and his role in our salvation (“I am the Light of the World, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, I am the Resurrection and the Life, I am the Good Shepherd”).  And now?  ‘I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.”  

How could Jesus call himself both Shepherd and Gate?  Go back to the picture of the giant Ishatar gate preserving life behind its door.  That is more accurate when it comes to the world of sheep.  Shepherds with their flocks in Bible times would be a literal gate.  In the evening they would funnel their flock inside a cave, or through a crack in a wallface and then they themselves would lay out as the physical gate.  They would often turn themselves into a living wall as the only point of entry or exit.  And little sheep prone to wondering and wandering would bump into their shepherd at the door before getting themselves lost.  Any wolf or lion prowling around would have to cross the protecting shepherd before doing damage to the flock.  

Jesus emphasizes his eternal purpose in verse 9, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved,”  What a difference from the characters in verse 1: “The man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.”  Jesus is being very clear, not only before the enemies of souls then in the Pharisees, but calling out all false teachers of all time.  Jesus is announcing that he alone is the only way to God.  There is no salvation apart from faith in him.  Any teaching apart from this leads only to spiritual and eternal damage.  

And frankly our world disagrees with him.  “Well!”  The world objects, and you can almost hear the outpouring of disdain!  “But Jesus, aren’t there all these other worlds religions?  Who do you think you are!”  You can almost hear the current cascading objections from the world out there.  The devil also certainly lures us away from Jesus with his sweet sounding siren songs – temptations to follow our own desires instead of God’s will.  And our Old Adam, our sinful flesh, is intrigued by the false teaching of “my wants first”.  All others who lure do so at the expense of truth.  They come to do what they want, not what God wants.  You and I might even find them appealing in the way they dress or talk or sell, but they come to steal, to slaughter, to destroy.  Their teachings might even really appeal to my reasoning, but the devil’s lies hide in their words.

Jesus is unfazed and resolute.  He does not waver.  He does not flinch.  With tremendous care for the truth, and with boundless love to protect and save life, his answer remains the same “I am the Gateway of God.  If you want to live – you live eternally through me.  There is no other way.  I am here for you.”  

And what message from our Savior!  Jesus’s words stand out.  We long to hear him speak.  We wandering sheep are often like a lost child in a big crowd, and how good it is to hear that parent’s voice call us by name, “I’m right here.  Let’s go this way together.”  We long for the relief that comes from Jesus’ words.  And knowing what he says, we hear and recognize in false shepherds that which is not true.  

And how much more when it comes to our families as well?  God is compassionate in keeping his sheep and his little lambs close to their Savior.  It is a wild and wicked world out there.  Many messages fill the ears of our children and grandchildren with a devilish design to take them away from Christ.  How can we best help them in their walk of faith?  What messages are they hearing?  What is their world being filled with?  There is no way to keep all evil away from them…and so our job (the most important job we can do for the next generation of Jesus’ church) is to teach our family to hear, and to recognize Jesus’s voice.  We want them to know him by faith, and to long for his Word and to be in his Word, because there they will have what is true.  We want them to cherish Jesus as their own shepherd who loves them so much he even laid down his life for them.

Because we now get to have a special relationship with Jesus forever (so keep the warm picture of the Good Shepherd hanging up)!  By nature we should have been left outside in the cold.  Your sin and mine placed us there for eternity.  Instead, in great mercy, Jesus has gone to the cross to pay for each sin, including our wayward wants and the many times we turned to other sinful fleeting fancies.  He took his life back up as promised and has secured for you, God’s elect, a place inside the gates of heaven.  You get to be part of his flock forever.  He is the gateway to God.  And heaven is open to you through him.

He says that was his very purpose, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  That is also a reality for you and me today.  In full and free ways our Good Shepherd comes to us and forgives hurting souls inflicted with guilt.  We are equipped in full and free ways with the saving message of the gospel – and are given a full and free life to live without fear, made “Dead to sins and alive to righteousness” in Jesus.  We are given a full and freeing faith through the Sacraments.  And we have a Shepherd who cares for us individually – fully and freely meeting our needs now and eternally.  Now with one foot in paradise we live as sheep of the Good Shepherd.  In Christ we have freedom, and we have purpose, and we have direction – looking forward to the eternal pastures of heavenly life.  Just as God promised and delivered his people from the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, God promised and will deliver us through Jesus, the Gateway of God.  Heaven is open through Christ.  New and eternal life is ours today.  Let’s go tell a future sheep of Jesus’ pasture about the great things our God has done in Jesus.  Amen.

“Doubt Your Doubts” (John 20:19-31)

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“Doubt Your Doubts” (John 20:19-31)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

Second Sunday of Easter, 04/12/2026

            I don’t know if you pay attention to religious trends.  I do, it kind of comes with the territory as a pastor, and one I’ve heard lately is to essentially treat doubt as a good thing.  The idea is simply this: it’s not good to accept faith blindly, but to really think about what you believe.  As such, doubt has become a way to hedge against arrogance that assumes, “I have all the answers”, and embrace positive virtues like humility and repentance.  In that sense that doubt has also become a virtue for many people.

So how about it?  Is that a mindset we should adopt that will MAKE A DIFFERENCE in our lives?  Before we hear God’s Word on this topic today, take a minute to think about the doubts you’re facing currently.  Maybe you’re unsure where a relationship is at right now.  Perhaps it has something to do with your health.  How about job security, do you have it?  What’s your housing situation going to be like next year?  Forget next year, do you know how you’re going to pay that bill next month?  Will interest rates reverse so you can finally refinance or actually purchase a home?  Will the stock market recover from its recent slump so you can meet your financial goals?  What’s going to happen with the war in Iran – is it truly winding down, or will it worsen leading to pain at the fuel pump or perhaps even worse pain than we can imagine right now?   Is that problem with your vehicle going to turn into a big deal?  What about that sound your water heater is making?

Yeah… doubt is something we struggle with everywhere else in our life.  We feel so much better if we can get these issues resolved!  We naturally long for answers and certainty, it’s just how we’re wired as human beings. (It’s why we appreciate the sciences, it’s even why the athlete who has everything still wants the security of that next contract!)  And today in his Word, God confirms the same is true for our faith.  He wants better for us, so he simply tells us to DOUBT OUR DOUBTS.  What better place to see it than in the biblical account of “Doubting Thomas”?

