Sunday, February 8, 2026, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
“What God Has Given Us”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 112:1-9; Isaiah 58:3-9a; 1 Corinthians 2:1-12; Matthew 5:13-20
Service Order: Divine Service III without Communion
Hymns: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” #790
“Seek Ye First” #712
“We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight” #720
“Praise and Thanksgiving” #789
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
My Grandma had a cross-stitched sign hanging on her kitchen wall, for years and years, that said, “Count Your Blessings.” Oh my goodness, how much time do you have? Don’t get me started! I don’t think I can even count that high.
“Blessed are we,” Jesus says. Little Church, God has blessed us BIG, in more ways that we can ever know. He’s given us everything we need – not only to grow, live, and thrive in our own lives, but to go out into the world and share our many blessings.
“Counting our blessings” is a good thing to do, and we’ll do that today, based on what our Scripture readings tell us. But we also have to answer the question: “What are blessings for?” What good is a gift if it’s left up on a shelf? If God has blessed us in such a big way, little Church, what are we to do with what God has given us? So we’ll start by counting just some of our blessings today; but then we also have to talk about how we can “make our blessings count.”
St. Paul, in our reading from 1 Corinthians 2, says, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” That, folks is the blessing of all blessings, the blessing “from which all other blessings flow.” We have a Savior who loved us enough to die on a cross for the sake of our sin. The cross of Jesus is our center point, our common ground, the basis of our fellowship, the one amazing truth binds us together. The Church gathers around the cross, and around God’s Sacraments. By the cross come our blessings of forgiveness, grace, and the hope of heaven. God loved us so much that He have us His Son; how much more blessed can we be?
And there’s more! Good St. Paul says, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power… so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.” Little Church, have you ever considered what a blessing it is to have pastors who bring you “message and preaching,” Sunday after Sunday, year after year? Not every sermon you hear is going to be perfect. (Your pastors are only human, after all). But every decent Christian sermon should be centered on Jesus and His cross. (If I preach one that isn’t, feel free to kick me!) Everything that’s said from this pulpit should come from God’s Word, and not from somebody’s opinion. It’s God’s Word that has “the Spirit’s power” that Paul writes about, the power to touch hearts, change lives, and draw people closer to God. The most eloquent preacher in the world won’t accomplish a thing if the Word and the Spirit isn’t in what’s being said - “So that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.”
And still more blessings! St. Paul goes on here: “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” Little Church, isn’t it a blessing that we can know the wisdom of God – wisdom that comes to us in Christian sermons, and is explained to us in Bible studies, and that we can read for ourselves in God’s wonderful Word? (If you haven’t started our “Through the Bible in One Year” reading plan yet, pick one up as you leave today. I promise you, you and this Church won’t be the same when you’re done).
This blessing we have of knowing God’s wisdom is our counterpoint and our answer to the world’s brand of wisdom that comes at us every day, that “Google it” wisdom that claims to know what’s true and what isn’t, the “wisdom” they put out every day on CNN and Fox News and MSNBC. We’re so blessed to have God’s Holy Word as a filter, as a measure to hold up against what the world tells us. It’s as simple as this: If the experts, the scientists, the mass media, or the government and “rulers of this age” say a thing is right or true, and God’s Word says otherwise, God is right and the experts are wrong. What a blessing it is to know real truth!
If the powers-that-be in this world had understood the love of God and what He was doing to bless us all, they wouldn’t have crucified Jesus, or be trying to crucify His Church yet today. But, little Church, we have the wonderful blessing of genuine hope, no matter what happens in the world around us, or what the world tries to do to us. As Paul says here, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him - but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” And, he goes on, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” How blessed we are, little Church, to know “the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding” -- to have peace on the inside, even while that unpeaceful world out there does what it does.
And we’re not done counting our blessings yet, little Church; there’s so much more that God has for us. Our reading from prophet Isaiah tells us we have the blessing of prayer; that is, of being able to pray and know that our prayers will be heard, and that God will answer them. We’re not praying to some God far away on a cloud, or to a God who’s only a concept or a nice idea; we’re praying to a God who took on flesh and blood to die for us, a God with real substance and real power, a God who really does have the power to help us. Isaiah says, “You will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and He will say: Here am I.”
And we haven’t even mentioned material blessings, those “daily bread” blessings God gives us every day - “clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have,” if you’ll recall that lovely list of blessings from Luther’s Catechism. And God, as the Catechism says, gives us “each of these and all of these and more of these.”
