1.12.25 Sunday Drive to Church

[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmuller. This is the Sunday drive to church for January 12th, the year of our Lord. 2025. Huh? 2025. Look at that. This is the week after epiphany, which means this is the day that we hear about the baptism of Jesus. Epiphany is one of those feasts with an octave. So a celebration seven days later, January 13, traditionally. But we moved it to Sunday, the baptism of Jesus, where he's manifested. He's. [00:00:28] He's out in the open, his work is made public. And that's really what happens at the baptism of Jesus. He stands there in the Jordan and John baptizes him. And then heaven itself opens and God the Father speaks and announces to the world that this is the one, this is my beloved Son. It's a beautiful text. In fact, I think that the idea. So, first of all, a lot of people don't at first understand the baptism of Jesus. Like John himself didn't Remember how John says, you come to be baptized by me. I need to be baptized by you. In other words, you don't need what I'm giving out. I need what you're giving out. And yet Jesus says, let it be so, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And that's in Matthew. We don't have it in our Gospel lesson today. But here's an interesting parallel conversation. Remember when Jesus was in the temple and he overthrows the temple? This is on Holy Tuesday before the week of the crucifixion. And the Pharisees say, by whose authority do you overthrow? Do you do this? Was that the first or second time Jesus overthrew the temple that they asked him about? I got a hold on. I might be mixing up my overthrowings of the temple. Let me check on. Okay, I got it. Second cleansing of the temple. So I'm looking. For example, in Matthew 21, when he came to the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted him as he was teaching and said, by what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority? Jesus answered and said to them, I'll ask you one thing, which if you tell me, then likewise, I'll tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, where was it from? [00:02:18] From heaven or from men? And they reasoned among themselves, saying, if we say from heaven, he'll say to us, why then do you not believe him? If we say from men, we fear the multitude. All count John as a prophet. So they answered Jesus and said, we don't know. And Jesus said, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Now, this is an interesting little exchange where they say, why do you stand here in the temple and teach? Why do you stand here in the temple and overthrow the tables? Why do you do all these things? And Jesus says, well, before I tell you, I want you to tell me if John, if his baptism was right. [00:02:57] Now, this puts the Pharisees and the scribes in a pickle. Because everybody loved John and considered John a prophet. [00:03:05] They didn't want to speak against John because the people would revolt. John was incredibly popular, but neither do they want to confirm John. Why? Because John baptized Jesus. And here's this. Jesus is not just silencing them, he is in fact answering their question. By what authority do I do these things? Jesus says, I have the office of the Messiah, and I was ordained to do this work by John so that Jesus, baptism is his ordination. [00:03:39] It's when he is put into the office of Messiah before his baptism, He's Jesus of Nazareth. Now he's Jesus Christ. That word Christ is the Greek word for anointed. The Hebrew word is Messiah. He's Jesus Messiah. He's Jesus anointed. That's the way to say it. He's Jesus anointed with the Holy Spirit more than his fellows. Remember Psalm 45, 6, 7. You bore the Spirit more than all your fellows. So that. So that Jesus is the spirit bearer, the one who restores the spirit to humanity. And he's put into this unique office in his baptism. Now, it's one of the strengths of our Lutheran theology that I think that not many other churches or denominations have, is this profound understanding of the office. I remember when I noticed this. I was reading Luther's Greater Galatians Commentary. He's written two Galatians commentaries. So the one that he wrote later in 1530 or whatever, the long one, it's great not only because it's longer, but it's profound. In fact, our Book of Concord just says in a couple of places, if you want to know what we're talking about with justification, you got to read Luther's Greater Galatians Commentary. And it's really something. I mean, it's beautiful, challenging, wonderful. If you're looking for some Luther to read, Galatians commentary is great. In fact, I want a pile of books. I'll do this. [00:05:21] Whoever wants. I want a pile of books at a Higher Things retreat a couple of years ago. And included in that is a edition of Luther's greater Galatians commentary. So I've got it in my set. I've got a couple of copies. So I've got this standalone copy of that commentary. So the first person who asked me for it this morning, I'm going to give it to. So this will tell me who's listening to the Sunday drive to church. That's great. And if anyone else is looking, this is a great place to start into Luther. But at the beginning of that, he starts with a really challenging discussion of the call because he points out how Paul in Galatians begins by saying, he's an apostle, he's put into this office, he's doing these things because God has authorized him to do these things. And if he's not authorized to do it, if he doesn't have the office, he doesn't do it. [00:06:16] So Luther goes on to say that we do not preach without a call. He says, even if I could go and