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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. Pastor Wolfmuller here. You're driving to church on Sunday, December 8, year of our Lord 2024, for the second Sunday in Advent, which is marvelous. It's the Sunday which we are really introduced to the whole theme of Advent, which is the character John the Baptist. John the Baptist and Advent are synonymous. So we have, especially historically, all these John the Baptist prophecies from Isaiah 40 and John the Baptist texts which come into Advent season.
[00:00:32] And even the proper preface. Remember, the proper preface is that prayer that changes for the season. As far as I can tell, it's the only thing that changes seasonally. Well, you know what? I'll take that back. We change the gradual also seasonally. So there's two parts of the service that will sit around for a whole season, and the proper preface is one of them. That prayer that goes right before the Sanctus, the Lord's Prayer, the words of institution, with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven. That's the preface for that divine service liturgy.
[00:01:11] And it changes by season. That's why it's called a proper. Remember, there's two kind of building blocks of the service. There's the ordinaries, which are the same every week. They're ordinary. And in that you have like the Creed and the Kyrie and the Gloria and the Sanctus and the Agnus DEI and the Nunc Dominus and the invocation and the benediction. They don't change. They're the same. They're ordinary. And then you have the propers, those things which rotate and change. And that would be like the readings and the hymns and the prayers and the proper preface. It's interesting to note that the two parts of the service, the first part of the service is the service of the word, from the opening psalm to the prayer of the Church. The second part of the service is the service of the blood or the service of the sacrament, prayer of the Church to the benediction at the end. And the first part of the service, the service of the Word, is really proper, heavy. Almost everything's changing. There's just like the invocation and the Kyrie and Gloria and the Creed. Those stay the same. But just about everything else at the beginning of the service changes at the end of the service. Once you get to the prayer of the church, almost everything is exactly identical. There's only one thing that changes, and that's the proper preface. And it only changes seasonally. So we have a preface that's for the whole season of Advent, and a preface for the whole season of Christmas and a preface for the whole season of epiphany. And so we have a seasonal. So it's even. It's almost like half proper, because it doesn't change week to week. It changed season to season. And as far as I know, that's the only real kind of liturgical thing that changes by season, that changes with the colors of the church. We do it with the gradual, but that's kind of our own local way that we have the convention for the gradual. We keep a seasonal gradual and we have a seasonal proper preface. Everything else is.
[00:03:15] Is.
[00:03:16] It stays the same. In fact, that's why I'm just looking at the bulletin. We, you know, we have. Do you know that we have these extra large pages? So we use 18 by 12 inch pages to get the bulletin, right? And so you got 12 inches on the left hand column and about 10 inches on the right hand column. And that gets you to the sermon. And then you've got about three inches, two and a half inches for the whole rest of the service. And that's because that just. It doesn't hardly ever change. It just stays the same. All that liturgy stays the same. Anyway, the proper preface of Advent talks about whose way John the Baptist foretold proclaiming him to be the Messiah. And that gives us this sense that John the Baptist is the character of Advent. And that makes sense for us too, because Advent is this time of preparation for Christmas. And that's what John came to do, to prepare the way for Jesus. In fact, we have the hymn, the hymn of the day on Jordan's banks. The Baptist cried, announcing that the Lord is nigh. We have the Old Testament lesson from Malachi, chapter three, so very last part of the Old Testament, which is already fantastic. Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple. And the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, Behold, he's coming, says the Lord of hosts.
[00:04:45] So this is the season of preparation for the coming of the Lord. John the Baptist was preparing the way for Jesus, and he still comes, and he preaches and prepares the way for us to repent and receive the Lord. So we got John the Baptist Week this week, and we see a kind of amazing picture painting of John preaching on the front cover. We have the colic for the. Remember I said last week that the colics of Advent are really unique. There's three stirrup colics and there's three colics to the Lord Jesus, but they don't overlap. So this Advent 2 prayer collect is the second of the three stirrup colics. But this is the one collect in Advent that's not addressed to the Lord Jesus. It says, stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of your only begotten Son.
