In our Old Testament lesson, we heard the shocking story of Manasseh (2 Kings 21:1-15). Though he was king of God’s people, he committed every evil imaginable. His wickedness knew no bounds. He worshiped idols and put false altars in God’s temple. He practiced witchcraft. He “made his son pass through the fire” which means he sacrificed his son on an altar. Tradition says he had the prophet Isaiah sawn in half. King Manasseh led God’s people into such apostasy that their sin was worse than the nations that God had driven out of the land.

This is the time of the year when farmers begin harvesting their corn. One of the least fun jobs for my sisters and me growing up on the farm was going out to help our dad fix the corn picker in 40-degree weather. Inevitably, something on the corn picker would break while he was harvesting at night. Our dad would come in the house and say that he needed one of the three of us to come outside to hold the flashlight.

My wife, Shelley, and I took our high school senior, Lydia, to Kalamazoo, Michigan on Monday for a tour of Western Michigan University. She wants to go to Western Michigan to become an airline pilot. As part of our tour we scheduled lunch with the WELS campus pastor. At lunch, Pastor Timmermann asked Lydia is she ever had any questions of crisis; anything that caused her to doubt her faith; anything that made her question God.

Pastor Timmermann will make a good campus pastor for Lydia. He isn’t afraid to allow the college students to question God, to dig deeper into their faith, to build upon their knowledge from Catechism classes.

As we get older and have more life experience, we learn to not always take things at face value. We want to know more and go deeper. We begin asking questions.

I was speaking with my dad earlier this week about his farm. Since I am the executor of my parents’ will, I wanted to see how much they thought their 53 acres, farmhouse, barns, sheds and farm machinery are worth.

We came up with a total of 1.25 million dollars.

My dad said he will never sell the farm. My mom heard 1.25 million dollars and called out, “I’ll sell!”

Halloween is coming soon. Hopefully our children will be able to go trick-or-treating this year. If we have trick-or-treaters, I encourage you not to do what the woman in Fargo, North Dakota did a few years ago.

Please understand that she had the best of intentions. But it didn’t come across that way. She decided she would give “moderately obese” trick-or-treaters a letter instead of candy. In that letter she encouraged the children’s parents to be responsible in helping their young ones to stay fit and ready for life.

The submarine doors slam shut. The klaxon horn sounds, and the skipper gives the order, "Dive! Dive! Dive!" Diesel engines firing, propellers whirling, they descend into the depths, safe from enemy attack. That was submarine life aboard the USS Finback stationed in the South Pacific Ocean during World War II. It was their tenth patrol, and so most of the crew was accustomed to this way of life, but for the five airmen that they had just rescued this way of life would take some getting used to.

God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he found ten righteous people there. He did not find them. Sodom was destroyed. Do we ever wonder if God would be able to find ten righteous people here in America, the new Sodom?

It is clear that we are no longer living in a Christian country. Christianity is dying here, and dying rapidly. God promises that the Christian faith can never pass away from the world, but it can be rejected by people and nations. People cannot remove Christ from the universe, but they can remove Christ from themselves. A nation cannot chase the Church from the face of the earth, but it can chase Christ from its borders.

Our hearts break as we watch the videos, see the pictures, and hear the stories of what has happened in Kenosha. In a recent news story, Daniel Esposito, a Kenosha property owner, pointed to his four buildings that rioters and looters destroyed in the night.

He spoke into the camera with a dispirited voice sounding like it might break at any moment, “When we came on scene, it was just carnage. I just don’t understand why something like this would happen. It’s frustrating. I don’t understand why people do these things. Our society is just disappointing.”

Have you ever been in a storm that caused you to really be afraid? Perhaps it was the storm two weeks ago when the tornado sirens went off in Kenosha and Racine. The smart people hurried into the basement for safety. The guys went outside to look at the sky.

In a broken, sinful world, storms come, fears come. Think of the things we’ve faced the past 6 months of 2020. Covid-19. Shuttering schools and closing businesses. Protesting and rioting. The threat of murder hornets and now 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes are about to be released in the Florida Keys. Hey, it’s 2020. What could possibly go wrong?

The disciples were sensible. And sending the people home was the sensible thing to do. After all, it was getting late in the day and the people needed food. So dismiss them, Jesus. Tell them that’s all for today, go home and get a bite to eat.

But Jesus does not live within the boundaries of the sensible. It was not sensible to tell fishermen who had been fishing all night and caught nothing to go back out in the day when the fish went deep and try again – but Jesus did, and provided a great catch. It was not sensible to assert that a girl who had died was simply asleep – but Jesus did, and then showed it by raising her from the dead. In the same way, it was not sensible for Jesus to tell his small group of disciples when faced with a crowd of well over 5,000 hungry people: “You give them something to eat.” But Jesus did. Perhaps the disciples were getting used to that by now, as part of their continuing education, because they don’t object. They simply take what they have and give it to Jesus. Five loaves of bread and two fish. And it is enough. For anything in the hands of the Lord is always enough. And more than enough.