Pastor Ike

Easter 2 Chapel Sermon at CCLS: The Confidence of God’s Word and Sacraments

How do you know your faith is real? How do you know Jesus is truly for you? In a world - and in hearts - that are often uncertain, the Epistle of 1 John points us away from ourselves to something far more solid: the testimony of the Spirit, the water, and the blood. These are not abstract ideas, but concrete witnesses, rooted in the real life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and still given to you today through His Word and Sacraments. In this chapel sermon at Christ Community Lutheran School and Homeschool Program in Almena, Wisconsin, we explore how God anchors your faith not in shifting feelings, but in His unchanging gifts, and how this certainty comes to life in the risen Christ who still comes to His people.

Raster 2: The Word Brings Life

In a valley filled with dry bones, the LORD asks a haunting question: Can these bones live? In Ezekiel 37, the answer does not come from human strength or understanding, but from the Word of God that creates life where there is none. This sermon explores how the Holy Spirit works through that Word - bringing life to the dead, faith to the unbelieving, and renewal to weary hearts. What we believe, teach, and confess is this: the power is not in our response to the Word, but in the Word itself, as God continues to breathe new life into His people through preaching, Baptism, and Absolution.

Resurrection Sunday: The Tomb is Empty - And That Changes Everything

In this sermon, we begin not with celebration, but with tension - the sealed grave, the guarded stone, and the uncomfortable truth that, left to ourselves, we might prefer a Jesus who stays dead. A dead Christ is easier to manage, easier to admire, and far less demanding. But the resurrection refuses to remain an idea or a distant hope. It breaks into the world - and into our lives - with a claim that changes everything.
Drawing from the witness of Mary Magdalene at the tomb, this sermon explores the collision between human expectation and divine action. The resurrection is not symbolic, not metaphorical, and not the natural conclusion to a tragic story. It is something wholly unexpected - something that does not happen, and yet did.
More than that, it is something that still happens to you.
Here, the risen Christ is not simply proclaimed as a past event, but as a present reality—One who still calls His people by name, still forgives, still speaks, and still gives Himself in Word and Sacrament. This is not just about what happened then. It is about what is true now.
Because if Christ is risen, then He is not safely contained in history.
He is alive. And He is for you.

Good Friday: The Ugliness We Refuse to See

Why do we instinctively turn away from the cross? On Good Friday, Isaiah 52:13–53:12 confronts us with the uncomfortable truth: the cross is ugly because it reveals the full weight of our sin and God’s righteous judgment. Yet in that very ugliness, Christ bears our guilt, satisfies divine justice, and wins our salvation. This sermon wrestles honestly with our tendency to blame others while avoiding our own culpability - and invites us to look again at the cross, where God’s wrath and mercy meet for us.
Join St. Matthew and St. Paul Lutheran Churches as we gather to see the cross.

Monday of Holy Week: Cleansing of the Temple

Today, the church remembers the cleansing of the Temple. What was that all about? How is the first Temple of the Lord, today - your heart?
Join Christ Community Lutheran School for Monday Matins Chapel in this Holy Week.

Passion Sunday: The King We Need

On Palm Sunday, the Church stands at a crossroads.
What begins with palms and praise quickly turns toward suffering and death. In generations past, Christians would spend the entire day moving from triumph to Passion - preparing their hearts for the solemn journey of Holy Week. While our modern schedules may compress that rhythm, the reality remains unchanged: today we are brought to the foot of the cross.
This sermon walks through Gospel of Matthew 27:11-54 and invites you to see not only that Jesus died - but why He died, and what His death means for you.
Here you will encounter a King who refuses to save Himself, a guilty man set free, darkness that signals divine judgment, and a final cry that declares the work of salvation complete.
This is not just the story of His suffering.
It is the story of your salvation.

Lenten Vespers: I Mess Up, over and over again

Every Christian knows the tension.
You want to trust God, yet you find yourself worrying about the future.You desire contentment, yet something in you keeps striving for more.You believe Christ is enough… and yet life often feels like it depends on you.
In this sermon for the Annunciation, we explore that quiet struggle between faith and ambition through the words of Romans 7:19–23 and James 4:13–14, alongside a striking historical story from the burial of Otto von Habsburg. At the center of it all stands Mary, whose simple words- “Let it be to me according to your word”- reveal what true faith looks like.
Drawing on themes from The Quiet Ambition, this sermon reflects on how our plans, identities, and achievements cannot secure our future before God. Instead, we learn again that the Christian life begins - and continues - with a confession: not success, but mercy; not control, but trust in Christ.
Because in the end, the door to life is not opened by what we accomplish, but by what Jesus has already done.

Lent 5: When It Feels Like God Has Left You

There are moments in life that don’t just feel difficult - they feel like a test.
Not small inconveniences, but deep trials where loss, uncertainty, and regret seem to close in all at once. And in those moments, a quiet but powerful question rises:
Where is God in all of this?
In this sermon on Genesis 22, we walk with Abraham up the mountain of testing and wrestle with the tension between God’s promises and our lived experience. When faith feels strained and God seems silent, what does it mean to trust Him?
More importantly, how does this account point us to Christ - the true Son who was not spared - and what does that reveal about God’s heart toward you in your suffering?
This sermon speaks to anyone who has ever felt abandoned, questioned God’s presence, or struggled to reconcile His promises with reality.
“The Lord will provide.”

The Hands and the God who works through them

In a world that celebrates effort, productivity, and self-reliance, it is easy to place our trust in what our hands can accomplish. Yet God reveals something deeper: behind every act of provision, care, and labor stands the Lord Himself, working through human hands. This sermon explores the gift of vocation, the danger of misplaced trust, and the comfort of Christ - whose hands were pierced for our salvation and still serve us today.

Lent 4: Children Set Free

In Galatians 4:21–31, the Apostle Paul confronts one of the most dangerous distortions of the Christian faith: the temptation to add human works to the saving work of Christ.
In this sermon from St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Pastor Ike Nicholson explores Paul’s powerful contrast between the two sons of Abraham - Ishmael and Isaac - and what it means for Christians today. Through this Old Testament story, Paul proclaims a clear truth: salvation does not come through human effort or obedience to the Law, but through the promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Listen as God’s Word exposes our natural desire to justify ourselves and then comforts us with the Gospel: in Christ, we are not slaves under the Law, but children of the promise - heirs of the free woman.
“So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.” (Galatians 4:31)