And then there are the more intangible, can’t-hold-in-your-hand blessings God gives us, like the blessing of loved ones to love who love us back, and friends to support us, and the blessings of fellowship and being together that we have in this little Church. We have “everything we need to support this body and life,” the lovely Catechism says. And we could just go on counting our blessings all day long, but I think you’re getting the idea by now. Too many blessings to count, none of us able to number them all or count that high.
So we’ve made a beginning of counting our blessings; but we still have the second part of the blessings question to talk about. What are all these blessings we’ve been given for? For what purpose has God given them to us? It’s good to count our blessings – but how do we make our blessings count? Thank God for the gifts we’ve been given – but what good is a present you never open, or gift you leave unused on a shelf?
So, how do we make our many blessings count? How can we who’ve been so blessed now be a blessing, to God’s Kingdom, and to the world, and to the people around us? For that, we have no better place to go, little Church, than to what our Lord Jesus says to us in our Gospel in Matthew 5: "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”
Salt, in earthly and chemical terms, is a catalyst, a change agent, one that can melt the ice on your sidewalk, or eat through the fender of your car. Salt is also a preservative, used since the dawn of history to preserve food and keep it from turning bad. And salt, we all know, is a wonderful seasoning, to make food that would otherwise be bland taste good.
But salt, biblically speaking, is a metaphor for faith; and salty faith itself is a blessing from God, and a really powerful one. This “salt of faith in Christ” God has given has changed our own hearts, and it can change the world. The salt of our faith, little Church, is what preserves what goodness there is left in the world. In another of the Gospels, Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth, to make it palatable.” What would this world be like if we who are here to be the salt became unsalty, and there was no one left here to keep faith and hope alive? So you, you dear and blessed Christian people, are “the salt of the earth.”
So we’re called to use our blessings to be useful and salty for God. And then Jesus says to us: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”
Light, in biblical terms, is God’s truth. In the darkness is deception and sin, and the lies people tell to each other and to themselves. Jesus says in John 3, “Men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil.” But Church, we’re here on earth to call people into the light of God’s truth. In the light is where sins will be exposed, for all the world to see, as uncomfortable as that may be. But in the Light is where we’ll find confession, and true repentance, and baptismal water. In the Light is forgiveness for sin, and grace, and a brand-new life to live for Christ. Shining that light is what we’re all about, little Church. We, blessed as we are, get to be that city on a hill, a light in all that darkness that people can come to, to be forgiven and free. Scripture calls God’s Church a “lampstand in the world.”
So, says Jesus, “Let your light shine before men.” What is this blessing of holy light that we have in us for anyway? It’s not something we ought to be “hiding under a basket,” that’s for sure. That would be a silly thing to do; it would make no sense. What baskets could we hide our light under? What could hide or obscure this light God has given us and keep it from shining? Maybe you’re keeping a basket full of anger, or resentment, or pride. Maybe your basket is full of fear or what people will say if you bring Jesus into the conversation. Maybe your basket is full of “busyness,” and not having time for God’s work in your life. Any of those negative emotions or habits can keep us from bearing witness to Christ and keep our Gospel light from shining. Can you be angry or jealous or hateful or unforgiving, and share the Gospel of Jesus at the same time? Has anyone ever been nagged or pushed or shoved or hated into heaven?
Love shines the light; all those other things hide it. Love is how our blessings are put to good use. “By this all men will know that you belong to Me, if you love one another,” Jesus says. “Practice and teach these commandments,” Jesus says. That means not only teaching others to keep God’s commandments, but doing our best to keep them ourselves – with “love one another” being the greatest commandment of them all.
“Speak the truth, but speak it in love,” Jesus says, and do it with a quiet and gentle spirit. “Let your conversations be seasoned with salt,” St. Paul says. Be salty for God! “Whatever is good, whatever is right, whatever is true… set your heart on these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Let everything you say be for building people up, and never for tearing someone down. We have a holy purpose, little Church, which is to keep the light of truth, love, and mercy shining, and to keep hope alive in this world. We’re candles that Jesus has lit in the dark. St. Paul says our job is to “shine like stars in the universe, as we hold out the Word of life to the world.”
We make our blessings count not by jealously guarding them, or by putting up walls to protect ourselves, or by covering our light with a basket – but by giving our blessings away. Ever see what happens when you put a lid over a lit candle? Pffffftttt… out it goes, for lack of oxygen. Instead, up on the lampstand it needs to go. And our blessings, as God had promised, will multiply, thirty or sixty or a hundred times what was sown, “and give light to everyone in the room.” And then, says Isaiah, “Your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.”
Count your blessings, little Church; count them every day, as God in His mercy every pours them out upon us, day after day after day. Then, O Lord, may we make our blessings count for Your kingdom, as we pour out what we’ve been given into the world around us. In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div.
Trinity Lutheran Church, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com