10.26.25 Sunday Drive to Church

[00:00:00] Good morning. St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's the drive. Oh, Reformation Sunday. Drive to church. [00:00:06] Reformation Day today. I mean, it's not October 31st. It's always a Sunday before October 31st. [00:00:14] October 26th, 2025. [00:00:17] Celebrating the 500. How do. I should have done the math already. 25, 17. 6, 7. The 507th anniversary of the Nailing of the 95 Theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg. October 31st, 1517. Although I don't know if that should really be Reformation Day. We've talked about this before. I think Reformation day should be June 25, 1530, the day of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession. But problem is with that, nobody asked me, so we have it today. That's all right, let's say the collect and then we'll talk about what we got a lot of great stuff today. Let's pray. Almighty and gracious Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit on your faithful people. [00:01:06] Keep us steadfast in your grace and truth. Protect and deliver us in times of temptation. Defend us against all enemies and grant your church your saving peace through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. [00:01:25] Amen. [00:01:27] We have, let's see, a couple things to think about today. First of all, liturgy's divine service setting five, which is Luther's German Mass. [00:01:36] This, you know, a big deal part of the Reformation was everything came out of the medieval Roman Catholic Church in Latin. So nobody knew what was happening. I mean, maybe some of the priests knew. [00:01:50] Oh, the thunder. Can you guys hear the thunder out there? It's great. [00:01:55] But most of the people when the Bible is being read have no idea what they're talking about when the priests are preaching. Now some of the priests would preach little sermons and homilies in the language of the people. But mostly everything's, the Mass is happening in Latin. And so there was this move to get the, the Bible into the language of the people, the hymns into the language of the people, and the liturgy into the language of the people. [00:02:23] So Luther wrote his Deutsche Misse, his Latin German Mass, 1525. So I think seven years after the Reformation. [00:02:33] Oh, that's 500 years. Hey, hey. [00:02:38] I should have introduced this as the 500th anniversary of the German Mass. It's also this year Luther wrote against heavenly prophets and bondage of the will and a bunch of other stuff. Luther's 15. [00:02:57] How Christians should regard Moses. It's another huge one. 1525, he did a lot of big time writing. It's also the year he got married to Caterina von Bora. [00:03:08] Anyway, he took the old Latin parts of the mass, the five parts, the canons of the Mass. So what is that? That's the Kyrie and the Gloria and the Creed and the Agnus DEI and the Sanctus. Those are the. When you talk about the canon of the Mass or the kind of the chief parts of the Mass, those are the five chief parts of the Mass. He took those anytime, turned them into hymns, most of them, and put them in German so that the people could sing them. [00:03:42] Jonathan has a nice little about this in the front cover of your bulletin, which is really great. So that means that we're singing all these hymns, some of them more difficult than others, but we sing Kyrie, Godfather. [00:03:56] I don't know what Luther did. For the Gloria. We're singing All Glory be to God Alone. Maybe that's what he did. Although I think that's a newer one. We're singing A Mighty Fortress for the sermon hymn. Luther's Psalm 46 hymn. We're looking at Psalm 46. We're singing we All Believe in One True God for the creedal hymn. We all. I like. That's like a. [00:04:17] I don't know, it's one of my favorite chanty hymns. We All Believe in one true God. In fact, I remember one year, boy, I'm all over the place today. I remember one year I wanted to sing that hymn at church. This was up in Colorado. [00:04:35] And a couple people are like, ah, it's too hard. It's too, I don't know, medieval sounding or something. [00:04:41] So that year at catechism camp in the summer, we sang it every day with the kids, with the middle school kids. [00:04:50] We all believe in one true God. [00:04:55] And the kids came back and they sang it in church. And then all the adults were like, well, the kids can do it, we can do it. For the Sanctus, we have this Isaiah, mighty seer in days of old. That's a great one. Although a little bit, I'll admit, a little bit difficult. [00:05:14] The Agnes Day. O Christ, the Lamb of God. We have that as well. There's no, you know, the Nunc da minus was. Is not one of those five parts of the mass classically because the Lutherans added it in. [00:05:26] But O Lord, we praise Thee as our nunc diminished. It's going to be great. [00:05:32] So that's what happened. That was the invention of the German mass. And we do it every year. [00:05:38] We've done it in the past, all of October this year, just today, just