Getting Ready for Sunday: Mark 1:29-39 The Gospel Reading for Sunday, February 4th

Mark 1:29-39

And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Gospel reading for Sunday, February 4, comes from Mark chapter one, verses 29 through 39. And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now, Simon's mother in law lay ill with a fever. And immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. And the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place. And there, he prayed. And Simon and those who are with him, search for him. And they found him and said to him, everyone is looking for you. And He said to them, let us go on to the next towns that I may preach, they're also for that is why I came out. And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons, here, hence the reading. So there are a couple of stories that are happening in this reading. It begins with a story of Simon's mother in law. Now Simon is also known as Peter. So they leave the synagogue and they go to Simon's house with Andrew, and James, and John. And Simon's mother in law was sick with a fever. And it says, and immediately they told him about her. And love, John of the gospel of Mark has lots of immediately, and immediately he left the synagogue, and immediately they told him about her. And so what Jesus does, he comes and he took her, took her by the hand, and lifted her up, and she was healed. I love it. And what's the response of a healing from Jesus? Service, Jesus heals the woman, and she begins to serve them. Isn't that how it works? God comes to us to give us healing, and then sends us through service. So the next story is what Jesus does in that town. That evening at sundown they brought to him all who are sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. And they would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. Now, of course, if you didn't have modern medicine, and somebody who was there who could miraculously heal, we would all line up, wouldn't we? I think even with modern medicine, we probably would, all the all the people who have sores on their legs that just won't heal all the diabetes stuff that does terrible things to your feet, all of the long term illnesses that just won't go away. Yeah, I'd line up to, maybe he could get rid of my epilepsy. But it was more than that. He also casts out demons, and he wouldn't allow them to speak because they knew him. Now, the demons and the diseases all have something in common. They're oppressing people, there are people who are feeling the weight of the sinful world, whether it's the kingdom of Satan coming in with demons, or the results of a world that is filled with sin that brings disease to people. And that's just weighing down on them. And Jesus, the Son of God comes to bring the kingdom of God by driving away the sickness and the demons. And he doesn't allow the demons to speak, which often confuses people, like if the demons know who he is, why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't Jesus want them saying you are the Son of God? Well, cuz they're demons, silly. Who's gonna take the word of a demon? Now, even if they are testifying the right thing, you don't want them on your side. And so he does not let them to speak. He lets his actions speak for him, casting out demons and healing the sick. Now in the next moment, he goes to bed and then he rises early in the morning while it is still dark, and he departed and went out to the desolate place and there he said, he prayed. So we see Jesus over and over again goes out to pray. He takes the time to pray to his father. Jesus is the prayer perfect human being. And even though he's also the Son of God and divine himself, he fulfills the role of perfect humanity for us. Just like when he was baptized by John, he repented for us. And he didn't need to. But he did it perfectly for us because we can't. He also prays, even though perhaps maybe the Son of God, who was perfectly united with his father doesn't really need to pray, the humanity of Jesus to live as a perfect creature does. So that's what he does. Now, everyone wants to get round two of healing. And Peter goes out, Simon goes out and says, Everyone is looking for you. But Jesus says, Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach, they're also for that is why I came out. So Jesus was not there to set up a little mini healing kingdom in this one town. He goes out to all of the towns and everywhere he goes, he preaches, he heals and he casts out demons. Because his message and his job was not to set up a little healing kingdom and gather together a base of support out in any of the one towns, but to go to all the people of Israel and tell them that the kingdom of God is at hand, Repent and believe the gospel. And that's what he does. And his his travels, his journeys and his preaching end up leading him to the cross, where he finally relieves us of all of the oppression, not just casting out demons from town to town are healing the sick, but ending the power of death forever, where he dies and rises to give us life. That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: 1 Corinthians 9:16-27 The Epistle Reading for Sunday, February 4th, 2024

1 Corinthians 9:16-31

For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Epistle reading for Sunday February 4 comes from First Corinthians chapter nine, verses 16 through 27. For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me, Woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this of my own, well, I have a reward. But if not of my own, well, I am still entrusted with a stewardship, what then is my reward, that in my preaching, I may present the gospel FREE of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the Gospel. For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them, to the Jews, I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak, I have become all things to all people, that by all means, I might save some, I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize. So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control. Lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. Here ends the reading. This comes as part of a chapter that is talking about the the extraordinary measures that St. Paul and Barnabas did when they came to Corinth to refrain from putting a a barrier to the preaching of the gospel. The passages before this, talk about what it takes to how other apostles have traveled around and received support for their missionary work includes Sefa, Sir Peter, and the and their wives, that they would receive support in order to focus on preaching the Word. Paul and Barnabas, however, are arguing that they have not taken that right, they have not required that the Corinthians support them while they are there. Because they don't want to use that as a barrier to the Gospel. And they're not trying to take the right of apostles, but simply be open and free to give the gospel FREE of charge. And that's what Paul is talking about in the beginning paragraph of this where he says that he is giving the gospel FREE of charge, he goes What then is my reward, than in my preaching, I may present the gospel FREE of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the Gospel. And that's what he's talking about there. That as a pastor, an apostle, he has a full right to be supported by the church, his job is to go around preaching and teaching the gospel so that all people can hear it. And he has the right to be supported in that. And yet, he gives up that so that he can not put a barrier for the people who would have to do the supporting. And that's what he why he goes into this section right here. He says, further, I am free from all I've made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them. To the Jews, I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings. So Paul was talking about ministry tack tic that he is using to build connections with people who are different than him. So he says to them, to the Jews, I became like a Jew. So well, he already was a Jew. But this means that he he adopts some of their culture and their their actions and their ways. And then he goes to those under the law I became as one under the law. And we can see this, that when he goes back to Jerusalem, he goes through all the cleansing rituals and all the things that he would need to do to go into the temple, as if he were under the law again, even though he had been out and about with the Gentiles, all of this time, doing all sorts of things, eating all the wrong things being just like everybody who's outside the law. When he gets back to Jerusalem, he takes on the rituals and practices again, so that he can enter into the temple and reach out to those people. Because the same reason why when he went out to the Gentiles, he lived and behaved as a Gentile. It probably would have been weird, the first time eating pig for Paul, right? Do you think that would be crazy? That would be a little odd. I bet. He was a little like, oh, I don't know what this is about. But he does it. It actually kind of reminds me of some of the things they used to do when I was in band in college, we will go on band tour when you go all over the country. And every time we would play a concert, we would stay with a host family. And so the host family, they were great. They would invite people in, and you'd stay the night there. And they always told us the same thing. When you go into the house, if they offer you food, you have to eat it. It doesn't matter how gross it is, it doesn't matter what it looks like, you have to eat it. And then you say thank you and you smile. I think that's kind of what St. Paul is saying is that he was using every every means at his disposal to build a connection with the people to say, this is how you learn about Jesus. And that's what we did, we were supposed to show how thankful we were for being housed, how thankful we were for their hospitality, and that even if we thought what they were serving was kind of gross, it still came from a generous heart. St. Paul is trying to do the same thing. He's saying I'm gonna be like you so that you there is no barrier between the gospel. And we do this in all sorts of circumstances where we take the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and we wrap it up in different cultures and music and ways of being so that it makes sense to the people who hear it. Paul finishes up he says, do not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize. So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control and all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control. Lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. I love the athlete metaphors. St. Paul uses them occasionally. And especially I love the running ones because you know, I run and he goes Do you not know that all the runners run but only one receives the prize? Yeah, I get it. It's every once in a while someone will talk to me. They'll say I'm going to do a marathon and they'll be like, Oh, are you gonna win? And I go, No, there are 3000 other runners and about 5000 About 1000 of them are faster than me. No, no, I'm not gonna win. I know exactly who's gonna win, not me. But I still train like it. I still train like I want to be as fast as I possibly can be. And St. Paul was talking about this, he says, athletes train to be the best they can be and they put aside all of these things and discipline their bodies, and they're only doing it for a perishable reef. You know, that laurel wreath that they would put on their heads. For us marathon runners, it's those metals that they hang around our necks that go up on the wall and then you never look at him again. What more how much more discipline should we have as we chase after eternal life, the gift of Jesus Christ. That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Psalm 147:1-11 The Psalm for Sunday, February 4th 2024

Psalm 147:1-11

Praise the Lord!
For it is good to sing praises to our God;
    for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.
The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
    he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars;
    he gives to all of them their names.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
    his understanding is beyond measure.
The Lord lifts up the humble;
    he casts the wicked to the ground.

Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving;
    make melody to our God on the lyre!
He covers the heavens with clouds;
    he prepares rain for the earth;
    he makes grass grow on the hills.
He gives to the beasts their food,
    and to the young ravens that cry.
His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
    nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,
but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
    in those who hope in his steadfast love.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The psalm for Sunday, February 4 is Psalm 147, verses one through 11. Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting. The Lord builds up Jerusalem, he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars he gives to them all of their names. Great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble, he casts the wicked to the ground, Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving, make melody to our God on the liar. He covers the heavens with clouds, he prepares rain for the earth, He makes grass grow on the hills, he gives to the beasts, their food, and to the young ravens that cry. His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man. But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him in those who hope in His steadfast love. Here ends the reading. Let's dig in, shall we? Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting. This is of course, a great statement about how worthy it is to sing praises to our God. But we know that we know why God needs to be praised, because of all his blessings that He gives us in Christ. But the psalmist is going to go on and explain a little bit about the blessings that God gives Jerusalem. He says, the Lord builds up Jerusalem, he gathers the outcasts of Israel, He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. So this passage begins focused on Jerusalem and Israel, that God builds up Jerusalem and his people gathering together. Jerusalem is a bit of a synecdoche, key for all of Israel. It's the capital city is representative of the whole country. And God gathers the people in, and he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. And then it shifts to talking about his power. And they're connected. He determines the number of the stars he gives to them all their names, great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble, he casts the wicked to the ground. So he it says he binds people up, he gathers together, he heals their wounds, and he can do it because he has abundant and mighty power. He numbered the stars, he gives them names, he has power to save. And he lifts up the humble and cast the wicked to the ground. The idea here of the humble, we use the word humble to mean an attitude that you have the attitude of humility, like, I'm not all that great. But that's not really what the humble means. Just like when Jesus says, Blessed are the meek, he doesn't mean somebody who has an a meek attitude, or is is humble when they're complimented. What he means is the lowly, the outcasts, the broken, the needy, the hurt the people who are who are truly on the bottom rung. This doesn't always mean economically. But it can be just anybody who is just crushed by something. And in particular, I think it's people who are crushed by the reality of sin and death. And by the judgment of God's law. He lifts them up through Christ, but he cast the wicked to the ground. The people who don't need God, the people who are, who believe they can do things on their own. The people who commit great and grievous evil and don't care, God lifts up the lowly and he cast down the crowd. It's a common theme throughout Scripture. And we see it especially in the Magnificat where Mary sings about this, how he scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, and he lifts up the lowly. He fills the humble with good things and the rich he sends away empty then it moves on singing to the Lord with Thanksgiving make melody to our God on the liar. Of course we respond to that with praises, right? If God is the God who builds up Jerusalem who heals the brokenhearted who comes to us through Christ, and lifts us up from our lowly estate to give us salvation, what else can we do then sing with thanksgiving, make melody to our God on the liar. Then it goes, he covers the heavens with clouds, he prepares rain for the earth, He makes grass grow on the hills, he gives to the beasts, their food, and to the young ravens that cry, and so now moves on to other blessings of God, not just his focus on healing the outcasts of Jerusalem and gathering them together. But now it's the general provision that God gives to the world, the rain, the grass, the food for the beasts and the Ravens, and of course, for his people, a food that is for us as well. And if he cares about the ravens and the grass, and as Jesus says the sparrow, of course, how much more does he care for us? His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of man. But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, and those who hope in His steadfast love. Our delight is in the strength of the horse or in the legs of a man. I mean, we are just about ready to have the Super Bowl. And all sorts of church programs get cancelled, to make way for the Super Bowl, like youth groups in church activities and meetings. And our second service is probably going to be a little light because everybody wants to make sure that we get to see all the strong legged men whack each other, and throw a football around, right. God doesn't care about these things. What God cares about is, the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him in those who hope in His steadfast love. And that's what the humble and the lowly do. We know that we have nothing that we can bring to our God. We know that our only hope is to wait for him for salvation for the day that Jesus returns to raise us up and give us new life. What a joy that will be. That's all I have for today. We'll see you next Sunday. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Isaiah 40:21-31 The Old Testament Reading for Sunday, February 4th, 2024

Isaiah 40:21-31

Do you not know? Do you not hear?
    Has it not been told you from the beginning?
    Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
    and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
    and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nothing,
    and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
    scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
    and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

