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[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Luther Church. This is the Sunday drive to church for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost. That's October 6, the year of our Lord 2024. I'm Pastor Wolfneal. This is going to be probably a shorter podcast this morning because I'm not feeling 100%, but I didn't want to miss the chance to have this radio voice go unrecorded. I like it when I get sick. I sound like a old school.
[00:00:26] Hey all you out there in radio land. Anyway, we'll talk about the text still and get you ready for church this morning. It's a beautiful theme that runs actually all the way through almost all of the readings. And it's the theme of marriage, giving husband and wife, starting in Genesis two with the institution of marriage, mark ten, where the Pharisees come to Jesus asking about marriage. And then psalm 128, which is this beautiful marriage psalm. And then Hebrews two, which is a little, you know, the epistle lessons are kind of off to the side, but it's great that we start reading Hebrews in the Sunday morning service, and we'll be reading Hebrews for a couple of months now, starting today and going forward. And hopefully, having studied Hebrews now in adult Bible class, these words pop a little bit more as well. But let's begin with a prayer of the day. Merciful Father, your patience and loving kindness toward us have no end. Grant that by your holy spirit we may always think and do those things that are pleasing in your sight. Through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:01:39] All right, the psalm, the entrance psalm is psalm 128. It's a short psalm. It's one of our wedding psalms. It says six verses.
[00:01:48] It's about the joy of marriage. Now, maybe a word of preface, because not all of us who are coming to church tomorrow are married. Some of us never were married. Some of us were married. And those we're mourning the death of our spouse, widows or widowers, some of us are longing to be married, and the Lord hasn't provided a spouse. All of us, no matter what our vocation is in relationship to God's gift of marriage, all of us, as christians, are called to rejoice in marriage.
[00:02:22] And this is something, I've been thinking about this a little bit.
[00:02:26] Remember when Jesus tells these parables about the lost and found sheep and coin and brother, and he says, the angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner who repents, over one sinner who's saved this angelic joyous is over the joy of others salvation. And what's particular about it is that it's not something that the angels can have for themselves. The angels cannot repent. The angels cannot be saved.
[00:03:00] They either are confirmed in glory or confirmed in condemnation. There's no repentance and salvation for the angels. So when the angels are rejoicing over the sinner who repents, they're rejoicing. Overdose. Someone who's receiving a gift that they don't have, in fact, and they can't have. Now, this is part of what we're called to, is this angelic joy, is to have joy over other people's gifts.
[00:03:27] And so one of the dangers with marriage is for whatever your relationship to marriage is, you are called to rejoice in what other people have.
[00:03:42] So even if you're waiting for the gift of marriage, to rejoice when other people have that gift of marriage, that's the angelic joy, the joy that we have in other people's blessings. And one more word on that. All of us, in a fundamental way, have the same relationship to marriage. And that is that we all have moms and dads. Every single one of us started out as a child of a father and mother.
[00:04:09] And so that's what the Lord intends, is for that gift of father and mother, that they would also be husband and wife. So this is near and dear to every one of us. Okay. Psalm 128. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord who walks in his ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed. It shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.
[00:04:37] The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel. So that's this psalm of blessing for the home and for the family and grandchildren. And it ends with the culminating blessing there, grandchildren.
[00:04:57] The other day I figured out theologically why grandchildren are such a huge blessing, and then I forgot. And I've been trying to remember for three weeks, but I can't remember. Anyway, hopefully I'll figure it out. We all know grandchildren are a huge blessing, but I sorted out why it was theologically.
[00:05:15] Anyway, if you have ideas, let me know. Genesis two is before the fall. Still remember, the fall is in Genesis, chapter three. But oddly enough, Genesis two starts with the Lord God saying, it's not good. And we said, now, hold on. Wait a minute, Lord. You've just been saying for six days, it's good. It's good, it's good. It's very good. Now it's not good. What? What's not good? Well, it's not good that man should be alone. I'll make a helper fit for him. So out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. Notice that goodness in Genesis is connected to life and to bringing forth life, supporting life, etcetera, so that everything that the Lord says is good is because it's connected to his gift of life, which was at that time not only temporal but also eternal. They were the same. It was the same life, now and forever. So goodness did not have a, what, primary moral sense, like it does for us. Like, that's good, that's evil, that's good, that's bad.
[00:06:29] I mean, it was moral, but that it was. It was intrinsically connected to life. And that's why it's not good for man to be alone, because if man's by himself, there's never any babies.
[00:06:42] Okay? So the Lord brings all the birds, all the fish, all the beasts of the field, and Adam names them. And the Lord is doing this on purpose because the Lord wants Adam to recognize that his aloneness is not good so that he can receive with such great joyous what is about to happen. Now, there's a funny part in Luther where he talks about how Adam, before the fall, was so wise that he would have looked at each of the creatures and understood perfectly why they were created by God in just this way and given them the perfect name.
[00:07:16] He would have been the perfect zoologist in that way.
[00:07:22] Now, after the fall, all we can do is look at an animal and say, can I eat it, or is it going to eat me?
[00:07:29] That's how much we've lost.
[00:07:31] Anyway, the Lord God put Adam to sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and he closed up the place with flesh. And the rib the Lord God had taken from man, he made into woman and brought her to the man. And the man said this. And so here we have verse 23, the first recorded spoken words of humanity. And it's a love poem of a man to his wife, which is great. It's a love song.
[00:08:00] So that, I mean, Adam would have spoken a lot of words before this, but he would have spoken them to the animals and to God, not to another person. Here's the first human conversation, if you want to think of it that way.
