View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's November 9, 2025, the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. We're inching closer and closer to Advent, to the new church here. God be praised. Here's the colic for the day. Let us pray. Living God, your almighty power is made known chiefly in showing mercy and pity.
[00:00:22] Grant us the fullness of your grace to lay hold of your promises and live forever in your presence through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:00:35] Amen.
[00:00:37] Amen. That's a beautiful prayer, by the way. I saw somebody was cutting out the little pictures that we have on the front of the bulletin, using it for some art stuff. I wonder if any of you are cutting out the colics because they're so beautiful and using them as bookmarks or giving them as notes to people. This is a beautiful one. God's power is chiefly made known in showing mercy and pity. This is so this is how when we talk about the Lord, how he is strong to save, that's an amazing thing. He's not strong to destroy, which is normally how we think of strong.
[00:01:11] Strong to obliterate, strong to overcome, but he's strong to save.
[00:01:18] That's like the old story about walking down the street and there's two huge big thug looking guys walking in the alley. Good news or bad news? It depends on if they're your friends.
[00:01:27] And when the Lord comes to us as strong, he comes to us as our friend. This is the good news. Oh, hi. By the way, it's Saturday night. I'm recording that. I was listening to a book on tape today while I was mowing the grass. It made me think of you guys because it was talking about how in the Middle Ages there were no clocks, so people didn't know how long things lasted, like in church.
[00:01:54] Ah, the middle ages.
[00:01:57] Psalm 148. I do not know why it's Psalm 148. Last week we had Psalm 149. Seems like we're moving backwards, but we're still in this beautiful hallel section, this great hallelujah crescendo that is at the end of the book of Psalms. And this Psalm 148 is really like the Doxology. You know, I was thinking about we sing the Doxology at the end of every service at the deaf church.
[00:02:23] And in sign language it's in a little bit different order.
[00:02:26] So praise him, all creatures. Here below is. You're kind of pointing to all the animals. And you're saying, gather up your praises and hand it up to the Lord. And then the next line, you're getting the attention of all the angels. Hey, you heavenly hosts, you all get together and let's praise the Lord as well. That's kind of how Psalm 148 is.
[00:02:46] Praise him, all the heights, praise him all the angels, praise him. Sun and moon, praise you heaven of heavens, Praise the waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord.
[00:02:58] Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures in all the depths. It's like going through all the days of creation and saying, hey, day one, stuff praise the Lord. Day two, stuff praise the Lord. Day five, stuff, you gotta praise the Lord too. Mountains and hills, fruitful trees and all, cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowls, kings of the earth and all the peoples, princes and all the judges, both young men and maidens, old men and children, let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted, who praise the Lord. That's so good.
[00:03:27] Then we're in the Old Testament. I might move a little faster on today's, but. Well, we'll see if I don't get distracted, but I think I'll move fast. We have Isaiah, Exodus, sorry, Exodus 3, 1:15 is our old Testament text. This is Moses conversation with Jesus from the burning bush.
[00:03:49] It's an amazing.
[00:03:51] It's an amazing thing here. Moses is 80 years old. You know, he's like, maybe I qualify for retirement. You know, he's going to talk to Jethro about kind of settling in. He's watching the flocks on the other side of Sinai, which is not, you know, a convenient place to be kind of out in the woods.
[00:04:10] And he sees this bush that's burning but not being consumed. And he goes, and the Lord's there. Jesus is in the bush. It says the angel the Lord, which is a way that the Old Testament will oftentimes identify Jesus. And we know it's not just an angel because he says, I am who I am.
[00:04:26] I was talking about that with Pastor Graff, my pastor, just last week, this Friday, and he was talking about how all the other gods, like BAAL is known. Not on his own, but he's known because of his struggle.
[00:04:45] So, like, if you were to go back and read the BAAL Psalms. Oh, that's a thing. I don't know if you guys.
[00:04:50] I knew that. I didn't know it for a long time. There's Psalms also to baal. I Guess you would think that there's psalms also to all the other false gods. There are psalms to the baal, and they're all about how he dies in the winter and then rises in the summer. And he has to kill these different gods so that he can conquer. And it's this battle, it's this constant back and forth of struggle.
[00:05:13] That's how the false gods are defined, by their struggle with one another. They don't stand on their own.
[00:05:21] But here, the Lord says. When Moses says, who are you? He says, I am who I am.