To whom then will you compare me,
    that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
    who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
    calling them all by name;
by the greatness of his might
    and because he is strong in power,
    not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
    and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Old Testament reading for Sunday, February 4, comes from Isaiah chapter 40, verses 21 through 31. Do you not know Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He Who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness? Scarcely are they planted scarcely sown. Scarcely has their STEM taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One, lift up your eyes on high and see who created these. He who brings out their host by number, calling them by name, by the greatness of His might, and because he has strong in power, Not one is missing. Why do you say Oh, Jacob, and speak, oh, Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord and my right is disregarded by my God. Have you not known Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young man shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Here hence the reading. Let's dig in, shall we? Let's start with the beginning. Do you not know Do you not hear has not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He Who sits above the circle of the earth and its habitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwelling, who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. This passage helps us to see how different our God is from us. That God is not someone who is in the middle of creation like we are. But as far outside it, it uses this idea of sitting above the circle of the earth, you know, when you look out and around you see a circle right there horizon acts like a circle. He's way above that. He looks down on the earth and its habitants are like grasshoppers to us. That's what you and me are like, like human beings are nothing when compared to God. Even so much that the mightiest of us is nothing, right? Who brings Prince's to nothing, as it says, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. The idea is that God is so much greater so much, far outside of our experience, that is difficult to truly understand who he is. Even this language doesn't quite get it right. It talks about God sitting above the heavens and stretching them out like a curtain. God doesn't have arms and the heavens don't stretch like stretchy pants. God is so far outside of creation, that all creation is contained there in and this is trying to give us the idea of the immensity of his vastness, the infinity that is so much beyond our minds that we can't even understand it without using language that falls far short of the real reality. It continues stalking about people now. Scarcely are they planted scarcely sown scarcely has their STEM taken root in the earth when he blows on them, and they wither and then Tempest carries them off like stubble. This is using a farming metaphor to help us understand. Farmers will plant sow seeds and it'll grow and harvest time will come and then the fall wind will, will come and they will all die off. And it seems like nothing to the farmer happens every year, season after season, year after year and we go out that's just normal. And God looks at human beings like that. were planted, sown. We take root and we die and It's all like nothing to him. And it goes on to continue you, it says, To whom then will you compare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One, lift up your eyes on high and see who created these, he who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name by the greatness of His might. And because he is strong in power, Not one is missing. So then God says, What in the world can you compare me to? Actually nothing, that's what in the world, right. And so he calls us to look up to the stars, and see who created the stars, only God, even the stars, are his creations and under his power. And that's an important thing to remember is that in the ancient world, they would often worship what they would call the starry hosts, as in all of the gods and goddesses that were floating up in the sky, the starry hosts. And even God says, All even these I created, nothing is outside of my power, and none of them exists without me. Now, this thing can be pretty scary. Having a god that's this big, and this powerful. He is everywhere, he created all things. He's connected to everything. And so it continues. Why do you say, oh, Jacob, and speak to Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God. What this is saying is that God's people are looking up at the God who is almighty and all powerful, and they're saying, God doesn't really know what is going on with us. He's not around to make right his promises. And for people who's facing enemies, and poverty and sadness, and people are going to invade, you could say, Yeah, that might seem like that to them. But God does not disregard. God can't be tricked, his attention doesn't doesn't wander, he doesn't get to be too busy. He knows everything, and is involved in everything. And that's what Isaiah says, Have you not known? Have you not heard, the Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, he does not faint or grow weary, he is understand his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. So this begins by saying, God does not grow faint or weary, like we do. God is almighty. And this helps us to see a problem that we often have with our understanding of God. Because God is so different, so alien, so other to us, we almost always imagine God as a bigger and better version of a human being. And usually what that ends up looking like is something like the Greek gods, who are big and strong and powerful, but still, kind of, they've got problems and their attention wanders, and you know, they have needs, and they're a little bit like us, just big. But that's not what God is. God is not like us, but bigger. God is different. He is all powerful. He is everywhere. And he knows everything. He does not weary or grow faint. He understands all things. And that means that God knows where you are, and what you're doing all the time. And he cares about everything that is happening. And he knows where everyone is, all the time, and what they're doing. And he cares about what is happening. His understanding is unsearchable. Now for people who are wondering where their God is, and why his promises aren't coming true, that might be a bit of a what? It's God should be doing better things for us. For people who are a little scared of God, he is almighty power could be a little scary, right? God knows exactly what you're doing. But for Christians, a God who is everywhere and knows all things, it means that a god that's the same God who is always able to come through on his promises. It means that God is never too busy to listen to our prayers. He never gets distracted by the events of politics in Washington, DC. He looks down on us and knows all things. He is there to hear all prayers. He is there to provide Christ with his body and blood to every church on every Sunday no matter what. And he is there to give us His Word in every moment and pass out his Holy Spirit through the means of grace all the time.

And that's what he does for the people who believe in Him who Love Him who have faith in Jesus Christ. It says he gives power power to the faint. And to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youth shall faint and be weary. And young men shall fall exhausted but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not be faint. God sustains us, doesn't he? That's all we have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Jesus, The Prophet: Sermon for Sunday January 28th, 2024

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken.I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. This morning's Old Testament reading is a well known story for for many people. It's a popular one for kids. We often tell this is a big feature strongly in VBS curricula, or in Sunday school curricula, because it's got a kid in it. Right? We've we've heard this story over and over again. And you imagine Samuel is in the temple? Well, that would have been the tabernacle at the time. Usually in our imaginations. He's like an eight year old boy, about that tall. And he hears the Word of the Lord and responds with joy. Pretty great, right? This story is one of those stories. There are lots of them, where we forget about the details. And imagine the story in our heads. We have lots of stories that have the traditional way of learning them have covered up with the Bible actually says, I think the most important one is the Christmas story from Luke. Do you know that story, right? Mary and Joseph, go to Bethlehem. Mary is giant. She's like nine and a half months pregnant. She's riding on a donkey. And just as they see the city of Bethlehem she goes, Oh. And Joseph goes banging on every Motel Six in the town. Right. John, just about everything I told you in that story is not in the Bible. No donkey. No in no rush to the pregnancy. You're like, wait, wait, wait. The Bible says in their word hotels back in the day. They didn't exist. That word is just, there is no room in the upper room of the house. Just about everything that we imagine in that story comes from tradition. And the retelling. What the Bible says is they went to Bethlehem, and the child was born. And that's it. And they placed him in a manger, because the guest room was full of other stories like that. And this one that we read today, sent about Samuel is like that. Samuel was likely not an eight year old boy. He was a young man, having served Eli in the tabernacle for many, many years. After Hannah, his mother had dropped him off. And the history of Samuel goes like that. So Hannah comes to the tabernacle, she can't have a baby. And the other wife of her husband is teasing her because of it. Because that's what happens when you have two wives. They fight over that kind of stuff in the Old Testament. So she's depressed, she's upset. She goes to the temple and she prays give me a child and I will give him to you, Lord. She has a baby Samuel. After the baby is weaned. She brings him to Eli and says here to take the child. And I want you all to know that the Punic household is not taking children as offerings.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've had something of a mini sermon series, all about the prophets. We began with Samuel, who was called to be a prophet as a young man in the temple. God came to him with a message of judgment concerning his, his surrogate father, Eli, we asked a question, do we tell the whole story? Did Samuel tell the whole story about judgment, Eli? And what about us? And we were reminded that the salvation we have in Jesus Christ doesn't make sense unless we also talk about the judgment of God on sin. You need to know what you're saved from, for a savior to make sense. Last week, we talked about Jonah, God sent the prophet Jonah to Nineveh with a simple message, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And what was amazing is the people heard that message of judgment and said, Let's repent. Show showed us that God's message of judgment always comes with the offer of forgiveness, just as Jesus proclaimed repentance, and believe in the gospel, so you can receive forgiveness. Now, today, in our Old Testament reading, we are seeing Moses established the Office of Prophet in ancient Israel. The Book of Deuteronomy comes at the end of Moses, his life, God's people have been wandering through the wilderness for 40 years, they are now at the edge of the promised land. And Moses gives them a series of instructions before they cross over. One of those instructions is about the prophet. He says, The Lord your God will raise up for you, a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to Him you shall listen to Moses actually had kind of a unique relationship with God. He was the one who spoke to God on a regular basis. If you look throughout those stories, it's almost like he could go to God and kind of have a conversation. Strange, right? But Moses, his main job was to hear the Word of God and speak it to the people to guide them through the wilderness, and call them back to the way of life. And now that Moses is about to go up to the top of the mountain to die, he says, God is going to raise up someone like me, for you, for your own good, a prophet that would give them the word of God. And he talks about what will happen, why they need this. He says, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, when you said, let me not hear again, the voice of the LORD my God, or see this great fire anymore, lest I die. You might go, what? This is a part of the story of Moses and God's people at Mount Sinai, also called Mount Horeb, where they get there, and God calls a sacred assembly. We are used to reading in our lectionary, the part where Moses goes all the way up to the top, and he speaks to God and he gets the 10 commandments, and he's there for 40 days and 40 nights. We don't always read the part where God speaks to the whole of the people gathered around the base of the mountain. He is up on the top and there are clouds and fire and lightning, and it is super scary. And he says the 10 commandments to them, and all the people go don't talk to us again. We're so scared. Which I would be too, right. You're at the base of the mountain. And this like fire and lightning and crazy stuff has happened all that and the booming voice of God calls out I would Pareek out. I bet you would too. So God says that He will raise up a prophet. And what that means is from that moment on, God doesn't speak to His people generally. He speaks to them through the voice of someone he calls to give them the message that he sent. And that's the second Part of being a prophet is that there is a message that God wants that person to speak. He says, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth. And he shall speak to them all that I commend him for. So part of this is that God will choose someone from among the people of Israel, to give this message to, and they will speak everything that God sets. And we see that men like Samuel, men like Jonah, Elijah, who was the chief of the prophets, the example that all the prophets would follow, after the Kings start going the wrong direction. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and all of the 12, at the end of the Old Testament, each one of these was a person like that, someone that God chose to speak His word to Israel, so that they could hear the Word of God. There's one more thing. He says, and whoever will not listen to my words, that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. So what that means is, God's people were supposed to listen, the word of the Prophet was binding on them. God threatened all those who would turn away from those words. Now you can ask, Why does Israel need a prophet? Doesn't that make sense? That kind of question. Especially if you are one of those people at the base of that mountain, right? You're looking up at the mountain, and at the top, you see the fire of God and the clouds and the lightning, and you hear the booming voice, and you're so scared that you say, never talked to me again. Wouldn't you remember that? Wouldn't you be like, That guy is pretty powerful and kind of scary, I should do what he says. You would think, right? And facts. They don't do over and over and over again. The people of God and Moses, go through this dance, they complain, God sends a punishment, and Moses has to get has to deal with it. And then God takes it away. God would redo things like give them manna bread on the ground every morning, and feed them quail that would fall out of the sky. You give them water out of Iraq, and over and over again, they would turn away. And the same thing happens for us. I think. That's because the same thing that infected ancient Israel does the same thing that's in every human beings heart, the desire to be like God, not creatures, not people who accept their role in God's place of creation. But people who want to forge our own way, who think that we know what's right. Because we all have a little bit of Adam and Eve in us. You know, the word that God gave them. He said, You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for on the day that you eat of it, you shall die. And what happened? Not too long later, Adam and Eve are at the tree. And the serpent says, Did God really say? God really tell you that they kind of want to be like God. So they both go for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of evil, because they want that knowledge and they want to be their own masters, to make their own decisions, to turn away from God's path. Israel needed a voice to constantly call them back. Because they had that same Adam and Eve inside them, calling them their own way. And so God sent them the prophets gave them Moses, when they were wandering through the wilderness. It gave them Samuel when they needed a leader and finally chose a king gave them Elijah when those kings had that Adam in them, turn them away from God and lead the people after a false god. ads.

And he kept doing it over and over and over again. Until finally it came to Jesus. Jesus, the ultimate and true prophet. Because that's the one that Moses was really thinking about. When he looked ahead to find a prophet among us, from our brothers. It was Jesus, the Son of God, who became one of us to speak God's word to all of humanity. Hebrews one says, Long ago at many times, and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. That final ultimate prophet is Jesus, the only one who was there with a father who came to earth to let us know everything we need for salvation. Because Jesus, this prophet is here for our good to give us this message of life, and hope. John one says, no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father side, he has made him known is the son, who is from the father's side, was sent into the world to proclaim a very simple message of grace and love, and the Father's will. Now, one thing that our lectionary doesn't give us is a simple task to understand who is a prophet it, Moses tells the people right after our reading, in verses 21, and 22, it goes like this. And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass, or come true, that is a word the Lord has not spoken? Well, that seems pretty easy, right? If a false prophet predicts something, and it doesn't happen, then they're a false prophet. Plain and easy. Nothing that the God says, falls flat. Everything that God says, comes true. And what we see, in Jesus Christ, are words that always come true words of a prophet who teaches with authority. And that's what happens in our gospel reading. Jesus comes into the Sabbath, and he teaches with authority, the message of God, and then he backs it up with the power of His words, a demon comes before him. And he casts it out, very simply be silent, and come out of him. That is 1234567 words. And the demon can't handle it. The power of the Prophet, the power of the Son of God. But even better than that, Jesus predicts something that would happen. He tells his disciples throughout the gospel, that the Son of Man will be betrayed and handed over and crucified. And after three days rise, and then it happens. Isn't that amazing? If someone came to you and said, Hey, I'm gonna go die, be buried and come up after three days. You think they were crazy? To say No way. But Jesus said it. And it happened. And his message is for us, to guide us back to eternal life. Every time that little Adam or Eve in US causes us to pull away to say to ourselves, I am my own true Master. I don't need the word of God. And I think that's what we do. Each of us has something that pulls us away from that little bit of our sinful nature that wants us to make our own decisions to forge our own path, to turn away from the call of God. And I think for us, it's not that we chase after the false gods that the Old Testament people did. I think for us, it's that we want to be Gods ourselves. I mean, none of us would say that we wouldn't be like, Oh, my God today, but we do have a lot of control over our lives, more than any people at any time in history, think about your home, like my home, it can be 40 degrees outside, and 75 degrees in my house. Do you know how crazy that is in the history of the world? How nuts that is. And I could hit a button and drop it to 74 degrees or the other direction and make it 76 degrees. It can be 105 degrees outside. And you can have your house at 75. Or if you're really, really rich 60. Right? Isn't that crazy? What about what about this? How many of you have or know someone who has a joint replacement? Isn't it kind of weird? Like, our joints were out. And the doctors are like I have a new one. No big deal. Right now, we have so much control over our lives, so much control over our bodies, and we think I can do whatever I can manage my world create my life. And when we do it our sin can pull us away from Christ. As our hearts say, Well, maybe God didn't say that. And so we hear the message of Jesus again and again, to call us back to him to call us back to His love and His grace, because he gives us forgiveness, and life. Because Christianity isn't really a knowledge thing. It's a constant pull back to the message of Christ, a constant calling back to the way that Jesus wants us to be to receiving His grace and hearing His word because our hearts are constantly trying to pull us away. And we need to hear that voice of the Prophet with His love and His peace, to fight against that little atom and that little Eve and turn us back to him. And what a joy, that we have a Savior who comes to speak that word of God to us all the time and turn us back to life. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Deuteronomy 18:15-20 The Old Testament Reading for Sunday, January 28th, 2024