[00:08:14] And it's this man singing a hymn, a love song. This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
[00:08:28] Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. So beautiful. Now we'll skip over to the gospel lesson, because Jesus is going to actually take that text and amplify it with a line of his own, with a conclusion of his own. So this is Mark, chapter ten. And the Pharisees come to test Jesus. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? And he says, what did Moses say? And then they quote Moses, sort of, which Jesus says, that's because of the hardness of your heart. Now, Vicar Krueger is preaching this morning, and I've had, you know, I have to approve his sermons, which is great for me, because I get a little preview. This is a really great sermon. And he does some work on this text right there that I had not. That I had not seen before. How they misuse Moses, how Moses himself did not say that you could get a divorce. It's almost assumed if a man is giving his wife a certificate of divorce, he doesn't approve of it. But he says, if it's happening, it ought to happen this way.
[00:09:38] Well, Jesus, though, goes back to the beginning. He says, because of your hardness of your heart, he wrote this commandment. But from the beginning, it wasn't made this way. God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother, hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. They're no longer two, but one flesh. And then Jesus adds this. What? Therefore God is joined together, let not man separate. And this marvelous word that it is God who does the joining in marriage is the most important word in the universe about marriage, because we think that marriage is our work, our decision, our choice, our commitment, our promises, our vows, our whatever. No, that's part of it. But more fundamental, the two. Becoming one is a. Is a creative act of God himself.
[00:10:28] And this is not just for christians. This is for everybody. Everybody who's married. You look around, you see someone. Two total pagans. God is the one who joined them together, and he intends for them to remain one flesh and to never be separated.
[00:10:44] And then the disciples asked about this, and Jesus says, look, if you marry again after being married, you commit adultery, with rare exceptions, which is a hard word, especially in our day, where we see divorce and remarriage as a solution to things.
[00:11:02] Jesus sees it as a problem. It's a hard word. And then they were bringing children to Jesus, and it's not an accident. And the disciples were rebuking those who were bringing the children. But Jesus says, no, let the children come to me. This is good for us to remember when it gets a little rowdy on Sunday service. Jesus let the little. Jesus wants the kids to be around there. He knows that they're squirmy.
[00:11:26] Let the children come to me. Don't hinder them. For to such belongs the kingdom of God.
[00:11:31] Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. Back in Mark, chapter nine, we heard a few weeks ago that you have to receive the children of God.
[00:11:41] You have to receive the children. And in this text, it says, you have to become like the children.
[00:11:46] And he took them in his arms and blessed them so that we were all pursuing that childlike faith. What a marvelous text. You're going to really love the sermon, too. The epistle lesson is Hebrews chapter two. I was looking, we didn't have the normal readings last week because we had St. Michael's Day, and so I thought we missed Hebrews chapter one. But they don't have Hebrews one. They must have it some other time in the lectionary. They just jump right into Hebrews two. And we'll remember that here. The big thing about Hebrews one and especially hebrews two, is that it's talking about how JeSus is better, and especially in this point, he's talking about how Jesus is better than the angels. And so.
[00:12:32] And so it's this beautiful, what comparison to Jesus and the angels.
[00:12:41] He says in verse five. Now, it was not to the angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking, as is Testified somewhere. What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? This is psalm eight. You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You've crowned him with glory and honor. You put Everything in subjection under his feet.
[00:13:03] So that this is a. This whole Hebrews one and two is a collection of Bible passages where it talks about the father talking to the son, and then again the son talking back to the father. So at first quotes psalm eight. That's the father talking to the son.
[00:13:20] You've put Everything in subjection under his feet, and then it gets to verse twelve. I will tell of your name to my brothers. This is Jesus talking to the Father in the midst of the congregation. I will sing to your praise, and again, I'll put my trust in him. And again, behold I and the children God has given me. So this is the voice of the Son from the Old Testament. So this is a beautiful passage, Hebrews one and two, of capturing and consolidating this heavenly counsel, this conversation between the Father and the Son in the Old Testament and bringing it forward for us.
[00:13:57] It's incredible. So many people say that the Old Testament, like, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the incarnation, is a New Testament doctrine. And it's not in the Old Testament or that in the Old Testament it's hidden and in the New Testament it's revealed. But this Hebrews passage, Hebrews one and two, is showing us that the text is there fully extolling Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And this ongoing conversation between the Father and the Son, it's such a beautiful apologetic, and it's a wonderful text.
[00:14:36] There's a key verse in verse eight because we don't get to verse 14. In fact, Hebrews 213 is where the epistle lesson stops, and then 14. I wonder if next week is where we started. I wonder if it has 14. Hebrews 214 is one of my most favorite of all time bible passages. And it's where, oh, we don't have it next week. It's where it says, for just as we partook of flesh and blood, he partook of the same, so that through his death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and set the children who were all their lifetimes subject to the fear of death free?
[00:15:14] Something like that. So it says that Jesus destroyed the devil. But you say, how can that be? Because we look around and, whoa, it looks like the devil is not at all destroyed. But verse eight in this passage tells us now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside of his control, including the devil and all the demons, etcetera. But at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him so that we, so that everything is under the control of our Lord Jesus. But we don't see it yet.
[00:15:53] What do we see? Do we see Jesus? Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. In other words, we don't see Jesus sitting in glory, ruling over the world.
[00:16:16] I wish we would, but we don't. And the Lord doesn't want us to. He wants to see. He wants us to see Christ crucified. Most especially Christ crucified and Christ risen. And that is how we live in this life. While we wait for the glory of the world to come.
[00:16:36] We don't see all things under his feet, but we see him, who for a little while, was made lower than the angels. We see Jesus, and we trust in him.
[00:16:45] All right, that's good. Sunday drive to church. We'll see you in a few minutes. God's peace be with.