WEBVTT 00:00.800 --> 00:04.000 Grace, mercy, and peace, be unto you from God 00:04.000 --> 00:07.100 our Father, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 00:08.000 --> 00:08.400 Amen. 00:10.000 --> 00:15.600 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter 00:15.600 --> 00:20.500 and the rest of the Apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" 00:23.400 --> 00:29.200 In Acts chapter 2, we see devout men, religious men, 00:30.400 --> 00:34.000 from all different parts of the world gathered in one place. 00:35.500 --> 00:40.800 They came some of them from a long way away to practice their faith. 00:42.200 --> 00:43.700 To hear a word from the Lord. 00:44.800 --> 00:49.900 Both Jews and proselytes Cretans and Arabians. 00:50.800 --> 00:54.100 Devout men from every nation under heaven. 00:56.800 --> 00:58.200 Yet, they stood condemned. 01:00.500 --> 01:03.200 They Crucified the Lord Jesus Christ. 01:04.599 --> 01:07.100 And though, they were devout on the outside, 01:08.100 --> 01:11.200 their hearts were, callused cold 01:12.400 --> 01:14.000 made of stone on the inside. 01:15.900 --> 01:21.000 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. 01:22.300 --> 01:23.400 Who can understand it? 01:25.300 --> 01:28.600 Or as the early church fathers said in an Easter sermon and the 5th 01:28.600 --> 01:29.300 Century. 01:30.500 --> 01:32.300 Is it the stone of the Tomb 01:33.300 --> 01:35.800 or your heart that stands in the way of God? 01:37.200 --> 01:42.300 The heart of man is shut and unable to discover the glory of the open 01:42.300 --> 01:42.800 grave. 01:45.200 --> 01:49.200 Little did these men know that on this day, the Lord Almighty, the 01:49.200 --> 01:52.200 Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit 01:53.200 --> 01:54.700 would deal with their hearts. 01:56.200 --> 02:02.500 They would be cut with such precision, only capable by Divine hands. 02:03.600 --> 02:05.000 A great physician 02:06.300 --> 02:09.199 who can kill and make alive 02:10.400 --> 02:11.600 with only a word. 02:12.800 --> 02:15.400 It's law and it's gospel. 02:19.000 --> 02:21.000 My youngest son is 3. 02:22.600 --> 02:23.700 His name is Creed. 02:25.800 --> 02:28.700 He's a redhead like his father. 02:30.100 --> 02:32.000 So he gets into all sorts of trouble, 02:33.700 --> 02:34.500 like his father. 02:36.800 --> 02:41.800 His little chubby cheeks and infectious smile reminiscent to me of the 02:41.800 --> 02:44.900 faces of cherubs often depicted in medieval paintings. 02:47.100 --> 02:49.200 Like any child to any parent 02:50.000 --> 02:51.700 Creed is precious to me. 02:53.500 --> 02:55.200 But he comes with a lot of worry. 02:57.500 --> 02:58.400 Though he's only three 02:58.400 --> 02:59.800 he's undergone close 03:00.000 --> 03:01.100 to 20 surgeries. 03:02.700 --> 03:07.800 The first of which was while he was still in the womb, 30 weeks old. 03:09.200 --> 03:14.000 When I watched the hands of a physician with such delicate precision, 03:15.000 --> 03:20.600 pierce a long thin needle through my wife's womb, into the amniotic 03:20.600 --> 03:26.000 sac, through my son's abdomen just above his brittle, hip bone, and 03:26.000 --> 03:29.900 into his bladder to perform a life-saving surgery. 03:31.200 --> 03:33.700 All while he was still moving and kicking. 03:35.800 --> 03:41.100 The night before the surgery, Creed's surgeon asked my wife and I to 03:41.100 --> 03:42.500 pray for his hands. 03:43.700 --> 03:45.300 Which we happily obliged. 03:46.400 --> 03:52.400 And after the successful surgery, he said to us, we treat them but God 03:52.700 --> 03:53.500 heals them. 03:55.200 --> 03:56.400 Thank God, he did. 03:58.600 --> 04:02.800 Now during the surgery knowing that there was at least a small risk 04:02.800 --> 04:08.000 that day of not only losing my child, but also my wife. 04:09.900 --> 04:14.600 I quickly found my thoughts, spiraling out of control and to doubt and 04:14.600 --> 04:15.100 worry. 04:16.800 --> 04:20.800 So I found an empty room in the hospital and I sat down in this blue 04:20.800 --> 04:25.200 faux leather rocking chair and I opened up to the Gospel of John. 04:27.500 --> 04:30.700 And I started reading through it from the beginning out loud. 04:32.000 --> 04:35.700 A practice that I would end up adopting for each and every surgery 04:36.500 --> 04:38.500 and all future long nights in the hospital. 04:41.400 --> 04:42.900 When you're at a loss for words 04:44.400 --> 04:45.800 and you have nothing else to give 04:47.800 --> 04:51.300 I have found reading God's Word out loud to be the best medicine. 04:53.500 --> 04:56.300 So there on that day, in the dimly lit room, I read. 04:58.500 --> 05:04.000 So, Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water 05:04.000 --> 05:04.600 wine. 05:06.300 --> 05:09.700 And at Capernaum, there was an official whose son was ill. 05:11.700 --> 05:16.100 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went 05:16.100 --> 05:20.800 to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, 05:23.600 --> 05:25.200 for he was at the point of death. 05:28.300 --> 05:29.700 So Jesus said to him, 05:31.100 --> 05:35.000 unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. 