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken.I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Old Testament reading for Sunday, January 28, comes from Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 15 through 20. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, it is to him, You shall listen just as you desire to the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, when you said, let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire anymore, lest I die. And the Lord said to me, they are right in what they have spoken, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I commend him, and whoever will not listen to my words, that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my Name, that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. Here ends the reading. Deuteronomy is a long sermon that Moses gives to the people right before he goes up to the top of the mountain overlooking the Jordan River and dies. It's like a farewell address. And he tells them all sorts of things that they need to know gives them guidelines about what they're supposed to do in the Promised Land, sets up the blessings and the curses that God will give them if they follow the covenant, or break the covenant. And in this section, he is telling them about the Office of Prophet, the the idea of a prophet, we often think about a prophet like someone who predicts the future. And prophecy is all about knowing something that you shouldn't, or knowing the future or getting a word that comes from God. That is, it's about things that are mysterious. But the offensive Prophet throughout the Old Testament was just someone who proclaimed God's word to the kings, mostly, and to the people. And Moses, what he did is he simply spoke for God. And so that is the office of Prophet, and he says, The Lord God will raise up for you, a prophet, like me, from among you, from your brothers, it is to Him you shall listen. The Office of Prophet is for you. It is a voice of God, revealing God's will for the good of the people. Now, Moses goes on to say, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, when you said, let me not hear again, the voice of the LORD my God, or see this great fire anymore, lest I die. Moses is referring to what happened at Mount Sinai, or otherwise known as Mount Horeb. God spoke directly to the people when he gave them the covenant right before Moses went up to the top. And the people were terrified, they were like, I don't want to hear the voice of the Lord. And so from that moment on, God speaks to Moses, and Moses speaks to the people. And so the people cried out, they didn't want to hear directly from God. So God shows prophets, from Moses on to speak to the people. And so God sets this situation up. And he says, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all than I commend him. So this office of Prophet is the person who speaks God's word to the people. And we see this over and over and over again, throughout the Old Testament. People like Samuel who spoke God's word to the people, and then the prophet like Nathan, who spoke to David, and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and Elijah and Jonah, and all sorts of prophets, who weren't just predicting the future, but who were proclaiming what God said to them, to the people, as he says, Thus says the Lord was their message. And so God gave this amazing office of profit for the good of his people so that they could hear God's word and listen. And he says, Whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will rock wire it of him. When we hear God's word, there's only one response, right? We're supposed to listen and obey. So when a prophet comes speaking in God's name, what are we to do? All we can do is listen and obey. And that's it. The problem in Israel was over and over and over again the story goes, a prophet would come, and people would not listen, they would not obey, and they would turn back to the false gods, and God would have to send some form of judgment. And it happened over and over and over again, until finally he sent in Babylon, to conquer them and carry them off into captivity. And it wasn't until he sent Babylon, that the people finally started to hear. And they returned to they returned from the from exile, and began to really dedicate themselves as a nation to God. So then he says up, whoever will not listen to my words, that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. And so God knows that he puts his own power, and his own his own requirements, behind speaking the Word. But there's a duty on the prophet as well. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my Name, that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. So there were was pretty aggressively punished. Those who would presume to speak for God, when He did not speak, or to speak for other gods, they were supposed to die. false prophecy was a really major crime in the life of Israel. And that ties into the command previously, right. If you do not listen to God's words, he will require accountability. Now, when you pair those things, it means that anyone who presumes to speak for God has an amazing requirement. They must speak only the words that God has spoken, only what God says. So there's no no wonder that God puts up this penalty for speaking. Now we in the Christian church, we look back at what Moses said, and we we know that we have the great Prophet, God raised up a prophet like Moses, in fact, greater than Moses in Jesus Christ, who is God's Word made flesh and revealed everything about, about the Father that we can know. And so the Hebrews tells us that God spoke in many in various ways through the prophets, but now in the last days, he has spoken to us through His Son. And so this great prophet is giving us all of God's Word. And so the church since then has been pointing back to Jesus and and listening to him as the basis for our proclamation as well. That's all we have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Psalm 111 The Psalm for Sunday, January 28th, 2024

Psalm 111

Praise the Lord!
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,
    in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
Great are the works of the Lord,
    studied by all who delight in them.
Full of splendor and majesty is his work,
    and his righteousness endures forever.
He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered;
    the Lord is gracious and merciful.
He provides food for those who fear him;
    he remembers his covenant forever.
He has shown his people the power of his works,
    in giving them the inheritance of the nations.
The works of his hands are faithful and just;
    all his precepts are trustworthy;
they are established forever and ever,
    to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
He sent redemption to his people;
    he has commanded his covenant forever.
    Holy and awesome is his name!
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
    all those who practice it have a good understanding.
    His praise endures forever!

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The psalm for Sunday, January 28, is Psalm 111. Praise the Lord. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. In the company of the upright in the congregation, Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them, full of splendor and majesty is His work and His righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and merciful. He provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works in giving them the inheritance of the nations, the works of His hands are faithful, and just, all his precepts are trustworthy. They are established forever and ever to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness, He sent redemption to his people. He has commanded His covenant forever, holy and awesome is His name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And all those who practice it have a good understanding, his praise endures forever. Here ends the reading. Let's dig into the Psalm. And I think we'll go through it verse by verse to see what's going on here. It begins with praise. Praise the Lord, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright in the congregation. This psalm begins with a proclamation of praise, and pointing us to praising God together in the congregation. And what I love about the way the Psalms praise God is very often most of the time when they praise God, they don't just say, you're amazing, you're awesome, you're powerful, you're super cool. What they do is they point to God's actual works. And so they say, they talk about what God has done. And that's what this psalm is going to do. It says, in the congregation, I'm going to praise you. And it points to his works. It says, Great are the works of the Lord studied by all who delight in them, full of splendor, and majesty is His work and His righteousness endures forever. So this points to the works of the Lord. And these are things that the church remembers, and the church at that time would have as well. When Israel looked back at the works of the Lord, they would have thought primarily of the Exodus, pulling God's people out of the out of slavery in exile, they would have then thought about all the ways that God has saved them as they went to the Promised Land, how he carved out a nation for them, and how he protected the judges and the kings and all this time. And so that's the splendor and majesty is God's work to protect them. And it goes on. He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and merciful. Again, it points back to the history of Israel and all the ways that God has protected his people. And we can look back and say that God has caused his works to be remembered amongst us as well, of course, the great work, the most amazing work that God did, is the work of sending His Son Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who comes to be among us and live among his people, and then die and rise and ascend into heaven, and promised to return. Ancient Israel looked back to the days of the Exodus, and the wonder, the wandering through the wilderness and the conquering of the promised land and the kings, we look back to our great King, Jesus Christ, whose throne was a cross with a crown of thorns on his head, and is now seated on at God's right hand in heaven. And we remember that amazing wondrous work to give us eternal life. Verse five, He provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant forever. One of the things that God promised in the covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai, and with Israel as they entered into the Promised Land, was that when they followed the covenant God would provide for them. The Promised Land was this place that was flowing with milk and honey supposed to be this amazing place filled with great produce. And when God's people came to the Jordan River and sent spies into it, that like yes, it is an amazing land flowing with milk and honey. And the promise in Deuteronomy that God gave in his blessings curses was that if they went in, they would have plenty of food, if they kept the covenant, and if they served other gods, God would send famines and enemies. And so here, this is recalling that He provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant forever. Now for us as Christians, the amazing food that God provides for us is Christ's Body and Blood, which is not a food that sustains us for tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. It's not something that fills our bellies, but it st sustains us to eternal life, so that God's covenant is remembered even through death. When he raises us up on the last day. Verse six, he has shown his people the power of his works in giving them the inheritance of the nations. So again, we point to in Israel, the inheritance that he had given was the the land, the promised land that they had conquered, taken from the nations around them and given as God promised Abraham. And that land was expanded in God's promises through time until Israel expected to inherit the whole earth, which we see in Christ, who is our king, who comes on the last day, to remake the heavens and the earth and provide resurrection for his people so that we live forever with Him. Or seven, the works of His hands are faithful and just and his precepts are trustworthy, they are established forever and ever to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness. So God's works are faithful and just, and his precepts, the ideas that he commands are trustworthy. Now often we think of the precepts and the commands of the Old Testament, the things that are performed with faithfulness, and uprightness, just to be God's commands. But the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah, the covenant that God made with his people, is not just about what he said, tells Israel to do. It is also about his love, and His promises to his people. And so there is this back and forth between the law and the covenant, and the sacrifices and the sacraments of the Old Testament system, where God delivered his grace and brought them back from their sin. And so you get even in the Old Testament, this law gospel dynamic going back and forth between Israel. And sometimes we think about Jesus as just someone who gives us commands. Like, we're supposed to be good people we're supposed to serve, and we're supposed to love and that's at the heart of being a Christian.

But the precepts are not just that, but also God's grace. That He gives us His love. And that's the foundation for our relationship, so that we serve not to please God, but out of God's love for us, it flows into other people. And his his works are faithful and just his priests reps are trustworthy. We know that we can trust this promise. So we don't have to worry about God's love for us. We let that love flow into the lives of others will continue with verse nine. He sent redemption to His people, He has commanded His covenant forever, holy and awesome is His name. Here again, we see the pairing of the the covenant commands with redemption. So He sent redemption to his people, he pulled them out of Egypt, he gave them this covenant, he gave them a land and protected them. But it is also then paired with God has given them command. This is what you are to do as my people. And so God's law and gospel was given to ancient Israel, just as God's law and gospel is given to us that in our baptism, we are redeemed by Christ pulled out of the power of sin, death and the devil, and given a joyous duty to serve Christ and everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness. Holy and awesome as his name is right, the last verse, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All those who practice it, have a good understanding, his praise endures forever. We've seen this phrase, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom in other places. It is one of the one of the chief lines of Proverbs. And what it reminds us is that if you don't have faith in God, all the wisdom of the world doesn't matter. The only way to truly understand reality is to begin with the the knowledge of God and the fear and faith in him. Which means that if we don't know Christ, if we don't understand who he is and what it means that he came and died and rose, you can never truly understand reality. You can measure the effects of gravity and figure out how much electric how electricity works and you can learn how to build bridges, but reality still is outside of your grasp. Because behind it all is our Savior, Jesus Christ who died and rose and is coming back. And without that, you do not have true wisdom. Without that you do not truly understand your role in creation. And you might think that you can make it up on your own. That is why all prayer all those who practice it, have a good understanding. So we need to know Jesus to truly under understand who we are. That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

They Did What? Sermon from January 21st, 2024

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them…

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

The reading from last week and the reading from this week, both kind of deal with the same subjects. They give us almost a mini sermon series on God's message of judgment. They also both have Sunday School stories that mess up our understanding of the text. Last week, we looked at Samuel, and we have a Sunday School message that said, the call of Samuel was to this little boy who had this marvel experience of hearing God. But the real story was this grown man, probably about a teenager hears the voice of God who tells him to bring a message of judgment to Eli, who was basically his surrogate father. A very different story. We asked the question, do I tell the whole story? Samuels question when he didn't want to tell Eli what God had said. And we realized that we Christians to have to speak the whole word of God to the world. Because the cross of Jesus Christ does not make sense. Without a message of judgment for sin. You need to know what you're being saved from, to reach out to a savior. That's what we talked about them. Today we have a story about Jonah. A message of judgment for the city of Nineveh. Jonah's message is yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. God sent him to this city of Nineveh. Now, if you remember from your Sunday school days, there is a story that goes behind it. It begins with God coming to Jonah and saying, go to Nineveh and tell them the message. You had 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And Josh Jonah says, No, thank you. He goes the opposite direction. He heads to Tarshish hops on a boat and out in the middle of the water a storm comes up on the boat, they figure out that the problem is Jonah. And Jonah says, Yep, it's me. Throw me over the boat and the storm will stop and the storm stopped. I'm glad they didn't try to do that when I worked on a boat. Jonah splashing around in the water and a huge fish comes in eats him. And he prays a prayer of repentance inside the animal before it spits him up on the shoreline. Then we get then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. And he follows through. Jonah goes to Nineveh one of the enemy's cities, a violent city full of evil men and proclaims yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So he goes, Nineveh, enemy of God's people conquering city. And he proclaims this message of judgment. And the people respond they all gather together and they kill him. No, that's that's pastor. You're not supposed to lie about the Bible. Okay, so maybe I'll get it right this time. They ignore him. No, that's not it. They laugh at him. No. They do. What did they do? They repent, or that's weird. Right. Jonah goes and he says you're all gonna die in 40 days. And they repent. Not only do they believe him, but they respond to the judgments with repentance. It says and the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them, to the least of them. And then you get three dots. Because for some reason, our lectionary pulls out of few verses that are really important in the story. It goes, the word reads the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything, let them not feed or drink water. But let man and beast be covered in sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Wow. What a response. And this is from the people who do not know God, who are enemies of God's kingdom and will eventually fight and attack them. Wow. Someone came up, maybe in Main Street, alcohol and that nice big paved area where they have all the events, put on one of those old school signboards back in front, the end is near and shouted. 40 days and alcohol will be destroyed. What would you do? Would we send the police after him? Probably not. You can say whatever crazy things you want on the streets, can't you? We laugh? Probably. Would we ignore him? Probably. Would you gather together all the people maybe get the mayor, he would come out and say, nobody can eat anything for three whole days, put on a potato sack and dump ashes on top of your head? I doubt it. Right? That would be kind of crazy. But Nineveh they believe that? What would you do? If someone came up to you when you were assured that they were right, you have 40 days left to live? Would you pull out the bucket list. Now we don't remember this maybe. But the phrase bucket list comes from a movie. Things you want to do before you kick the bucket. Right? The list of all the experiences you want before you die. And if you've got 40 days that you quit your job, pull out that list and get it done. Look at your bank account and think, hey, I can spend this many dollars every day until I die or the credit card and say once I die, this is gone. Some people would probably take that time and use it for their family. Would you dig in your firepit? Lay it out on the floor, put on the potato sack and rub it in your hair and say I repent. I doubt it. But that's what the people of Nineveh did. It's kind of crazy, right? Why? There was no message of grace or forgiveness No, or else it was just 40 days, and none of it will be overthrown. But what we're missing is some of the context from the ancient world. And what Jonah himself says about God's message. In the next chapter. Jonah says, oh, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country. That is why I made haste to flee. Tarshish for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Jonah says that God relents from disaster, merciful, full of steadfast love. Which is why when he says yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown and the people repent. God does not destroy the city. Because when God sends a message of judgment, He always follows it with the option of repentance

