A Note From Pastor (April 2026)

As we move from Holy Week to the celebration of our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, rejoice in all your Lord accomplished on the cross for the sake of your salvation, from a sermon by Johann Gerhard on the Suffering and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ:

Our Easter/Passover Lamb is Christ, who also died on the tree, and shed His blood so that we may be safe from the hellish angel of death.  Jonah was in the belly of the whale-fish for three days and for three nights. Christ applies Jonah’s experience to Himself, and teaches that it too, was a type of His death.  In conclusion, all sacrifices of the Old Testament, which were first slaughtered, pointed to the death of Christ.  Secondly, Christ chose to die in such a way for our benefit and for our sake, and for many reasons. For since He took our sins upon Himself, He therefore also had to take upon Himself the punishment for our sins, namely death, for sin’s wage is death, so that thereby a satisfaction could take place for the righteousness of God, since God the Lord had said to man in Genesis 2, “The day you eat from the forbidden fruit, you will die.” This command of God could not be broken. Accordingly, we should have died the eternal death; thus Christ had to give Himself into death for us as St. Paul says, “Christ gave Himself up for the sake of our sin,” (Rom. 4) and in Hebrews 9, “So it is set for man to die one time, but after that the Judgement: Thus Christ offered Himself up one time to take away many sins.” In Matthew 26, Christ says that He sheds His blood for the forgiveness of sins, and once again in Mark 10, that “He gives His life as a ransom for many.”   (An Explanation of the History of the Suffering and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ; Gerhard, Johann, Repristination Press, 1999, p. 287.)

Prayer :  O Lord Jesus Christ, may Your thirst which you endured on the cross quench the thirst of my soul and protect me through Your atoning sacrifice, which You accomplished on the cross, may it be a comfort to my soul; give me grace that my soul thirst for You, the Fountain of Life; and, grant that I may commend my soul into Your hands at the hour of death.  Amen.