[00:05:26] I am. And not only that, this is.
[00:05:31] It's so beautiful because God gives us those things which belong to him.
[00:05:39] So, for example, the Holy Spirit isn't just holy in himself, but he also makes us holy.
[00:05:46] The living God isn't just living in himself, he makes us alive. Jesus, which means the Lord saves, isn't just the Savior. He saves us.
[00:05:56] So he gives to us those attributes which are his name. So when the Lord says to Moses, I am who I am, it's this beautiful promise of you who are not. I mean, Moses is nothing. He's just a shepherd out in the sticks. And if he's nothing, all the other Israelites are even less than nothing. They're slaves to the Pharaoh who's driving them into the ground.
[00:06:19] They're not a people. But now their God is the one who is. That means that they will be also.
[00:06:28] So there's a promise implicit in this name. I am who I am.
[00:06:32] Because the Lord is so good, he makes his name happen to us, his people.
[00:06:38] That's the idea.
[00:06:40] This is a beautiful story. It's one of these stories that we gotta make sure that the kids know this calling of Moses from the burning bush. So he goes, and he goes in, and he goes back to Egypt. And then you have the 10 plagues, and then the crossing of the Red Sea. And then they come to Mount Sinai, back to the mountain. In Exodus, chapter 19. So Exodus 3, Moses leaves the mountain. Exodus 19, he's back to the mountain. And this time it's not just the burning bush.
[00:07:05] You think Moses is like, all right, we'll come back here to where the bush is burning. But now the whole mountain is on fire.
[00:07:12] And Moses goes up into that fire. That's where God gives him the Ten Commandments and all this instruction for worship. It's so great. And they're there for a long time. I should. I always forget the number. They arrive at Mount Sinai at Exodus 19, and they're all the way through the end of Exodus, which is 40 chapters, and they're all the way through Leviticus, and they don't leave until halfway through Numbers.
[00:07:40] Let me see.
[00:07:42] Where is that? I gotta. Hold on a minute.
[00:07:47] Numbers, chapter 10, verse 11.
[00:07:49] It came to pass on the 20th day of the second month, the second year. The cloud was taken up from above the Tabernacle of Testimony. So they're there at Mount Sinai for a couple of years, and then the Lord says, boop. Okay, now off we go. Numbers. So Exodus 19, all the way through the end of Exodus, all the way through Leviticus, all the way through Numbers, and it's Numbers.
[00:08:11] Halfway through numbers 10 to the end of numbers is the 40 years in the wilderness. That's not that long. I mean, I should. All right, I got to. Hold on. I'll pause and do some more math here. How about this? Okay, so Genesis is 50 chapters. That covers from the creation of the world until the birth of Moses, well, until the slavery in Egypt. That's thousands of years.
[00:08:33] Exodus 1:18 is kind of the setup. Exodus 19 all the way through the end to chapter 40. That's 21 chapters. All the way through the 27 chapters of Leviticus and through the first 10 and a half chapters of Numbers.
[00:08:49] That's 58.5 chapters for the two years that Israel has camped at Mount Sinai. That's amazing. 50 chapters for the thousands and thousands of years and all those generations at the beginning, 58 chapters, 58 and a half chapters for that time in Mount Sinai, and then the remainder of numbers 10 and a half, all the way to 36. That's 25 and a half chapters. That's the remaining 38 years of wandering in the wilderness.
[00:09:18] So you got 58 chapters at Mount Sinai, and then 25 wandering in the wilderness. And that takes us to the end of Numbers, to Deuteronomy, which is one long sermon from Moses on the edge of the promised land. So the whole of Deuteronomy is Moses repeating the law to the people right before they're about to go into the promised land.
[00:09:37] Now, why does this. Why am I telling you all this? Because I was going to have a quick podcast and not get distracted.
[00:09:44] The Epistle is second. Thessalonians 2:1 8, 13:17.
[00:09:52] This 2 Thessalonians is probably the second book of the New Testament that Paul writes. I think the Thessalonian correspondence is very early. Paul, remember, goes to Thessalonica at the second missionary journey when he skips over Ephesus and Asia, goes straight into Philippi, then down to Berea and Thessalonica and then from there Athens and Corinth. And he's getting news about how things are going in Thessalonica after he was driven out, while he's over there in Corinth. And so he's writing these notes back and forth to them. One of the things that the people were worried about because Paul was teaching them about the second Coming and they were afraid, it seems like there were some teachers in there in their midst that had convinced them that they might have missed the second coming.