is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and unrelenting from disaster. And this is where our Sunday School Story messes up the story of Jonah. I bet many of you when you were told this story heard it like this. God calls Jonah. And he's scared. He doesn't want to go to Nineveh because they'll be mean to him. They might laugh at him or hurt him or kill him. So he runs away. That's not the story. What does Jonah say? Oh, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country. That is why I made haste to flee. Tarshish for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love unrelenting from disaster. Jonah didn't want Nineveh to repent. He wanted them to be destroyed. That's why he ran away. God's message of judgment was not a message of judgment. It was an offer for repentance. And when the people heard, they believed, and they turned to God and they asked for mercy. And God gave it that is the kind of God we have. When he sends a message of law, a message of judgment, whether to Nineveh to us or to the world. It always comes with the option of grace. I think this is why our lectionary pairs it with the story of Jesus, who goes out to the world and says The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. The message of repentance comes with the message of forgiveness. God always sends it that way. Jonah's day and the days of ancient Israel, the story of Jonah was a lesson for the kings. The question was, if God so loves the enemy, Nineveh, not the promised people of God. What would he do if his people put on sackcloth and ashes and commanded a feast and returned to him and turned aside from their evil way and worshipped the true God. Of course, you would forgive them. He would remember His covenant He would turn from them and give them peace. But the Kings over and over and over again, they had prophets come to them and say, turn to God or be destroyed, turn to God or be destroyed. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And they refuse to over and over again. And so this important section where it talks about what the king ordered everyone. That's what the kings of Israel were supposed to do, is put on sackcloth and ashes and repent. Because every time that message of judgment goes out, every time someone hears about their sin, God follows it up with an offer for forgiveness. Repent, and believe in the gospel. Same for us. We all know this. We Christians, we hear this message of judgment knowing that God is a forgiving God. We know that God condemns sin, which is why He sent His Son Jesus to take that condemnation on himself. We know that every time we hear that God brings judgments on all of us or for the evil that we do. We just need to turn to a savior and ask for His love and His mercy. Because we know like Jonah, we know that God is a gracious God and merciful slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. he relents from sending us to disaster because he sent that disaster on Jesus himself when he died on a cross When we hear the message of God's law, it is always calling us to turn from our sin and trust in our Savior, to repent and believe it. God always gives you life. He always follows it up with his promises, because that's who God is. Someone who loves you enough to send His Son to die for you, and give you His salvation. And it's the same when the message goes out into the world. When we send out this message of judgment, God's law on sin, it always comes with the gift of repentance, and offer of forgiveness. Because the purpose of God's law is not judgment. The purpose is to turn people to the Gospel. And that's what happened when John the Baptist was out on the Jordan River, right? He goes out and he preaches repentance, and everybody comes out confessing their sins and being baptized for forgiveness. They hear the words and they repent. And the same thing happens when Jesus preaches it, repent and believe. The world sees Jesus, not as a judge, but as someone who calls them out for their sin, and offers forgiveness when sinners turn to Him. For the purpose is to drive people to the Gospel. And that's where the difference is between the church's proclamation of judgment and the world's. Because when the world proclaims a message of judgment, they just want to strike people, cut them down, punish them, cast them out, divide the world between good and evil, between powerful and oppressed between the horrible and the good. And we see it more and more every day. Judge judgment is just there to punish the wicked and establish the righteous. And I think many people when they hear this when they hear the word, that is all they know. They're trying to make me cut me down make me feel like a bad person cast me out. We always have to remember that our message for sin comes with forgiveness. Repent and believe. Join Jesus receive His forgiveness, whether it comes to us or it goes out into the world because our message is always an invitation. Turn from your evil ways and receive received the gift of life that Jesus offers because it's always there. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Mark 1:14-20 The Gospel Reading for Sunday, January 21st

Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Gospel reading for Sunday, January 21, comes from Mark chapter one, verses 14 through 20. Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men. And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were in their boats, mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father's Ebody in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him. Here ends the reading. So this begins with a notice about what Jesus is doing. So it says, After John was arrested, that means that there's a gap of time between the baptism and the, and Jesus's time in the wilderness. And what is going on here, there's a gap somewhere. So Jesus comes into Galilee then, and he proclaims the kingdom of God, he's got this, this proclamation. The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. So Jesus is doing this thing in an ongoing basis, he's got a proclamation that he does. And so there's there's sort of like, a pause almost in between what's going on here. And what happens next. It assumes almost that Jesus is out doing some of the preaching. And then while he's doing that, he ends up going alongside the Sea of Galilee. And he sees Simon Andrew and says, Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men. And immediately they left their nets and followed him. The same thing happens with James and John. Immediately, they follow Him, there are a couple of things I think we need to note. First, it is amazing that Jesus comes up to these two men in the middle of their work. And he says, Follow me. And they do it. That's it, right? He walks up, follow me. And immediately they left their nets and followed Him. What a crazy thing. The power of Jesus to call people to follow him in this instance, is outstanding. Now, we do have to say that it is likely that Simon Andrew and James and John, all had heard Jesus preach, had been connected with Christ during this time, this gap, where he is preaching in Galilee, and the beginning of his calling to them. And so it's not like they didn't know who Jesus was like he's a stranger. In fact, the Gospel of John tells us that Andrew and Simon were disciples of John the Baptist. And John goes, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then he does it again, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and Simon and Andrew, follow Jesus, and come to Him. And so there's this, they do know who he is, before this, this call is made, and yet, they don't say, Sure, Jesus, let us first fill in the blank. Immediately they're left their nuts and followed him. How wonderful life changes when Jesus calls. I think another thing we need to note about this, is that the saying follow me and I will make you become fishers of men. Now, I think many of us when we read this passage, we immediately jumped to And so Jesus makes us all into fishers of men. But I think it's important to note who he is calling. This is Simon or Peter, Andrew, James and John. They are apostles. The call of Jesus is different for them than for all Christians. They are called to be witnesses, one of the 12 witnesses that goes out into the world to proclaim the resurrection and begin the new family of Abraham in the 12 tribes of Israel, their calling is different from your calling. They were called to become fishers of men in a way that normal, regular Christians are not. Now, that does not mean that Christians aren't supposed to witness or even that Christians are supposed to let their pastors do all the work. But still, this is not a passage that lays a burden on every Christian to look into their metaphorical net and see how many Christians they've caught, to lay that burden on themselves and be like how I truly become a fisher of men. That is not what this passage is about. Mark is showing how Jesus came to call the very first apostles, Simon, Andrew, James, and John, and how they left their nets and followed. At best, what this can teach us is what it's like that when Jesus calls, we begin a new life. They began a new calling as apostles, like a seminary following Jesus around we when we are baptized when we come to faith, we also became a begin a new life, but it's certainly a different calling than the calling of one of the 12 apostles. That's all we have to say today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 The Epistle Reading for Sunday, January 21st

1 Corinthians 7:129-31

This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Epistle reading for Sunday, January 21, is first Corinthians chapter seven, verses 29 through 31. This is what I mean brothers, the appointed time has grown very short, from now on, but those who have wives live as though they had none. And those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing. And those who buy as those they had no goods, and those who deal with the world, as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. He rents the reading. What a weird reading, right? This is the kind of thing that is super confusing for people. He's like, let those who have wives live like they had none. And if you're not, if you're mourning, as if you're not mourning, what is going on here? Well, it begins with the appointed time has grown very short, that's an important passage to put this in conflict context, is that God, he is talking about God coming, the end of the world is soon and we need to keep our eyes focused on that the appointed time has grown short, it is time to come. And so then we have so let those who have wives live as though as they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, those rejoices, they were not rejoicing, etc, and cetera. Now, you could take that to mean, St. Paul is saying, Get rid of all your worldly connections and focus just on God. But of course, that would be not not consistent with other parts of Paul's message, where he talks about loving and serving and husbands caring for their wives and serving each other. Another thing you could take this to mean, and sometimes people say this is that St. Paul here is saying, God is gonna come back anytime so we can abandon stuff. But then later on, he realized that, that God would come back, Jesus is coming back, but maybe in a little while. So we still have to do our work. But that is also not something that we can support. Because that would mean that Paul was wrong about something and something in the Bible is incorrect. And that just isn't doesn't work out with the way we approach this. What can this mean? Well, I think what St. Paul is saying is revealed in this what comes after this, he says I want you to be from free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrayed, woman is anxious about things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. So what I'd like to suggest is what St. Paul is saying here, is not abandon all things and focus only on prayer, or that he's expecting Jesus to come back any moment now. And you should just leave everything behind and just wait. What I think he's suggesting is that when we are in Christ, we ought to focus on God. Above all things. Jesus said something that is could seem just as crazy as what St. Paul is saying. He says, If anyone would come after, who does not I hate his father, and mother, and even his own life cannot be my disciples. And if it took that literally, you would have to say, Wait a second. Jesus wants us to hate people. But that's not what he means he's using a figure of speech. And I think St. Paul's doing something similar. We who are married, like I'm married, I need to please my wife. But what's more important than pleasing my wife, pleasing God, making sure my my efforts and my hope and my life are focused on Him, which includes taking care of my wife and the people around me. But when God is first, and when God is most important, sometimes those two things come in conflict. And I need to be focused solely and wholly on God and and His will for my life. So I think that's what's going on here. It's a tough reading. But you know, we got to try to work through it. That's all we have to say today we'll see you on Sunday bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Psalm 62 The Psalm for Sunday, January 21st, 2024

Psalm 62

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
    from him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
    my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.

How long will all of you attack a man
    to batter him,
    like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?
They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.
    They take pleasure in falsehood.
They bless with their mouths,
    but inwardly they curse. Selah

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
    for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
    my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
    my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

Trust in him at all times, O people;
    pour out your heart before him;
    God is a refuge for us. Selah

Those of low estate are but a breath;
    those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
    they are together lighter than a breath.
Put no trust in extortion;
    set no vain hopes on robbery;
    if riches increase, set not your heart on them.

Once God has spoken;
    twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God,
    and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.
For you will render to a man
    according to his work.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The psalm for Sunday January 21, is Psalm 62. For God alone, my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation my fortress, I shall not be greatly shaken. How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leaning wall, a tottering fence. They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehoods, they bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse for God alone, oh my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation my fortress, I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory. My mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, oh, people pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. Those of lowest state are but a breath. Those of highest state are a delusion. In the balances they go up. They are together lighter than a breath. But no trust in extortion, set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them. Once God has spoken, twice, have I heard this, that power belongs to God, and that You oh Lord, belong steadfast love for you will render to a man according to his work. Here hence the reading. Psalm 62 is a Psalm of David. And he begins by saying confidence about God and His salvation. It goes for God alone, my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation my fortress, I shall not be greatly shaken. Now, this is an image of God that we use throughout the Bible, the idea of God being a rock, a foundation or a fortress, we have the hem A Mighty Fortress is my God right now, this is compared in the next statement to the trustworthiness of human beings and the threat that they take. How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leaning wall a tottering fence, they only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure and falsehood they bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. This is an expression of the human humanity that is all around us. How many of us know people who are are just always on the hunt for you? Like they're always looking to peck at you in some way. They they want to take you down somehow. Usually, it's not an aggressive thing like, like violent, like it might have been in David's day. But it's the people who are as he says, they blessed with the miles but in really they curse. They take pleasure and falsehood. They're just hoping for you to fall. What a contrast is that between humanity and God, who is a solid fortress, a rock and salvation. And that's what David says in the next section. For God alone, oh, my soul wait and silence from my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation my fortress, I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory, my mighty rock, my refuge is God. So he says this again, he repeats this image of salvation and the mighty Rock says For God alone, oh my soul wait and science from my hope is from him. This is a reminder that human beings we just can't trust each other. I mean, we there's trust that we can share, and it comes back and forth. But at a certain point, only God is the one that we can truly trust. People will always fail us. People will always hurt us. Even the people who love us most, there will come a point where they just can't live up to their promises. They their weakness means that they won't support us the way they said we should. And it's the same for us, right? Every one of us does that same thing to other people. Which is why David says For God alone, oh my soul, wait and silence from my hope is from him. And it's so funny that David has so much confidence in God that he can say I will just wait. I'll just wait in silence. God knows what I need and he'll give it to me. He is my rock and my salvation. and David makes it even more clear. He says, Trust in him at all times, oh, people pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. So not only can we trust God, but we can also pour out our hearts everything that we are before God because we have so much trust in Him. And we don't have to worry about what we say. What a contrast is that between the people in high position who want to take you down, the people who take pleasure and falsehoods who blessed with their mouths, but in really they curse. They're always looking for an in, you can't trust them. You can't trust them with your confidence, you can trust them with their hope. And you definitely can't pour out your heart, because all they will do is use it against you. But not God. You pour out your heart to God, He returns with love only. Next, those have low estate or butter breath. Those of high estate are a delusion in the balances they go up they are together lighter than a breath. Put no trust and extortion set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them. So again, this is a contrast between humanity and God. People of lowest state. They're just a breath, people of highest state of delusion. It reminds me of what Solomon says when he says Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity, or emptiness, emptiness, everything is emptiness. It's nothing. He says that riches, power, wealth, humanity, pleasure, all that is nothing. And David goes, people are like that, too. They are worth nothing compared to God. Don't trust an extortion or robbery. Don't trust enriches. None of that will get you ahead only God. He finishes. Once God has spoken twice have I heard this? That power belongs to God, and that You oh Lord, belong steadfast love for you will render to a man according to his work. So this phrasing once God has spoken twice have I heard this is saying it's emphasizing in a lyrical way, what God says one that God has power and steadfast love. And that rendering according to his work means that God has judgment, but he also has grace for all those who follow him. That's all we have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Jonah 3:1-5, 10 The Old Testament Reading for Sunday, January 21st, 2024

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation.

The Old Testament reading for Sunday, January 21, comes from Jonah chapter three, verses one through five and verse 10.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.

So Jonah rose, and went to Nineveh, according to the Word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breath, Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey, and he called out yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And the people of Nineveh believed God, they called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them, to the least of them.

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them. He did not do it. Here, hence the reading.

The story of Jonah is rather famous, because it is pretty amazing. God comes to Jonah early in the book, and he says, go to Nineveh and tell them the message that they will be overthrown. And Jonah says, No, thank you. And he goes as far away from Nineveh as he can. He heads out of the city and goes to tries to get on a boat to go to Tarshish.