[00:05:39] So this is a prayer that's addressed to God the Father, and we're asking him to stir up our hearts. Can you imagine that picture? Like, you know, something's been cooking on the stove and it's starting to get ready to stick to the bottom. And so you got to go and you got to stir it up. This is. We're asking God the Father to stir up our hearts so that they're ready for Jesus to come to us. We'll pray. Let's pray. Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of your only begotten Son, that by his coming we may be enabled to serve you with pure minds through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:06:24] All right. Our psalm is the first part of Psalm 66. It's Psalm 66, verses 1 to 12.
[00:06:32] It is a great psalm of deliverance. In fact, it's one of these psalms that reminds the Lord of his great works in the past. So many of the psalms will do that. They'll reach back into the history of the Lord's working and say, lord, remember how you did this. So it says, come and see what God has done. He's awesome in his deeds towards the children of man. Verse 6. He turned the sea into dry land. They passed through the river on foot. I think the reason why this psalm is included on this Sunday is probably the parallel between verse 6 of Psalm 66 and the Old Testament lesson. Let me read you Psalm 66:10. For you, O God, have tested us. You have tried us as silver is tried. And then let me read you the verse from Malachi, chapter three, verse two. Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like refiner's fire and like fuller's soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. So I think those two parallel passages, picking up this idea that the preaching of God's law, this preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins which John is going to bring, is like. It's like a Fire, but it's a fire that doesn't destroy. It's a fire that refines. And it's a really captivating image, isn't it? Because normally when we think about fire, like when the prophets are preaching fire, like Amos and Joel, and the Lord is going to set Moab on fire, and the Lord is going to set Ammon on fire, and the Lord's going to set Israel on fire. And behold, our God is a consuming fire. This is this destructive preaching of God's anger and wrath towards sin. But here, Malachi and the Psalmist 66 says, It's a refining fire.
[00:08:39] So you gather up the metal and you put all the metal in the crucible, and then you heat it up. And when the gold and the silver gets hot enough, it becomes liquid. And all of the dross, all of the impure things, all of the things that are not as heavy as the precious metal, the silver and the gold, it floats to the top and you scrape it off and it purifies the gold. This is why you go from 12 karat gold, which is 50% gold, to 24 karat gold, that's 100% gold. Or you get to sterling silver, 2.95, 92.5% silver. And all the other metals are there so that you're purifying the metal with the heat. And so the preaching of God's wrath is for us who are brought to repentance by the Holy Spirit, something that refines us. I think the last two verses of Psalm 66 are pretty amazing, too. For you, O God, have tested us. You've tried us as silver has tried. You've brought us into the net.
[00:09:45] You've laid a crushing burden on our backs. You let men ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water.
[00:09:54] Yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance, who we better not let Jonathan stop us early. We got to get all the way through verse 12 on that. You've brought us out to a place of abundance. And so this is always the. These prayers are looking for the Lord's deliverance. There's one, maybe we talked about Malachi already. The refiner's fire. It's the promise of John the Baptist, who is, I think, the most promised Old Testament character. Sorry, New Testament character promised in the Old Testament, aside from Jesus. I saw an interesting message from a friend of mine, a pastor in Colorado, and he said, what New Testament characters were prophesied in the Old Testament?
[00:10:37] And that's a really interesting question. And we can answer a few Already Jesus, for one, and John the Baptist, Isaiah 40, Malachi 3, Malachi 4.
[00:10:51] Maybe even he's prophesied in a couple of places in Isaiah. Maybe you can even get a Jeremiah, a passage that quotes to John the Baptist. I think that seems to be remembered. But this would be a good question as you're driving along. Who else was promised in the Old Testament that shows up in the New Testament? In fact, here's a game. If you're driving with your family or you want to think, you could pause it here and guess a few, and I'll tell you the ones that I thought of when you come back and see if you got more than me. And then you can tell me. So you can pause now. Okay, now you're back.