[00:10:44] So he says now, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or be alarmed either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us. This is interesting that there was these false epistles flying around already.
[00:11:03] But don't be.
[00:11:06] One of the things that Paul does is he does not disturb the people's faith. He's always pressing them to repentance and faith and establishing their faith anyway. He says, don't be bothered by a word or a spirit or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
[00:11:24] Let no one deceive you in any way, for the day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the Son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself against every so called God or object of worship.
[00:11:39] So he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
[00:11:44] This is Paul talking about the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness who will be revealed.
[00:11:49] And Paul says that he won't be revealed until the one restraining him is taken away. The catacomb.
[00:11:58] He says in verse six, you know what's restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
[00:12:08] Only he who now restrains it will do so until he's out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
[00:12:20] So part of the.
[00:12:22] Part of the purpose of the second coming is to destroy the Antichrist.
[00:12:27] Now notice how Paul says the Antichrist is already here. I was talking to someone not that long ago. They indicated that they didn't think the Antichrist could be possible until 1942. And why is that? And I said, they said that that's when nuclear weapons were available to destroy the world. And it has to be the parallel The Armageddon or the Antichrist.
[00:12:48] To which I said, it's not anti. Armageddon that we're talking about, it's Antichrist.
[00:12:53] And he's already. That spirit of Antichrist is already at work, but won't be revealed fully till the Revealer is gone.
[00:13:01] Now what is that? Until the restrainer is taken away. Now what's the Restrainer? Most people will kind of casually interpret the Restrainer as the Holy Spirit.
[00:13:12] After all, it seems like the kind of thing that the Holy Spirit would want to do, hold back the Antichrist from coming.
[00:13:20] But some old Lutherans as well as some old Anglicans had this idea which I really like, and that is that the restrainer that Paul talks about here is the Roman Empire. The reason why he talks about it in such covert language is because he couldn't just talk about the end of the Roman Empire. That's kind of sedition. That'll really get you in trouble. Although, I mean, Paul was only slightly afraid of that kind. I mean, he wasn't too worried. But the idea is that when the, when the Roman Empire collapsed, it made way for the Antichrist. And the Lutherans have always taught that that Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, is the Pope. In fact, I was looking at Luther did a. He had a notebook that he kind of put down all the chronology of the history of the world. It's a really cool book and they published it. I found some guy translated into English. You can download the PDF, I think I sent it out on the, on the Wednesday whatnot a few weeks ago. It's pretty cool to look at. And he has all of world history leading up to the Reformation, starting from the creation.
[00:14:23] And I think in 518, when Gregory the Great dies, Luther says that was the last real Pope. And at his death is the rise of the Antichrist. The Pope becomes the Antichrist.
[00:14:34] Now it might seem hard to our own ears to hear that Lutheran confession that they've always said Pope's the Antichrist. So I remember one time when I was a baby pastor, I mean, baby, baby, baby pastor. I was probably like a three week old pastor and I was teaching Bible class and someone said, pastor, do you really believe what the Lutherans say, that the Pope is the Antichrist? Oh boy, that's like a bear trap question because it sounds so mean.
[00:15:04] And I said, yeah, I believe it. And everyone looked at me like I was a scoundrel. I said, look, I don't want to talk about it now, let's talk about it next week. So What I did is I went.
[00:15:14] I went into my office and I found all of these old documents from the Vatican that talk about the Pope, like unum sanctum. It was a bull promulgated in what, 1302 or something, where the Pope, Boniface something or other, says it's absolutely necessary for salvation that every human soul be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
[00:15:42] It's an amazing thing.
[00:15:44] The Pope understands that he is the one who holds the keys to heaven and he's the one who gives grace.
[00:15:51] The Pope says that we, for example, we Lutherans don't have the body and blood of Jesus. And the reason we don't have the body and blood is because we don't have the Pope, because we don't have the proper priesthood, because I'm not part of the apostolic continuum. I don't have the indelible character because I wasn't consecrated by a bishop, and all this. So everything goes back to the Pope.
[00:16:12] And that's when Paul says that he exalts himself.