While he's on the boat, a great storm comes up, and they figure out that the storm is Jonah's fault. And he goes, Yes, it's me. And they throw him into the water and the storm stops.

While Jonah is in the water, giant fish comes up and eats him.

And then eventually, Jonah is spit out on land. And we get to this, this part where it says, The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. That covers up a lot of plot, doesn't it? A lot of story is happening between, in those words, the second time.

So Jonah is back out, out of the fish alive and well. And the Word of God to him comes again. This time, he goes and goes to Nineveh, and says exactly what God would do. He says, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

The message is a message of judgment. God is going to punish Nineveh, an evil city, a city filled with violence and terrible things.

What's amazing, though, is in response to this judgment, the city reacts in repentance. It says, they called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them, to the least of them. Now our reading skips over the details of that story. What happens in between verses five and verse 10, is this. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne removed his robe, covered himself in sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles. Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything, let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered in sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands, who knows, God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.

Now, this makes us realize that the proclamation that Jonah gave was not just simply those words, yet 40 days and none of us shall be overthrown, but a lot longer saying that is about what God would do and what he calls on them to do. There was a repent and believe kind of aspect of this. And so they all respond from the greatest to the least it goes all the way up to the king of the Nineveh who makes a law that everyone has to fast no food or water.

When God sees their repentance, he turns away from his disaster. he relented from the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do.

The proclamation that Jonah had, is a proclamation

that leads towards God's grace. It doesn't look like it though right? You see, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. The funny thing is that looks just like judgment when the people heard it, though. They heard it as an offer for forgiveness, that if we turn and repent, we can receive it. And that's the funny thing about what Jonah says in Jonah chapter four. Now, when Jonah sees that the city is not destroyed, he gets kind of angry. He praised the Lord. He says, oh, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country. That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

Jonah knew that the proclamation of judgment from God was not a condemnation, but an invitation to repentance.

Jonah's mission wasn't go to Nineveh and tell them they're all about to die. Jonah's mission was go to Nineveh and tell them that there's judgment unless they repent, and the people turned.

That's an interesting way of looking at this preaching of repentance is that it's not just look how evil those people are. What it is, is, God wants to save you from yourself. Repent and turn and believe the gospel.

That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Do I Tell The Whole Story? Sermon for Sunday January 14th, 2024

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.

Then the Lord called Samuel, and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down.

And the Lord called again, “Samuel!” and Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lordwas calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.” Then the Lord said to Samuel, “Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.”

Samuel lay until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” And he said, “Here I am.” And Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And he said, “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.”

And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. This morning's Old Testament reading is a well known story for for many people. It's a popular one for kids. We often tell this is a big feature strongly in VBS curricula, or in Sunday school curricula, because it's got a kid in it. Right? We've we've heard this story over and over again. And you imagine Samuel is in the temple? Well, that would have been the tabernacle at the time. Usually in our imaginations. He's like an eight year old boy, about that tall. And he hears the Word of the Lord and responds with joy. Pretty great, right? This story is one of those stories. There are lots of them, where we forget about the details. And imagine the story in our heads. We have lots of stories that have the traditional way of learning them have covered up with the Bible actually says, I think the most important one is the Christmas story from Luke. Do you know that story, right? Mary and Joseph, go to Bethlehem. Mary is giant. She's like nine and a half months pregnant. She's riding on a donkey. And just as they see the city of Bethlehem she goes, Oh. And Joseph goes banging on every Motel Six in the town. Right. John, just about everything I told you in that story is not in the Bible. No donkey. No in no rush to the pregnancy. You're like, wait, wait, wait. The Bible says in their word hotels back in the day. They didn't exist. That word is just, there is no room in the upper room of the house. Just about everything that we imagine in that story comes from tradition. And the retelling. What the Bible says is they went to Bethlehem, and the child was born. And that's it. And they placed him in a manger, because the guest room was full of other stories like that. And this one that we read today, sent about Samuel is like that. Samuel was likely not an eight year old boy. He was a young man, having served Eli in the tabernacle for many, many years. After Hannah, his mother had dropped him off. And the history of Samuel goes like that. So Hannah comes to the tabernacle, she can't have a baby. And the other wife of her husband is teasing her because of it. Because that's what happens when you have two wives. They fight over that kind of stuff in the Old Testament. So she's depressed, she's upset. She goes to the temple and she prays give me a child and I will give him to you, Lord. She has a baby Samuel. After the baby is weaned. She brings him to Eli and says here to take the child. And I want you all to know that the Punic household is not taking children as offerings.

She brings the child to the temple and gives him to Eli and he serves in the tabernacle for the rest of his life. What happens before this reading is every year Hannah comes to the sacrifice and she brings a new piece of clothing for for Samuel to wear as he grows. And we get a sentence that says And Samuel grew and became strong and was filled with wisdom before God and man, which is that way of saying and the boy grew up. And so Samuel is now a young man, about the same age as David was when he went to fight Goliath. And, like a teenager, is likely the timeframe. He has been serving Eli basically Eli is his dad now. And now Eli is blind. And he has been serving Eli for many, many, many years basically his whole life. God comes to him and says Samuel and you get the drama. Samuel rushes over to Eli. And he says, I'm here you called me and he like goes, Why did you wake me up? It happens again. And finally Eli knows what's going on. He says, it's the Lord. When you hear the voice, say, speak, your servant hears me goes back and he lines down, he hears the voice, Samuel, Samuel. Speak, your servant hears. And that's where our lectionary says we should end the story. In our lectionary, there's a number of readings that have a suggested end. And then there's a parenthesis with optional readings afterwards. Right. And so what they say is pastors, if you really want to take a shorter reading, you can, if you want to take the longer reading, you can as well. And I think it's really fascinating the way the lectionary divides this up, I mean, take a look, the Lord came and stood and called at other times, Samuel, Samuel, and Samuel said, Speak for your servant hears. And if you end the reading there, it is a wonderful and beautiful moment. you've imagined that in your head when they told it to you in Sunday school, the boy, he looks up and he says, I am here for you, Lord. And that's it. And we tell them, you two children can be used for God, this wonderful, beautiful moment of calling. There's a reason people don't like what comes next. What's yours yourself, in the place of this young man? When you hear these words, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two years of everyone who hears it will tangle This is about to go viral. On that day, I will fill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end. And I will declare to him that I am about to punish his house for ever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. And therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever. And the next thing goes, Samuel lay until morning. I can imagine he lay until morning staring at the ceiling. Right. Speak Lord, Your servant here. Go tell your dad I'm about to punish him for what's been going on in the family of Eli? Well, a lot. Eli's sons, their names were Phineas and Hockney. They were also priests of God in their tabernacle is that office is passed down from father to son. And they have been bad guys. Samuel earlier, this book tells us that they did not know the Lord. And they were doing pretty awful things. On one part, they were stealing portions of the sacrifice that were not allotted to them. The order of God's sacrificial system allowed for the priests to take particular pieces of the sacrifices as the way that they would eat. But these guys thought they needed the better pieces, not the pieces that were assigned to them. That's only the beginning. They also were sleeping with the ladies who served at the front of the tent of the meeting. Also not so good. And in fact, then they were threatening people with violence if they came to God's temple and didn't listen to them. And Eli knew about it. How could he not since it would happen right in front of him. He even told them Hey, guys, you gotta stop this. But he didn't actually stop them. Not too long before this story. It says no, a man of God came to Eli and said to him, this is what the Lord says, Did not clearly reveal myself to your father's house when they were in Egypt under Pharaoh. I chose your fan Lay Out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense and to wear an ephod in my presence. I also gave your father's house all the offerings made with fire by the Israelites. Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling? Why do your you honor your son's more than me, by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering I made by my people, Israel. Therefore, the Lord, the God of Israel declares, I promised that your house and your father's house would minister before me forever. But now the Lord declares, Far be it from me. Those who honor me, I will honor but those who despise me will be disdained. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father's house. Yikes. So God sent a prophet to Eli to say, What's your son's is doing is not cool. I'm going to cut off your house. And then he says the same thing to Samuel. This is what's going to happen, Samuel. So Eli comes to Samuel, who obviously doesn't want to say anything? I wouldn't, either. And he says, You better tell me all, May God punish you if you don't. And so Samuel will die. What a position to be in. How much pain must have caused Samuel to go from hearing the voice of God for the first time. And the message you get is this message?

What's the question? He would ask himself all night as he stares at the ceiling, when Eli comes to him and says, Tell me everything? And it's a very simple question and the title of my sermon, how do I tell the whole story? Do I tell everything? Or do I make something up? Samuel told Eli the whole story. He told him everything that God had said. And I think it's a good question for us when we're put in a position where we have to ask what do we tell? When we tell the story of God to people? We ask ourselves, do we tell the whole story? When God gives a word of judgment for the world? How do we speak it? When God has a message for sinners, how do we say it? That's a tough question isn't? Most of us can actually imagine being in the situation that Samuel is because we have relatives and friends weren't Christians, right? We have friends who are not in the salvation of Jesus Christ. We have family who have left the church and are looking forward only to judgment on the day Christ returns. Do we tell them the whole story? Or do we let them know what God says about our sin? That's a hard one, isn't it? Because we ask ourselves, I don't want to get them upset. I don't want them to turn away from the church. I don't want to hurt their feelings. But the story of God, the story of Jesus Christ doesn't make sense without a word of judgment, does it? Let's think about Jesus Himself. Right? We talk about Jesus is the Savior of the world. He came to show God's love for the world and to give his love for the people. But the cross doesn't make any sense without judgment on sin, right? Jesus the story of Jesus is he comes down he becomes a child he grows up and then he dies. You don't need to die on a cross. Just to love right Without God's judgment on sin, the cross makes zero sense. Jesus could have come down and hugged a whole bunch of people that would have been easy. Right? Pat everybody on the head and say God loves you just the way you are trophies for everyone. Then the cross wouldn't make any sense. Jesus wouldn't have had to die to take away the sin of the world. He wouldn't need the whips and the note the the nails through his wrists and feet, the crown of thorns on his head, he wouldn't have had to cry, Oh, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Only make sense. If God actually judges sin. If God threatens the sinner with eternal death, forever, we can look at the cross and we can say, that is what I deserve. And that is what was supposed to be for me. And he took it instead. How amazing. I am not judged like Christ because He was judged for me. I will not be cast into hell because he was judged for me. And now I have the life that he deserves. The cross only makes sense when you know about the judgment that was placed on Christ instead of on you. And the same thing is true when we look at our confession and absolution, right? Think about how that works in our lives. What happened if you took only one part of that story? Let's start with what has happened if we just had the love part, right? I forgive you. And everybody's like, Yay, everything's great. Jesus just loves me. You tell people that over and over and over long enough? And they just say, well, great, isn't this awesome? I don't have to worry about this stuff anymore. Jesus just loves me. And I can go and do whatever I feel like. What happens if you just have the confession? I am by nature, sinful and unclean. I've sinned against you thought, word and deed by what I have done, and by what I have left undone. I justly deserve your present and eternal punishment. And then you stop. That would be kind of depressing to right. And so if you just give them the grace, that doesn't work, and if you just give them the law, that doesn't work. But when you bring it together, I'm a sinner, I justly deserve your present and eternal punishment. And then the pastor says, I forgive your sins. What we get is the whole story. I'm a sinner. On my own, I'm going to hell. But Christ came to die for me to give me like, there's a reason that I gather around Christ in His Word, is because I need that salvation. I need the whole story to be saved. My sin, his grace. And it's the same for those who are not a part of the church. If we just tell them if God loves you, and Jesus came to give you His love, they will say that's awesome. Thanks a lot. I'm gonna go do my own thing. Because it's not the whole story. For those who are outside the church, those who are happy in their sin, they need to know that God threatens judgment for all who turn away from Him. That our sin places us outside of God's grace and threatens hell.

That's the only way to point them to the Gospel. And then when they go, oh, yeah, that's right. It's easy. And Jesus came to die for you. The story doesn't make sense without both pieces. What I think is fascinating about First Samuel, and this story is how Eli reacts to the word that Samuel gives him. This is really interesting for me. Samuel tells him everything it goes. So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from of from him. And then Eli said, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.

Eli just heard that his sons are going to die, and so is he, and it's his family is going to be cut off, they will never be priest, all that terrible stuff is going to happen. He's like, Oh, yeah. Okay. God does what he wants. And I can accept that. Eli is still a faithful priest, even if he can't control his sons. When he hears the word of judgment, He accepts what God is going to do. And sometimes, when the word of of judgment is told, when we explain God's law to people, they go, Hmm, that makes sense. Maybe I do need Jesus. That's the way to gather them into the faith. We can tell the whole story because that is what is necessary to become a Christian. It's necessary in your life. Because you need to hear about your sin, to receive forgiveness. And it's necessary for those outside the church to we have to tell the whole story, or else Jesus doesn't make sense. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: John 1:43-51 The Gospel Reading for Sunday, January 14th

John 1:43-51

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Gospel reading for Sunday, January 14, is from the Gospel of John chapter one, verses 43 through 51. The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee, he found Phillip and said to him, Follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, We have found Him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? Jesus entered him. Before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathaniel entered him, Rabbi, You are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel. Jesus answered him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe you will see greater things than these? And he said to him, Truly, truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man, Here ends the reading. This passage takes place right after Jesus is identified by John as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then we see Andrew and Peter following him. Then Jesus goes up, and he finds Philip and says, Follow me. Philip, then goes and finds Nathaniel and says, we found the Messiah, it's Jesus of Nazareth. Nathaniel has doubts. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Mean Nazareth is the podunk town out in the middle of nowhere, everybody's poor, nothing is good. It is the sticks. It is the hillbillies of Israel. Philip doesn't argue, and this is what I love about this passage. He doesn't argue with him. He doesn't try to debate him. He doesn't say, Oh, he does all these things. It's no evidence. It's just come and see. This is how we do it. Right? We we, we don't present evidence. We don't tell people like, here's a long list of why Jesus is awesome. We say come and see, experience Christ, experience His Word, experience His grace. It's not like being a Christian is good for your health. Being a Christian is good for the country, being a Christian will make Western culture great and wonderful. None of that it's experience Christ. Come and see. And so much of that is just like you invite someone to worship, you invite someone to hear the word of but God proclaimed to read the Bible, you, you gather together around Christ in His Word, and you just say, Come and see. And when Jesus sees Nathaniel, he shows Nathaniel right away, something is different about Jesus. He sees Nan Nathaniel says, Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. And Nathaniel says, what? You don't know me from Adam. How do you know me? He says, before it filled, Philip called you. When you're under the fig tree, I saw you. We have no idea what this means. There are hints, legends about fig trees and studying God's Word. And people have tried to fill in the gaps and understand what what it means about the fig tree or whatever it is. But what really matters is that Jesus proved himself to Philip or to Nathaniel. And Nathaniel responds, Rabbi, You are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel, whatever it was about the fig tree, and the no deceit and whatever it is. It was enough for the Nathaniel to know something was going on. And Jesus says, Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree do you believe you will see greater things Cindy's. So Jesus is predicting that Nathaniel and the rest of the disciples will see some pretty amazing things more amazing than Jesus knowing what was going on. And then he says, Truly, truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. They will see greater things, they will see miracles, they will see Jesus feeding the 5000, they will see him die, and then they will see him alive. These are amazing and great and powerful things. But what soulmate, what also is amazing about Jesus is that the end of this gospel, he turns to another disciple, who saw and only believed, because he saw Thomas, he says, Do you believe because you see me, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And what we have is the witness, and of the apostles and the testimony of them, we get to hear their eyewitness versions of what Jesus did and said, and we get to believe, even though we weren't there, we get to believe their witness, and without seeing, and what a joy it is, we can hear what they saw, and understand what they did. Jesus ends this passage with truly, truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. This reminds me of the story of Jacob, Jacob after he had deceived his brother, he runs off on his way to his uncle Laban. And while he is in the wilderness, he sets his head down on a rock, and he has a dream. And the dream is that there is an a ladder, going up into heaven on the place where his head lies. And he sees angels ascending and descending on that place. And he when he wakes up, he's he says, surely this is the house of God, and I did not know it. What Jesus is doing is he's referencing this passage from the Old Testament about the God's house being in this place, this place called Beth l, a house of God. And we see Jesus now is God in this place. And many people would see him and not realize it, as the angels are ascending and descending. He is the Word made flesh, who who dwells among us, and we get to see the glory of God. And that's what this passage is referencing this Jacob's Ladder, and the location of God in this place is now Christ. And that is the most amazing thing. That's all we have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 The Epistle Reading for Sunday, January 14th

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Epistle reading for Sunday, January 14 comes from First Corinthians chapter six, verses 12, through 20. All things are lawful for me. But not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food. And God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord, and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never? Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her. For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Here's the reading. This is a challenging passage, because it seems like St. Paul is reacting to some ideas that are coming out of Corinth. In the in the text, he repeats a couple of things that are in quotation marks. It begins with, quote, All things are lawful for me, and quote, but not all things are helpful. What St. Paul doing, it seems like is that he must have gotten some comments from Corinth. And he's using them to react to what what is going on. The idea that they would have said is that all things are lawful for me, I can do whatever I want in Christ, right? Because the law of God, the Old Testament law has now been fulfilled and no longer applies to the church. It applied to ancient Israel, but in Christ, the Gentiles and the Christian church, we do not have to follow it. So All things are lawful. But then he says, but not all things are helpful. Again, he goes, All things are lawful, but I will not be dominated by anything. And then here's another, quote, food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and quote, and he goes, and God will destroy both one and the other. What must be happening here is someone has taken the freedom that we have in Christ. And what they're doing is using it as an excuse for lawlessness for sin. Specifically, what we have going on is sexual immorality. Because that's what he says, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord, for the body. This is a huge problem that people misunderstand about the gift of the gospel and the free gift of grace that we have in Jesus Christ. Because we hear Jesus forgives your sin. It is all by grace, there is nothing you can do. In fact, no act you can do can please God in any way. And we go, awesome. That's fantastic. I love that news. That means I can go do whatever I want. And all I have to do is come back on Sunday and say, Oh, forgive me for this thing I did. I love it. I'm going to do it again. Of course, that's not how it works. But that is a common misunderstanding about Christianity is that you just go out and sin and then you say you're sorry, and then you can do it again and just keep up keep at it. What Christian churches often do then is that we say, we, we think we have to threaten someone salvation, to be able to get them to obey. And so we say, Ah, if you're going to be a real Christian, you have to, but that's not how St. Paul goes about it. St. Paul does something different. He calls on the nature of God's salvation, to tell us how to behave. So he goes the body is not And for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body, and God raised the Lord, and will also raise us up by His power. So our body is not meant for this evil thing. It's meant for God. And so what it means is this, this is not a salvation thing. Paul is saying that we have been saved, we have this promise, we've been raised from the dead with Christ. And he claims us, which means that there's there are implications for our behavior. And then he goes into that, in this particular issue about prostitution. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make the members of a prostitute? Never? Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her, for as it is written, the two will become one flesh. So what he says is that we who are in Christ, we've been saved by Him, we are members of His Body. But when we commit sexual immorality, we join ourselves with the other person. Now, this is true in that day, when it would have been a prostitute someone you pay to have sex with, or maybe even someone like a temple prostitute might have been the situation there, where sex is a part of the ritual of worshipping a false god. And they're just like, I can do whatever I want. And he's saying, when when we join together in this act, to become one, and then you take that and you bring that into your communion with Christ. Now, most of us don't have this challenge of paying someone for this kind of thing. But the sexual immorality is just as a big bigger deal today, as it always has been, because we have urges, and we'd like to act them out. And the same thing applies for us in in our sexual life, is that when we have partners outside of marriage, we are joining ourselves into this into this act that we should not. And we're making Christ a part of that since we are members of His Body. That's why we we live in holiness. Say St. Paul continues, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him, Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. So here he's talking about how this particular kind of sin is, is, is not outside of us, but inside of us, and it affects our bodies that God has chosen for us. And he uses the language of a temple of the Holy Spirit. And the idea behind this is that our bodies are like temples set aside for God, and they should be holy and sanctified. Which means that joining into into these acts our bodies, actually is a way of de sanctifying the temple. And so what we want is our bodies to be holy and righteous before God. Now, the my body is a temple is often something that people will talk about when they're talking about fitness. Right? My body is a temple. So I only put in, in organic food and I, I run and I work out so that I can have six pack abs because my body is a temple. That is not at all what St. Paul is talking about. That is totally wrong. He's saying your body is holy, because the Holy Spirit dwells within, keep it holy. Now, of course, this this passage is is his law, right? He's saying, we are we are saved, we are made holy, we should act that way we should glorify God in our body, and not by joining in in these difficult and sinful acts. But we know that we're sinners too. And so as we we we rest in the promise, the Holy Spirit is in us that God has saved us even as we fight against these these urges that sometimes we lose too. But we have to remember that the battle is worth fighting. The job is worth it. Glorifying God in our bodies is worth fighting against these urges, because we have the salvation of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit in us. We need to keep at it, even if it's tough.

And that means we just don't Give up, not to people who've just given up on this and acted as if you just can't stop it. Or even worse, a human being just isn't living a fulfilled life unless they have lots of partners and they go out and they sow their wild oats before they get married, and settle down. Now, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Glorify God with your body. That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: Psalm 139:1-10 The Psalm for Sunday, January 14th

Psalm 139:1-10

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
    behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
    Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week, I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The psalm for Sunday, January 14, is Psalm 139, verses one through 10. Oh, Lord, you have searched me and know me. You know, when I sit down and when I rise up, You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways, even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, oh, Lord, you know it all together, you have me in behind, and before you lay your hand upon me, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence. If I ascend to heaven, you were there. If I make my bed in shale, you were there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost parts of the sea, even there, your hand shall lead me. And your right hand shall hold me. Here ends the reading. The psalm begins with the sure knowledge that God knows us, and is with us in all things. Oh, Lord, you have searched me and know me when, you know when I sit down. And when I rise up, You discern my thoughts from afar. So God knows us, not just by looking down upon us from up in heaven, but he actually understands our thoughts and our feelings and our paths. And that continues, you search out my path and my lying down, you are acquainted with all my ways. God knows everything that we do. He is with us in all things. And continues, even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, oh, Lord, you know it all together. So God doesn't just know like, watching what we do, he knows what we will do. So even before we speak, God knows what we will say. Even before we wake up, God knows what we will do. God knows all things, the future, the past and everything in between. And he is there with us in all of it. You have me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain it. Now, you might wonder what Wait, you him me in? Is that like a fence is the blocking? I think what is going on here? Is it saying that God hems the the person onto the right path. It's a little bit like bumpers in bumper bowling. Right? When you go to a bowling alley, and you've got a really young kid who's not very good at it, they'll bring the bumpers in, and then they bowl the ball and a bounces back and forth. But it doesn't go in the gutter. And it's going to hit something right. When God hems in David, it means he's keeping him on the right path. He's keeping him from falling off the path from one side to the other. And it's part of God's good and mighty power. Now, this can feel pretty bad when you really want to run off the path and jump into sin and do some terrible things. But in the end, it's pretty good because God's power to hem us in through his law through His Word through through his the actions that he does in the world. They help us because we want to be on the right path. We want to be heading towards God's salvation. We don't want to run off into shit into great sin and despair and vice and all those things that would would lead us away from God. We want him to hem us in. And so he goes Such knowledge is too wonderful me, for me, it is high, I cannot attain it. The idea of God's presence and his constant care for us is so amazing. It's just it's hard to understand. Because we look at a material world and we see people all around us we don't see God. It's not like he comes down and his. It's like there's this flash of fire and he says, Don't take this job. It's all in human things all through vocation, all through through life and experience and learning and lessons and the word of God that spoken through people. And so it's an amazing thing what God does, how He guides us and cares for us behind the scenes. And the next move is really interesting. He goes, where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in che Oh, you are there. If I take Wings of the Morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there, your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. Now, this passage for Christian is just a wonderful and amazing promise, right? Can I can I get out of God's grasp? Is the question. If I'm up in heaven, God's there, if I'm in the grave, God is there. If I'm if I'm out in the morning, rising with the sun, God is there, if I'm down in the bottom of the ocean, God is there, we cannot be alone. How amazing is it that it's even true, when we are down in shale is that God loved us so much that Jesus Christ entered into the grave with us into shale oil with us, so that he could be there with us. But this isn't just joyful. Because if you are not in a great relationship with God, where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I free from the presence? If I ascend to heaven? You're there. If I go into my bed and shale you're there to if I'm making the wings of the morning and I dwell in the uttermost parts of the seat, even there, you are there to judge me. Because we can't escape God. The question is on this is, what is that presence of God for us? Is it justice and righteousness through Christ, joy and salvation? Or is it the judgment of God in His presence around us, seeing what we do? The only difference is by being in Christ, following him, hearing His Word, and following his path. That ends the reading for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Getting Ready for Sunday: 1 Samuel The Old Testament Reading for Sunday, December 24th

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.

Then the Lord called Samuel, and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down.

And the Lord called again, “Samuel!” and Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lordwas calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.” Then the Lord said to Samuel, “Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.”

Samuel lay until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” And he said, “Here I am.” And Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And he said, “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.”

And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord.

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, Psalm epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Old Testament reading for Sunday, January 14, is First Samuel chapter three, verses one through 20.

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Ely. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days, there was no frequent vision. At that time, Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim, so that he could not see was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, were the ark of God was

then the Lord called Samuel. And he said, Here I am, and ran to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call lie down again. So he went and lay down. And the Lord called again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call my son lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

And the Lord called Samuel again the third time, and he rose and went to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore, Eli said to Samuel, go, lie down. And if he calls you, you shall say, speak, Lord, for Your servant. Here's. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

And the Lord came and stood calling as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel said, Speak for your servant. Here's.

Then the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel, at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. On that day, I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore, I swear to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice, or offering forever.

Samuel Leigh until morning, then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, Samuel, my son, and he said, Here I am. And Eli said, what was it that he told you do not hide it from me? May God do so to you and more, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.

So Samuel told him everything, and he had nothing from him. And he said, It is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him.

And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord. He runs the reading.

This is a rather famous reading from the book of First Samuel, often called the call of Samuel. So the young man, Samuel, the lad, probably, you know, 13 ish, was ministering to the Lord. And it says that there was no frequent vision. So this would have been a time in the history of God's people when there wasn't a prophet or an ongoing revelation of God coming to the people. Something that happened occasionally throughout the history of Israel. Eli was the high priest who was taking care of the temple. Excuse me, not the temple, it was the tabernacle. And Samuel would have been given to him by his mother when he was old enough to be raised in the temple.

So Samuel, He lives down and goes to sleep. And he hears the voice of God. Three times he runs to Eli and says, Here I am for you called me. And Eli says, No, I didn't call you. I can imagine that the second time. Eli might have been a little grumpy, having been waked up woken up in the middle of the night. But the third time he realizes something is up. So he says,

Go lie down. And if he calls to you say, speak, Lord for your servant hears.

So Eli, no

What's going on? He realizes after the third time that the voice had called for Samuel that something was happening. Samuel was not hearing things. Nobody was playing a trick. It must be God.

So it happens. Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel says, Speak for your servant hears. And here are the words of the prophecy that Samuel gets for the very first time. Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end. And I declared to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore, I swear to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.

Yikes.

This is not often where the reading ends. This is actually an optional part of the reading. Very often, the reading for this Sunday ends at verse 10. Where it goes, Samuel, Samuel, and Samuel says, Speak for your servant. Here's.

And that's much more fun, isn't it? You get you imagine the boy Samuel, he hears the Word of God, and He shall think, yes, I get to hear from God isn't this wonderful. And then we end the reading, and we can think it is wonderful and cute and be done.

But that's not where it ends, right? A prophet is not someone who hears from God. A prophet is someone who hears from God and speaks the message.

And Samuel gets one that will make everyone's ears tingle, their spines will shiver, when they hear about what happens to Eli, the high priest,

his house and his family will be destroyed, punished. That's because Eli, the bad father is allowing his sons, the priests, to use their offices for their own good to abuse the tabernacle to steal from the people. And he's not putting a stop to it. That is what it says when his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.

