TEXT: LUKE 14:1-14/HEBREWS 13:1-17/PROVERBS 25:2-10
JESUS GIVES YOU HIS PLACE!
Rev. Kenneth W. Wieting

In many and various ways God spoke to His people of old by the prophets, but now in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, through whom also He made the world (Heb. 1).  Dear hearers of the Word made flesh;

As a single vicar in North Carolina, I was the guest at lots of meals.  The dear people in our sister congregation no doubt understood my lack of culinary ability and took pity on me.  But those dinner invitations were also a time of sizing this Midwesterner up a bit – of asking lots of questions – and sometimes of suggesting things a vicar might attend to.  Dinner invitations can have more than one purpose.

TEXT: LUKE 12: 49-53/Hebrews 11:1-16
JESUS IS THE GREAT DIVIDER!
Rev. Kenneth W. Wieting

In many and various ways God spoke to His people of old by the prophets.  But now in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son…through whom also He made the world (See Heb. 1:1, 2).  Dear hearers of the Word made flesh;

Heavy words spoken into our ears by Jesus!  Do you think I have come to give peace on earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division.  From now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three.  Our age admires compromise and external accord.  Our culture despises truth claims as divisive and detrimental.  Our sinful nature would like everyone to agree with our own superior, personal view of reality.  As a child of this age and culture, dealing with your own Old Adam, how do you receive these heavy words of the Son of God?  They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother. As Jesus continues, even the in-laws become outlaws over Him.