Let the LORD Be Your Strength in Difficult Times

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Everyone, Even Elijah, Could Become Discouraged
The LORD is Always Present to Sustain You
Doing the Work He Gives You Will Bless You

SERMON TEXT: 1 Kings 19:3-8

Elijah was afraid, and he ran for his life. He went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. There he sat down under a broom tree, where he prayed that he would die. He said, “I’ve had enough, LORD. Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” Then he lay down and went to sleep under the broom tree. Suddenly an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” Then he looked around, and near his head there was a loaf of bread baking on coals and a jar of water, so he ate and drank, and then he lay down again. Then the angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, because the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Then, with the strength gained from that food he walked for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.

Bible Readings

FIRST LESSON: 1 Kings 19:3-8

See Sermon Text

SECOND LESSON: Hebrews 5:11-6:3

We have much to say about this, and it is difficult to explain, because you have become too lazy to listen. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the beginning principles of God’s word all over again. You have become people who need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is not acquainted with the word of righteousness, because he is still an infant. But solid food is for mature people, who have their senses trained by practice to distinguish between good and evil. :Therefore, leaving the beginning discussion of Christ, let us press on toward matters that require greater maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, of faith in God, of the teaching about baptisms, of the laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And we will do this, if God permits

VERSE OF THE DAY: Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

GOSPEL: John 6:41-51

So the Jews started grumbling about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They asked, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? So how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the Last Day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. I am not saying that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He is the one who has seen the Father. Amen, Amen, I tell you: The one who believes in me has eternal life. “I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”