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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmuller, and this is the Sunday Drive to Church podcast for October. The October. Look at that. October 5th year of our Lord 2025, the 17th Sunday after Pentecost finished, we passed St. Michael's Day, and now we're headed towards the Reformation and All saints at the end of the month. Beautiful. Let's begin with the colleague for the day, and then I'll get you ready for the service. Let's pray. Oh God, our refuge and strength, the author of all godliness, by your grace, hear the prayer of your church. Grant those things which we ask in faith we may receive through your bountiful mercy, through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:00:43] Amen.
[00:00:45] We continue in Luke today. So Luke 17 is our text, and it's kind of a threefold text where Jesus warns about temptations and forgiveness, and the disciples pray for an increase of faith, and Jesus talks about faith and then service. It's great. And so. So the other connections are sort of loosely affiliated, loosely connected to that theme, starting first with Psalm 62. Psalm 62 has a beautiful refrain in it. I'm opening my Bible to Psalm 62 here. I thought I had it bookmarked. There it is, right after Psalm 61.
[00:01:21] It says, let's see, verse 2 and verse 6.
[00:01:28] Let me read you verse 2. He alone is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense.
[00:01:34] I shall not be greatly moved. And then verse six. He alone, no, he only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be moved.
[00:01:45] Almost identical. And then later in the psalm, it says, verse 11, God has spoken once, twice. I've heard it.
[00:01:52] Power belongs to God also to you, O Lord, belongs mercy.
[00:01:57] So that the psalm is a psalm of praise to God for his power and his mercy.
[00:02:04] Now I'd like you to give your attention when you're praying it in church, especially to how David comes out of that refrain.
[00:02:16] So in verse two, he says, he alone is my rock and my salvation. I shall not be greatly moved. And then how long will you attack a man?
[00:02:24] You shall be slain, all of you. So he's praying to his enemies. He says, look, the Lord is my protector. I'm going to be fine. How long are you guys going to keep coming after me?
[00:02:36] How long are you guys going to keep attacking me?
[00:02:40] How long are you going to delight in lies? Bless with your mouth, but curse inwardly? How long my soul waits silently for the Lord? That's by the way, verse one and verse five, truly my soul silently waits for God. And then verse five, my soul waits silently for God alone.
[00:02:56] And then after the second refrain, verse 6, he only is my rock and my salvation. I shall not be moved. In. In God is my salvation and my glory. The rock of my strength, my refuge is in God.
[00:03:08] So this is a prayer. That's a prayer of confidence and a prayer of faith in the midst of all kind of distress and all kind of affliction and all kind of persecution.
[00:03:21] And David says, lord, I'm going to wait for you. I'm going to wait quietly for you. I'm going to wait silently for you.
[00:03:26] I'm not going to complain. I'm not going to moan or groan under the burden of all these afflictions. I'm going to wait for you and I'm going to trust that you're going to come and deliver me. It's beautiful.
[00:03:37] Look at this confidence in verse nine. Surely men of low degree are a vapor.
[00:03:43] That vapor is what Solomon preaches about in Ecclesiastes when he says, vanity of vanities. All is vanity. That's really the word there. Vapor of vapor, like the.
[00:03:53] It's like breath on a cold day. You know, you can say, oh, if you're from Texas, you don't know this. If it's cold outside and you breathe, then it makes a fall. That's the vapor that this psalm is talking about.
[00:04:11] Men of high degree. Sorry, men of low degree are a vapor. Men of high degree are a lie.
[00:04:17] In other words, if we're considering the esteem of men and trying to weigh men up, are you important? Are you not important? It's all just a. It's all a charade.
[00:04:26] The Lord is the one who doesn't change. The Lord is the one who's good and holy. It's great.
[00:04:32] Habakkuk is our Old Testament lesson, and it's interesting. We have the first four verses of Habakkuk 1, and then the first four verses of HabakKuk 2. So a couple of paragraphs from a couple of chapters of Habakkuk, you'll notice the psalm or the dating of Habakkuk written by Prophet habakkuk in Jerusalem, 635 BC.
[00:04:55] And remember, dear saints, that it's good to have a couple of Old Testament dates in your mind so you can figure out when things were happening.
[00:05:03] So 1446 is the exodus. 40 years later, 1406 coming into the promised land.
[00:05:10] 1010 is the crowning of David. So 40 years before 1050 is Saul. 40 years after 970, that's Solomon.
[00:05:20] 40 years after that, Solomon's death. Nine hundred and thirty, the division of the kingdoms, nine hundred and 31.
[00:05:25] And then that civil war goes on until 722. Okay, so I've given you a lot of dates, but really only two. 1446, Exodus. And you can figure out everything else from there.
[00:05:36] 1010, David. Let me give you two more.
[00:05:40] 722 BC that's the destruction of the northern kingdom by assyria.
[00:05:47] And then 586, that's the destruction of the southern kingdom and Jerusalem by Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. That's the Daniel stuff.
[00:05:56] So 635bc puts a square in the middle of those two major dates. 722, 586. And so the north has been destroyed by Assyria, but the south was protected. That's when The angel killed 120,000 Assyrian soldiers one night and they go running off. And the south was protected for, oh, I don't know, 140, 150, right in the middle of that time.
[00:06:20] And it's all through this time that the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem was arrogant, lazy, unjust, violent. All sorts of terrible things are going on. So the Lord keeps sending the prophets to them saying, repent, repent, repent. Things are going to get really bad.
[00:06:43] And ah, and then the Lord finally, they don't repent. And so he sends Nebuchadnezzar. Now here's Habakkuk in the middle of that.
[00:06:52] Habakkuk says, lord, look, the people here in Jerusalem are doing whatever they want and you're not doing anything about it and you're not going to solve this problem. And then the Lord answers. Habakkuk in chapter one says, well, I'm going to solve it. I'm going to send the Babylonians to destroy you. And then the Lord says, and then Habakkuk says, what?
[00:07:13] Wait a minute, I mean, I didn't. You weren't supposed to take my complaint that seriously.
[00:07:18] And then the Lord gives in chapter two, the most beautiful prophecy, to Habakkuk so profound that it becomes in a way a summary of the entire doctrine of the Old Testament. And it's quoted by Peter. Sorry, it's quoted by Paul twice in Galatians and Romans as that central theme verse. And it's quoted in Hebrews, the righteous shall live by faith. This is one of the central verses of the Reformation time. But here's how it goes.
[00:07:48] So the Lord said, hey, I'm going to destroy. The Lord says to Habakkuk, you're right, I'm going to destroy Jerusalem. Habakkuk says, that's not fair. You're going to destroy a wicked people with an even wickeder people. I don't think wickeder is a word, but that's the idea.
[00:08:02] How can that be right?
[00:08:04] So Starting in Habakkuk 2 1, Habakkuk says, I'm going to take my stand at the watch post and station myself on the tower and look to see what the Lord will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
[00:08:15] So Habakkuk says, now how are you going to handle that? And then the Lord answered me. Verse 2. Write a vision. Make it plain on tablets so that he may run who reads it.
[00:08:25] In other words, the Lord's saying, I want you to get a poster board and I want you to make a big billboard so that even if people are running past you, they're going to be able to read what it says.
[00:08:35] The vision is awaiting for the appointed time. It hastens to its end. It won't die. If it seems slow, wait for it. It'll come, it won't delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up and not upright within him. That's the unrighteous man. But the righteous shall live by his faith.
[00:08:53] So the righteous lives by faith.
[00:08:58] And this verse is right every which way you read it. It means the righteous person is not living according to his obedience and his righteousness, but he's living rather by the promise of God and trusting in the promise of God. That's all the righteous has. It also means that it is precise by faith that the Lord accounts us righteous so that when we believe the promise, then we are acceptable to the Lord. And this is the life that we're called to live. That life of trusting the promise of God, even if we can't see it.
[00:09:30] So the Lord says, I'm going to send Babylon, the wicked nation, Babylon, to destroy my wicked people, Jerusalem. And you are going to believe my promise that I love you and I care for you in the midst of all this destruction, and you'll not only live through it, but that you will live forever in heaven.
[00:09:47] And that doctrine that we're declared righteous by believing the promise of God, that's the doctrine of justification. And that's the point of the whole Bible.
[00:09:56] It's amazing. What a text. Write it with big letters.
[00:10:00] Who?
[00:10:02] The epistle is 2nd Timothy. Let me see. Psalm 91. He will command his angels. That's our gradual. Oops. Church bell.
[00:10:11] I'm still at church. It's been a fun day here, by the way. On Saturday we had the young Adult Conference Friday night and Saturday, and you'll see, oh, I don't know. A hundred of these young adults are hanging around and will be in church tomorrow.
[00:10:24] How great is this?
[00:10:27] It gives me so much hope to have all these young, faithful Christian people gathering to hear the Lord's Word. We were talking about how to.
[00:10:35] The theme of the conference was the comfort. Christian comfort for life in a chaotic cosmos. And how do we engage with the news as Christians and how do we think about all the troubles of these days as a Christian? How do we speak to people about the hope that we have in Christ? It was so much fun. Anyway, the epistle is 2 Timothy 1, 1 14. Paul's last letter, probably written from prison. He in fact mentions it in the letter. So Paul's remembering that in the Book of Acts we have three sort of four journeys of Paul, three missionary journeys, and then his prison journey.
[00:11:12] And the Book of acts ends in 64 AD. Paul's in prison in Rome, but he's writing to the Philippians. That's when he writes Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon. But then he wants to leave, and it seems like he does. It seems like, in fact he goes to Spain, then to Crete, then to Ephesus, and then to Corinth, and then to Macedonia, Corinth, back to Ephesus, and then to Troas, where he's arrested. And he left Titus in Crete, and he left Timothy in Ephesus. And so now he's been arrested in Troas and he's been brought back to Rome. And now this imprisonment is pretty serious. And Nero's locked down on things and he's about to get his head cut off. So he's writing this last letter to Timothy there in Ephesus.
[00:11:56] Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, according to the promise of the life that's in Christ Jesus. How amazing is that?
[00:12:03] He's facing down his death and he's thinking about the promise of life. So beautiful. To Timothy, my beloved child. Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience. Wow.
[00:12:17] As I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day, he goes on to talk about, really the gift of ordination. And this is a very precious text for. For pastors especially, he says, for this reason, verse six, I remind you to fan into Flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
[00:12:38] For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and of self control.
[00:12:45] Now all Christians have the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is a spirit not of fear, but power and love and self control.
[00:12:52] But when Paul's talking about the Spirit here to Timothy, he's especially talking about the gift that's given for the office of pastor. Now, a couple of things here.
[00:13:02] Number one, every Christian possesses the Holy Spirit, otherwise we couldn't say Jesus is Lord. It's the gift that's given in baptism. But number two, there's a special anointing of the Holy Spirit that the Lord gives when he calls us to particular tasks. That's why we lay hands on the kids when they're confirmed. Now they take up the job of confessing the faith. Why we lay hands on the husband and wife when they get married, to bless them for the calling as husband and wife. And it's why, especially when a man is set into the Office of the Word, that they lay hands on him to ordain him. And that's why in church, when I say, the Lord be with you and you all respond and with thy spirit, it's a reference to the office. It's not like I'm the only guy with a spirit, but it's this Spirit that Paul's talking about here with Timothy. It's the Spirit that comes particularly for the work of being a pastor. That's why I try every Sunday when we have divine service. Three, we have this old response, the Lord be with you and with Thy Spirit.
[00:14:01] I try to pause and let it be to me a reminder of my ordination. Just like whenever we wake up and bless ourselves with a cross in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's a reminder of our baptism.
[00:14:12] You all give me this week after week, this reminder of my office.
[00:14:15] So Paul's reminding Timothy, you have a spirit, not a fear, but power and love and self control. And then he goes on to say, he talks about that Spirit again. He says, where is it? Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me as prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
[00:14:47] It's so good and it's now manifest through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle and a teacher. And now I suffer like I do, but I'm not ashamed. And that idea of not being ashamed to suffer for the sake of Jesus is all over Paul, and especially here.
[00:15:09] I know that he can guard us until the day that is coming. Follow, he says, the pattern of sound words that you've heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you. Now again, every Christian can say, the good deposit of faith is given to me and that each and every one of us Christians, to us belongs the word of God and the kingdom of God. And we make it known. But especially here, Paul's making that application to Timothy, who's a pastor and about to lose his mentor. Paul, can you imagine the pain of. You know, Timothy has got to go on pastoring the people in Ephesus without Paul.
[00:15:47] And he says, look, the good deposit. You have the word, you have that confidence. Live by it.
[00:15:53] I'll preach on the gospel, so I won't say too much. But it comes to us in three parts. The first is that Jesus says, temptations are coming, but woe to the one who brings temptation.
[00:16:03] And then, if you're sinned against, rebuke your brother and forgive him. And then look at this. Jesus says, if he, your brother sins against you seven times in the same day, and turns to you seven times and says, I repent.
[00:16:18] You must forgive him.
[00:16:21] That is amazing. Jesus says, look, seven times, seven sins, seven days, seven I repent, seven forgivenesses. And that's a must. It's not an option. You don't. You have the choice. You must do it. You're a Christian. I remember, and I was thinking about this when I was watching some of the memorial service for Charlie Kirk and Erica Kirk forgives the assassin. It's a stunning thing. Amazing, beautiful testimony. And it reminded me of a story when I was in.
[00:16:52] I was 19. I was backpacking in Israel. I was in the West Bank.
[00:16:56] I was in this. There was this Coptic priest, Ilias Shakur.
[00:17:01] Well, it's still his name. I think he's still there. And he was building a school and university. It was a Palestinian place.
[00:17:09] It was a Christian community.
[00:17:11] They were getting tons of grief from the nation of Israel.
[00:17:16] And I was sitting there in this guest house. There's a few of us who were there volunteering and working.
[00:17:22] And there was a couple, and they were telling me a story about.
[00:17:28] I Don't know if it was their daughter or some. Someone connected to them. I think it might have been their daughter who was murdered.
[00:17:39] And they were telling me this story. I couldn't believe it.
[00:17:43] And I said, what did you do?
[00:17:46] What did you do when you had to see the man who was arrested for the murder of your daughter? And they looked at me and they said.
[00:17:52] They said, well, we forgave him.
[00:17:55] And my jaw must have hit the floor. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. You forgave the man who murdered your daughter?
[00:18:02] And they looked at me and they said, we're Christian.
[00:18:07] Like, why does that astonish you? What's wrong with you? Of course we forgave him. We're Christian now. The disciples hear this. That's amazing. The disciples hear this, and they say to Jesus, increase our faith.
[00:18:23] Like, whoa.
[00:18:27] How to do that? You have to give us stronger faith if you expect us to forgive people seven times. And Jesus says, no, it's not the size of your faith that matters. If you had faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you'd say to the mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it obey you.
[00:18:40] And then he talks about this little parable of the master and the servant working together in the field. And then they come into the house, and what happens? Does he say, hey, come sit at the table with me? No.
[00:18:50] The master says, prepare supper.
[00:18:53] Get on your right clothes. Serve me while I eat and drink. And then you can eat and drink. Then does the master thank the servant because he did what he was commanded? The answer is no. So Jesus says, you also, when you've done all that was commanded, say, we're unworthy servants.
[00:19:07] We've only done what was our duty.
[00:19:10] This is the humble office of the Christian.
[00:19:16] And we're pleased to be in that humble office to be invited to the service of the Lord.
[00:19:24] It's amazing.
[00:19:27] Beautiful text. I know. My faith is founded.
[00:19:30] In fact, the hymns that we're singing today are marvelous. By grace I'm saved Grace free and boundless oh, so believe and doubt it not I know My faith is founded on Jesus Christ. Draw near and take the body of the Lord why should cross and trial grieve me? Pay spirit special attention to that one. We were talking about that one with the kids today. Why should cross and trial Grieve me? Christ is near with his cheer Never will he leave me I think that section in the hymnal is called Hope and Comfort. It used to be called Cross and Comfort, but I guess that sounded too mean, but that's what it is. Why should cross and trial grieve me? What am I worried about? I got Jesus on my side. Forgive our sins as we forgive Lord, help us walk your servant way and then now thank We All Are Gone as our closing hymn. You guys will love it.
[00:20:19] All right. Better call it a night. We'll see you in a few minutes. Drive safe. God's peace be with you. See you soon.