Our Saviour Lutheran Church - Vernal, UT

10/12/2026

Sermon excerpt for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
For the full sermon, visit www.oursaviourvernal.org/sermons

10/12/2026

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
The forgiveness of sins is what Jesus gave this man that hour, and it is what He gives you this hour. He gave it to you first in Holy Baptism, where you were carried to Him; ever since, He has never stopped applying it. It resounds through the whole of the Divine Service; as you have just sung, the Spirit witnesses to your soul’s salvation “in Your Sacraments and Word,” and “there He sends true consolation.”
The Service begins with the Name of God, the very Name into which you were baptized, now spoken over you again, even as the sign of the Cross is made: the same sign once made over your head and your heart, marking you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified. You confess your sins, and you hear them forgiven “in the stead and by the command” of Christ Himself. You cry for mercy; over and over and over again, you cry, and the Lord hears. In the Creed, you confess, “I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins,” the very faith that forgiveness calls forth in you. Daily, when you pray, “Our Father,” you say the very words once spoken over you as a hand was laid upon your head at the Font, words by which “God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children.” For in your baptism, He made you His own; now, He calls you as He called the man on the bed: “Son.”
And then, at the last, here, from this Altar, the forgiveness that has sounded in your ears throughout the Divine Service is placed into your mouth. “Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you. Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you.” Here, the mercy for which you have cried throughout the Service, and which you have received again and again, is given in its fullest measure: the very Body and Blood of Christ, under bread and w**e, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.

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10/05/2026

Sermon excerpt for DAY, 2026
For the full sermon, visit https://www.oursaviourvernal.org/post/sermon-for-the-eighteenth-sunday-after-trinity-2026

10/05/2026

Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” The lawyer wanted to know which commandment weighed the most. So Jesus answers him with the words every son of Israel prayed morning and evening: “You shall love the Lord your God.”
Not simply “God” in general, whom the spiritual, if not religious, seek: either within themselves or upon the mountain. Not even “a God,” over whom the churches wrangle. No, your God.
That word is a claim. Before the command ever asks for your heart, it tells you whose you are. He is the Lord your God. He made you: your body and soul, your eyes, your ears, and all your members, your reason and all your senses. And what He has made, He requires whole: all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.
So, whose are you?
You say “my God” readily enough. You sang it a moment ago, “Thee will I love, my God and Lord.” You even pray it: at times in earnest, at others in vain. Yet what about the other words you say all the week long, and far more often: my time, my money, my weekend, my rights, my way? Each one draws a line around something and says, “This much, at least, is mine.” Is He your God when times are good, or only when there’s trouble or difficulty of some sort? Is He the God you thank and praise, serve and obey throughout the week, or just the One to whom you give a few hours, or less? Is He your God only when it’s convenient to you? Or is He your God even when it costs you? When you say “my God,” who is doing the claiming? Is it He, or is it you?
God Himself says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Or, in other words, “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” Above all things. Above all your things. Above you.

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09/28/2026

Sermon excerpt for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
For the full sermon, visit https://www.oursaviourvernal.org/post/sermon-for-the-seventeenth-sunday-after-trinity-2026

09/27/2026

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
The lawyers and Pharisees’ contempt, wearing silence, is not the only way they break the Third Commandment. Even before the healing, Jesus noted how they chose the best places, and in that vying for position, that same contempt wore pride ever before silence. So, now, He says to them, “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him.” Well-versed in the Scriptures, they should know as much, for so Solomon taught in the Proverbs. Yet grasping for the highest seat is the same refusal to be taught that kept their mouths shut a moment before. The guest who thinks too highly of himself leaves no room to be taught otherwise: not by the host, and certainly not by God. Both are the same contempt, aimed first at the table, then at the Word that governs it.
You have been invited as well, not merely to some wedding feast, rather to the wedding feast, the very marriage supper of the Lamb. Even now, you are at that Table, in this House of the Lord. So examine your own place at it today. You have sat in this House on more days than you can count: listening for the sermon’s ending rather than hearing what is actually said; watching the clock rather than resting in the presence of the Almighty, desperate for the benediction, longing for the kickoff. Even if you have never said it aloud, you have thought, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, always Jesus; always Word and Sacrament,’ as though the same bread should have grown stale in your mouth by now. Or, perhaps, you have wished for a friendlier person in this pulpit, and teaching softened enough to draw a crowd, as though the trouble were a marketing problem rather than hearts already too full to be hungry: full of themselves, full of a theology of glory sweet on the ears and empty of a crucified God. Is any of that the way a guest at the greatest of feasts should think or behave? No; it is the same contempt for the Word proclaimed, dressed differently each time.

