Sermon series for the Easter Season 2020
The entire efficacy of the Easter story hangs on one detail: the contents of Jesus’ tomb. If Jesus’ body remained in the tomb, then everything Jesus had said would have been a lie. Everything he had promised would be empty. And God's plan to save humanity through his Messiah would have been a hoax. If Jesus' body remained in the grave.
But it didn’t. The easiest way to describe the implication of the fact that Jesus who had died stopped being dead is victory. Victory over his enemy. Victory over the curse. Victory over sin. Jesus’ victory which is signaled by the empty grave means that every promise he made is already certain. That God’s plan to save the world worked. And that the hope that Jesus holds out to his people will not fail.
In From the Empty Grave, we’re looking at texts from Scripture that connect Jesus’ resurrection to gifts that God through faith gives to his people.
Week 1: Peace from Proof - April 18-20
Week 2: Hope through Faith - April 25-27
Week 3: Safety in the Good Shepherd - May 2-4
Week 4: The Way Home - May 9-11
Week 5: Love from God- May 16-18
Week 6: Resolution from Glory - May 23-26
When we grasp through faith the love that God has shown us in Jesus, it kindles a new love in us, a love that is alive and that reflects the selflessness of God’s.
Pastor Pat Brown preached this sermon on May 16, 2020 at the Family Worship Gathering of Bethany Lutheran Church’s Lynndale campus in Appleton, WI.
Learn more at www.bethanyappleton.org
Home is the place we’re meant to be. It’s where we’re safe, where the things we love are, where everything is okay. So many people search for home in different things. So often their search is a continual stumbling over the one thing that brings them home, the one thing they reject--Jesus. But when we find in Jesus a way home, we realize that no matter how far from home we might be, we are God's royal and chosen and prized family. And our rooms in heaven are waiting.
Pastor Mark Henke preached this sermon on May 9, 2020 at the Family Worship Gathering of Bethany Lutheran Church’s Lynndale campus in Appleton, WI.
On Good Shepherd Sunday, we normally go to the metaphors that Jesus used directly to show how he protects and guides his people. But 1 Samuel 17:34-37 gives us a grittier take on how God protects his people. The shepherd kills the lion to protect the sheep. God kills the defiant Philistine to protect his sheep. And wherever we, God’s sheep, go, the LORD is with us and will deliver us until he brings us hope through the ultimate deliverance of the Good Shepherd
Pastor Pat Brown preached this sermon on May 2, 2020 at the Family Worship Gathering of Bethany Lutheran Church’s Lynndale campus in Appleton, WI.
Learn more at www.bethanyappleton.org
Two hopeless men drag their feet as they return home. They’d learned the prophecies, they’d heard Jesus’ teachings, yet they’d hung their prospects on what they could see. And what they saw was their Savior dead. Jesus rebuilds hope for them. He takes them back to that which gives faith--the Word. And through the Word, he cultivates faith. By the time Jesus leaves them, their faith has the ability to make the connection to see that the reality is something that, though impossible, is true. And faith transcends their human limitations to accept that Jesus is alive, and in that, to find hope again.
The hopeless situations we face don’t find their answer in a solution that we can see with our eyes. Rather, we find hope for life in God’s Word. There he extends our perspective to see how alive our hope is every day.
Pastor Zach Gebert preached this sermon on April 25, 2020 at the Family Worship Gathering of Bethany Lutheran Church’s Lynndale campus in Appleton, WI.
Learn more at www.bethanyappleton.org
God appointed his disciples to proclaim peace. Peace comes when we have assurance that Jesus is truly alive, because when he’s alive, the prophecies are true, God’s plan is true, and we have forgiveness. + assurance of the resurrection = + peace. God provided the maximum peace by literally showing the resurrected Jesus to his people and allowing their eyewitness testimony to come to us.
Pastor Pat Brown preached this sermon on April 18, 2020 at the Family Worship Gathering of Bethany Lutheran Church’s Lynndale campus in Appleton, WI.
Learn more at www.bethanyappleton.org
How much of our lives do we spend trying to find resolution to all the stuff that’s wrong in them? Or trying to find an explanation or a way to cope with the reality that maybe there isn’t resolution? Whether we find resolution on earth or not is, to some degree at least, irrelevant. For there’s an “eternal weight of glory that is far beyond any comparison” that is in store for every one of God’s people.
Pastor Zach Gebert preached this sermon on May 23, 2020 at the Family Worship Gathering of Bethany Lutheran Church’s Lynndale campus in Appleton, WI.
Learn more at www.bethanyappleton.org