Bible Study on Luke 15, March 10, 2013

A Bible Study taught by Seminarian Lewis Polzin on March 10, 2013 at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in O'Fallon, MO, on Luke 15. The Bible Study recording may be accessed by clicking the title of this blog post and playing it in your browser.

 (A large cup of coffee was dropped during the teaching. Oops.)

Podcast Sermon for March 6, 2013: Locusts

A sermon preached by Seminarian Lewis Polzin on March 6, 2013 at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in O'Fallon, MO, on Amos 7:1-6. The text of this sermon may be found at the following web address: http://apastoralapproach.blogspot.com/2013/03/sermon-for-march-6-2013-locusts.html. The sermon recording may also be accessed by clicking the title of this blog post and playing it in your browser. (This sermon is an edited version of sermon written by Concordia Seminary professor, Dr. Reed Lessing, for Concordia Publishing House's 'Restore the Roar' 2013 Lenten Series. This sermon is posted for educational and edification purposes only. No copyright infringements are intended.)

Sermon for March 6, 2013: Locusts

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.  

Our text for our sermon today comes to us from the prophet Amos, chapter 7, verses 1 through 6:

This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,   “O Lord God, please forgive! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!”  The Lord relented concerning this: “It shall not be,” said the Lord. This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, the Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said,   “O Lord God, please cease! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!”  The Lord relented concerning this: “This also shall not be,” said the Lord God. 

My dear friends in Christ,

     This is a sermon about locusts.  Locusts are disgusting.  They're big, hard, winged things that never, ever stop making sounds.  They're worse than cicadas, since they come in by the thousands.  This is a sermon about locusts.  Now just the mention of locusts should bring to mind the man who made locusts famous, John the Baptist.  I mean, can you imagine being in his shoes and having to eat locusts all your life?

     A few years ago a man from Bloomington, Minnesota, certainly could.  He made national news by eating thirty of them.  The man ended up in the hospital with a rash all over his body.  Pastors may call that “proverbial folly.” Most other people call that “just plain dumb.”  Imagine all those locusts.

     Now, locusts may not be our insect of choice, then again, what insect does any one really like, but they certainly were THE insect of the Old Testament.  Israelites were so familiar with locusts that they coined NINE different Hebrew words to describe these purveyors of powerful plagues.  Sometimes there can be as many as 120 million critters in one square mile of locusts.  One swarm that crossed the Red Sea in 1899 covered an area of over 1,900 square miles! There's even a huge swarm of locusts, this very day, making its way over Egypt towards Saudi Arabia.  Go figure.