05:36.800 --> 05:38.600 The official said to him, sir. 05:40.200 --> 05:42.400 Come down before my child dies. 05:44.800 --> 05:46.600 And Jesus said to him, go 05:48.100 --> 05:49.500 your son will live. 05:51.100 --> 05:56.400 While the surgeon provided just what my son needed to live. 05:56.400 --> 05:59.700 So the Lord provided me and my 06:00.000 --> 06:03.900 troubled heart, just what I needed to live. 06:04.000 --> 06:09.800 In that moment his law and his promises of Life over death. 06:11.400 --> 06:13.100 It is his promise to you 06:14.500 --> 06:19.500 and to your children. To all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord, 06:19.500 --> 06:22.000 Our God calls to himself. 06:23.900 --> 06:28.300 When God Called to himself, those gathered on the day of Pentecost, he 06:28.300 --> 06:35.200 did so by his law and gospel their hearts were rent asunder before him. 06:36.100 --> 06:40.300 Their entire previous attitude towards Jesus changed 06:40.300 --> 06:44.500 in a moment, in the hearing of his Word. They had treated him as merely 06:44.500 --> 06:48.900 a man, some with indifference others with open hostility. 06:50.000 --> 06:55.200 But now their eyes and their ears and their hearts were opened by the 06:55.200 --> 07:01.100 powerful working of the Holy Spirit through God's Divine, word of law 07:01.600 --> 07:02.400 and gospel. 07:03.800 --> 07:05.200 And they believed. 07:06.200 --> 07:10.600 Jesus is both Lord and Christ. 07:11.600 --> 07:18.800 Jesus is risen from the dead and it is, he who has poured out, all 07:18.800 --> 07:24.900 which you are seeing and hearing by God's power by God's grace 07:26.000 --> 07:26.900 they were saved. 07:28.300 --> 07:31.000 Three thousand of them in one day. 07:33.500 --> 07:34.400 Dear Saints 07:35.900 --> 07:36.900 you have come 07:39.400 --> 07:41.800 some of you from a long way away. 07:43.500 --> 07:44.800 To practice your faith. 07:46.900 --> 07:48.600 To hear a word from the Lord. 07:50.700 --> 07:51.800 To be prepared. 07:53.300 --> 07:55.000 To care for God's people. 07:56.600 --> 07:57.700 Lost sheep 07:59.200 --> 08:03.800 in constant need of the great Physicians pierced yet 08:03.800 --> 08:05.100 precise hands. 08:07.100 --> 08:08.400 And it is you 08:09.500 --> 08:16.600 whom the Lord Almighty, Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit shall use 08:17.400 --> 08:21.700 to bring to them, both his law and his gospel. 08:23.300 --> 08:27.800 When you find the Sheep scattered and lost in a day of thick cloud and 08:27.800 --> 08:28.600 darkness, 08:29.800 --> 08:32.299 Whether they be alone in a hospital room 08:33.900 --> 08:35.600 overwhelmed by their sin 08:37.000 --> 08:40.799 or frightened by death itself, followed the example of the Apostles. 08:42.000 --> 08:47.600 Who pointed their hearers to the promises of God in Christ Jesus, and 08:47.600 --> 08:49.900 his glorious gifts given to us in 08:49.900 --> 08:51.000 Holy Baptism. 08:52.800 --> 08:56.100 When a child is on the way, commend the child into the care of the 08:56.100 --> 08:59.800 resurrected Lord, who holds all life in his hands. 09:00.900 --> 09:02.900 And point them to the gift of baptism 09:02.900 --> 09:04.000 upon their birth. 09:04.800 --> 09:09.100 That they might receive the new birth of water and spirit for you too 09:09.600 --> 09:13.000 through these very means were circumcised with a circumcision 09:13.000 --> 09:14.900 not performed with human hands. 09:15.900 --> 09:20.300 And when that baptized toddler or young child, approaches the altar 09:20.700 --> 09:24.200 bless them and point them back to their baptism. 09:25.900 --> 09:32.000 And as they grow up and Lord forbid, they wander from the church. 09:33.600 --> 09:34.700 Reach out to them 09:35.700 --> 09:42.200 and remind them who's they are and how God himself, the Father, the 09:42.200 --> 09:46.700 Son, and the Holy Spirit has sprinkled us with clean water and 09:46.700 --> 09:49.500 cleansed us from all our uncleanness. 09:49.800 --> 09:55.800 And has given to us a new heart, a new spirit by cutting away the heart 09:55.800 --> 10:00.200 of stone from our flesh, and has given us a heart of flesh in the 10:00.200 --> 10:02.200 waters of baptism. 10:04.100 --> 10:06.100 And when they approached death's door, 10:07.700 --> 10:09.500 to take their final breath. 10:11.300 --> 10:15.900 Until Christ comes again and breathes into them, once more. 10:17.900 --> 10:19.300 Point them again. 10:21.300 --> 10:28.100 And point us all to the promises of God in Christ Jesus and his life 10:28.100 --> 10:32.700 over death given freely to us and the waters of our baptism. 10:34.200 --> 10:35.600 For the day is coming 10:36.900 --> 10:38.900 when this saying, shall come to pass. 10:40.500 --> 10:43.500 If we have been united with Him in a death, like his 10:44.800 --> 10:49.900 we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His 10:51.500 --> 10:52.000 Amen. 10:53.600 --> 10:57.500 Now May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard, your 10:57.500 --> 11:00.200 hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. 11:01.500 --> 11:01.800 Amen.