And God looks at his tabernacle, and his high priest, and he knows that something needs to be done.

And this poor boy, Samuel is the one who has to share this message.

Think about it. Samuel had been raised by Eli from right after he was able to be separated from his mother. He had lived in the tabernacle with Eli helped out all this time, worked with him taking care of him doted over him. And when Eli's became blind, he served him. And now he has this message.

And best of all, he can't hide it from Eli, because Eli wakes up Samuel, and he's like, tell me what the Lord said to you. And you better not hide a thing. He threatens him. He says, May God do so to you? And more. Also, if you hide anything from me of all he told you.

So Samuel told him everything, and hid nothing from him.

And here's something that I think we often overlook in this story, this little saying, and Eli said, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.

There's a lot going on in this little passage. I think one is it shows that Eli is still a faithful follower of Israel. Yeah, he screwed up. He's a high priest, and he failed in his duties. But he still accepts God's judgment on him.

He still says it's the Lord. He knows what he's doing. He'll do what's right. And so he just takes it. And there's a there's a level of faith in there that just says, Okay.

And the other thing I think is Eli knows that God is right.

I'm sure that Eli has spent a lot of time like stressing out about his sons like wondering how did they fall so far from the tree? Why were they so evil and using their position as priests of God to extort from the people and do horrible things and blaspheme against God? He's like, didn't I raise them? Right?

Well,

he knows that God is punishing him justly. It's very simple. And I think that's going on here.

What's interesting, I think about this story, is that this one

What is halfway through the story, a very cute, loving, classic Christian story, the kind of story that you put in children's bibles to be like, yes, the children too can hear from God

flips into a judgement story, that being a prophet of God is not always fun and good news. Sometimes it's judgment. And so what we hear there, I think, is a

thing that we often have as Christians, as we sometimes leave out half the story of God's message to the world. We like to talk about Jesus's love. We locked it like to talk about his sacrifice. But we don't talk about his judgment. We don't talk about his law.

And what that means then, so often, we just get a whole bunch of saccharin sweetness. And everybody just miss it, that God is going to come and break judgment on the world, that all who are in Christ will be saved and all who are not will be condemned. The Gospel means nothing. Without without the law.

No one will flee from the coming judgment and turn to Christ for salvation. Unless they know the coming judgment is happening.

What we need to do is what Samuel did, tell, tell everything and hide nothing.

That's all we have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The Word of God Over The Water: Sermon for January 7th, 2023

Genesis 1:1-5

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Over the last couple of weeks, we have had a lot of holidays in the Christian church, beginning with Christmas Eve and Christmas day and then stretching through now there's a whole lot of things to celebrate. That happened. The day after Christmas is a big day. It is St. Stephen's day, the very first martyr in the Christian church. And, you know, you probably knew this already because of the song Good King once this law, right? Good Kingdom once this law worked out, when on the feast of Stephen, right, the day after Christmas, we also have other days of celebration. New Year's Day is a holy day in the church. It is eight days after Jesus was born, when he was circumcised, and first shed his blood in fulfilling the law for us. You might think, well, that's a little weird day to celebrate. But it's a big moment. In the Christian church. There's also the holy innocence. That is the day that Herod sent out his armies after the wise men left. And he went and killed all the young boys in Bethlehem, two years old, and under the first martyrs of Jesus's day. And yesterday, we celebrated the Epiphany, when the wise men came and saw Jesus for the first time and worshipped him, and gave him gold and frankincense and myrrh. Lots of holidays, in the last couple of weeks. And today, we finish out these series of holidays with the baptism of our Lord, Jesus being revealed for the first time as Son of God, to the people who would hear him speak, going out to the Jordan River and being baptized by John. Sometimes I think we forget how cool this moment is. It's only a few sentences. But I want you to imagine what it might be like, actually seeing it happen experiencing it, whether you're Jesus or someone, they're just watching. The heavens are torn open. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit comes down like a dove, and a voice cries out from heaven, you are my beloved son with you. I am well pleased. That's kind of a cool day. I think if that happened to me, it might make my day. Probably I'd be pretty happy after that. might even make my year or perhaps best day in my lifetime. Pretty cool stuff going on. And we read through it, just a few sentences, and it's gone. We don't always reflect on the amazing thing that happened. When Jesus is revealed as the Son of God in this baptism. The Spirit and the Word come together. And it's on this day that our lectionary pairs an odd reading. You know, I have chosen to preach on the Old Testament readings throughout this year. And they often pair readings with their gospels and the Old Testament along a theme, especially on holidays like today. And in Genesis one. We're talking about this creation story. In the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth. Now, we often read the creation story, Genesis one all the way through in our lectionary pops up at least once, usually. And when we do that, it's pretty clear that it's focusing in on the idea of God being all powerful, and over creation. God has made the world and everything and everything is underneath his control and power. And then he hands off managing his creation to the human beings He created, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion, he says. But here today, it's only got the first day. It's a little hard, right? Why is it that God or our lectionary has paired this story with the baptism of Jesus? And I think what it has to do is the Parents have the Holy Trinity in this creation story, because it says In the beginning God created the heavens in the earth. And then a little bit later, in the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. So what we get is, there is the father, a voice, the spirits hovering over some water, and the Son of God in the word, let there be light. It actually kind of sounds like Jesus's baptism, right? You've got the father of voice being spoken, the Holy Spirit coming down like a dove over the water, and the sun is there to hear it all. What an amazing day. And this Genesis Reading helps us to see the power of God's word. Because when God says something, it happens. God says, Let there be light. And then there was light, it came into being God's creation was just a voice spoken into the void. It did not say God got together and he bound up a whole bunch of hydrogen atoms. And he smashed it together with his hands until it's really tight, and then formed into a star. Let there be light. And there was light. God's voice did it. And it's the voice of God that is important, the word of God. That is important as we consider Jesus's baptism. So as we celebrate Jesus's baptism, we celebrate two things. First, this baptism is a revelation of Jesus is God's Son and the beginning of His ministry. From here, he goes out into the wilderness, and then he preaches the kingdom of God is here. Until we remember that Jesus is baptism sanctifies, the waters of baptism for us. That the experience of Jesus paves the way through his life, desert, death and resurrection, for us to be chosen as God's sons with Jesus, and be fellow heirs with Him. And to be filled with the Holy Spirit just as He is. By His life, death and resurrection, that he makes this happen for us. And Genesis, points us to the power of God's Word. And it makes me ask a bit of a question. What is it that makes a baptism, a baptism? When we splash water on someone, what makes it a baptism? Now, this question may seem weird to you, because you know, especially if you've been a Lutheran your whole life, you're just like, well, it's just is right. We know what it does. When someone comes forward. We say the words we pour the water on their head, and they're baptized, and then they're one of us, right? That's just how it works. And I do that with a lot of things in my life, right? I have a computer. I do not know how it works. It is a box. And it might as well be magic. I mash my fingers on the keyboard. Cool stuff happens on the screen. And it's great. I don't need to know how it works. Until it breaks, right. Kristen had a computer that stops charging not too long ago. And we're like, oh, no, what's going on? And I did my magic thing. You know, the magic thing that you do when your computer doesn't work? You turn it off and you turn it back on again. And it didn't fix it. I'm like, Oh, I'm out of things to do. We had to take it all the way down to the Apple Store. And they figured out that it was an IO board. Just wasn't working wasn't charging. Do you know what an IO board is? I know input output that doesn't fix anything. It just makes the name longer. Once that was fixed, it was back to being a perfectly good magic box again. Sometimes you have to take things apart. Sometimes times you got to know what's going on to be able to understand the thing you need to really look at it.

So what is it that makes baptism work? What is it that makes a baptism? A Baptism? You can go to a pool, splash people with water, that's not a baptism. My brother and I, we love the Super Soakers back in the day and we pump those things up and he spray each other down. And that's not a baptism. What makes it work? What makes it so that when the father looks down on the person who is being baptized, he says, You are my son, whom I love with you, I am well pleased. Well, Luther gives us some help. He asked the question, what is baptism in his Small Catechism, and he says, baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God's command, and combined with God's word. Then he goes, which is that word of God? He writes this, Christ, our Lord says in the last chapter of Matthew, Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. There says something pretty simple. What is baptism? It is the water, included with God's command, and combined with God's word. So what you get is, Jesus says, do it. And then he gives us the words, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And it's the word that empowers the sacraments to do their thing, because it's the same word that said, let there be light, and there was light that sends us to baptize. See, there's nothing magic about the water. We, we take the water from the tap, pour it into the bowl, we bring it out, and we set it down. And then when we're done, we take it back out and we dump it. It's the same water that you drink. It's nothing magic about it. We don't order it from the Jordan River and have it shipped in so that the magical properties of Jesus's baptism can be given to you. That's not what makes the baptism work. It's the voice that said, let there be light. And there was light. That also says, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. It's not even the pastor who makes a baptism work. There is no indelible quality, no magical gift that the pastor receives that makes a baptism happen. Sometimes we think that I want you to imagine for a second, the wizard Gandalf probably have an image of him or maybe any other wizard there. There's a common image right? wizards in our mind, and in our imagination, they typically are wearing a well. A white robe, right? I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm wearing a white robe. They usually have a rope tied around their waist. You don't get to see it. But you know who's wearing a white rope when he's up here. The vicar. We call it a Cincture. They often also wear a really tall pointy hat. Do you know who wears really tall pointy hats? Bishops, right. Gandalf also walks around with a really big stick could dunk right? Everywhere he goes, who also walks around with a really big stick a bishop. They call it a Crozier. I bet you never really thought about why are our wizards in fantasy look just like pastors. Because some people think that pastors can do magic with the waters of baptism, or with Holy Communion. But it's not because I wave my hands over the cauldron of God's word and the baptism and say Ah, now it's a baptism. It's very simple. The same voice that said, let there be light sends me to say, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. That's what does it. The command of God, and the voice of God. Luther says it this way. How can water do such great things? Certainly not just water. But the word of God in and with the water does these things along with the faith which trust this word of God, in the water, or without God's Word, the water is plain water, and no baptism. But with the Word of God is a baptism. That is a life giving water rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth of the Holy Spirit. As St. Paul says in Titus, chapter three, he saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit comi poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ, our Savior, so that having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs, having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying. Jesus gives us this amazing thing when he sends us to be baptized. We have the word of God, the same word of God that spoke in creation that said, let their light be light and brought light into existence. That same voice said, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. And it's that word that makes a baptism into a baptism that saves you because it's the power of the Word of God at work behind it all. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

What God Has Done! Sermon for December 31st, 2023

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
    my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
    he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,
    and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
    to sprout up before all the nations.

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent,
    and for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet,
until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,
    and her salvation as a burning torch.
The nations shall see your righteousness,
    and all the kings your glory,
and you shall be called by a new name
    that the mouth of the Lord will give.
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
    and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Merry Christmas. Every year we tell the story of Jesus birth. And then we get to see the stories of the times unfolding after that. I love the story of Simeon and Anna, and seeing the history of the people who get to get to see Jesus for the first time and recognize him. And their amazement at the salvation that God brings when he brings his son to the temple through Mary and Joseph. I love the stories of all of the things that we hear in the church. And the traditions that we carry on in every congregation, every place has a different way of celebrating Christmas of the different decorations, schemes, the different traditions that they hold. These things go on and on. And they tell the story of who a congregation is and what a people is. And one of the things that we in the church need to remind ourselves of it sometimes is our history, and the amazing ways that God has worked through the church over the years, and how he brings his grace forth, in times of difficulty, and in times of joy throughout the history of God's people. And one of the reasons we look back at the book of Isaiah, looking at chapter 61, and 62, is to see the pattern of God's grace at work over and over and over again through history. We look back at what God did with his people. And we can see examples of what he does for us in that as well. What I'd like to do is take a look at what God says. In this passage. He says, For as the Earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up. So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. It continues for Zion sake, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem sake, I will not be quiet until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nation's cells shall see your righteousness and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name, that the mouth of the Lord will give you shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. What this says is that God is going to do something amazing for his people. God is going to bring about a change in their fortunes, that they would not have expected. To understand that of course, we have to remember that Isaiah is looking at a time of challenge for Israel. Israel is about to face Babylonian invasion, destruct destruction, horrible tragedy, perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of Israel's time up until when Rome comes in, and destroys Jerusalem again. They will come they will tear down the city, tear down the walls, and worst of all, destroy the temple and carry off all of the instruments of God from the sanctuary. Everything except for Well, we think the Ark of the Covenant, which has been lost ever since. Can you imagine the tragedy the thing that is the symbol of the presence of God, where God says it was his footstool, or maybe his throne. All of it is now gone. The city that was the sign of God's presence and love destroyed and people sent into exile last forever. Now, you could look at that. And you could say, Ah, yes, we see. God's people have been defeated. They've been destroyed. God was not strong enough to save them. And the Babylonians were too powerful for him. That's certainly what ancient people would have seen. Looking at a story like that. God wasn't strong enough. His promises weren't powerful enough. The gods of the Babylonians when but that's not what happened. What's amazing about what God did in the Old Testament story He is that he used tragedy and sadness, to bring about even greater righteousness amongst his people. They were hauled off out of Babylon, into Babylon. And there they rediscovered God's promises. They realized where they had gone wrong. And we get to see some amazing examples of God's showing his mind and his power, even in Babylon. We know the stories of Daniel. Now he's protected from lions, how he shows up the advisors of the people around him. We know the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace and how God shows His power protecting them from that it's disaster. God led his people through this terrible time. And when the new King Cyrus of Persia comes in, he brings the people back. And they return from exile, dedicated to God. And for the next 300 years, the people of Israel are studying his promises. They are rebuilding the temple, bringing back the sacrifices, and they become the dedicated people of God that would produce Pharisees, as the leaders of God's religious people. But the people who hold strictest to the law are the ones that are high in the esteem of the nation. A total reversal of what had happened before that God used this tragedy, the Babylonian exile, to turn his people back to his promises. And the faithfulness of Israel grew out of that. And it was into that the gods sent His Son Jesus Christ. So that there would be people in a temple who would rejoice when the child came in, who would be looking for the promise, so that when John the Baptist went out into the wilderness, people knew what he was talking about, and we're excited and ready. When Jesus went preaching from town to town, they would know that a Savior was on his way. And they'd be able to see through His miracles and His sermons and his workings, that this was it. But then, tragedy struck again. That same Savior, who had come to free them, was arrested. He was killed, and laid in a tomb. But of course, this tragedy, it didn't stop God, either. He used this tragedy, the killing of the Son of God to save the world. In fact, this was his plan the whole time. To send the eternal Son in the form of a human being, to live and die for us. So that by His resurrection, he would bring out righteousness for the whole world, that it would sprout up out of this tragedy. And the message of this righteousness went out, all throughout the Roman Empire, out to the east and the west, into Africa and Persia, and everywhere else. And it began to spread. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ could have looked like a defeat to just about anybody. But God turned it into salvation for the world. This wasn't the only historical tragedy that God has used to bring righteousness to the world. We can look at the Roman Empire. The persecution under Diocletian, was a terrible and horrible persecution of the church. This was one of the biggest programmatic persecutions in the Roman Empire. Now, we often think about this history as the whole time, there was just like the emperor was out trying to kill Christians everywhere. But most of the time, that wasn't the case. Most of the time, Christianity was persecuted in pockets. Every once in a while some guy would get it in his head that he needed to impress the Caesar, and he would do something to the Christians in that place. It wasn't until Diocletian that we got that systematic programmatic persecution of all Christians in the empire. And what they would do is they would go to these churches, and they would go after the pastors, the bishops, the priests I tried to take their Bibles.

