Pastor Bob and Vicar Colin hope to meet and gather with you at the feet of Jesus this Sunday as He gives us the Words of Life and feeds us graciously and generously at His Table.

After the Divine Service we look forward to getting to know you better during our after service fellowship where we enjoy light refreshments and wonderful conversation.

God’s nature is to love His creation. Even the Law reveals the divine love that would not abandon us to our sinful estate but redeemed us through Jesus’ salvific work upon the cross.

Though we deserve nothing but God’s temporal and eternal punishment we see God’s steadfast and unrelenting compassion in the proclamation of the Gospel that all would be saved through His free give of salvation in Christ Jesus. God’s holiness demanded:

1. sin be punished and justice requires the life of the sinner as payment.
2. divine justice allowed an innocent life to be the acceptable payment to redeem the sinner’s life from the wages of their sin. To prepare humanity for Jesus’ sacrificial death upon the cross and His resurrection three days later was the slaughter of innocent lambs of the old covenant. This demonstrates the superiority of the new covenant in His blood for the old system required annual sacrifice of an innocent life and that sacrifice never was raised from their death.
3. compassion for you and me, compelling Him to suffer injury and loss in God the Son's incarnation rather than to abandon us to such a temporal and eternal fate.

God grieves that we suffer and struggle under the weight and consequence of original sin and our actual sins. Though He is neither the source nor the cause of sin He nevertheless is glorified in such situations of trials/temptation to prove our God given faith is faithful and true.

God’s delight and will is that we look to Him first and foremost as the only one who desires and has the power to deliver us from sin and the consequences of our sin. He is glorified in:

1. our prayers that AMEN His holy work of testing that calls us to turn from our sin to Him for such prayers are the pleasant aroma of our offerings He delights in and graciously receives from us.
2. our AMEN to His promises to hear our confession of sin and appeal for His mercy for sake of Jesus and His bitter and innocent suffering and death.
3. every good spiritual and physical thing He give us to spiritually and physically sustain, strengthen, safeguard and comfort us.
4. bringing us safely through our spiritual trials that test our faith and lays naked the evil the devil conceals in his temptations.
5. those few but precious moments when we see the divine Wisdom has neither abandoned nor rejected us but has truly and faithfully met all our needs.

Amen and Amen