 First of all, let’s be clear: when Jesus told Thomas to “Do not continue to doubt, but believe”, that’s Jesus calling doubt a bad thing.  In fact, when Jesus says “stop doubting”, he literally says in his first language, “do not be unbelieving”, which also literally makes doubt the opposite of faith.  Doubt is not some virtue for our faith.  Doubt gets in the way of saving faith.  That said, notice how Jesus approaches Thomas.  There’s a gentleness here.  There’s also a distinct invitation preceding it. “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Take your hand and put it into my side…” In that context Jesus lovingly says, “Don’t be unbelieving, but believe – i.e. Now that you’ve seen the evidence, Thomas, there is no room for doubt!” 

And how does Thomas respond to Jesus?  Well, he promotes doubt as a positive thing and says, “There’s no way!  It can’t be true you’re alive after you died, Jesus!  You must be an imposter!…”  No, that’s not some hidden meaning in the original language.  Instead, it’s simply the short, striking reply of faith that we see in our text: “MY LORD AND MY GOD!…” Have you ever noticed that nicknames often come from single incidents, and they don’t always describe a person well?  That’s “Doubting Thomas”.  Despite his doubts Thomas answered them with faith.  He does so here.  He also does so to a degree back in John 11. When Jesus there spoke about his impending death, we are told, “Thomas said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go to Jerusalem that we may die with him,’” Now I’m sure Thomas did not completely understand all that was about to happen to Jesus. (None of the disciples did!)  But it was a better response than Peter who chastised Jesus at the time for talk of dying.  Still, because of the event we’re hearing today, Thomas gets the nickname.

But anybody would have doubted like Thomas.  It’s no virtue, just an acknowledgement of our sinful shortcomings.  It’s why Jesus doesn’t just obliterate Thomas for his doubts.  But he does direct him to DOUBT HIS DOUBTS when confronted by God’s truth, which is exactly what Thomas did in the end…  As he did so, Jesus seems to prove that faith isn’t as blind as it may appear to be.  After all, he satisfied Thomas’s doubts by actually appearing to him!  But what about our doubts?  We haven’t seen Jesus appear to us, so are we just supposed to trust him blindly?

Or could it be that God satisfies our doubts more than we realize?  Just consider the great event we are celebrating this time of the year.  Do you realize there is absolutely no event in ancient history as well documented as the events of the first Easter?  That’s not just a point of dogma, it’s a cold hard fact!  As we think about the confession of faith we will again use today from 1 Corinthians 15, there are literally hundreds of witnesses who saw the risen Christ, many of whom comprised of the Bible writers who wrote about it: Matthew, John, Peter, and James saw Jesus alive with their own eyes – likely Mark & Jude as well.  Meanwhile, Luke carefully investigated many others who had seen Jesus alive.  Years later Jesus also appeared to Paul alive to complete the rest of the New Testament.  And we have copies of all their writings dating back to within a couple hundred years of Christ.  In some cases like John, we have examples of his writing just a couple of generations after he lived!  By that metric, if you’re going to doubt anything the Bible says about the resurrection, you’d really have to doubt everything we know from all of ancient history.  Seriously, throw out Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great – any copies we have of eyewitness accounts from their lives are from many more centuries (if not a millenium) later.  But who’s really willing to doubt all of human history? 

At the same time, how do we know Jesus’ earliest followers didn’t just steal his body and say he had risen, like the Jewish leaders claimed they did?  Because that introduces an entirely new level of doubt!  Why in the world would they do that?  Why perpetuate a lie which they had refused to believe possible after Jesus death, as the disciples & Thomas’s initial skepticism demonstrate?  Then, why would they risk their lives for a belief so contrary to human experience and expectation?  If they had not actually seen Jesus rise, why would they be willing to be killed for it – as most of them were? For example, we think Thomas was martyred in India!  There’s no reason for any of it unless these events actually happened.  From the pure perspective of history, which considers primary source material and an author’s purpose in evaluating the writing – without any bias against religion and allowing for the fact that if you actually believe there is a God, it’s not hard to believe he could do a miracle – the resurrection is the gold standard of historic credibility!  Jesus will satisfy our intellectual doubts, if only we let him.

More than that, Jesus satisfies our spiritual doubts.  Think of what Jesus told Thomas & the Disciples, “Peace be with you.” We primarily think of this word as peace among people, such as peace from war, but when the Hebrews heard the word peace, they primarily thought of peace with God.  And that’s what Jesus offers us, the kind of peace that we need to be true.  It explains everything about how we live and think.  Why else would anybody want to do any good for others if they get nothing out of it, or feel guilt when they have committed a sin?  Why else would mankind care about legacy and producing things that last after they’re gone?  If you just die and that’s it, none of this would matter!  But deep down in our souls we know we’re accountable to God and that more comes after death…  Yet the best any other religion offers is a blind faith, a wishful thinking that you’ve done enough good for what comes next. Which is precisely where Jesus takes the blindness out of that faith.  He clearly shows himself as a perfect substitute for us and a perfect sacrifice for our sin.  Far from hiding salvation, he simply offers himself on the cross – as proof that something real was done about our sin – then he offers us his empty grave – as proof that something real was done about death.  As we think about our sin, and the guilt we carry, and the evil in this world, and those we couldn’t bear losing (or those we have had to bear losing), where else are we ever going to find an answer like the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Dear friends in Christ, DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS.  They’re not as solid as you think they are.  That’s true for every concern of body & soul. Whatever you face, look to see how Jesus has helped you in the past. Look at the cross and tomb. Look at your life personally, see how God has worked out things over the last year, or over the last decade for your good.  Then trust God will do the same in the future.  Trust those same words Jesus said about us in our sermon text, “Blessed are those who have not see yet believe.”  Whenever you have doubts about health or wealth, doubts that are relational or vocational in nature, doubts about your own value & self-worth, even doubts about mortality and eternity – trust that Christ will bless you, go to him in prayer, and take the hand he offers when life has you knocked to the ground – hands pierced by nails for you! 