And the idea was you turn over your Bibles, you offer up a little sacrifice to the Caesar and for the good of Rome, and you are set free. And if you didn't, sometimes they would throw you to the lions. Sometimes they would do terrible things or crucify you or whatever. But the standard one was to hamstring the church, the bishops, what they would do is they would take on one leg, slice through the hamstring on the other leg through the Achilles tendon. pretty terrible, right? What a horrible thing. And now, when you're sitting around as a pagan, under Diocletian, you would look at this persecution, the destruction of churches and Bibles, and you would see, look at this, we're winning. That's not how it worked out, right. The persecution under Diocletian, actually became the the beginning of the growth of the church in the Roman Empire. You've heard it before that the blood of the martyrs is the seeds of the church. It was the dedication and faithfulness of God's people through this difficult time. That led to the explosion of Christianity through the Roman Empire. God took a tragedy, by the power of His grace, and turned it into righteousness and glory for the church. The people suffering under this horrible persecution. It led to expansion and growth and the message of the Gospel going forth into the whole world. Is it an amazing how God does that? We see tragedies happening like that, all the time. One of the great tragedies that happened after that was when the the Christian Center of of gospel and study Africa and the Middle East, fell to conquerors. We don't think of the places today as centers of Christian power and study places like Egypt, Arabia, Africa. That was where Christianity was strongest, where the great minds of the church were produced all the way up until they were conquered and forced to convert. Now, you might say, What a terrible tragedy. What a horrible thing God had had allowed this to happen. And people would look at that and say, Oh, what a defeat, Christianity must have lost in this region of the world forever. You know, it took a while. But that's not true. If you look at the places where we think that there aren't any Christians, places that are centers of Islam, where it's the only legal religion, these are the places where Christianity is growing fastest, where God's people meeting in secret, and underground are sharing the gospel, where the word of God is growing, and righteousness is springing forth out of the ground in amazing ways, and people are fleeing these places, and converting in droves, in Europe, in America, all over the world. It only took about 1000 years. But God is doing something amazing, isn't it? We see the growth and the power of Christianity and God's grace springing forth amongst the nations. What God does, very simply, as he uses the same things, the means of grace, His word and Sacraments, to spread the gospel and righteousness, to cause righteousness and praise to sprout up almost out of the ground before the nations you can see that in story after story in place, after place. You can see that in the United States. Now we have a story of America as being a place that was always extremely Christian. All right, way back in the day, we called ourselves a Christian nation. Some of that comes from the early settlers, who came specifically to establish a Christian utopia. You know, the pilgrims, they wanted to come here and everybody was gonna be amazing Christians, they're all gonna believe all be perfectly faithful. And it worked great for like 20 years. And their kids were not. As the colonies expanded, Christianity was actually pretty rare. I bet you don't know this, scholars estimate that in 1776, when we became a nation, only 17% of Americans belonged to a church. I bet you thought it was a lot more 6070 80% 17%. Kind of crazy. The greatest growth and expansion in the Christian church in America happened just prior to 1850 in this timeframe, where 35% of Americans were members of a Christian church, it doubled all the way up to 35%. This was what we call the Second Great Awakening. This is camp meetings out in the wilderness. This is hundreds of people gathering together, converting and joining the church and still only 35%. What an interesting thing as we look back at our history compared to what it would have been like, in the 50s and 60s, the great Christian America, that was the 1850s is nothing, right? So we are sitting around here with about 46% of Americans are members of a church or synagogue, according to Pew Research, which means that we are doing far better than any time in our history. And yet, compared to when many of you were young. It's horrible. A terrible tragedy. In fact, in the last, I don't know, 20 years, we've dropped 10 15%. In the United States. We can see that and say What a tragedy. Our churches are shrinking. The United States is becoming more and more secular, and people are getting crazier and crazier because of it. And you can say, Wow, maybe the church is losing. Maybe this tragedy shows that the power of the gospel just doesn't work the way it used to. The God's people have moved on. All we have to do is hunker down and hide and hope that something changes. But God has always caused his righteousness to spring up before the nation. He has used difficult times and tragedies, year after year after year, century after century to cause amazing things to happen. All you have to do is look at the history of the church. Look at places all around the globe, where God's people looked defeated, where they looked destroyed, where the power and promise of the gospel seemed not to do anything. And then a switch flips. Something happened. And out of nowhere, God causes righteousness to spring up almost as if it came out of the ground.

We can trust in this promise. We can look back at the history of the church and take a bigger picture, a picture bigger than our own youth or the history of first Lutheran Church. We can take a look at the way that God has always functioned. He has always delivered His grace and His promises through congregations going up and down in times of history. And he has always used times of decline and persecution for the good of his church. And as we consider our lives now we can say God doing something again? Is he taking this time in the United States of America, to prepare the church for something new? Are we taking a time of examining ourselves, dedicating ourselves to faithfulness, hearing the gospel and understanding who God is to prepare for another explosion? Maybe it might not be in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years who knows, could be tomorrow. God has always used these times, to prepare his church for more, to prepare the gospel to go out into the world and be heard and received by 1000s. Millions. We can trust that same promise that it will always be at work. That's what he did in Babylon. He brought about a rebirth of the people of Israel dedicated to the promises. What he did under Diocletian, when the new emperor Constantine came in, and Christianity became legal, it's spread across the whole empire. What he did under Islam, as he's doing it now. And I think it's what will happen with us. The grace and mercy of the gospel can go out into a world that so desperately needs. And people are aching for I can see it. I think God is doing something amazing. And that's the promise we have is that God's grace and his mercy is always at work through the power of His Word. This promise will always go out, sometimes to deaf ears and persecution. But sometimes, God is getting ready to produce amazing things. It's just our job, to wait for him to be faithful and have God come through on his promises. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Your God Reigns! Sermon for Christmas Day, 2023

Isaiah 52:7-10

How beautiful upon the mountains
    are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
    who publishes salvation,
    who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice;
    together they sing for joy;
for eye to eye they see
    the return of the Lord to Zion.
Break forth together into singing,
    you waste places of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people;
    he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared his holy arm
    before the eyes of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth shall see
    the salvation of our God.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Merry Christmas. It is joyful to be able to wish you all a Merry Christmas, once again as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I love Christmas movies. And we in our household have a stable of movies that we like to watch around this time of year. It's interesting to see what they say the meaning of Christmas really is. We watch things like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, either the old short version with the song, you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch to go to one right. Or the new one with Jim Carrey. What is the meaning of Christmas there? It's about community. Right? The whole point of that movie is it's not the President's it's about getting together and singing nonsense songs. Daboo Doris, right. Whatever that is. About It's A Wonderful Life. What's the meaning of that one? I have to admit, I haven't seen it in a long time because I think it's the most boring movie ever made. I know. I know, breaking your hearts. But there's something about the person being a place a cog in society, and that everything depends on all of us working together. Oh, yeah. And every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. The meaning of Christmas. What about Miracle on 34th Street? The importance of believing in Santa. Right? That's kind of what it's about. Nobody believes it's actually the Santa's Christmas story. It's one of my favorites. It's all about a family that smell kind of quirky, a little weird. But they're together. I had one for Christmas vacation National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I thought, coming into watching it last night. That the meaning of Christmas, there was a family that gets together. But having seen it, I realized that the meaning of Christmas is how great it is to get a bonus check. Which is really everything is terrible until he gets some money. And then they celebrate. Do you notice what's missing? In every single one of those Christmas movies? Absolutely. Jesus. Hidden behind all of the things that we watch on television, or the things in the celebrations in our culture hidden behind all of that is the actual reason we are gathered here today in the celebration of the incarnation of the Son of God, as Jesus Christ was born to poor parents in a faraway land who had to hustle off to Bethlehem so that they could register for attacks that was coming and living in a relative's house that was so full with the other relatives who came that day that they had to stay with the animals. A poor child who was the king. That's what our readings today are all about. About a hidden King, underneath the poverty of Mary and Joseph. It's not just a king, God himself who comes down to lie in a manger about that big. Right. Jesus is a king who is hidden. Are Old Testament reading for today. Talks about the reign of the king, God himself. It says how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness who publishes salvation who says to Zion, your god rain That's the message of Christmas, your God, rain. And Isaiah is day, this would have been a message of hope that someone would come and free the people from oppression. This time, oppression from an army of nations like a Syria, or Babylon or Persia or later the Romans would send armies into Israel and take over. And the people would expect a king, someone like King David, who rode around on a chariot who had a sword and a spear. And they wanted a king on a throne, full of power with a sword in his fist. And they look back at the mighty kings like David and say, Will there ever be a king like this again? Will someone come to save us?

But the mystery of today is that God reigns over all of creation, even without a king. What they missed at that time is publishing this message your God reigns with that God was actually the one behind Assyria and Babylon, sending the armies to punish and unfaithful Israel. And giving them a promise that He is the one behind everything. But even behind all this sadness that they were experiencing, he would not forget them. In Isaiah 10, God calls a Syria, the rod of His anger. And then he says because they took it too far, he would punish them as well. You see, God would reign over Israel, whether there was a king on the throne or not, God reigns. We can see that from 1000s of years later, as we look at the history of Israel, and we see them go from conquered by a Syria to conquered by Babylon off in exile. And then finally back and we see how God's plan was laid out over the years to lead us to the glorious day of Jesus Christ. That there would be a king who was born in Bethlehem, just as Isaiah predicted, that everything would happen exactly the way Isaiah said, throughout all of history. Your God reigns. That's the method and message of Christmas. For us, the story of Christmas is kind of similar to those expectations. Human beings always expect a king to come with power. Right? The Son of God, though, is born in that poor family. spends his first nights lying in a feed trough next to the animals. It's so strange, isn't it? For a king. Nobody expected that way. Nobody in Israel, nobody who was far away. And we know that because when the Weizmann hear about the King of the Jews, and they see the star, they don't go to the town of Bethlehem do they? Do they go to Jerusalem to Herod the king, where the palace is where the soldiers are, where the gold is in the mind and the power, they expected a king on a throne full of power with a sword in his fist. And they expected it to be a king like that. And they went, whereas this new baby King and the news shook Herod and rightly so. Because he wasn't in charge. God was you couldn't see it. If you only looked at the soldiers. You couldn't see it if you only looked at the gold and the parades and the power and the catapults and whatever they had. But if you knew the message of Isaiah, you would know your God reigns. And he is there in a manger in Bethlehem, hiding behind this tiny child ruling over all of creation. The King has come to God has become man. Your God reigns. That's the message that we have on Christmas Day, the message for all of us and the message of Jesus's ministry. When he was baptized, he went out and he said, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is here. And if you looked behind him, there were no soldiers, spears, no armor, no wagons, or Treasury or anything like that. It was service, and miracles. He didn't amass wealth or power. He didn't do it any way, any way that anyone would expect. They wanted a king on a throne will full of power with a sword in his fist. But that wasn't Jesus. Even Peter wanted that, right. When Jesus started to say what he would do, where he would be crowned by being lifted up on a cross, Peter said, No way. You're gonna fight and you're gonna win. And it was the opposite, that Jesus would go and die on a cross and lifted up to his throne, which wasn't made out of gold, but wood, and nails with a crown that wasn't made out of precious gems, with thorns. And then he would die and rise from the dead, and ascend into heaven, where now he sits at God's right hand reigning over all of creation. It's just not what you'd expect. If you thought that our God was the kind of king that everybody expects. You see, even today, we think that when we hear the message, your God reigns, that it should be powerful. It should be exciting. It should be big and loud. And it should win all the time. We don't have a message like a king anymore. We in America, we don't think kings are winning. What do we do? If the tech gurus, Steve Jobs is kind of the ultimate Epitome, which is why so many churches look like tech gurus speeches. Right? It's an empty stage, and a giant screen, and a guy in skinny jeans. And we look at those pastors and we say, look how successful they are. They're big and powerful and strong. They're exciting and amazing. But what are they missing? Jesus is the King. Your God reigns not in power, and might with a throne with a sword. rains in hidden ways, just as he always had, just in the same way he did when he came on earth. And yet, we still want something to be powerful. We want to worship experience that excites us and gets us moving. Even though Taylor Swift can do the same thing, can't she? Maybe it's more about those emotions than it is about the Holy Spirit. We want Christians who live the way we preach right? We preach the good news of Jesus Christ and it's all about love and service and then we don't do it. Right. And we get mad at the church because it's filled with sinners who aren't Jesus and yet, your god rains. He rains here in hidden way. He rains here through the Word and Sacraments. In the same way he lived the same way he died. He is hidden in the message of the gospel. The message is your God ray that he is coming back again. It's not that day, it will no longer be hidden by the King who is on the throne in heaven will finally come with the power and might we expect it He will make all things new. Until then he stays hidden behind the words of a faithful pastor in a congregation that may have five or 5000 people under the bread and the wine in our congregation, and every place where God's people gather. The message is your God reigns. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai