OFFRE D'UNE DURÉE LIMITÉE | Obtenez 3 mois à 0.99 $ par mois

14.95 $/mois par la suite. Des conditions s'appliquent.
Page de couverture de Sermon: Holding It Together When Everything Is Falling Apart

Sermon: Holding It Together When Everything Is Falling Apart

Sermon: Holding It Together When Everything Is Falling Apart

Écouter gratuitement

Voir les détails du balado

À propos de cet audio

 Title: Holding It Together When Everything is Falling Apart | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson | Text: 2 Thessalonians 2:1–8, 13–17 | Liturgical Date: Pentecost 22, Proper 27 C | Calendar Date: November 9, 2025 | Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County serves Fish Creek and other areas in Northeast Wisconsin. The following transcript was produced with the assistance of AI. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. This Veteran’s Day weekend, of course, we are very thankful for the service of our veterans and our armed forces, and above all, we thank the Lord for the freedom of religion that is secured by their work as Christians. That is the greatest freedom that we enjoy. We praise and thank the Lord for this freedom of religion here at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church and the way that has been secured by armed forces. Now, I myself am also a veteran and I enjoyed my time in the service. Something I really enjoyed about my time in the service was singing cadences. You know, those songs that soldiers or marines or airmen or sailors will sing when they’re marching or when they’re running. Those are cadences. Now, I’m not gonna sing any for you today. I like singing and that’s probably why I like cadences. But most of these are not pulpit appropriate. But let me tell you about a couple themes that, or one very big theme that came up. Military Cadences and Facing the Worst In those cadences, and that’s all the terrible things that you could expect in the military. There was one person that you’d end up hearing about quite a bit, a person named Jodi. Oh, we couldn’t stand Jodi. You know who Jodi is? Jodi is the guy back home who steals your girl when you’re away training in the military. Oh, we couldn’t stand Jodi. We’d sing about Jodi. We’d sing about other terrible things. We’d sing about the terrible food, the terrible living conditions, the terrible leadership we had. We’d even sing about dying and bullets whizzing by your head, and that was a deliberate thing, by the way. That was a deliberate part of the training. You see what that was teaching you? Is that even when these things happen, even when Jodi is stealing your girl back home, even when the food is terrible and the living conditions are rough, and when bullets are whizzing by your head, and even if you face the threat of death, you keep on marching, you keep on working to fulfill your mission. And St. Paul was indicating the same thing to the Thessalonians today in our epistle lesson, and that’s our theme for today: holding it together when everything is falling apart. And the falling apart that St. Paul is referring to in our lesson today is the ultimate and final falling apart. When the whole world seems to be falling apart and the Thessalonians, it appears, seemed to think that the return of Christ was right around the corner and they could see things falling apart around them. Expect the Worst: Apostasy and the Antichrist And it seemed as if this was causing no small number of their congregation distress, and maybe some of them were falling away from the faith and losing heart and confidence. And Paul helps to build ’em up in the faith, but he does so through, in the first instance, something that might seem counterintuitive. He tells the Thessalonians, well, expect the worst. Yeah, things might be bad and they are probably gonna get worse. He tells the Thessalonians, you might think to yourself, my goodness, why would he be telling the Thessalonians to expect the worst? Well, first of all, let’s take a look at how he tells the Thessalonians that they can expect the worst. He says, look, before the coming of the Lord, let no one deceive you for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called God or object of worship, so he takes a seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. What is Paul talking about there? He’s talking about two themes that we see consistently in prophecies of the end times, whether these are prophecies that Christ himself uttered or what he himself is here discussing or what we might find in the Book of Revelation. And the two themes are this: apostasy and the arising of the antichrist. Now apostasy, that’s what he calls rebellion here in a somewhat different term. What is apostasy or the rebellion that he is talking about here? Apostasy is when those who claim to be Christian turn their backs on the Christian faith and fall away from the faith and oppose the faith even. And Paul is saying, look. You might think that it’s bad now, but guess what? The time is coming when huge numbers of those who you considered your Christian brothers and sisters will turn away from the faith. And not only this, but many of them, he says, will be led astray ...
Pas encore de commentaire