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09/21/2026

Sermon excerpt for DAY, 2026
For the full sermon, visit https://www.oursaviourvernal.org/post/sermon-for-the-sixteenth-sunday-after-trinity-2026

09/21/2026

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
So, there are these two great crowds approaching one another. At the head of one is Jesus, the Lord of Life. And at the head of the other? Who leads that procession of death? It was not the grieving widow, or those who bore her dead son, or the crowd itself, though they were all its captives. It was not even the coffin, laden with the dead young man. No, at the head of that procession was the devil.
The devil: who mocks our grief and laughs at us and has done so ever since he fooled the woman into thinking, with her husband, that they would not die. He and death, with its cruel grip, have clutched our hearts and throats ever since. That is why we die: it goes back to what happened in Genesis. And the devil laughs all the while: as we get sick; as we grow old; as our loved ones grow weak and frail with age, disease, or infirmity; as mortality surrounds us, hems us in, threatens, and ultimately has its way with us. And there is nothing we can do about it.
Behold, though: the Lord of life draws near the gate of the city, before this woebegone procession of death; He has compassion, and says, “Do not weep.” He steps forward and touches the open coffin, and the bearers stand still. And in that touch, He who is completely clean makes Himself unclean, taking the young man’s death upon Himself, even as He will take your uncleanness upon the Cross, that death might pass from you to Him, and so bestows His life to you. Oh, what a marvelous expression of what happens when life meets death. Beloved, this is why He came: to stop death in its tracks, to make it cease, to put forth His hand, and to say, “Arise.”

So, there are these two great crowds approaching one another. At the head of one is Jesus, the Lord of Life. And at the head of the other? Who leads that procession of death? It was not the grieving widow, or those who bore her dead son, or the crowd itself, though they were all its captives. It was...

09/14/2026

Sermon excerpt for DAY, 2026
For the full sermon, visit https://www.oursaviourvernal.org/post/sermon-for-the-fifteenth-sunday-after-trinity-2026

09/14/2026

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026
“Behold the birds of the air,” He says. A bird neither frets nor worries itself about tomorrow, for it neither sows nor reaps nor gathers into barns. And yet it is hardly idle, for it goes about its task, finds a scattered seed or a worm in the ground, brings it to the nest, and then sings on a twig, twittering at your foolish fretting. Your heavenly Father has provided for it. Will He not also provide for you?
And how is that bird fed? From the ground itself, a worm brought up by rain. In the twenty-second Psalm, which Jesus claimed as His own from the Cross, crying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” it goes on to say of Him, “I am a worm, and no man.” Christ, the eternal Son of the Most High, was humbled that low, brought down to the very dust of death, and buried in that same ground from which a worm comes. A bird is fed with a worm from the ground. Yet you, Beloved, are fed with the One who was buried in it and rose, conquering death itself.
Jesus did not shed His blood for birds. He shed it for you. His blood shows what God has determined to do for you: to redeem you from sin, death, and the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. Beloved, that is why your worth does not depend on what you possess or on what tomorrow may bring. It was already won at the Cross. Mammon demands and never gives. God gave His own dear Son upon the Cross, demanding nothing in return.

“Behold the birds of the air,” He says. A bird neither frets nor worries itself about tomorrow, for it neither sows nor reaps nor gathers into barns. And yet it is hardly idle, for it goes about its task, finds a scattered seed or a worm in the ground, brings it to the nest, and then sings on a ...