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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolf Mueller. This is the Sunday Drive to Church podcast where we talk about all the things that are about to happen.
[00:00:08] So you're ready for it. You know, the services come at you quick.
[00:00:14] So this is like you're stretching before the run, you know, getting warmed up so you don't pull a spiritual hamstring.
[00:00:23] It's the baptism of our Lord today, the first Sunday in Epiphany, January 11, 2026.
[00:00:31] The baptism of Jesus is officially on January 13th. It's actually the octave of Epiphany. So it's eight days after the epiphany that the baptism of. That's the official day, but we move it to the Sunday after to celebrate it, to rejoice in it. So we have it today where Jesus is being manifest to the world.
[00:00:55] This is especially where the Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove. And John the Baptist knows already, but now it's confirmed that this is the Son of God. In fact, the voice of God the Father is going to declare that. Just what a beautiful text. We'll be preaching about it. So we won't talk too much about the gospel lesson, but we'll get all the other texts. So you're ready for that. But let's start with the. Well, I'm looking at the bulletin and there's this really stunning.
[00:01:24] Where is this from? It's an image. It looks like a wall, almost like a wall painting. And it's Jesus being baptized by John in the Jordan River.
[00:01:34] And the Spirit, Holy Spirit is like head first diving onto Jesus in the form of a dove. It's great. But in the bottom right hand corner, take a look when you get to church is a little guy holding a jar.
[00:01:49] And out of it is flowing the water with all these fish and dolphins in it. And he's labeled Jordan Flumas, the River Jordan. And it's this, this ancient idea that the, that there was a character, almost like a personality to these natural things.
[00:02:12] So there was a. So the Jordan river and, and the, and the Bible will talk like this, especially in the psalms and the prophets, but the Jordan river almost becomes a char in the Bible itself.
[00:02:24] And the hills, Mount Zion is a character there.
[00:02:28] And the valley of Megiddo is a character. And the hills of Jordan are characters. In fact, the trees are clapping their hands and the mountains are leaping. And remember the psalm that says, oh, Jordan, what ailed you so that you ran dry when the Lord walked by?
[00:02:49] This is, it's so great. There's.
[00:02:52] People have commented on our own culture about how it's a disenchanted culture. We have disenchanted minds. We think of the world, the cosmos, like this gigantic machine, and like the planets are like clockwork, and biology is just molecules moving around and chemistry is just these laws of physics and.
[00:03:20] And everything just kind of. It's a very materialistic view of the world, but it's not the biblical view of the world. I mean, at least this. We can add this to it, that there's an unseen reality that's around us everywhere.
[00:03:37] And the angels and the demons are there fighting so that we would. The angels so that we would hear and rejoice in the word of the Lord and the demons so that we wouldn't remember. The devil wants to snatch the word like a bird catching a seed on the path.
[00:03:54] And so we at least can confess the unseen reality of the angels and the demons swirling around us so that there's much, much more to this world and to our lives and to history than just the normal physical things that we see. But even the physical things, there's something special about all the uniqueness that the Lord has.
[00:04:17] Has built into this world and this creation. So I think it's just cool to see that little guy holding the jar. That's the personality of the Jordan River. It starts with three headwaters, by the way, which all flow into the. Into the Sea of Galilee. And then the Jordan river flows down that rift valley from the. From the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea. Amazing to think how it starts with this life and ends in this death, because that's where the Lord sort of blew up Sodom and Gomorrah down there. But anyhow, just thinking about the picture, here's the colic. We better get to it. We'll never make any headway. The colic. For the baptism of Jesus. Let's pray.
[00:04:57] Father in Heaven, at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river, you proclaimed him your beloved son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit. Make all who are baptized in his name faithful in their callings as your children and inheritors with him of everlasting life through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:05:21] Amen.
[00:05:23] The Psalm is 85. I was looking at Psalm 85, and it was incredibly familiar.
[00:05:31] I said, wait a minute, was that today? I'm recording this on Saturday afternoon. And this was today's treasury of Daily Prayer Psalm.
[00:05:40] Although it bounced around a little bit, the treasure of daily prayer had verse 8. We only go verses 1 to 7. Although if you want to read a beautiful verse as you're meditating on the Lord's Word and getting ready for church, you could open to Psalm 85 and just read one more verse. Extra verse, verse 8. Let me hear what God the Lord will speak. He will speak peace to his people. Who the Lord speaks peace anyway?
[00:06:09] We will all have together the first seven verses.
[00:06:12] Lord, you were favorable to your land. You restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people. You covered all their sins. You withdrew all your wrath. You turned from your hot anger. Restore us again, O God, of our salvation and put away your indignation toward us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you?
