The Epiphany season is the time of the church year when we see how God’s plan for His creation’s redemption through Jesus begins to be revealed. Our text for Epiphany Sunday is the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew which tells how Jesus was first revealed to the Gentiles. God’s plan isn’t always so apparent at first, but His design fulfills all His promises and is first made known to the most unlikely of persons.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the God was the Word. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

  Merry Christmas! John’s Gospel begins like no other. No wise men. No shepherds. No angels. No Mary and Joseph. No decree from Caesar Augustus. No list of genealogy. John's nativity account is like nothing else in all of Scripture. They are perhaps the most beautiful words ever written, the most elegant of the Scriptures.

Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS! What does always mean? All the time. Without ceasing. Prayer. God’s word tells us to pray without ceasing, delighting in the words He has given us and repeating those words back to Him in all times and places. And we are to do it with thanksgiving! But we do not. We forget to pray, and we certainly don’t do it without ceasing. We are not always thankful for what we receive. And we seldom remember to be thankful for the opportunity to ask! There are the wages of sin again. But take heart! Be anxious for nothing!

How easy that is to say. How very hard to do.

Our text this evening comes from both St. John’s Gospel, and his first Epistle:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16 NASB and “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” I John 4:10 NASB.

This morning, the words of Our Lord from the Cross is our text from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter Twenty-three verse forty-three: “And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”. This is our text.

On the last Sunday of the church year, we focus on the last day. Both our own last day, and Judgment Day. In God’s word, we are shown the contrast between the two options for which way this can go for us. In the Bible, God has provided us many examples of contrasts throughout the history of His people, and in the people Jesus encountered and taught about: