Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan

September 10, 2023. Divine Service. 8 A.M. |Matthew 18:1-20

Is God right-handed or left-handed? Perhaps you think that a silly question. But I ask that question in all seriousness because our readings today teach us that the answer is: both. Theology calls the civil government and authorities, as talked about in Romans today, as the kingdom of God’s left-hand, and the Church, as we hard in the reading from Matthew, as the kingdom of God’s right-hand. Both are His. He exercises rule and authority in both, and He blesses us in both - just in different ways. The kingdom of the left, the civil government and authorities, rule and bless by the Law. They exist to protect us and punish evildoers. They exist to restrain sin by enforcing the Law, so that there is not anarchy and chaos and we can live in order and peace. Now, they don’t do it perfectly. They are sinners too. But murderers and thieves and the like are still brought to justice, we turn to the police and the courts when we have been wronged or are in need of protection, and we are punished when we break the Law. And this is a great blessing from God and how He is mercifully restraining the sin and evil that seeks to tear our world - and us - apart. The kingdom of the right, the Church, is concerned about sin too, but in a much different way. For it is not by Law and punishment and coercion that the Church is ruled, but by grace and forgiveness. The Church calls sinners not to justice, but to repentance; she exercises not vengeance but love; and she does not punish but forgives. You could say that the government deals with sin from the outside in, but the Church deals with sin from the inside out. God restraining sin by healing our hearts and minds with the medicine of His Word and Sacraments. ----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

Bible Study: Is God Right-Handed or Left-Handed? | Matthew 18:1-20

True greatness is not self-sufficient strength, but humility like that of a little child. The greatness of childlike faith receives all good things as gracious gifts from our Father in heaven. Apart from such faith, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” but whoever is humbled like a little child will be “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3–4). Though in our sin we deserve to be “drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6), we have instead been drowned (“buried”) with Christ in Baptism and then raised to the new, humble life of a child of God. The Lord sends His watchman to warn us with a word from His mouth, in order that we may not die in our iniquity but be turned from our pride and selfishness to live (Ezek. 33:7–9). Thus, we live in humility and faith before God as well as in love for our neighbor, which “is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10). In the reverent fear of God, we do no harm to our neighbor, but we “pay to all what is owed to them” (Rom. 13:7) and we “owe no one anything, except to love each other” (Rom. 13:8). ----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

Sermon: The Lord’s Labor Day | Matthew 16:21-28

----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

September 03, 2023. Divine Service. 8 A.M. |Matthew 16:21-28

On this Labor Day weekend, our country takes time out to honor the work and vocations that we have been given in our lives. With that in mind I’d like you to think of the Lord’s Labor Day i.e. His Labor Day of creating us, His Labor Day of redeeming us at the cross, His Labor Day of sending His Holy Spirit, His Labor Day of serving us with His gifts of forgiveness, life, and peace in His Service this morning, and His Labor Day of judging the living and the dead on the last day. ----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

Bible Study: The Lord’s Labor Day |: Matthew 16:21-28

After St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, our Lord “began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matt. 16:21). Upon hearing this “theology of the cross,” Simon Peter stumbled into a satanic “theology of glory.” But the glory of God is revealed in the Passion and cross of His incarnate Son. The faithful prophets, such as Jeremiah, suffered persecution and rejection in anticipation of Jesus’ cross. Yet the Lord did not abandon them; He remembered them, and He was with them to deliver them (Jer. 15:15–20). By His cross, Jesus has redeemed the world, and in His resurrection, He has vindicated all who trust in Him. Thus, the Christian life is a discipleship of self-sacrificing love. Since Christ Jesus has reconciled us to God, we “live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:18). By the certainty of His cross and resurrection, we “rejoice in hope,” and we are “patient in tribulation” and “constant in prayer” (Rom. 12:12).
 
----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

Sermon: Who do You Say that I Am?

August 28, 2023. Divine Service. 6:30 p.m.

Imagine, having the key that locks heaven’s door and another key to unlock heaven’s door. In the text Jesus promises to give the keys to Peter of all people! Would you? Jesus does! Not to make him bishop or pope, but to make him a preacher, confessor, absolver, and servant. “The things you bind [lock] on earth shall be bound in heaven. The things you loose [unlock] on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” You don’t have to search for the keys to heaven like some misplaced set of house or car keys stuck in a forgotten pants pocket or drawer. You don’t need to ask: “Now where did God put those keys?” The keys of heaven are found right smack in here in this congregation, even as few as two or three gathered in the Name of Jesus. The church even has an “office of the keys,” the office of the holy ministry, where the keys are always at work for certain so that you might know and be certain that heaven is open to you who repent of your sin and believe in Jesus for forgiveness. The keys of heaven belong to Jesus, to whom “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been given. They do what He did for all on the cross – binding sin, Satan, death, and hell, loosing sinners from their guilt and shame, freeing them to be the children of God, swinging wide the gates of salvation. In every Baptism, every word of absolution, every proclamation of Jesus, every communion in which you eat and drink Christ’s Body and the Blood, the keys of heaven are turning – binding and loosing, opening heaven to faith, shutting it to unbelief. ----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

Bible Study: Who do You Say that I Am?

Jesus asked His disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). The question is also put to us: Who do you say that He is? Flesh and blood do not reveal this to us, but by the ministry of the Gospel the Father in heaven reveals His Son to us on earth, who has become flesh and suffered death for our salvation. Thus we believe and confess that He is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). As He died for our transgressions and was raised for our justification, He looses us from all our sins and preserves our life within His Church, against which even “the gates of hell shall not prevail” (Matt. 16:18–19). His salvation is forever, and His righteousness “will never be dismayed” (Is. 51:6). He comforts us with the Gospel in His Church, so that “joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song” (Is. 51:3). Therefore, “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Rom. 12:3), we also offer ourselves “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1) through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Jesus asked His disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). The question is also put to us: Who do you say that He is? Flesh and blood do not reveal this to us, but by the ministry of the Gospel the Father in heaven reveals His Son to us on earth, who has become flesh and suffered death for our salvation. Thus we believe and confess that He is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). As He died for our transgressions and was raised for our justification, He looses us from all our sins and preserves our life within His Church, against which even “the gates of hell shall not prevail” (Matt. 16:18–19). His salvation is forever, and His righteousness “will never be dismayed” (Is. 51:6). He comforts us with the Gospel in His Church, so that “joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song” (Is. 51:3). Therefore, “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Rom. 12:3), we also offer ourselves “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1) through Jesus Christ, our Lord. ----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

Sermon: She Gets It!

August 20, 2023. Divine Service. 8 A.M.

One of the fascinating aspects about our text for today is that a Canaanite woman gets what the disciples don’t, that Jesus will always do what He has promised. While the disciples act in a self-serving way wanting her sent away because they were annoyed by her persistent cries to them for help, she is vigilant in seeking help for her daughter. She gets that Jesus is the Christ, having referred to Him as the Son of David. She gets that Jesus has come to set us free from sin, death, and the power of the devil. She gets that even though Jesus was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, that she and her daughter would become His sheep by faith. ----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService