https://assets-cdn2.dropwave.io/086174f0-efbe-400f-a3e9-b91549a26ab7/media/Trinity 7 AD 2026.mp3

https://app.dropwave.io/show/our-savior-lynchburg/trinity-7-ad-2026

Today’s sermon is read by an elder in Pastor Yaeger’s absence. It is lightly edited from a sermon preached by Pr. Karl Hess in 2015.

++ JESU JUVA ++

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Gospel reading demonstrates that true Christianity is far above human power and living. Four thousand people go out to Jesus in the desert to hear His Word. They stay so long listening to His Word that they run out of food. They become so weak from hunger that they are sure to faint on the way home.

That is how true Christians act. Because they love and desire the Word of God, they are willing to give up comfort and health — and even risk their lives — in order to have God’s Word. No one forced these people to stay for three days. No one forced them to listen to Christ preach. They did it willingly.

True Christians hunger for God’s Word. They love God’s Word. They don’t love it perfectly, because they still carry the sinful flesh with them. But they have begun to desire God’s Word. First of all, in the Third Commandment God requires that we “not despise preaching and His Word, but gladly hear and learn it” (Small Catechism). True Christians recognize their laziness and unwillingness to hear God’s Word, which comes from the sinful flesh they inherited from Adam. They fear God’s wrath because they see how they have despised God’s Word. So they repent and seek God’s mercy.

True Christians also love the Word of God because it contains great treasures. It proclaims God’s free and gracious forgiveness of all our sin through Jesus’ suffering on the cross. And Christians hunger and thirst for this forgiveness. True Christians daily feel their sins, and they long to hear the Gospel that declares that Jesus has borne God’s wrath against those sins.

Because of this, Christians are eager to hear God’s Word. They are eager to support the preaching of God’s Word by their offerings and their service. They are eager to speak God’s Word to the people around them. They hunger to grow in knowledge and faith in God’s Word. And they are willing, if necessary, to lose earthly comforts and things in favor of having God’s pure Word.

They are willing, for instance, to make less money so that they are free to hear God’s Word on Sundays. They are willing to drive a longer distance to church in order to get to one that preaches God’s Word purely and faithfully. They take time away from other activities to teach their children the Word of God and the catechism, to bring their children to catechesis and church. We should be on our guard against despising God’s Word. We should repent and turn from such foolishness every day.

This is different from the children of the world and from false, hypocritical Christians. False Christians and unbelievers don’t care about God’s Word. This may be obvious. Some people simply don’t come to hear Christian preaching. They don’t read the Bible at home. They allow themselves to be cut off from contact with the Word of God. Or it may be more subtle. False Christians may hear the preaching of God’s Word even on a regular basis, but they don’t take it to heart. So they neither tremble at their sins, nor hunger and thirst for forgiveness, nor believe in the good news of God’s forgiveness for the sake of Christ alone.

And because they aren’t much concerned about their sins, false Christians can’t imagine giving up earthly comforts and things for the sake of God’s Word. They often think that true Christians are overly pious or fanatical. What do you think would happen in most LCMS churches if a group of visitors showed up to worship, and after the service was finished, they said, “No, we can’t leave yet. We want to hear more of God’s Word!” What do you think would happen? Maybe some of us would be put to shame by their hunger for God’s Word. But maybe there would also be some who started looking at their watches, annoyed at the pastor for spending so much time on such “fanatics.”

Jesus doesn’t respond this way to the crowd who comes to Him. He doesn’t shorten the sermon and say, “Now get home before you faint on the way.” He sees how hungry the people are for God’s Word and He has compassion on them. He keeps preaching and teaching even though the food has run out. Perhaps He keeps preaching because the food has run out. As long as the people are spiritually hungry, Jesus will give them what is His—the Word of God which proclaims Him and the forgiveness of sins at His expense.

Jesus could have said: “Listen to God’s Word only until you run out of food.” ”Listening to God’s Word while you’re hungry is not sensible.” He doesn’t say that. In Jesus’ eyes, it is sensible to listen to God’s Word even when you don’t have any food. Because He knows just how great our need for the Word of God is. We need it more than food, more than clothing, more than air. Food, clothing, and air give only temporary life, temporary comfort, and temporary happiness. God’s Word alone gives eternal life, eternal comfort, eternal joy.

So when Jesus sees those who long for God’s Word, He doesn’t have contempt for them, like the world does. He has compassion on them. He fills the hungry souls with the living and abiding Word of God. Then He also sees that their earthly needs are met and that they will not die of physical hunger. He multiplies the loaves and the fish so that everyone eats and is satisfied. The disciples pick up seven large baskets full of broken pieces.

We now live in a time where to receive God’s pure Word may come at the expense of earthly comforts, pleasures, even needs. There are normal things that people have always had to give up for God’s Word. You don’t get to sleep all day on your day off. You have to get up and go to Church. And if you want to be a faithful hearer of the Word you have to give to support its preaching, when it is already difficult to afford all we need and want for ourselves and our children. But these are sacrifices Christians have always had to make for the sake of the Word of God.

But now we have more sacrifices that we may be called on to make for God’s Word. To hear God’s Word proclaimed purely and faithfully may cost us at work and in our children’s activities. If you don’t hide that you are an orthodox Christian at the company you work for, then you may be skipped over for promotion or required to attend sensitivity training. Do you want your kids to hear God’s holy Law and His life-giving Gospel every week (as you should)? That may cause your kid to sit on the bench during a game or not even be on the team at all.

As a church, we risk losing earthly comforts for the sake of having God’s Word preached in its purity. Many people don’t want to be members of a Church that wants to be faithful to God’s Word and therefore doesn’t allow people of a different confession of faith to receive Jesus’ body and blood. In time, if we continue to hold with the Word of God that homosexual lusts and acts are sinful, we may lose our tax-exempt status. People outside and even inside the community of the visible congregation may call us fanatics, intolerant, bigoted, unchristian, unloving, and worse.

And it may become still worse for us. We will likely live to see the time when hearing and remaining faithful to the Word of God will alienate you from members of your family. It’s already happening for people in this congregation. Maybe you know it yourself. Maybe we will live to see the day when faithful preachers and hearers of God’s Word will go to prison. That’s a lot to risk for the sake of God’s Word. And the world and false Christians don’t understand why you would. Why not just compromise? Don’t insist so strictly on the difference between God’s Word and falsehood. Make sure your meals and shelter and entertainment are lined up and — if you have any time and money left over — then worry about hearing and supporting the preaching of God’s Word. No, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ! Don’t listen to the mockery of the world and the whispers of your flesh. Jesus’ Word is the true treasure. Whoever has this treasure above all other can rest assured knowing that it is the truth, that it is infallibly true because it comes from God Himself. So don’t consider whom it may offend or how lightly the world regards it. When God’s Word gives commandments, we aren’t simply hearing human ideas about morality, but the commandments of the all-knowing, all-righteous God. The Word reveals the true and living God to us — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — which no human reason could have ever attained. No one would know God if He didn’t reveal Himself in His Word. And the Word of God is the true treasure because it makes known the way of eternal life. It proclaims the forgiveness of the Holy God even to those who have sinned and are unable to keep His laws. It declares to the trembling and contrite sinner — even the one who has despised God’s Word and sees his flesh working daily to make him despise it — that He is righteous for Christ’s sake, who died and was condemned for him. It declares each of us righteous today for Christ’s sake. This is true treasure. And it is worth having this treasure even if it costs us our lives and everything else we have in the world, as the great Reformation hymn sings: And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife Though these all be gone Our vict’ry has been won The Kingdom ours remaineth (LSB 656:4). You hunger for Jesus’ Word. Jesus has compassion on you. Just as He did on the 4000 in the wilderness, so He cares for you. And because He has compassion on you, He will sustain you. Not only will He give you His Word that brings with it all the treasures of heaven. He will also sustain your life in this world. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” The Lord promises to hear this prayer that He taught us and give us food, clothing, wife, children, friends, good reputation, house, home, money, goods, good government, good weather — everything that we need for this body and life. And if He ever allows us to go without something for the sake of His Word, He says that no one who has to leave “house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s. who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time. and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). Just as He had compassion on the crowd, so He has compassion on us. He will sustain us in this world and comfort us when we are dying. So Christians, eagerly desire the pure milk of the Word, that by it you may grow up in salvation (1 Peter 2:2). Many Christians begin well. They hear the law of God, and that God will judge men’s secrets on the day of Jesus Christ. And they repent. They are comforted by the good news that all our sins, even those only known to our conscience, all these sins have been punished and taken away in Jesus’ crucifixion. They delight in this comfort. But then they stagnate. They do not go on and progress in knowledge of God’s Word. They remain spiritual infants, and when persecution or hardship comes, they fall away. Let us therefore repent of the wickedness of our lazy flesh. Let us repent of attempting to use the Gospel as an excuse not to grow in God’s Word and to not support the preaching of this Word. In Holy Baptism, each of us had our sinful flesh crucified with Christ. Now we belong to Him who rose from the dead and lives in the presence of God the Father. As sons, adopted into His family, we are to hear His voice forever. So let us be what we are: children of God who hunger for and delight in His Word. Let us take every opportunity to be instructed from God’s holy Law and to be blessed and forgiven by His holy Gospel. For in so doing, we will not fail to receive great treasure through God’s Word. We will be strengthened in faith and hope and the assurance that when we die we will not come into judgment but have eternal life. We have great spiritual treasure. And until the Lord Jesus comes and gives us our inheritance in heaven, He will also support us in earthly things.