rescue people from error by going to the town next door and by preaching to them, I shouldn't do it because I'm not called by God to do it. [00:06:31] And it's more important to stick with our calling than to go outside of our calling and to do what we think is important and necessary, because our calling is how God orders the world. [00:06:46] This, in fact, is the basis of our Lutheran doctrine of vocation that the Lord calls us, the Spirit calls us to certain places and stations in life, and he puts us there to do his work, to pray and work in love and suffer and serve. And so we're in these various different callings where the Lord has put us. And we want to faithfully do our work there. And this is the office, therefore, of Jesus. He is a son of Mary, adopted son of Joseph, Son of God. He's a neighbor. He's a citizen. [00:07:25] He is, most especially now in his baptism, the Savior of the world. So that Jesus baptism puts him into this unique office of Savior. [00:07:37] Now, that understanding that baptism puts us into an office is the basis of the collect. This, by the way, is all me setting up the collect for today, because I think if we get the collect for today, we. We get the whole deal. [00:07:54] Because the collect that we're going to pray is going to grab ahold of that idea that Jesus is put into an office by his baptism. And it's also going to say that we are put into an office in our baptism. Now, what is the office that Jesus is put into? He's put into the office of the Messiah and the Savior of the world. What Office are you and I put into. [00:08:18] Into the office of being God's children. [00:08:21] This is the office of Christian. This is the saving office. [00:08:27] Now, all of us have various different offices in this life. For example, I'm a son and a grandson and a brother and a husband and a father and a grandfather and a pastor and a neighbor and a citizen and so forth. I have all these different callings. [00:08:50] And here's a kind of profound thing to recognize that as the Lord speaks to me according to all of those callings, he says only law. [00:09:04] So whenever God is talking to me in the Bible as a father, he is only speaking to me in terms of commands, wisdom, and maybe gentle commands sometimes, but it's commands. Here is what is required of you as a father. [00:09:21] Here is what is required of you as a son. Here is what is required of you as a friend and a husband and a neighbor and a pastor. It is all law. And this is true for each and every one of us. All of our vocations. When the Lord is addressing us as workers, as bosses, as friends, as moms, as doctors, as whatever we are, whatever you're calling, you open the Bible to say, what is it saying to me as a lawyer, or as a computer programmer, or as someone who rents an apartment, or someone who's engaged to get married, or whatever. [00:10:07] Whatever station and vocation the Lord has given you, you find only law except for one. [00:10:16] There's one calling and one vocation that the Lord has put us in that brings us the Gospel. [00:10:25] And that calling and vocation is being baptized. [00:10:31] It's our baptism that makes us the children of God. It's our baptism that puts us in God's favor. It's our baptism that forgives us all of our sins. [00:10:47] It's our baptism where God comes to us in kindness and grace and with saving love. [00:10:56] In other words, if I'm reading the Bible and trying to figure out what it means to be a pastor, it's all law. But if I'm reading the Bible trying to figure out what it means to be a Christian, now it's law and gospel, and especially most beautifully, the Gospel, which means, and this is quite wonderful because there's all sorts of different vocations in life. [00:11:18] And we might think that some are more important than others or some are more holy than others, but that's not the case. [00:11:26] The baptized Christian, who has the most secular of all jobs, I don't know, maybe he's like a city council person, is just as forgiven as the baptized Christian who has a vocation in the church, organist or pastor or whatever. In other words, the forgiveness of sins comes to me, Brian Wolfmuller, not because I'm Pastor Wolfmuller, but because I'm baptized. [00:11:55] It's the same forgiveness to every single Christian. [00:12:00] So baptism puts us into the office of forgiveness of sins, of being forgiven, the office of being a Christian. [00:12:11] We are anointed by the Spirit for this saving thing. Now, I don't know if that is spending too many words to say something that's simple, but I'm going to pray the collect of the day. And I think you're going to hear it because it's a prayer to God the Father, that says that in the baptism of Jesus he was proclaimed to be the Son and anointed with the Holy Spirit. And then it's a prayer that all who are baptized in his name would be faithful to our callings as God's children and inheritors with him of everlasting life. So let us pray. [00:12:44] 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. [00:12:54] Make all who are baptized in his name faithful in their calling 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. Amen. [00:13:15] How wonderful is that. And how wonderful that God interact. Baptism calls us his children. The same thing that the Father speaks. Remember, at the baptism of Jesus, we hear the voice of the Father. This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. It's the first of three times that we hear the voice of God the Father in the New Testament. Amazing. At Jesus baptism, at Jesus Transfiguration. And then on Holy Thursday or Wednesday, when Jesus is