[00:06:41] Show us your steadfast love. There's the chesed, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.
[00:06:49] The Lord is merciful, and then he's merciful again. And then he's merciful again. And here's a prayer that he would be merciful again and again and again. And this is what we see. Our Lord is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, full of mercy and kindness.
[00:07:07] He's always calling us to repentance and he's always ready to receive us again and do his joy.
[00:07:13] Marvelous.
[00:07:15] The Old Testament lesson is from Joshua, verses from chapter three.
[00:07:20] And this has to do with the crossing of the Jordan River. I remember I talked about it earlier. There's a lot of incidences that are occurring right here at the Jordan river crossing. That's maybe a few miles. I. I would guess maybe 10, 15 miles north of where the Jordan river flows into the Dead Sea and right directly across from Jericho. So if you were to draw a picture of the Middle east, you got. So you have the Mediterranean Sea. That's going to be your wall on your left. And then you have the sea of Galilee.
[00:07:58] Five miles across, 10 miles top to bottom. Kind of a diamond. The Jordan river flows almost straight south out of the Sea of Galilee, maybe 60 miles. I should check on that. Well, this is interesting. It turns out that the distance between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead sea is about 88 miles.
[00:08:20] But the Jordan river meanders. So much to get from one to the other is that it's 230km.
[00:08:32] Wonder how many miles that is. I should.
[00:08:39] So It's. It's almost 143 miles of river distance.
[00:08:45] 88 miles in actual distance. It's interesting. So just maybe 10 miles north of where the Jordan river goes into the Dead Sea is the plain of Jericho.
[00:08:58] And a bunch of things happened. That's where at first the Israelites crossed over into the Promised Land. It's interesting that they didn't come, like, straight up from Egypt through Gaza. Remember, Gaza touches Egypt, and you could just cross right into the Promised Land. But they wandered in the desert and then came around south of the Dead Sea to the east and up the east side of the Dead Sea through Edom and Moab and Ammon, and then crossed over into Jericho right there, the oldest city in the world. And that's what this passage is from Joshua, chapter three. And it's going to be the second water crossing. Remember the first time they crossed the waters through the Red Sea on dry ground. But now they're crossing over with the Ark, which they didn't have when they left Egypt. Remember, they built the Ark out in the wilderness. All the stuff they built in the wilderness. They've got the Ark and the high priest. Forty years later, they step into the Jordan river and the water stops and they.
[00:10:00] And they pass through and they come to Jericho, and then they're going to wallop Jericho. So that's the second pass. The first is through the sea, the second's through the river.
[00:10:12] The second, it's the high priest steps into the river. Remember, there wasn't a high priest when they left Egypt. All these things are now in place 40 years later.
[00:10:20] So the year, if you want to kind of notch it in your memory for when this is happening, is 1406.
[00:10:28] So the children of Israel escape Egypt. The Passover is 1446.
[00:10:33] And then 40 years later, they pass over the Jordan River. The other thing that happened there is this is the place where Elijah ascends into heaven.
[00:10:47] And he, remember, with his cloak, with his stole, strikes the sea and crosses over the Dead Sea the other way. And then the chariots take him up into heaven. And Elisha sees it and gets a double portion of his spirit.
[00:11:01] It's also the same place where. Where Jesus was baptized.
[00:11:06] So that all three of those major events happened right in this place, close to Bethany, beyond the Jordan, down in that spot where the Jordan river is about to go to the Dead Sea. It's beautiful.
[00:11:18] The epistle lesson is 1 Corinthians, chapter 1.
[00:11:22] Remember, Paul is writing to the Corinthians, who were, as the kids would say, a hot mess.
[00:11:30] I mean, this is disastrous. What's going on. Half the people didn't believe in the resurrection. Everybody's fighting with each other. I'm of Paul, I'm of Cephas, I'm of Christ.
[00:11:43] There's the guy boasting they had an antinomian streak, and the guy boasting that he's sleeping with his mother in law.
[00:11:51] As if our freedom in Christ would lead to sexual immorality. People are getting drunk and at the Lord's Supper, everybody's preaching at the same time.
[00:12:01] Men and women, no matter, speaking in tongues all at the same time. And nobody's interpreting getting drunk at the Lord's Supper.
[00:12:10] I mean, it's a mess. You can imagine when Paul gets notes from Corinth and he stayed there for two years starting this church and then he's over in Ephesus and he hey, how are things going?
[00:12:23] You know, we did so good to start this church. How's it looking there? And to get this list of problems back. Oy, oi yoy.
[00:12:31] So Paul's writing this letter and he starts with his thanksgiving. I thank the Lord for all of you all the time, which is a miracle. I think Paul's thankfulness is a miracle and it's a good example for us because we have so much to be thankful for.
[00:12:46] But Paul's thankful in all circumstances. He can see the good. I mean, he knows that the Holy Spirit is working in Corinth even through all this trouble.
[00:12:57] And he's going to take them back to the basics. And in this passage, he's going to refocus the thinking and the attitude of the church.
[00:13:11] He writes this chapter one, starting with verse 26. Consider your calling, brothers.
[00:13:17] Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.
[00:13:21] Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.
[00:13:25] But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
[00:13:30] God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
[00:13:35] God chose what is low and despised in the world.
[00:13:39] Even things that are not to bring to nothing, things that are so that no human being might boast in. In the presence of God.
[00:13:51] He is the source of your life in Christ, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
[00:13:59] Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.
[00:14:05] Can you imagine? This is such a beautiful text. I mean, first of all, Paul saying, there's not many of you guys are not from royalty. You guys are not from big money, you guys are not from the best schools, but you are the Lord's. And this is how the Lord works. He uses the Lowly things. So why it's such a beautiful baptismal text? Because the Lord doesn't use, like Don Perrion. Is that the name of the fancy champagne? What is the name of the.
[00:14:33] Wait, am I mixing up the name of the champagne with the name of the fancy mustard now? I can't think of it. Anyhow, God doesn't use like, some sort of fancy soaps and perfumes.
[00:14:52] He uses water to wash away sin.
[00:14:56] He doesn't use even like dawn with extra grease, cutting power or whatever, just water. And the water of the Jordan river, and not even the nice water of the Jordan river up where it comes, flows out of Mount Hermon, and it's clear and clean and cool. But the muddy, slow moving, meandering bottom of the Jordan river, which is all muddy, looks like chocolate milk. He's down there. He's using that water to wash away sins.
[00:15:27] The theological term ex nihilo, which means from nothing, is normally how we talk about God's creating of the world. He creates the world ex nihilo from nothing.
[00:15:39] But here it's not talking about the creation of the world. I mean, it is, but it's talking about our salvation.
[00:15:45] It says the Lord uses the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are.
[00:15:54] So the Lord creates faith and creates his church and creates his kingdom out of nothing. And he uses the nothingness that is the humility of his kingdom to bring to nothing all of those things that are boasting and bragging and claiming to have some glory.
[00:16:13] So there's a lot of glorious kingdoms at the time of St. Paul, namely Rome and probably Egypt and Assyria. They've kind of got a little lingering glory over there. But the Lord is using the humility of His Son being baptized in the Jordan river to make all those kingdoms into nothing.
[00:16:33] He. This is what Mary sings in the Magnificant.
[00:16:37] He casts down the proud from their thrones and lifts up those of low degree.
[00:16:45] So the Lord is lifting up the lowly and casting down the haughty. He's lifting up the weak and he's throwing away the strong. He's lifting up the poor. He. He's casting out the rich. He's forgiving the sins of the contrite and he's sending the proud away.
[00:17:08] And it's not two acts of God. That's what Paul's saying. The Lord actually uses the lifting up of the nobodies to make nothing, those who think they are somebody.
[00:17:20] So look at this list. We can't miss this list. He's the source of your life in Christ, whom God made our wisdom. So Christ is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and our redemption.
[00:17:34] So there's an earthly wisdom, but there's a heavenly spiritual wisdom that comes from the Spirit and the Word, and that's Christ.
[00:17:40] Paul's going to talk about that more in First Corinthians. He says that God made the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man. And he talks about the cross of Jesus being the wisdom of God.
[00:17:52] So Jesus is our wisdom and our righteousness, our righteousness, our being.
[00:18:01] What does righteousness means?
[00:18:04] To be in step with the particular standard.
[00:18:08] So there's the righteousness of the Ten Commandments, which means to keep the Ten Commandments. There's the righteousness of the house, which means to live according to all the rules.
[00:18:20] There's the righteousness of the hotel swimming pool, which means no running, no glass containers, etc. There's all these different kinds of righteousness. There's the righteousness of the highway department, which means 70 miles an hour, et cetera, et cetera. There's all kinds of righteousnesses.
[00:18:33] But our righteousness is Christ, his keeping the law, his perfect life. That's our righteousness.
[00:18:39] It's not a righteousness that we achieve by our own works. It's one that's given to us by faith, and he is our sanctification.
[00:18:46] To be sanctified means to be holy, which means to be set apart by the Lord and for the Lord, so that Jesus is the one who sets us apart for that eternal life that he wants to give to us, and he is our redemption. To be redeemed means to be rescued.
[00:19:02] There's the redemption of.
[00:19:04] Like, if you're a prisoner of war and your general leads a raid to rescue you from prison, that's the redemption. Or you could be enslaved and someone could pay your debt and set you free from that slavery. That's your redemption. To be redeemed means that you're. That you're locked up and you're brought out of that bondage.
[00:19:24] And Jesus is the one who brings us out of our bondage to sin and death and the power of the devil to make us his own.
[00:19:32] That's why the one who boasts, boasts in the Lord.
[00:19:36] Well, I mentioned we'll talk about the Gospel quite a bit in the sermon. We'll lean into that. But it's the baptism of Jesus by John, his cousin, who says, I need to be baptized by you, and you're coming to me. But Jesus says, let it be so now. This is right for us to fulfill all righteousness. So he's baptized and the Spirit descends. And remember, we only hear the voice of God the Father three times in the New Testament.
[00:19:59] Once at the baptism of Jesus, once at the transfiguration of Jesus. Once in Holy Week when Jesus is praying, father, glorify your name. It's in John 12. I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. That's it. Those three times. That's the only time we hear the voice of the Father.
[00:20:15] And so this is a real treasured moment that the Father is going to speak. And I don't know, the last time he boomed from heaven like this was probably at Mount Sinai. And everyone said, don't talk to us. But now here he's booming from heaven so that we notice that this Jesus is here. He's our Jesus.
[00:20:38] The hymn.
[00:20:39] My hymnal. Go.
[00:20:42] Oh, someone's taking my hymnal. Oh, here it is, right, right under my telephone. I have it open to Psalm 85. Here I thought Carrie had stolen my hymnal and taken it to the piano. And it's right under my nose, like me looking for my glasses. The hymn is to Jordan came the Christ our Lord. It's from Luther.
[00:21:04] It was. It's one of his six baptismal, one of his six catechism hymns. So Luther not only wrote the small catechism and also preached on the small catechism, and also turned those sermons into essays on the catechism, which became the large catechism. He also wrote hymns for all six chief parts. So these are the holy 10 commands. That's 10 commandments.
[00:21:26] We all believe in one true God. That's his creedal hymn.
[00:21:31] Our Father who in heaven above is the hymn for the Lord's Prayer to Jordan. Came to Christ our Lord Here from depths of woe I cry to Thee. That's his Confession Absolution hymn. And then he wrote a handful of Lord's Supper hymns. I don't remember which one he wrote for the catechism. But this is the baptismal hymn, and it's a retelling of the story of Jesus coming down to the Jordan river to be baptized.
[00:21:56] It's really phenomenal.
[00:21:59] It doesn't happen too often. But this is one of the hymns that wasn't in the old TLH that should have been and is given back to us by the lsb. So it's a great gift. So it talks about the baptism of Jesus, and it then goes on from talking about the baptism of Jesus to talk about the institution of baptism.
[00:22:18] So in verse five, it switches to his disciples spoke the Lord, go out to every nation and bring them the living word. And this my invitation. Let everyone abandon sin and come in true contrition to be baptized and thereby win full pardon and remission and heavenly bliss. Inherit.
[00:22:35] This is like. It's a skipping forward from the very beginning of the gospel to the very end.
[00:22:41] So that there. And Luther wants to confirm this. There's a deep, profound connection to the baptism of Jesus and to our baptism.
[00:22:54] And really it comes down to this, that the same words that God the Father speaks to his Son in his baptism, you are my beloved son. He also speaks to us.
[00:23:07] So we, the baptized, hear from Jesus, you are my friend.
[00:23:12] And we hear from God the Father, you are my children.
[00:23:18] God be praised for the gift of baptism. If we had a hundred years, we could never exhaust the glory and gifts of holy baptism.
[00:23:28] All right, that'll do it. Hopefully you're ready. That's a Sunday drive to Church for January 11th, year of our Lord 2026. Don't forget to come to Bible class, too. We're winding that. Well, we got about a month left on the Augsburg Confession, but we're having a lot of fun using that to talk about the basics of the faith.
[00:23:47] So make sure to join us for that, of course. Always. If you have any questions, let us know. And if you have one of these super long commutes, like you're driving from Lake Buchanan or, or New Braunfels or whatever, Pastor Packer and I are doing the weekly Q and A podcast, so we got an episode of that posted up this week, so that's there. Also, the Worldwide Bible Class on Wednesday morning has its own podcast. So if you need more, those are some good spots.
[00:24:15] We'll see you soon. God's peace be with.