[00:16:17] It says when he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
[00:16:23] That's what the Lutheran says. That's why the Pope is Antichrist, because he stands in the Lord's church, the Lord's temple, and proclaims to be in the place of God.
[00:16:33] Anyway, I printed all that stuff out. I printed out Unum Sanctum, and I printed out a couple other Papal Bulls. I printed out Vatican 1, Vatican II, some other stuff like that. And we read it in Bible class the next week. And afterwards people said, gee, this guy's Antichrist. That's what I was telling you.
[00:16:53] That document, by the way, what the Pope says about himself is on the website, if you're interested in this.
[00:16:58] Here's how Paul continues. We ought always to give thanks to our God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
[00:17:13] To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:17:18] So stand firm hold to the traditions you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus himself and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace. Comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. Amen. May God grant it.
[00:17:39] The gospel lesson, which is what I'll preach on, so I won't say too much.
[00:17:43] Well, I don't know if I'm going to use the gospel Lesson as an occasion for the sermon. I'm going to talk about the resurrection because the sermon is from Luke chapter 10, which, sorry, Luke chapter 20, verses 27 to 40, which is already in Holy Tuesday.
[00:17:59] So remember Holy Week, the last week of the Lord's life, earthly life before his death and resurrection.
[00:18:07] Holy Tuesday was the last day of his public teaching. And this is when they all came to test him. He was teaching in the temple and they brought all their hardest questions to try to get him in trouble. And so the Sadducees come, who don't believe in the resurrection or angels or the prophets. The Sadducees were like the theological liberals. They were like the elca.
[00:18:28] And they come ask him a question. Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother die having no. A wife but no children, the man must take a widow and raise up the offspring to his brother.
[00:18:38] Now, there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, died without children. The second, the third, took her likewise. All seven left no children, all died. Which you just have to think. I mean, I'm thinking if I'm. You're not like brother number five, you know, you've been to four brother funerals. And who, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
[00:19:00] Now they're asking him this not because they want to know the answer, but because they think the situation proves the resurrection absurd.
[00:19:11] So they're not asking with good motives.
[00:19:14] And Jesus is just going to blast him out of the water. I mean, he just.
[00:19:20] Jesus says, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore because they're equal to the angels and are sons of God being sons of the resurrection.
[00:19:39] But that the dead are raised and then Jesus is going to now say, here you really are asking me this because you don't believe in the resurrection. So let me prove the resurrection and listen to how Jesus does it. It's masterful.
[00:19:50] But that the dead are raised.
[00:19:52] Even Moses showed in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He's not the God of the dead, but the living all live to him.
[00:20:04] Some of the scribes answered, teacher, you've spoken well. In other words, we never thought of that. And they no longer dared to ask him any question.
[00:20:13] Now, we need to think about this because we sometimes forget about the resurrection. We think about eternal life, but we're tempted to think about eternal life with just our spirits without our bodies. Like, we leave the body behind and we live forever with a spirit. But that's not what we believe or confess. We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. And what body is raised? Is this body the one you've got? That's the one that's raised, which you say, well, what if I want a new one? Too bad you get this one. Just like the body of Jesus was out of the same buried body is the same raised body. By the power that enables them to.
[00:20:51] To control the universe, all things are called by his marvelous power.
[00:20:58] And so that power is at work on the last day. What will it be like? It's marvelous. And that's what we're going to reflect on, because this doctrine of the resurrection is a beacon that stands out in front of us and lifts us up and calls us forward.
[00:21:15] It's the thing that even the saints that we talked about last week who are in heaven are looking for and longing for. How long? They say.
[00:21:26] So that last day and the day of the resurrection is that culmination of all of the work of redemption that the Lord has done for us.
[00:21:35] It's the last chapter. And how marvelous that for us, the last chapter is the first chapter. But I better stop talking about it because it's the sermon. I don't want to ruin it.
[00:21:47] Going to keep. Oh, Pastor Knuckles is going to be hanging around, so he's going to talk about Veterans Day, and we're going to work hopefully to the end of Chapter Article 12 and the beginning of Article 13 of the Augsburg Confession in Bible class. Hope you'll be able to join us for that. Also, we have our new member class, which is great. That started last Wednesday. It's not too late to jump in, though, so if you're interested in joining us for that, let me or let Pastor Davis know.
[00:22:16] That's great. Big time. All right, Safe driving. See you soon. That's a Sunday Drive to Church podcast.