Pastor Kyle Bitter - The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost - Sunday, August 25, 2019

Text: Genesis 18:20-32

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A popular children’s book bears the title “If you give a mouse a cookie…” I’m guessing many of you have read it, but if you haven’t, the basic plot goes like this. A little boy gives a cookie to a mouse, who then asks for a glass of milk to wash it down, and then a straw to drink the milk, and then a mirror to avoid a milk mustache, and so on from there. The illustrations throughout the book show the boy getting more and more frazzled as he satisfies request after request after request – each one seemingly reasonable and logical after the last, but also increasingly unreasonable because there are so many demands! Its silly story designed to be entertaining for kids, but like most children’s books, there is a subtle message in it as well. Usually, when you ask someone for a favor and they are generous enough to give it to you, you don’t then turn around and ask them for something more! It usually comes across as a bit ungrateful at best, and perhaps at worst looks like you’re taking advantage of their generosity.

Pastor Joel Leyrer - The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost - Sunday, August 18, 2019

Text: 2 Kings 6:8-17 (The Seventh Petition)

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Dear Friends in Christ,  Today we come to the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer. We are asking the Lord to deliver us from evil, or as it could also be translated according to the Greek and found in many modern translations, deliver us from “the Evil One.”  Both mean the same thing; one identifies the source, the other identifies his product.

Pastor Kyle Bitter - The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost - Sunday, August 11, 2019

Text:  Job 1:6-22

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A couple of months ago, Pope Francis made a bit of a stir among Catholics and broader Christianity when he approved a new translation of the mass that had been prepared by the Italian Bishops Conference. Among the changes made was a slightly different rendition of the sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here because the changes really didn’t have a major effect on the meaning and don’t affect us at all in the Lutheran church, but I bring it up today as an illustration of a simple fact.  Some people find the sixth petition to be a bit difficult to understand when they overthink things a little. For example, some have wondered, if we didn’t pray, “lead us not into temptation,” would there be a chance that God might actually lead us into temptation? That doesn’t really fit with the rest of what God tells us about himself and his plans in the rest of scripture, so what is God inviting us to pray that he would do in time of temptation?  Where can God’s people turn in time of temptation? Afterall, living in a sinful world and shackled to our sinful nature, it’s a daily struggle!      

Pastor Eric Schroeder - The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost - Sunday, August 4, 2019

Text:  Matthew 18:21-35

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See if you can guess the answer to the riddle. We all think we understand it, but it’s one of those things we might find difficult to define clearly and concisely.  We all desire it—and even expect it at times—but we are hesitant to hand it out to others. We use it on a daily basis, sometimes without even thinking about it; other times we refuse to spend it, because we don’t want to be taken advantage of.  Sometimes we obsess about it too much; most often we take it for granted.