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 21-22
This week Jeremiah is sent to the palace. Zedekiah asks him for a miracle while Babylon is at the wall and gets the answer nobody wanted — I Myself will fight against you (Jer. 21:5). Then chapter 22 walks back through the four kings Jeremiah outlived and measures every one of them against a sentence spoken twice to the house of David: execute judgment and righteousness. In the middle of the worst of them God stops and points at the good one: Josiah judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well — and then the line this session hangs on, Was not this knowing Me? (Jer. 22:16). It ends where nobody wants it to. God swears that if Coniah were the signet ring on His own right hand He would tear it off, and tells the scribes to write this man down as childless (Jer. 22:30) — and Matthew’s family tree of Jesus runs straight through that man. - “A Word With Nothing Under It Yet” Trinity 16 2026Nobody in Nain sent for Him. The widow did not pray, the boy certainly did not, and there is no faith in this story anywhere — only a Man coming the other way through the gate who tells a mother at her son’s casket to stop crying. It is a command with nothing under it yet: the boy is still cold and gray when Jesus says it. That is where the church lives, between “Do not weep” and “arise,” holding a word with nothing in our hand but the promise.
- “Asking the Son for His Papers” Friday of Trinity 15 (observed) 2026The Sanhedrin’s question — by what authority? — is not illegitimate; checking a teacher’s call is exactly their office, and our Confessions call that mercy, not bureaucracy. The tragedy is structural: servants in the house have stopped the Son at the door of His own house and demanded His papers. He never produces papers — He produces the house, answering not with a credential but a crucifixion, and naming us the very masonry He set at the font.
- “A Handful of Flour” Trinity 15 2026A widow at the gate of Zarephath has a handful of flour, a little oil, two sticks, one son, and a plan to eat it and die. But before she ever picked up a stick, the LORD had already said, “I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” The cake goes to the prophet first because the promise is in the prophet’s mouth, and the promise is the one thing in the story that never runs out. Christ came hungry to your gate and went out with wood on His back to make the meal where He died and you get to eat.
- “He Came to Be Your Estate” Friday of Trinity 14 (observed) 2026A man interrupts the sermon to ask about money, and Christ refuses the case: “Who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” He gives a farmer instead — the barns, the succession plan, and then the religious upgrades, the pledge card and the estate gift. Luther’s verdict on all of it is not greed but idolatry, the most common idol on earth. But the appointed reading does not stop at “Fool.” It runs on to the ravens: the one creature in the chapter with no storehouse and no barn is the one God feeds. He will not divide your estate. He came to be your estate.
