It seems generally assumed that preachers want hearers to remember at least the main idea and purpose of the biblical truth considered in the sermon, as well as to reflect it in their lives. Here is a question that has not really been posed. How may preachers use new knowledge about the actual functioning of their hearers’ brains to help the hearers remember the biblical truths—ways that are more direct and beneficial than by just hoping the biblical truths will be remembered? How may the preachers’ expressions and explanations of God’s Word best reach this memory in hearers’ brains?

Nicopolis was a Roman colony on the west coast of Greece, on the isthmus separating the Ambracian Gulf from the Ionian Sea. The city would serve as winter quarters for Paul and his colleagues in AD 68 before his arrest and second imprisonment at Rome. Paul was on his way to Nicopolis, perhaps along the road from Macedonia, when he paused to write this letter to Titus, his representative serving congregations on the island of Crete. Paul urged Titus to sail to Nicopolis and join him for the winter (3:12).

While searching for Paul, Onesiphorus would tread the broad streets of Rome, passing beneath the archways of its aqueducts and walking beside its grand colonnaded porticos. But the prison where Paul was held would be out of the way, along an alley or even in a cave, requiring all of Onesiphorus’s diligence to find his colleague.

Have you ever wished there was a simple resource to help you better understand the prickly issues of our day or to give you the tools you need to talk with others about them? Have you been watching for weighty books that deal with doctrine and practice without swelling to the size of a complete systematic theology? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were something available from a trusted theological source that could be easily shared? 

About the worst thing for a Lutheran is to find yourself thinking that your access to God isn’t through His Word but through yourself, as if in a direct line from your heart to the Holy Spirit. He’d call that Enthusiasm, but He doesn’t mean you’re too joyful and boisterous.

Let the kingdom of heaven be proclaimed! Jesus has chosen the Twelve, and their instructions are clear: Preach and heal so that the world knows the Kingdom has come. The proclamation of the Kingdom continues today, and so God continues to send and protect His disciples.

This blog post is adapted from Matthew 1:1—11:11 in the Concordia Commentary Bible Study Series.

This blog post is adapted from Lutheran Bible Companion Volume 2: Intertestamental Era, New Testament, and Bible Dictionary.

Paul, on his way to Macedonia, has left Timothy at Ephesus with instructions to “charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3). Paul does not describe this “different doctrine” systematically, but from his attacks upon it in 1:3–7; 4:1–3, 7; 6:3–5, 20–21 and from the tenor of his instructions for the regulation of the life of the Church, it is clear that Timothy must do battle with a deeply troubling heresy.

This blog post is excerpted from The Christian Faith: A Lutheran Exposition, second edition, by Theodore J. Hopkins and Robert Kolb. 

God used the many and varied voices of the prophets to convey His message to His people (Hebrews 1:1), and He spoke the final, complete Word through His Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). His Word, His message for us, came in human flesh, as Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed all authority in heaven and earth because He is the author of life and the author of new life (Matthew 28:18).

This blog is excerpted from an article by Rev. Carl C. Fickenscher II  that was published in a previous edition of Concordia Pulpit Resources.

So much has been written on the dynamics of Law and Gospel—by classic authors such as Luther and Walther as well as more contemporary ones such as Gerhard Aho, Richard Lischer, Herman Stuempfle, and Gerhard Forde—that Law-Gospel preaching might be evaluated from any number of perspectives. In this study, though, seven criteria have been distilled from the various sources. While these are not exhaustive, they will be sufficient to determine whether meaningful differences in Law-Gospel effectiveness exist among sermon forms. In addition, it is hoped that the criteria can be guidelines which we preachers use personally to sharpen the Law and Gospel of our own messages.

The city of Thessalonica, named after a sister of Alexander the Great, was 
built within sight of one of the great religious landmarks of ancient Greece. 
Southward, across the Thermaikos Bay, the people could see the distant 
slopes of Mount Olympus, traditional home of the gods in their culture.