Reformation Day. It'll be great. [00:05:46] Fantastic. [00:05:48] There's one other thing. Oh, yeah. I was going to talk about the art. We might talk a little bit about the art in Sunday School, but here's what I'd like you to notice. There's three very, very famous pieces of art in the bulletin today. [00:06:04] The first is the Weimar Altarpiece, which is on the COVID And you can spend a lot of time looking at what's going on on this piece of art, including the angel with a ribbon in the background in the sky. You want to notice that the bronze serpent. [00:06:21] There's Cranach, who painted it, standing next to Luther and John the Baptist in the front on the right. And on the left, Jesus trampling over death and the devil. We got to not miss the fact that death and the devil are twice in the painting. One time they're having a pretty good day, and the other time they're having a pretty bad day. [00:06:42] And then right in the center, Jesus crucified Inri at the top, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. [00:06:50] But the blood is not going down. It's flying over onto the head of Chronoch, the painter, who's looking at you like, this is all I got. The blood of Jesus covering my sins. It's so beautiful. Now, what you have to do is you have to open your bulletin and look at the. [00:07:11] At the woodcut on the back cover. [00:07:16] And it's also by Chronic. [00:07:20] It's also very famous. It's the Allegory of Law and Gospel is the name of it. And you'll notice a tree goes right up the middle, and the leaves are on the right side of the tree, but not on the left. So on the left we have the law. There's Moses with the devil and the demons poking this guy into the flames. There's Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. Jesus coming in judgment, who. Oh. [00:07:40] But then on the right side, there's Jesus crucified. There's Mary, Jesus coming to the womb of Mary. There's the angel flying down to the shepherds. There's Jesus triumphing over sin, death and the devil. And there's the Holy Spirit bringing the blood of Jesus onto this poor sinner, while John the Baptist is preaching. Now, here's the amazing thing, is that it's the same image, just from a different angle. [00:08:06] So I'll let you see it. You can see it when you look at it. So you'll have to take your bulletin, open it up and compare those two paintings, those two Chronic paintings. You'll be amazed you can connect the dots on all the pieces. So great. And then when it's opened, you can flip into the inside, and you can see the famous St. Mary's Altarpiece. [00:08:26] This is there in St. Mary's Church in Wittenberg. You can still go see it. It's still sitting there waiting for you to come and visit. [00:08:32] We're missing. It's a triptych. So it opens up. And you see it opened up. So on the left, there's Philip Melanchthon baptizing, even though he probably never baptized anybody. And then there's. [00:08:41] There's the Lord's Supper right in the middle. [00:08:44] Luther's hidden in that painting, sitting at the table. And then on the right is Bugenhagen, Johan Bugenhagen, with the keys binding this guy, this poor, repentant sinner. Oh, sorry. [00:08:58] Forgiving this poor repentance sinner, and then driving this unrepentant sinner out. [00:09:03] And then the. The part of the painting that's missing is. There's a little panel that goes below the Lord's Supper panel with Luther preaching and Christ crucified right in the middle. And that. That's right above the altar. [00:09:17] It's beautiful. [00:09:20] Beautiful painting. So it captures those. So don't miss the painting. Okay? We talked about the hymns. We talked about the liturgy. We talked about the painting, the pictures. Let's talk about the Psalm 46. [00:09:34] Now, remember that Luther would say, hey, Philip, let's go sing Psalm 46. And they would go sing, a Mighty Fortress. So A Mighty Fortress is Luther's hymnic version of Psalm 46. And they happen to be again on opposing pages. So you can see Psalm 46 there on the left, A mighty fortress on. On the right. [00:09:55] And you can look and compare the two parts of the hymn. Now, I remember one time I was doing this. I was looking at Psalm 46, and I was looking at a mighty fortress, and I thought to myself, what are you thinking, Luther? They don't have anything to do with each other. [00:10:14] But the more you get into the picture of Psalm 46, it's this beautiful picture of this walled city that's surrounded by so much trouble, by armies and enemies and disasters. But God is in the midst of that city, so there's nothing to worry about. God is in the midst of her. We shall not be moved. [00:10:39] God will help her. And that right early at the breaking of dawn. But then at the end of the. Of Psalm 46, you got to imagine that you're living in this city and outside the city Mountains are falling over outside the city. All the armies of the world have gathered to destroy you. But you're not even worried about it because God's here with us. What do we have to be afraid of? God's in the midst of her. We shall not be moved. Not afraid of nothing. [00:11:07] But then, as you're going about your business, one day, living in this city with God, someone is up on the wall looking out at all the disastrous things out there. And they said, come look at this. [00:11:19] So you run up to the wall, and you see that the Lord has gone out from the middle of the city, and he's going around the outside of the city, just laying the boom on all of these enemies. Like, here's these chariots, and the Lord setting them on fire. Here's all these soldiers with shields. The Lord's breaking them in half. Here's all these spears. They're sitting there sharpened to poke you. And the Lord shatters them. [00:11:48] And as the Lord is going around setting the chariots on fire, he looks back at you, standing there on the wall, where you're thinking, well, does he need help? Should we go look? He's by himself. There's thousands of millions of people who want to destroy us. He's out there by himself. Should we go and help him? And he looks back at you and he says, be still and know that I am God. [00:12:08] I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. [00:12:19] So then we turn over to a mighty fortress and we say, jesus holds the field forever. He's the one who's gone out from the midst of us to destroy our enemies. And he does it. And he looks at us and says, hey, I don't need your help. [00:12:32] That could probably be the summary of the Reformation. [00:12:38] Jesus says, hey, I'll save you. And, like, do you need any help? He says, nope, I got it. [00:12:45] I got it. And then we try to help. He's like, hey, really, I got it. Don't start trying to help. [00:12:53] You don't know what you're doing. You don't even know how to fix a carburetor, much less save humanity. [00:12:59] I'll take care of it. [00:13:03] It's great. One little word Will fell the devil. It's an amazing singing. A mighty fortress. Thinking about how profound a hymn it is about spiritual warfare. [00:13:13] And that one little word, Remember this? We often think, well, what's that little word that Will fell him? It doesn't matter. It's any little word. It's just any word of The Bible. The point is, you don't need lots and lots of words to fell the devil. You just need the Lord's word, his promises, and the devil's undone with might of ours. No, cannot be done. [00:13:35] Soon were our loss effected, but for us fights the valiant one. [00:13:40] The Old Testament lesson is not from the Old Testament. In fact, it's like the opposite of the Old Testament. It's from Revelation 14. This is interesting. [00:13:48] It's just two verses. This is the traditional first lesson for Reformation Day, because the theologians after the Reformation, like right after the Reformation, understood this text to be a prophecy of Martin Luther. Revelation 14. 6, 7. I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. [00:14:15] And he said with a loud voice, fear God, give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and. And the springs of water. [00:14:28] Now, is that a direct prophecy of Martin Luther? [00:14:32] I don't know. It's a cool idea. I can't quite get there myself. Even though I'm very inclined to go for things like that. I can't quite get there on this one. But if you like it, then that's great. [00:14:44] But certainly it's fulfilled, at least by Luther. So remember that angel means messenger, and so it could be a spiritual being, like the angels sent from God in heaven. It could be a preacher. [00:15:00] And anyone really who's declaring the gospel of the glory of God is fulfilling this prophecy. But I'm not sure anyone did it more loudly and clearly than Martin Luther. The Epistle gets into the very heart of the Reformation fight, which was about. Well, first, about authority, and second, about salvation, where Paul writes, now we know that whatever the law speaks, it speaks, speaks to those who are under the law. So every mouth may be stopped. The whole world may be held accountable to God, for by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. [00:15:37] But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. For all who believe, there's no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift to the redemption. That's in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. [00:16:04] Phew. [00:16:06] Justification by grace through faith. Justification means that we are declared Righteous. And this is because God first declared Jesus, the righteous one, to be a sinner for us. He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him, so that we are forgiven. Declared to be righteous and holy and perfect and acceptable in the sight of God. [00:16:32] That's what's going on there. And this is not by works, it's not by our own efforts, it's not by our own striving. [00:16:44] It is by grace and by grace alone, through faith and faith alone, apart from works. [00:16:51] The gospel for Reformation Sunday is from John 8. It's interesting. [00:16:58] It's right in this middle of this massive fight that Jesus was having with the Pharisees. I mean, they were going at it and they were. I mean, this is when they, they bring out the fact that they'd done like the background research on Jesus and found out that he didn't have a dad. [00:17:17] Whoo wee. It's ugly. [00:17:20] And in the middle of that conversation, Jesus says some wonderful things. He says, if you abide in my word, you're truly my disciples and you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free. [00:17:33] Now here's the problem. [00:17:35] They don't even think that they need to be set free. [00:17:38] What are you talking about, set free? [00:17:41] We're free already. We've been free for years. [00:17:44] They answered him. We're offspring of Abraham. We've never been enslaved to anyone. It's just so funny. It's like, do you guys remember, like, Egypt when you were slaves for 400 years? [00:17:56] That was after Abraham. Would you remember like Babylon when you were in captivity for 70 years? [00:18:01] You forgetting about that? Or are you forgetting about the fact that you're occupied by the Romans right now? [00:18:12] But that's not even what Jesus is talking about. He's talking about the slavery to sin. [00:18:17] Anyway, they say, how can you say we'll become free? Jesus answers them, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Ooh wee. That verse needs to just that we need to throw that verse in a slow cooker and just let it marinate for a little bit. [00:18:38] Whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin. Because the devil always tries to present to us sin as freedom. [00:18:47] In other words, if you do what you're supposed to do, then you're bound by the law. [00:18:53] But if you sin, then you're free. [00:18:57] This is this delusion of freedom through sin. But man, it worked for Adam and Eve. You won't surely die. The devil said, no, you'll Be like God. And it works for us, too. I mean, this is the way the devil comes to tempt us. It says, oh, God doesn't want you to do that. He's trying to. [00:19:20] You know, he doesn't want you to have any fun. He wants you to suffer, and he doesn't want you to do what you want to do. He's trying to enslave you. [00:19:28] You should do whatever you want. Live free. [00:19:32] It's like, I need a better picture than this, but it's this picture that I've got of, like, the. You're walking through the Old west, like in Tombstone or something, and there's this guy in the jail. You know, he's been thrown in there for drunk and disorderly or whatever. [00:19:49] And as you walk by the jail, he's like, hey, come in here. [00:19:53] And you're like, what do you mean, go in there? You're in jail, man. I'm out here, I'm free. And the guy says, you think you're free out there? Out there, you got to do whatever the sheriff says, in here, we live free in here, we do whatever we want in here, we don't have to eat dinner in here, we spit on each other's faces in here, whatever it goes. [00:20:16] So the devil tries to sell us slavery as freedom. [00:20:22] That's the first slavery, by the way, the first of three that I know of, the slavery to sin. Then there's the slavery of despair and the slavery of pride. [00:20:34] But here's the slavery to sin. [00:20:37] Belly slavery. [00:20:39] Whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin. The slave doesn't remain in the house forever, but the Son, Jesus says, remains forever. [00:20:48] So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. [00:20:53] Here's an interesting thing for us to think about. How much of the Reformation was actually about Christian freedom? [00:21:03] There was a huge thing because on both sides, on the Catholic side and on the radical Reformation side, there was no freedom. [00:21:14] It was all these laws and requirements for salvation. [00:21:20] And Paul says in Galatians, for freedom, Christ has set you free. Do not return again to a yoke of bondage. [00:21:29] So a huge part of the Reformation was that faith sets us free, and free to suffer and free to die, and free to love and serve God, but free to not be our own savior. That's the freedom of a good conscience. [00:21:47] So good. [00:21:49] So good. [00:21:50] All right, that might do it for today, for the Sunday drive home. I think you should be ready to go in Bible class. We are going to talk about Augsburg 11, which will be really great. [00:22:04] Last week, I think I said Augsburg 12. And a bunch of you said, what about 11? We just did 10. So Augsburg 11. [00:22:11] This Sunday. We can talk about the Reformation too. I might tell some Reformation stories during the sermon. We'll see how that goes. Our short term missionary team is in Puerto Rico. I got a good word from them today. [00:22:22] Oh yeah? I'm recording on Saturday night. So. Heard from them today. So they're doing well. [00:22:27] We'll keep them in our prayers. [00:22:29] I think that's good. We'll see in a couple minutes. Drive safe. God's peace be with you. That's Sunday drive to church.