Yes, we will still doubt at times,  It is a sign of sin in this world and of our own sin, yet it’s no unforgiveable sin.  But the key thought, how should us doubting Christians address such doubts?  Take page out of Thomas’s book.  Put your fingers in the side of his flesh.  You & I find that in Word & Sacrament, in the message of which he is the flesh incarnate, and in his own body & blood given for us in Lords Supper.  Then DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS.  Doubt is not the goal!  It’s not with anything else in our lives, so don’t allow Satan to get you to accept it as some virtue here, that it’s somehow OK not to have the answers with faith.  No, Jesus and his certain answers to us are the goal.  He lives to MAKE A DIFFERENCE for our doubts…  And don’t let anyone tell you it’s arrogant to know what God knows and listen to what God says.   At the same time, do be humble & repentant as you see how Jesus works patiently on you despite your doubts, just like he did with “Doubting Thomas.”  Amen.

The One Place God Isn’t

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“The One Place God Isn’t” (Matthew 28:1-10)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

The Festival of Easter (4/5/2026)

            Have you ever been in a situation where you wondered, “Where is God?”  If so, you’re not alone.  Even us pastors feel like that at times.  We’ll look difficult situation or a difficult home, and we think, “There is no God in this place.”  And you can understand that if it’s a situation where someone has rejected God and done what is wrong. But what if you haven’t?  What if you do everything right in your career, but others end up ahead?  What if you do your due diligence on your car purchase and keep up with the preventative maintenance, and you still have a catastrophic engine failure?  What if you go to church and try to follow what the Bible says, yet you still come down with that cancer diagnosis. What if it’s your mom or your dad who always went to church and they were so good to others, and they died way too young?  It’s those times where we may be tempted to think, “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES MAKE?” if, in fact, our faith does not seem to be making any difference where it matters the most.

            Well, there is ONE PLACE GOD DOESN’T EXIST, but it’s not in these places where our fears dwell.  The one place God doesn’t exist is in the grave.   Because the only thing worse than not being able to see God is working in a situation would be if he were truly dead himself, unable to help us with these situations.  But the great meaning of Easter is that Jesus lives, and that means our faith in him can always make a difference.

            As we look back on our sermon text, a few thoughts really stand out in connection with this theme. First of all, did you notice that fear is a repetitive thought throughout?  From the soldiers to the women it is mentioned again & again, and the women’s fear even persists after they get good news from the angel.  Granted, godly fear can be a good thing – you may recall that this Bible word even has the connotation of respect – but when the angel & then Jesus himself both tell the women “do not fear”, it tells us this is not healthy fear but bad fear.  And of course they were afraid.  They thought the one they had identified as their God was dead!  They just saw him buried in the tomb at the end of the previous chapter of Matthew. Now, it would have seemed their faith would make no difference for them. And the fact is that Jesus was indeed dead for a time, the angel’s word don’t hide that truth.  He had clearly been killed before their eyes by crucifixion (vs 4), and (vs. 6) when the angel describes Jesus lying in the tomb, the tense in the first language conveys the sense that he was lying there for some time.

            Wouldn’t we have drawn the same conclusion?  As we face trouble in this fallen world – as we encounter pain and confusion and loss – fear often gets the best of us and threatens to undermine all God would give to us.  You ever notice how fear subtly shapes our lives for the worst?  You go through something bad, so you fear it happening again.  You don’t trust someone because you don’t want to get hurt again, or you assume the worst of situations that hold any resemblance to a bad chapter from your past, or you anticipate that a medical test will only end poorly long before you know the results or how it will actually play out in the future. It’s PTSD, or rather PSTD, Post-Sin-Traumatic-Disorder.  The more we’re affected by the consequences of sin in our world – worse yet, the more we’re affected by the consequences of our own sinful actions and see the damage it causes – the more it wears on us… 

            And that may be where we think we’re missing something in our faith, or (even wors) that God isn’t actually there.  But do you realize what’s going on?  There’s a very simple explanation for this that has nothing to do with any deficiency in our faith; or rather, any deficiency the object of our faith.  It’s our sinful nature’s last-ditch effort to get us away from the right answer. It’s our wounded nemesis Satan trying to drag us down with him before God crushes him.  You see, faith was never meant to solve all our problems in a terminally-ill world.  That may be the world’s delirious idea of faith as it lies on its deathbed, but it’s not God’s idea of faith.  In fact, faith will always mean a struggle in a world dying with sin.  The Bible says that faith is certainty of what we cannot see, which assumes that life won’t always be problem-free!   That’s precisely what we hear from God today: faith may not eliminate every cause of fear in our lives. But what it will do is help lead us through these fears to something better. 

            Case in point, consider the women once more from our sermon text.  They were clearly living in fear before the events of the first Easter Sunday.  I even wonder if they had some PTSD as they walked to the tomb and felt that earthquake, harkening back to a few days earlier to that wretched earthquake when Jesus died and their hopes died with him.  And we’re even told they continued to have some fear after they heard the good news from the angels!… but also that there was joy mixed in.  Why?  It wasn’t because Jesus hadn’t died.  It wasn’tbecause they were able to erase every concern.  It was because there was one place their Savior could not be found. As the angel said: “He is not here.  He is risen!”  The tomb was empty.  Though the angel reminded them that Jesus spent time in that tomb just like we will, the angel also told them that Jesus hadn’t stayed there. 

            So also, dear friends in Christ, “He is not here. He is risen!” Our Savior exists everywhere except in death.   That means Jesus lives to drive away our fears.  So whatever it is that you face – whatever irrational fears have a grip on your heart, whatever health concerns you have for you or those you love, whatever hopelessness you see in a grave whether it’s a dying relative or you just think about the terror that awaits you someday – Jesus lives to deal with it and Jesus lives to bring us back from it!  As we saw with the women, those fears may not be removed right away, but there is joy to be found if we face these fears with a Savior who offers certain victory in the future.  And it’s not just for the future.  As you look to him in faith, Christ may calm those fears sooner than you realize.  Consider the rest of his disciples.  The angel said Jesus would see his disciples in Galilee some time later. (It had to be a few days later at least, since it would take them some time to travel from Jerusalem.)  Then, Jesus repeated that he would see his disciples in Galilee.  But, whether it was because of their fears or their lack of faith, Jesus actually appeared to them that same evening in Jerusalem. (That’s actually our Gospel next week in church.  Make sure to come back for that, don’t let Easter just be a “one and done”, this message is too good!)

            That’s just it, our faith provides such good news that it’s an immediate call to action.  Back to the women: think of how they responded.  There was no waiting around.  No lingering at the greatest memorial in human history.  After all, what good was this empty tomb if others didn’t know their Savior lived also?  Similarly, the good news of Jesus’ resurrection is yours to share.  You heard that right.  Don’t think for a moment you have nothing to offer if you’re not a pastor or a teacher.  Think about this: if at this most pivotal moment in all of human history, God chose women to be the first witnesses of the resurrection with all the challenges they faced back in that culture – women whose testimony wouldn’t have been admissible in a court of law back then, women who weren’t even looking for this task themselves – then this is a job for all of us even if you think nobody will believe you or if you’re not looking for this task. Like them, the only thing we need to be qualified is simply to have heard the message that changes everything…  and you just heard it.  And besides, why wouldn’t we want to have such meaningful purpose in our lives? Souls saved forever.  That’s what’s at stake. Forever is a very long time. Nothing else we do could matter as much as that! Don’t let fear stop you from experiencing such joy.  Get it in your mind that this is for you to share, to live out, to bring to the world around you. (We’ll hear more about that also in the weeks to come.) 

            Finally, all this rings true because there’s one place God isn’t: dead and in a tomb.  If he were, our faith would contain no call to action; in fact our faith wouldn’t make any difference in our lives, we’d simply be at the mercy of what happens to us.  But Jesus lives.  Throughout this Easter season, we’re going to see all the difference this can make in our lives.  For today, if you just remember one thingn remember that this single fact has changed your outlook on eternity.  You and I know where we are going. That makes all the difference.  We know we’re going to see our loved ones raised in the flesh someday, because Jesus was raised in the flesh first, and we’ll see them with our own eyes as we too are raised in the flesh. … So, if Jesus lives to make such a difference for death, somehow-someway he can make a difference for everything else along the way.  Amen.

Look Up to See Your King

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Palm Sunday

Zechariah 9:9-10

The Israelites’ heads must have hung toward their feet much of the time.  They must have felt defeated.  Sure, they had returned from exile in the East.  But the temple was still in ruins.  They were really just a remnant of what they once were – now struggling to find identity as a people.  But behold the prophet’s words, “Look up!  Here comes your King!”

Fast-forward five centuries . . .The heads of the people are still hanging toward their feet much of the time.  Still feeling defeated.  Sure, the temple was now rebuilt, and Herod had even done some impressive renovations.  But they still didn’t have real freedom.  They were subject to the Romans, who told them what to do and how to do it.  They longed for the glory that was once Israel’s.  But someone shouted, “Look up!  Here comes your King!”

Fast-forward two millennia . . .Our heads hang toward our feet much of the time.  We often feel defeated.  Sure, we have freedom; we’re not subject to another country’s king.  But we are subject to sin and to its sad effects.  We long for the days of glory.  But today we hear, “Look up!  Here comes your King!”  We look up to see our hero—our Conqueror.  And for the next 7 days, the inspired Holy Week Prophet, Zechariah, helps us look up to see our King on the back of a donkey, on a cross, and coming on the clouds.  And it all starts this Palm Sunday.

Often with heroes we do look up…“in the sky! (you may know the phrase)  It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  No . . . it’s Superman!”  And the hero emerges.  The Jerusalem Jews didn’t need to strain their eyes to the skies.  Jesus was there, on the back of a donkey, and they were excited.  Here he was, they assumed, their long-promised Messiah.  Here was their conquering hero!  Here he was, their salvation from the Romans, from poverty, from sickness, and from suffering.  Here was Jesus!  Look up and see him.  Then bring the family out!  Spread your coats and palms to welcome him!  Shout loud hosannas to honor him!

When Zechariah told the people to shout, he chose a word that was used as a battle cry.  How hopeful the Jews must have been: their king had finally arrived to wage war on Rome!  This superhero could raise fallen troops

back to life.  He could end the need for supply lines as he multiplied loaves and fish.  And if he could do all that – He could conquer the world!”  Even Zechariah said, “His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”  “Hosanna!” they cried, which means “Save now!”  Conquer the enemy for us!  Conquer the world for us!  And do it today!

But look how he arrives…on a donkey.  Can you picture Superman meandering up to the fight on such an animal?  With donkey noises as the soundtrack?  There was no display of superhuman strength, no lasers shooting from his eyes.  He didn’t drive a golden chariot pulled by white stallions.  He was coming gently, peacefully, and humbly.  “See, your king comes to you, . . . lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  In many ways, the opposite of what one might expect.  Power and glory is what people then, and still today, demand and expect from the Christ.  How strange to see him enter the city in such a way.  

How strange to watch him throughout the week on his walk to of all things: a cross.  The people would see their hope for his herohood be tortured and executed as well.  So much for the Superman who would be broken and extinguished under a Roman fist.  But why?  Why did he who once walked through an angry mob allow himself to be arrested?  Why did he who raised the dead allow himself to die?   

We also often look up to Jesus and wonder: Why?  Why does the omnipotent God allow my body to break down?  Why does he allow my relationships to fall apart, leaving me feeling so lonely?  Why does he let me struggle with my finances that I so often worry about?  Why doesn’t he instantly sweep in and save me from all the suffering and pain?  Why doesn’t my Superman-Savior save me from all my troubles?

Because he’s not that kind of king – he’s better.  He didn’t come to wage war on poverty or disease or unhappiness.  He didn’t come to take away problems or pain or to make this life easy.  He didn’t even come to snap his finger and remove all war and rumors of war in this fallen world.  When you get disappointed in what Jesus doesn’t do for you, are you tempted to reject him as the inhabitants of Jerusalem did?  Does he need to be the kind of Savior you want right now?  Or else what?  You then have no need for him, at least not right at this moment.  Oh, we figure, I can always turn to him later, when I think he’ll then give me what I think I need.  But if we’re so bold (as we so sinfully are) to demand Jesus be what we want right now or we’ll leave him…we should not be surprised if he stops this parade to the cross altogether, walks away, abandons us, and leaves us without a saving hero!  Should he really make every effort to rescue people who aren’t interested in his kind of salvation?  But you know what kind of king he is, the Word of God makes that clear: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!  Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!  See, (today) your king comes to you, righteous and victorious.”

Look up to see your Hero, who never sinned, who always does what is in line with the will of God.  Look up to see your Conqueror, who is victorious, who brings you salvation from your soul’s enemies.  Look up to see your King, who arrived in a glorious Palm Sunday entrance, that would end alone on a cross for you and for me.  Look up to see him at his lowest.  Look up to see him waging war against Satan, against death, against hell.  Look up to see him fighting the ultimate battle for your freedom!  Don’t hang your head in shame.  Look up!  He won and proclaimed peace!  He stayed faithful for every time you forsook him, for every time you went AWOL on God.  His righteous record is now credited to you, making you perfect in God’s sight.  He is the humble, gentle, obedient hero we need.

“Wait a minute,” we might wonder…“if King Jesus proclaimed peace to the nations, why doesn’t the world look more peaceful?  Why do we still have so much strife?  Why do we still hear of conflict, of crashed planes, of scandal, and of countless murder documentaries?  Why are our lives still in turmoil because of broken relationships, broken homes, and broken promises?  Because he’s still not that kind of king.  We need to understand what Zechariah meant when he prophesied, “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken.  He will proclaim peace to the nations.  His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”  

In 1949, the US Air Force unveiled its newest bomber, the Convair B-36.  Its wingspan was 230 feet (nearly long enough to play a football game).  Beneath those mighty wings were four bomb compartments capable of carrying 86,000 pounds of bombs (ten times more than the World War II B-17 Flying Fortress).  It was given a surprising nickname for an aircraft carrying so much destructive power; it was called the Peacemaker.  Every enemy knew that it was better to make peace, rather than war, with a nation that flew such a plane.

Such weapons are needed because there will always be wars and rumors of war.  Jesus said that would be true until he returns.  So the promise of “peace to the nations . . . from the River to the ends of the earth” must mean something else – something more profound.  Jesus is the real Peacemaker.  His atoning death for us established peace in our relationship with God.  He rode on in majesty to deliver us from guilt and shame, from the fear of death and hell.  And one day, we will have peace from all our problems, from all wars and conflicts, from all suffering and pain, from all frustration and heartache.  A day is coming when he will end wars of every size and type, when he will save us from all the effects of sin and give us perfect, eternal peace. 
So we look up to the skies and eagerly await the day when our King will return, no longer humble and gentle but coming in power, no longer riding a donkey but riding on the clouds.  We look up with confidence that he is coming to bring us perfect, permanent peace.  Dear friends, look up to see your King on a donkey, on a cross, paying with his blood for our peace with God, and one day coming on the clouds, when he will put an end to all conflict.  In the meantime, shout his praises: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!  Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you”!  In the name of Jesus our Savior and King. Amen.

“Only the Best”

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“Only the Best” (Romans 4:1-5,13-17)

Series: Exactly What I Needed

by Pastor Nate Walther

The 2nd Sunday of Lent (3/1/2026)

            ONLY THE BEST.  It’s kind of a motto for our lives.  As Americans, we expect our country to have the best standard of living, the best military, and the best medical care.  Professionally, we want to be the best at what we do, get the best pay, and receive the best benefits.  For our kids, we look for the best schools, the best dental care, the best sports opportunities.  In our homes, we want the best materials: that nice hardwood furniture, those striking stone countertops, or those energy-efficient windows & appliances…

            If we think that way everywhere elsewhere in our lives, we don’t easily “turn it off” when it comes to our faith.  And that’s OK. God wants us to have the best for our faith too!  The problem comes when we make faith about what we do, choose, or think.  Like so many other things in my life, it’s easy to take matters into my own hands to ensure that I get the best! But if we want the best for our faith, God paints a dramatically different picture for us today in his Word. 

            As we look again to our sermon text from Romans 5, it intersects so well with our theme today. Abraham is the father of the Jewish faith & a great paradigm for faith in general.  What we heard at the beginning of verse 2 only makes sense, if anyone had reason to boast it was Abraham!  Yet that only makes what we heard at the end of verse 2 even more striking, “But not before God…” As God expects “only the best,” this is him telling us in his Word that not even Abraham could cut it — Abraham, who moved a month’s journey away from his family to some place he had never seen before, all because God told him so.  Abraham, who washed the feet of random strangers that showed up on his tent-step and served them with the finest meat from his flock & produce from his field. Abraham, who risked life and limb not just to rescue his nephew Lot from powerful kings who had captured him, but he also rescued many other unworthy, evil citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah (whom God would later destroy!).

            Granted, God does commend Abraham, but did you notice it was for a completely different reason? Verse 3, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”  Abraham did have something going for him, but that something was faith.  Which is interesting when you consider that faith is always contrasted to works in the Bible.  Here and in verse 4, God doesn’t say he credits righteousness to people for what they do, as something they earn; rather, he credits it for the opposite reason: for faith.  And the thing about faith in the Bible is that it’s not just some abstract, “you’ve just got to believe.” Faith always has an object, it always relies on something else.  In particular, Abraham’s faith was about what someone else did.  “Abraham believed God” That’s what was “credited (or calculated) to him as righteousness.” 

I’m sure Abraham wanted the best in his life just like us, and there was plenty a guy like him could earn for himself. But what about all the things he couldn’t earn for himself?  For all his accolades, Abraham had sin.  He questioned God at times, one time even sleeping with his own maidservant (Hagar) to try to fulfill God’s promise about having a child that would lead to blessing for the world.  It didn’t work.  The world’s Savior from sin did not come from that child born to him (Ishmael).  Abraham and all nations were still in their sin… But give Abraham credit for one thing: he didn’t settle for what he could do, and he continued to live by faith that God could do something better.  That’s what God eventually did give him “credit” for, since God eventually would provide a child for him & his wife (Sarah) in their old age (Isaac) who would lead to a Savior for the world.

So also, dear brothers & sisters of Jesus, do you want the best?  Good!  God has wired that into your heart and mine.  Don’t settle for anything less. So every time we’re tempted to think more highly of ourselves because we go to church when others don’t, or we go about our career in a godly and respectable way even when our coworkers don’t, or we are being honest in our classes when classmates are cheating and trying to us AI… stop!  Don’t settle for that!  Because what good is a gold star before the one who made the stars?  And every time we’re tempted to make faith about how much more we know than others, or how committed we are in our convictions, or the fact that we go to the right church when others don’t… stop!  Don’t settle for that!  God knows more than us and expects a lot more than that from us.  And every time we’re tempted to minimize our own sin, and we revel in the fact that we haven’t done the bad things that others have, or we pretend those sinful thoughts we have aren’t affecting the way we look at our spouses or at the success of others… stop!  Don’t settle for that!  After all, God is pure holiness and wants us to enjoy such perfection with him, not some cheap, sin-corrupted version of it.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying.  Do those good things too, just realize they won’t cut it. And more than anything, live by faith.  Because we get more by focusing on the object of our faith and what he does.  It’s what this season of Lent is all about.  Last week we began Lent with the traditional reading about how Jesus overcame the devil’s temptations for 40 days in the wilderness – it’s a reminder of how Jesus perfectly overcame every temptation to sin for us as our substitute!  During Holy Week we will end Lent with the traditional readings about how Jesus went on trial and died on the cross– it’s a reminder of how Jesus perfectly suffered the penalty for all sin for us as our sacrifice!  This time of the year is all about focusing on how Jesus can do more for than we can do for ourselves.  And it’s exactly what we need.  When God calculates Christ and his good deeds to our account, he is able to credit so much more to us than if he were to calculate only our deeds (good & bad) to our account. 

Have you ever been there yourself?  You’re trying to solve a problem at work, or maybe you’re just looking at the family budget, and the numbers don’t add up.  But then some extra funds come along, the math changes, and everything works out! One of my favorite real-life examples of something like this is when UPS implemented software that prioritized right-hand turns over left-hand turns.  It seemed extremely minor, but changing that one variable meant that in one year their drivers drove nearly 30 million less miles, they saved 3 million gallons of fuel, and they required 1,000 fewer trucks. Such a seemingly small change made a huge difference… Now take a huge change and apply it to our faith.  If faith were only about what we do, God must add up all our sins and factor them into the equation too.  Then, if you consider two possible outcomes for eternity – one without any imperfection in heaven and one with imperfection in hell – there’s just no way around it, we’re spending eternity with our sin!  But if you add Jesus as Savior from sin to the equation, and the math completely changes.  That’s where God is able to keep all of his promises to us in full. 

Help others see it.  In a world that longs for “only the best,” anything short of it can throw people into a tailspin.  Which is really bad, because it’s rare for anyone truly to be the best at something.  Even if they are the best at one thing, they will usually struggle with other things that relate to what they are trying to accomplish. The world’s best three-point shooter may not be a particularly good defender.  Or the most brilliant scientific mind may not have the best people-skills, which limits what he or she can get done.  Even the best presidents have ton of flaws (anyone would when put under a microscope)…  If only the best will do, then no one will do; which means what everyone really needs at the end of the day is Christ, who was the best at everything for them!  If you love someone, always be thinking about how you can bring Jesus into their lives.

And don’t miss ithist for yourself either, dear Christian.  Whenever you look at yourself and struggle and think, “I’m not the best! I should be a better mom, a better husband, a better person…” – And you and I should be! – or if ever we think, “How could God ever settle for someone like me to spend eternity with him in heaven?”, remember what we heard earlier, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life!” (John 3:16)  That’s not my take on the subject as a pastor, nor is it some inspirational quote AI fashioned for a coffee mug.  The words from our Gospel reading are Jesus himself saying that faith in him will make all the difference.  Christ’s love, forgiveness, and power can make a real difference for you in your God-given callings. Don’t underestimate how everything can change with one variable, especially when that one variable is Jesus. He really does bring “only the best.”

Abraham had a lot going for him humanly-speaking, and he was a wealthy man.  Yet God always kept Abraham looking for more.  For years promising a child, but not giving him that child; and even what God gave Abraham that child, he still promised a great nation from this son that Abraham would never live to see!… It worked.  It kept Abraham looking for something better.  The Book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham lived as a sojourner on earth.  Despite all that he had, he saw that heaven was what he needed all along. His story is our story.  Whenever we find that we’re lacking, and when we are kept waiting, we don’t have to settle for something less than the best or do anything to fix it.  Just live by faith.  Just let God do what he’s promised all along.  That’s when Christ will give us EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED.  Amen.

Hope Held in Holy Hands

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Matthew 4

Lent 1 February 22, 2026

Pastor Horton

Are you familiar with Edward Martin Grylls, better known as Bear Grylls?  Born in northern Ireland he served in the British Special Forces and has made a name for himself as a tv reality show host and outdoor adventure enthusiast.  By that I mean he puts himself into crazy survival situations….often taking a famous person along with him.  You may remember him scaling a cliff with Shaquille O’Neil, hunting wild boar with Marshawn Lynch, or dodging bear while exploring a glacier with the then-sitting President Barak Obama.  Most times these famous people find themselves looking to Bear as a guide through all the dangers of the wild.  They have high hopes in his survivalist skills to get them safely out of the wilderness.  Admittedly, much of that show was made for tv with the danger perhaps more imagined than real.

When we find Jesus out in the wilderness, it is a very different scenario.  He is going alone.  In fact, the interaction he does have is only problematic.  It’s with the devil, described in unflattering words, “the diabolic one”, the “one who slanders God by slandering God’s truth”, and the one “who constantly tempts”.  This is who he is.  And his sights are set on Jesus.  Why?  Because of these exceptionally high stakes.  If Jesus, the chosen one of God, appointed to be our sacrificial substitute, and live under the law perfectly, and carry our sins to his cross for full payment, if this Jesus were to be tempted to sin just once, he would be disqualified as our needed Savior and we, along with every soul that’s ever lived, would be lost to hell forever.  The stakes were exceptionally high. 

And yet, did you notice that into the wilderness Jesus will go!  “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.”  He wasn’t lost or in this situation by accident.  This is a divine strategy to guide him into battle.  Jesus is going to face and to overcome temptation.  The Second Adam is going to go into the arena of the First Adam…and win.  Jesus is more than a really good example.  He is our Substitute.  He has told us as much in the gospels that he is here to “Finish the work of his Father who sent him.”  During this battle our hope for heaven is held in his holy hands.

And here comes the temptor, “After he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  The Tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.”  But Jesus answered, “It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.”  It’s hard for me to wrap my head around exactly how weak, weary, and worn Jesus is during these 40 days of temptation – especially hearing that he had been fasting.  I know that I get hangry in the late afternoon if I’m not eating that day, add in a headache, and it doesn’t take long before I am in a miserable mindset.  Jesus is focused and determined in spite of the devil targeting his mission to be our perfect substitute.

What is at the heart of the first temptation we have listed?  “Prove that God is who he says he is: both you, Jesus, and your heavenly Father who provides for all your needs.”  Especially during this time when Jesus was operating without, the temptation was to take matters into his own hands and fix the problem.  This temptation is a call back to the Garden of Eden, to imply Jesus is not given enough from his Father, and to act out of line with the Father’s will.  

Jesus’ response?  He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, proving that God’s Word fills more fully than any earthly bread.  And that he has complete trust in his Father to extend his earthly life – even if it meant a bit more suffering in the moment by way of human hunger.  His Father would see him through.  And the Father would make a far better wilderness companion than Bear Grylls.

The next temptation?  To the top of the temple they went – either to the tippy top of the main structure, or some have speculated to the southeastern corner with its 450 foot drop into the Kidron valley – we don’t know.  We do know the challenge,  “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.  For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you.  And they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”  Jesus said to him, “Again, it is written: You shall not test the Lord your God.”  And so moving from the temptation of distrust, Satan twists God’s Word to the other extreme that he might incite false trust.  “Oh you have this wonderful relationship with your Father?  Let’s see it in action.  You want to quote the Scripture?  Here’s one from the psalms.”  Only if you know Psalm 91 by heart, you know that the devil purposely left out “concerning you…in all your ways.”  But again, our Savior properly responds using the great gift of God’s Word.  This temptation would not push him over the edge, so to speak, and he would continue to embrace, not exploit, his day of grace with God.  He would not test God, but be a caretaker of the blessings that were his –  including that gift of his life and breath.

Then the final temptation we have listed (out of the countless ones Jesus faced during these days of testing), verses 8-10, “Again the Devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  He said to him, “I will give you all of these things, if you will bow down and worship me.”  Then Jesus said to him, “Go away, Satan!  For it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”  I don’t know how the devil did this, but God permitted him to present before Jesus all the kingdoms of the world.  And what would he have seen?   Those Chinese dynasties and their armies?  The grandeur of Rome?  The freedoms earned and found here in the United States?  “Look, Jesus, you came to win the world – here it is!”  And with an alluring shortcut!  Why go through all that suffering, agony, and death?  Here is a far easier way!  

And yet Jesus recognized that the devil’s promises – glimmering and shining as they so often do – are empty and on the inside reek of sin and death.  Ultimate glory, comfort, and control are not the devil’s to give.  Jesus returns again to God’s Word, that full of armour of God, (which is yours and mine as well!).  He goes to the top of the list and quotes the first commandment.  Jesus would remain faithful to his heavenly Father and committed to his heavenly Father’s plan for our salvation.  This Lent we find Jesus remaining on that gruesome path to fix the fall of Adam, to pay for all our sin, and to resolve that echoing chorus of death brought about by Adam in our lesson moments ago from Genesis.

And we needed such a Savior.  Think for a moment if our salvation was left up to us!  Imagine if it was you out there in the desert!  We so often act like we can walk in step with our perfect Savior – as if his work maybe isn’t all that important – as if we could do something too.  But what would that look like if your salvation was left in your hands?  How quickly would you fall into temptation?  There have been plenty of times when we face immediate challenges in the physical world and do what?  Despair, complain, worry, fear and doubt our Father in heaven.  Even if you are a life-long believer, how often do you stand at the edge and break to the temptations to play loose and free with sin?  Maybe jumping off the temple isn’t something you face, but being reckless with God’s grace and jumping headfirst into various evil wants – that is our regular problem!  And then I probably don’t have to ask how often, how constantly do our hearts bow to other things of this world and we find ourselves so often chasing the deep desire for glory, for comfort, and for control?  Sadly if our salvation was left in our hands we would quickly fumble it all away.

But this Lent, behold again the Lamb of God, once again in Christ Jesus!  He is out there in the wilderness for you and for me.  His holiness and his heart are on display.  He goes forward to cross and through the grave for you.  He holds us in his hands through Word and Sacrament.  There we are reassured of our personal forgiveness with God.  And Jesus remains committed to us, helping guide us through our many constant daily temptations.  Jesus is with you in the wilderness of this world and he will bring you home to heaven – he has made you that promise.  Because Jesus stands, we stand.  Because Jesus wins, we win.  Because Jesus holds our salvation in his holy hands, we have heaven forever with him.  Amen.

“Trust Your Eyes” (2 Peter 1:16-21)

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Series: Identity Revealed

by Pastor Nate Walther

The Festival of Transfiguration (2/15/2026)

As Peter looked back on his life now at the end, it had been tough.  Growing up with his brother Andrew on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, those were good memories.  But life never remains as simple as it was when you were a kid.  Sure, he had his brother’s company as they grew older and got into the local fishing trade, but problems came along with age: bills to pay, issues with coworkers, dying relatives … that’s life.

