God with Us: Advent Christmas and Epiphany Sermons

Rev. David H. Petersen has been pastor at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, since 2000. In addition to his pastoral duties, he is also a frequent speaker, prolific writer, and magazine editor, serving as editor of the Lutheran journal Gottesdienst, for which he writes on the life and liturgy of the Church. He is also the author of Thy Kingdom Come: Lent and Easter Sermons, published in 2012. Rev. Petersen graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity in 1996 and received a Masters of Sacred Theology in 2012, having written his thesis on Law and Gospel and the preaching of Norman Nagel. God enfleshed Himself and became one of us in order to redeem and rescue us from sin, death, and the devil. Christ's incarnation forms the substance of all Christian preaching, and it is the essence of every celebration of the Lord's Supper and Baptism, every proclamation of Absolution to repentant sinners. That's why the Christian Church gathers around preaching and the Sacraments, and that's why books of sermons continue to be published and cherished in the Church. Christ is present in His body-for us, for forgiveness. The sermons in God With Us embody incarnational preaching. In fifty-nine sermons spanning Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, including daily sermons for all of Advent, Rev. David Petersen preaches an ever-present Christ, a Christ for you, a Christ with you. "Almost no one I know of has the ability that Fr. Petersen has to simply speak God's truth to us—both in its devastating exposure of the darkest secrets of our hearts and in its intense comfort to the troubled conscience."