Pastor Chris Brademeyer’s Podcast

“God is love.”Those words from St. John are among the most familiar in all of Scripture. They are often quoted, printed on banners, stitched into sentimental ideas about Christmas. Yet love is not something that floats in abstraction. It is something concrete, historical, and costly. “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world.”Love is no mere idea, no ...

Christmas is often imagined as gentle, quiet, and unchallenging. When we think of Christmas we think of things like soft light, familiar hymns, and peaceful scenes. And indeed, there is real comfort and joy in the birth of Christ. Yet the Church, in her wisdom, places before us today a text that refuses to let Christmas remain sentimental.

Simeon takes the Ch...

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” These words from St. Paul come to us here on the last Sunday in Advent in an age of history in which the Christian Church is poised between promise and fulfillment, between longing and arrival. The cry of Rorate Coeli, “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness,”[2]  is not sentimental or vague. It is a sober...

 God certainly knows how to give a sign. The problem illustrated before us today is not that God is unwilling to give signs, but that fallen man is unwilling to receive the sign God gives. This is a willful sort of ignorance that has been attested to by more than the observation of Christians. Even Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher saw that people prefer comfortable ideas to profound truth, famously illustrating this with a famo...

“That we may obtain this faith, the Ministry of Teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted.” So begins Article V of the Augsburg Confession. After confessing who God is, what sin is, and how we are justified by Christ alone, the Reformers knew the next question would arise immediately: If Christ has won forgiveness, life, and salvation for us, how does He give these gift...

Advent is a season of preparation. It is a season of expectation, of longing, of hope. But Scripture does not speak of preparation in vague spiritual terms, Advent preparation is concrete. It involves repentance. That is why John the Baptist stands so prominently in these Sundays before Christmas. John does not offer sentimentality. He does not point us toward nostalgia or warm feelings. He calls us to repent because the Lord is ne...

Beloved in Christ, human history is characterized by movement. The world moves. Nations move. History moves. Culture moves. People move, often in anxious, restless directions. And the Scripture readings appointed for this Sunday show us the movement of God in history clearly. The prophet Malachi speaks of a day that burns like an oven, when the arrogant and the evildoer will be swept away like stubble, blown and burned, leaving not...

As I mentioned on Sunday, Advent is the season characterized by waiting. But this is not the kind of waiting we do at the checkout line. It is a holy waiting, a hopeful waiting, the waiting of a people who know Who is coming and what He brings with Him. James tells us, “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.” And Matthew tells us of John the Baptist, the voice crying in ...

Episode 22: The Law isn’t just for the unconverted or the guy next to you in the pew. It’s for you, the Christian, too. But why? Why is the Law still preached to those who are in Christ. Isn’t the Gospel enough? The answer is simple: the old Adam hasn’t been reformed—he has to be drowned daily. And for that, you need the Law to expose the sin that still clings, so that you can be driven again and again to Jesus. Now, we’re not talk...

Advent is a season characterized by waiting, but not all waiting is the same. We are not talking about regular, boring waiting in every day life like waiting for a doctor’s appointment or waiting in line at the grocery store. Advent is marked by an expectant kind of waiting like a family waiting for the knock at the door when a loved one returns home for the holidays. It is the waiting of long...

Real thankfulness is never vague or abstract. The Samaritan leper does not come back simply to express a general attitude of gratitude. He returns because he has received something real from Jesus. He saw his skin restored, the disease destroyed, and that his life was given back.

True thankfulness always has an object. More specifically, it clings to someon...

   “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?” For what do you wait? Are you even waiting for anything? I pray that you are all waiting for what is described in our readings for today: the new heavens and the new earth and our return to Zion – the kingdom of heaven. God has not revealed much to us about what our eternal life with Him will be like, but we do get a glimpse of its joys. Consider the po...

When our Lord teaches about the Last Day, He does not speak to terrify His people but to prepare them and to comfort them. Despite what is often portrayed in popular culture, the Last Day, Judgement Day, Armageddon, this day is not a cause for alarm or terror. No, for us Christians it is to be a day of great joy. Here in Matthew twenty-five, Jesus gives us a picture of that Day. For those who have rejected Christ it comes as a thre...

There are some passages of Scripture that seem strange to us at first glance. That is to say, the sayings or events are difficult to unpack without some insight into the historical context. This passage from Matthew 24 can seem like one of those. Jesus speaks of abominations, desolations, fleeing to mountains, and vultures gathering around a corpse. And yet these words were not only meant for p...

Faith is not a vague feeling, a general notion that everything will turn out all right. Faith is not a spiritual pep talk we give ourselves when life gets hard. Faith is confidence in a Person, specifically in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world to destroy sin, death, and the devil.

Faith always has an object, and the proper object is Ch...

Our Lord Jesus, ascending a hill, a mount, sat down and began teaching His disciples. What followed is arguably the most famous of His speeches, the Sermon on the Mount. In particular, the section that has since come to be called the Beatitudes which we read today, are among the most familiar and yet most misunderstood passages in all of Scripture.

“Blessed a...