But then he met Jesus, and everything changed. Miracles that offered a glimpse of something far bigger: Jesus curing diseases, providing for those in need, even raising the dead – even Peter was able to walk on waters of the Sea around which he grew up, just like Jesus had!  Was this finally the one God had promised?  Yet at other times, Jesus appeared to be so human. He talked about his death as if it was inevitable.  How could the Messiah—who was supposed to rescue them from sin—succumb to sin?  But then, there was the Mount of Transfiguration, that indescribable scene! Surely this was the Son of God!!! But then, there was Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion.  For three days Peter could interpret nothing good in this mess, and all hope seemed lost.  Except… Jesus rose from the dead!  Hope was restored when Jesus appeared to Peter alive again on that first East morning!!!  Except… it had now been a generation since Jesus went back to heaven.  Since then, other Disciples had been killed for the faith, including his own brother. Peter’s life was constantly under threat also, and looked like this would take his life soon too… So what was Peter supposed to think here at the end? 

It’s the quintessential picture of faith: always ebbing and flowing, like light which grows brighter in the darkness of this world and then wanes some too. But a key thought?  Throughout all the darkness of sin, we still keep seeing that light… That’s what Peter goes back to in this letter, which effectively serves as his last will and testament, and he tells his readers the same: TRUST YOUR EYES, eyes which see Jesus.  In our sermon text, Peter makes that clear right away.  How can we be sure Jesus is the answer?  He says it’s as simple as eyewitness testimony.  Jesus was the answer for those who saw him.  And among the many things Peter must have saw in his life, it’s interesting how Jesus’ transfiguration stood out, which we are celebrating today.  Again, 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father, when the voice came to him from within the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We heard this voice, which came out of heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.  Peter still remembered hearing the Father’s own voice and seeing Jesus in all of his glory, which would serve as a source of light for the rest of his life. 

But notice that it didn’t immediately solve everything.  In verse 19 notice how Peter talks about a lamp in a dark place, waiting until the day dawns, and a morning star rising (which only rises when it is still dark). It calls to mind the fact that there is still darkness!  Life will still be hard!  But Peter just keeps going back to this message, and he tells his listeners to do the same.  Why?  Because it is reliable.  Because it offers precisely light for those situations of darkness.  That’s because it comes from the source of all light.  Peter reminds us this comes from God, it’s not just some human interpretation of things.  In fact, in the Greek language and in the word order in which this was first written, people are actually the last thought of the last sentence of our sermon text.  Literally in verse 21, Peter wraps up this entire section by saying, “by the Holy Spirit were carried, as they spoke from God, men…”  

It’s been said before in our world, “don’t trust your lying eyes”, but ironically so.  It’s actually meant to demonstrate the opposite: when things get messy in this world – as they tend to do in politics, for example, where the phrase originates – what else are you supposed to believe other than what you can see right before you? 

So also, trust what you see. First of all, trust the darkness you see around you.  When you see death in the news, when you see pain in your body, when you see trouble in your family, when you see chaos in this world…  trust that sin is real, that it’s serious, and it needs to be fixed.  Along with it, trust that no manmade solution will do.  We’ve had thousands of years to get it right and it’s not getting better, we need something else!  Then trust the light you see in Scripture.  Trust what no man has ever come up with on his own (indeed, no other religion has ever conceived of anything like it): full forgiveness from sin & guilt that is not earned, and hope that has no business being in the room when what you see is evil. You’re at your parents’ or your friends’ or your child’s funeral, and yet this hope says you will see them again even after you die – with your own eyes in their own bodies…  Trust that there something different here, because you’ve seen everything else in this world and you realize, there is something different here.

In other words, like Peter see the morning star, even if morning itself hasn’t yet dawned.  Because despite the darkness we do see around us, we also see Christ.  He’s dawned on our hearts already, and he will dawn on our risen bodies someday when they are glorified to be like his transfigured body.  We can be sure of it because this message of Jesus is reliable.  It’s reliable in the eyewitnesses who saw his glory, then saw Jesus crucified for sin, then saw him raised to life for our justification.  It’s as reliable as any other historical event anyone saw.  Maybe it feels different when we see dark things and we haven’t seen Jesus personally, but this is based on the same eyewitness testimony that all of history is based on.  It is no fiction.  

Finally, if that’s not enough, trust what you see because it’s exactly what we need.  Look, sometimes there is just trouble in this world.  Even after the glorious sight he saw on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter still experienced that.  Shortly after our Gospel account Peter would live through the darkest, gloomiest period of his life.  Jesus was not only arrested and killed, but Peter had a hand in betraying him.  Can you imagine the suffocating guilt Peter felt without a Savior (at least, as he thought of it).  We’ll hear all of that again soon during Lent… So could that be why Jesus wanted Peter to be one of three men to see the transfiguration?  So that he would have something, anything to hang onto and not lose his faith in the end?  So that he could provide the same meaningful testimony to others who find themselves in such hopeless darkness?

How might God be doing the same for you?  Life is just hard sometimes in a dark world, so he gives you just the right kind of light for it.  Could your family life be good because he’s got some challenges in store for you at work?  Or does he make you love what you find at church because you’ve got extended family that’s hell-bent against it?  Maybe he’s given you sickness preciously because you have a strong faith and can witness to it?…  I know, maybe you’re thinking, “Pastor, you don’t get it, that doesn’t really explain what I’m going through…” And you’re right. I don’t know.  As our sermon text reminded us, our interpretation & our understanding is the absolute end of the equation!  I don’t know any better than the next guy… But God does.  So what could God be doing right now to give you light where you need it, or make it so that you can shine that light for others in a meaningful way precisely because of what you have experienced?    

Light & sight are interesting things.  You can be in absolutely, pitch-black darkness, but even the tiniest, most minute light will inevitably draw your eye to it.  It’s why they charge double to put those tiny little indicators on light switches: you’ll see it from across a dark room, and you can find more light.  That’s our faith too, and always go back to it.  Christ is light, and in his transfiguration today we remember just how much light he has as the son of God.  In the darkness of the things we don’t understand or guilt of sin that smothers us, see that.  In fact, see more than that.  See Jesus somehow shining out even more brightly on another mount: on a cross where he pierced through the darkest clouds of hell.  Then see Jesus somehow shining out even more brightly than that from the gloom of a grave for you…  Dear Christian, TRUST YOUR EYES, eyes of faith that see Jesus.  Amen.