Blessed is the Man: A Man’s Journey Through the Psalms – Psalms of Lament

Blessed Is the Man is a devotion book written by a compilation of authors, all connected to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The eight contributors each have a paragraph-long biography on pages 4 and 5 of ...

Four Branches – February 2020

Jump to: Exegetical Systematic Historical Practical Exegetical Theology: Three Passion Predictions from Zechariah: Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will be Scattered Jesus told his disciples, “This very night you will all fall away on ...

Wittenberg vs. Geneva: A Biblical Bout in Seven Rounds on the Doctrines that Divide

Brian William Thomas is a pastor at Grace Lutheran Church (LC-MS) in San Diego, CA. He formerly served as a naval officer. He is a graduate of Christ College in Irvine, CA and Concordia Seminary. ...

“God, I Thank You That…”

My sinful nature needs little nourishment to feed smug self-satisfaction, but an unbelieving world provides a smorgasbord.  If it’s not another mass murderer semi-automatically butchering people, then it’s the drug deal gone bad with bullets ...

Preach the Word – January/February 2020

Volume 23, Number 3 Preaching to the Choir Biblically Illiterate In March 2018, The Wall Street Journal had to issue a correction. The previous day, a journalist had quoted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as ...

Four Branches January – 2020

Jump to: Exegetical Systematic Historical Practical Exegetical Theology: Three Passion Predictions from Zechariah: The One They Have Pierced In this series of articles, we are looking at the Old Testament context of Passion Predictions from ...

The Honeycomb Scroll: Philipp Melanchthon at the Dawn of the Reformation

Gregory B. Graybill is senior pastor at First United Presbyterian Church of Moline, Illinois. He earned a DPhil at the University of Oxford and is author of Evangelical Free Will: Philipp Melanchthon’s Doctrinal Journey on ...

Four Branches December – 2019

Jump to: Exegetical Systematic Historical Practical Exegetical Theology: Three Passion Predictions from Zechariah - Thirty Pieces of Silver The prophet Zechariah is quoted a number of times in the Passion Narratives in the Gospels. In ...

Gaudete! Rejoice! Really!

Sunday’s gospel (Matthew 11:2-11) seems a strange choice for the Sunday historically known as Gaudete (Rejoice).  As the curtain opens on Matthew 11, the scene before us is John languishing in Herod’s dungeon.  Gaudete? Rejoice? ...