Biblical · Confessional · Liturgical · Sacramental
Delivering Christ Jesus
and His Gifts for You
A confessional Lutheran parish and school in Random Lake, Wisconsin — gathered around Word and Sacrament since 1855.
Sundays at 9:30 a.m. · Divine Service
Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. · Divine Service
Our Church
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church in Random Lake, WI gathers at Sherman Center to receive Christ’s gifts of Word and Sacrament. We are a confessional, liturgical congregation of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, faithful to the Scriptures and the Book of Concord. Visitors are always welcome.
Our School
St. John Ev. Lutheran School in Random Lake has served families with Christ-centered education since 1855. Children grow in the faith through daily catechesis, the liturgical life of the parish, and a rich academic curriculum rooted in the Lutheran tradition.
Sermons, Catechesis & News
Recent sermons, Bible studies, and articles from St. John.
- Jeremiah Chapters 16–17
Last week Jeremiah called God a stream that runs dry and his own wound incurable. This week God uses that same word of the human heart — “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9) — and then, five verses later, the man with the incurable wound asks to be healed anyway: “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed” (Jer. 17:14). He even gives God back the name he’d thrown at Him as an accusation, calling Him the fountain of living waters (Jer. 17:13). Chapter 16 is how he got there. God takes away his wife, his funerals, and his feasts, until there’s nothing ordinary left to lean on. He isn’t being punished. He is being made into the message. - “The Mercy Seat is Jesus Christ” Trinity 11 2026Two men go up to the temple at the hour of the lamb, blood being shed a few steps away in plain sight. One of them never mentions it — his religion is complete without the blood, and that religion sits in the pew and climbs into the pulpit. The other says one sentence, and the word he uses is not the ordinary word for mercy. It is the mercy-seat word: let the blood be over me. And the mercy seat is no longer a gold lid in a room no one may enter. It is a Man.
- “You pray to be stood up; Christ stands you up!” Friday of Trinity 10 (observed) 2026The snare of the last day falls on those sitting — and you sit because you cannot carry what you already hold. Every program you have run, from the budget to the devotional with the ribbon, set one more thing on your back and told you to stand. But the verb in the Gospel is passive: you are told to beg that somebody would stand you up. Christ has done it, and He says so out of a preacher’s mouth — holy, blameless, above reproach, today, before you have improved by one ounce.
- Jeremiah Chapters 13–15God made His people to cling to Him the way a sash clings to a man’s waist (Jer. 13:11). A sash that stops clinging rots in a hole by the river and is good for nothing. Then the prophet who preached that ends up praying his people’s own words back to God — they say they are called by Your name, and so does he; they say there is no healing for us, and he says my wound is incurable (Jer. 14:9, 19; 15:16, 18) — and he accuses God of being a stream that runs dry. God doesn’t defend Himself. He answers with the very thing Jeremiah has been preaching: “If you return, then I will bring you back” (Jer. 15:19). Our Confessions file that line under the Gospel.
- “The Tears of Your Savior Settle It” Trinity 10 2026Jesus cries twice in the Gospels — once at a grave, and once outside a church. The grave we understand. The other one is worse, and it is the only thing in that whole city worth crying about. You can read God’s oath that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked and still lie awake wondering whether He meant it about you — but the tears of your Savior settle it.