praying, it must be Thursday or Tuesday in Holy Week. And Jesus says, glorify your name. And he says, God the Father says, I've glorified it, and I will glorify it again. That's it. Those are the three times that we hear the voice of the Father. [00:13:57] Pretty amazing. [00:13:59] And it's always pointing to the Son. You are my beloved Son. Now here's this overwhelming, marvelous truth, is that those same words that the Father speaks to the Son in His baptism, he also speaks to us in our baptism. [00:14:14] So when I was baptized, heaven was opened. Nobody noticed. We see it by faith. And God said, brian, you are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. I said, how could that possibly be true? How could God possibly be pleased with me? A poor miserable sinner. And the answer is because he's pleased with Jesus. And Jesus offers to God a perfect life of obedience to the commandments and submission to his will. And he gives that perfection to me by faith in baptism. So that in baptism I'm joined to Christ. I am. And this is our Epistle. I'm joined to him in death and in resurrection. [00:14:59] In baptism we put on Christ. [00:15:02] In baptism we're adopted into God's family, which is the mystery of being baptized in the name singular of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And behold what manner of love the Father has given us that we should be called the children of God. It's amazing. Such we are that God, who should call us his enemies and his forgotten ones and his cast out, calls us his children, his sons and daughters. [00:15:31] Now this epistle kind of bouncing all over, but maybe just let me give you a few hints of things to look at in the Psalm and Psalm 29 and Isaiah 43, because both of them are going to talk about the great waters. [00:15:45] Psalm 29 and Isaiah 43. [00:15:51] And remember the waters in the Bible. They should remind us of the chaos in the beginning of the world. They should remind us of these boundaries which are foaming. They should remind us of the crossing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan river, which are foreshadowings of baptism. Like Paul says, Israel was baptized into Moses in the Red Sea. And now we're baptized into Christ in the waters of holy baptism. Just we prayed in baptism. You'll hear it when Will's baptized. This morning when we pray this great flood prayer. Lord, you drowned hard hearted Pharaoh in the Red Sea and led your people across on dry ground. Foreshadowing this washing up baptism. We should remember the flood of Noah. Remember the ark becomes a picture of baptism which saves us, says 1 Peter 3. So that the floods which destroy and then bring about new life, so that the floods and the great waters are a death and a resurrection. They're a rescue, they're a passing from one thing to another, so that we are brought through the waters into the new kingdom, into the new promised land of being a Christian. [00:17:05] That's really the sense of the Psalm 29 and Isaiah 43. And then we have this Romans text. [00:17:14] This is the fourth of the four texts that Luther teaches us in the catechism about baptism. Remember, we have the institution of baptism, Matthew 28, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We have the benefit of baptism. Mark 16:16. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. We have the how can water do such great things? And not just water, but the word of God in the water. And that's Titus 3. 5 and following, which talks about the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit by grace that we're given in baptism. And then what does such baptizing signify? And this is where Luther points us to our epistle. Romans 6:1 4. Let me read these verses. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? [00:18:06] By no means. How can we who died to sin live in it? [00:18:10] So that there's death and resurrection in the Christian life? [00:18:14] Your faith is a death and resurrection. Your baptism is a death and resurrection. Just as Jesus is died and raised, so you also are joined to that death and resurrection. That's what it says in verse three. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. [00:18:41] I remember. I think I told you this story. I remember, Cayce, one of my confirmats was having trouble memorizing these verses. And I was there at his kitchen table and I said, okay, Casey, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to imagine that you are being. You're hanging on the cross next to Jesus. And you look over and there Jesus is. And he looks back at you, and you're suffering and you're having trouble breathing. And you see Jesus breathing. Breathe out his last Father, into your hands. I commit my spirit. It's finished. He breathes out his last and he dies. And you do the same. You breathe your last and you die. [00:19:22] And then you look over. Pretend like you can look over when you're dead. You look over and you see Joseph of Arimathea and some of the others. And they're pulling the nails out of Jesus hands. Oh, they're pulling them out of yours, too. And they're lowering his body down to the ground. And, oh, they're doing the same. And then they're carrying Jesus along. They've wrapped him up quickly and they're carrying him along. And they're carrying you beside him. [00:19:47] And they go into the garden and there's the tomb. [00:19:51] And they pass into the tomb, carrying Jesus, and behind him, carrying you. [00:19:59] This is your baptism. [00:20:01] You pass through this watery door into this dark grave. [00:20:08] And there the. Your body in Jesus body is hastily wrapped up and sealed up. And you lay there and they. You hear them kind of say a final prayer and blessing, and they leave. And you hear the stone rolling over the tomb and they're sealing it. And you hear the soldiers talking outside. You look over and Jesus is dead. And you're still dead too. And the next day you look over, and I mean, again, you're amazingly able to look over while you're still dead. But you look over, he's dead, I'm dead. [00:20:46] And then on the third day, still dark, I mean, it's pitch black, but you look over and you see Jesus. And he's looking back at you, and he's kind of smiling and you say, wait, you're alive. [00:21:04] You used to be dead. You're alive. [00:21:06] And he says, indeed. [00:21:09] And look, you're alive too. [00:21:13] And then Jesus says, do you want to get out of here? [00:21:20] Yeah. And so Jesus sits up and he folds his head cloth and he sets it to the side. And you sit up and you say, well, how do. And he walks through the door and you follow him out. [00:21:35] That's your baptism. That's what I'm not. That's what Paul says. Here. It's so beautiful. Can you get. He says, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. [00:21:57] So by your baptism, you are already up out of the grave. [00:22:02] Hallelujah. [00:22:05] And we are not living toward death. This is what all the old existentialists always used to talk about, how we are living toward. We're always headed towards death. We're walking towards the grave. But not you, not me, not the baptized. We're walking out of the grave to. Towards life. [00:22:23] Can you. [00:22:25] Can you imagine that? Oh, if we could. If we could really have faith to believe these promises that we're not dying, we're going from. From grace to grace, from life to life eternal. [00:22:39] And the Lord is drawing us to himself. [00:22:42] And that the death that we now die in the flesh, it's. It's a way to the glory of God in heaven while we wait for the resurrection and these fleshly bodies to come up out of the tomb and live forever in the glory of God. [00:22:59] That's our baptism. Oh, boy. [00:23:03] For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly Be united with him in a resurrection like his. [00:23:12] We know that our old self was crucified with him. [00:23:17] Why? In order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. [00:23:21] So we're no longer enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. If we died with Christ, we believe we'll also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him, and, by the way, over you. [00:23:38] For the death he died. He died to sin once for all the life he lives. He lives for God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You must consider yourself this way. Not alive to sin and dead to God. Dead to sin, alive to God in Christ Jesus, who loves you, who gave himself up for you, who baptized you, who called you into the office of being a forgiven sinner and a beloved child of God. [00:24:16] This is so great. Well, that's what's coming. We are going to sing to Jordan Came the Christ Our Lord. This is Luther's baptismal hymn. Luther wrote a hymn on each of the six Chief Ten Commandments, Creed, Lord's Prayer, baptism, Confession, Absolution, Lord's Supper, and a bunch of others. But this is his baptismal hymn. We'll probably preach about it a little bit about just the story about Jesus coming to be baptized and John baptizing him and heaven's opening and getting this revelation of the Holy Trinity. It's an amazing thing that the most clear texts about the Trinity are baptism texts. Matthew 28, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and then the baptism of Jesus, where Jesus is in the water and God the Father is speaking from heaven and the Holy Spirit is descending in the form of a dove. That's great. [00:25:12] All right. I think that's all that should probably do it for today. A couple of announcements. Let's see how we're doing on time here. We have in two weeks. Oh, whoa. Hopefully you're already at church already in two weeks. We have a couple of amazing things coming up. [00:25:25] Saturday, January 25th, we have our Life Magnified Conference. So we'll have morning prayer, a little Bible study, discussion about some life issues. I'll lead that. [00:25:36] And lunch. Not sandwiches. I was rebuked for saying it was sandwiches last week. It's going to be a hot lunch. Not even hot sandwiches. Hot. Something else. So hot lunch. And then we'll go down to the Capitol and join the march for life. If you can just come from the morning or just come from the afternoon, that's great. But as many people as we can, it's really a wonderful event. And then on Sunday, January 26th, we're going to have a special voters meeting to do some synod, no district politics stuff. So if you like district politics, well, okay, if you are. I don't think anybody likes district if you are interested in district politics. So Texas district stuff, that's a good meeting for you. It's all we're going to deal with. So we won't deal with any church stuff. So if it's not your thing, that's great. I don't think anyone should feel compulsed to come to this voters meeting like we do to other voters meetings which govern our life together as a congregation. But if you're interested in Texas district and synod stuff, this is great. Pastor LeBlanc and I have written, I think, eight or nine little resolutions for us to consider, so we'll talk about those. We have some opportunity to nominate people for various offices, so we'll do that as well. So make plans to join us there. [00:26:53] I hope you're at church. If you're not, drive safe. See you soon. God's peace be with.