No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.

Do you laugh and roll your eyes at romantic movies, or do you cry? Or maybe both?

I've been reading the novels of Raphael Sabbatini recently. They have bold, adventurous titles like Scaramouche, and Captain Blood. But they're really just love stories with lots of sword play. Sabbatini is just a swashbuckling Jane Austen. But men roll their eyes at Austen and enjoy Sabbatini.

Don't believe me? What was the TV show '24' really about?...

"Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel..."

Have you ever met a policeman who abused his authority?

Or a school teacher? Or a coach? Or a politician? Or a boss?

This is not exactly a new thing to us, is it? Put a uniform on someone and their character often seems to change. Give someone power over others, even if it's only in a tiny area, like appointing one student to lead a small group of others, and they may become perfect tyrants. I have even known pastors to abuse their "power." But what is God doing, making us watchmen?...

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"

Have you ever tried to plan a party, but no one could come?

• The siblings couldn't agree on a date for a family reunion.
• The office staff couldn't find a date for a Christmas party.
• The weekend of your child's birthday didn't work out for his friends.

What a bummer. When you had food purchased, and the house was clean, and the plans were made, but then your guests called to say, "Hey, something came up." It makes for a very depressing evening...

...as I have oftentold you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame...

Um... This is not P.C. Definitely not politically correct, or even polite! I mean, we just do not talk this way, do we?

I am afraid that if Paul were a pastor today he would be given that ultimate label of failure in our society... "hater." We like to say that those whom the Bible calls immoral are simply making different lifestyle choices. And those who believe different things about God just have "another perspective on the truth."

There is, however, one small problem for us to get past. How do we explain Paul's tears?...

As soon as Jeremiah finished telling all the people everything the Lord had commanded him to say... "You must die!... This man should be sentenced to death because he has prophesied against this city."

A bumper sticker you would never see on anyone's donkey in Jerusalem, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Jeremiah (and 600+ years later, Jesus) simply point out the sins of the people of Jerusalem, and their opponents say, "You must die!"

In our country it's popular to criticize the government, or even the entire populace. But only for certain things...

We're all looking forward to seeing the mural that is being created for our worship service at the school. If you're not familiar with this project, it will be a very large mural on the south wall of the gymnasium. It will show the Apostle Paul preaching to the gentile philosophers in Athens and pointing them to the risen Christ. And it is a symbol of our ministry in Ann Arbor, preaching Jesus in the "Athens of the West."

Click 'more' to see a couple of shots of the mural in process...

A dear friend is attending the funeral of his father today. I woke up thinking about it.

Have you experienced a loss like that? Ten years ago, although I had been with dozens of grieving families, I did not really know what that was like. When I experienced that for myself, I discovered that my faith was indeed the comfort I knew it would be - and which I had always preached about. But I also found out there is more to grief than the pain of facing death...

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil...

I've fielded a lot of questions over the years from people who want to know if Jesus *could* have sinned - and if he could not then was it really a temptation to him? For that matter, many people seem to think that Satan's approach is so obvious that it hardly constitutes temptation. After all, they can't imagine themselves being seriously tempted to bow down to the devil or to jump off a tall building.

But the real question at the heart of this is, what is temptation?...

The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming...

Paul makes it sound so easy. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." So why does it seem so hard for us? Here in chapter 10 he is talking about his deep desire to win over the Jewish people to faith in their Messiah, Jesus. And surely for the Jews it ought to be the simplest thing in the world. They already know the Law. They already have the word - God's promises...

When you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance...

Wow! Talk about advance planning! The Israelites won't be harvesting the fields and orchards of the Promised Land for several years yet. And they won't have full possession of the land until after Joshua's lifetime. But God not only commands them to give a firstfruits offering as a thanksgiving, he tells them specifically what to say when they do it.

What if we were to do this at Thanksgiving?...

Fix your thoughts on Jesus...

I dare say that people obey this instruction more easily now than they did at the time this letter was written. For new Jewish believers in Jesus (the Hebrews to whom the letter was addressed) it might have been harder to get used to addressing prayers to Jesus. Nowadays Jesus' name is on everybody's lips.

Or is it?...

"This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it."

You know, in a way, what's the big deal? After all, Abraham didn't get to possess the land (although he lived in it). 400 years of his descendants had that same promise, but they never even saw the land. It might even have started to seem like a dream to them. Like it was unreal. At least Moses gets to see the land from the mountaintop. But he can't enter.

Would that be enough for you?...

James Neuendorf did an interview with KFUO radio in St. Louis this morning (Feb.10) about his recent experiences in Haiti. You can listen at the link.

James serves as Communications Specialist for the Latin American region for LCMS World Mission. In that capacity, he documents and helps to communicate and promote the work of our US missionaries and the work of the many missionaries, pastors, deaconesses, and others from the Lutheran church bodies in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, till all the world adore His sacred name.

There is a very real danger that anything can become a cliche'.

And that's a terrible shame, because there are some things that should always be sharp and real and current - but by our careless use of them their meaning is gradually shifted... drained away... until they are only a faint tincture of their rightful potency.

Of all things, can you imagine this happening to the cross?...

[Jesus] said to Simon, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so..."

Do you ever find your work frustrating? [Insert sounds of laughter here.] Do you ever feel like you're wasting your life, putting in countless hours without being appreciated, without really accomplishing anything? [Insert groans and lamentation.] Do you ever wish that somebody who doesn't know anything about how your job functions would come along and tell you how to do it better? [Insert sound of silence.]

Maybe not...

Try to excel in gifts that build up the church.

It's funny how we can know something quite well, and yet fail to apply our knowledge or fail to see the implications of what we know in a different context.

For instance, a pastor can know all there is to know about listening skills in counseling but never stop to think that his wife needs the same listening ear. A doctor can master the perfect bedside manner but not think to apply it to his own children. A waitress earns the gratitude and gratuities of her customers by her attention to their needs, but doesn't apply those same skills to her friends. And we all know that...

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send?"

Somehow, it seems to me, we tend to look at verses like this as being directed at someone else - not us. I don't know if you feel this way or not. Maybe it's just me. But things like this happen to people like Isaiah or Jeremiah, not me.

Oh sure, I have a "call" from God. But it's much harder for me. For us. Isn't it? I mean, God didn't appear to us. He didn't speak out loud to us. And most importantly, no angel touched us with a burning coal...

Do you know why a short ladder (only 5 rungs tall) has appeared in every single photo of the main entrance of the Church since the invention of photography?

Back in 1757 (before the Revolutionary War, etc.), the Ottoman Empire issued a ruling that established the status quo at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

You see, the church was owned or controlled by several different divisions of the Christian faith who were constantly fighting over how it was to be treated (repairs, expansions, worship, admission, etc.). So to stop the fighting...

Veritas

That's the Harvard University motto. It means "truth," which presumably is a reference to the goal of education, to pursue scientific, historical, literary, and philosophical truth. There's just one problem... That's not actually Harvard's motto.

Their real motto is...

They were amazed at his teaching, because his message had authority.

What does it mean to say that Jesus' message had authority? Where did that authority come from?

We typically talk about 4 kinds of authority...