[00:11:26] So here's one. The Virgin Mary. He will be born of a virgin.
[00:11:32] So Mary's promised also the children who were slaughtered. A cry went up from Ramah, so the slaughter of the innocents, they're promised.
[00:11:43] The betrayer is promised he'll be betrayed with a kiss.
[00:11:47] The woe to the one who betrays him. The betrayer, friend, is prophesied also in the Old Testament, in a way. The animals that Jesus rides in Jerusalem are promised.
[00:12:01] But you'll see him comes to you lowly, riding on a donkey. We had that last week. I think also we Christians are promised in the Old Testament, he will declare you to his children so that he'll have brothers and sisters and children and friends. That's the family of God. That's accomplished by Jesus.
[00:12:22] I was trying to think if we could pinpoint a prophecy of Pontius Pilate. I don't know if we can or not. I couldn't think of one. But if you can think of some others, you can let me know one more thing from the Old Testament, and that's this verse six, the second to last verse. For I, the Lord, do not change.
[00:12:44] Therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
[00:12:49] This is the doctrine of the immutability of God, that God is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, that he does not essentially change. Although we have passages. We're talking. Vicar and I were talking about this a lot this week. We have passages in the Scripture that talks about the repentance of God.
[00:13:07] So how do we understand them both? Well, probably one of the things that we would say is the Lord doesn't change. That's our comfort and our hope, because he's always ready to forgive. And so part of his unchanging nature is that he is love and he is merciful and long suffering.
[00:13:26] And he will always be merciful and long suffering. So the unchanging essence of God is our comfort. The Epistle lesson this week and next week is Philippians. It's absolutely beautiful. We get Philippians 1 this week and we get Philippians 4 next week.
[00:13:43] So you have to read all of Philippians.
[00:13:46] It's worth it to sit down and read Philippians a few times these weeks and just let the text wash over you. Here at the very beginning of Philippians, Paul's talking about his thankfulness for the Philippians. Remember, the Philippians were the church established in Paul's second missionary journey. Paul wanted so bad to go to Ephesus, but the Holy Spirit kept stopping him. And so instead of going over to Ephesus, he ends up going up to Troas and then across the sea and lands in Europe at Neapolis and goes up to Philippi, which is in Macedonia, so northern Greece, but it's a Roman city. And he. He goes there and finds Lydia, the seller of purple, and he starts preaching and he's arrested. I remember there was two households that were baptized in Philippi that first visit. The house of Lydia and the house of the jailer who was about to fall on his own sword. But because he sees the gate of the door of the gate open, but Paul and Silas are still there and singing, and he's don't save yourself.
[00:14:48] So he's writing to them probably. This is probably 25 years later, after the church was started, and Paul's in prison in Rome, and he's writing them this letter of great joy. I thank my God in all remembrance of you always, in every prayer of mine, for all, for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day till now. So Paul's thanking them for the support that they sent to him in Rome, in prison. And there's all this deep affection that Paul has with the Philippians. I hold you in my heart, he says. I yearn for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.
[00:15:28] So Paul has this profound love for all of the Christians in Philippi, and he wants them to rejoice with him. It seems like they're so sad that Paul's in prison and so many bad things are happening. And remember when Paul was in Philippi, the first time the Lord broke him out, at least broke the door open. This time the Lord's keeping him in prison. And that's become something of a controversy. And he says, don't worry. Rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord. Always again I say, rejoice. That's next week for the pink Sunday when we have all this joy and he has this confidence. This is the chief verse of this text. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It's right for me to feel this way about you. Beautiful. Now, of Paul's 13 letters, he begins 11 of them this from memory, so you can check me out on this, but I think this is right. He begins 11 of these letters by reporting his thankfulness and oh, that the Lord would give us his Holy Spirit so that we would do the same thing. In other words, if the 11 out of 13 times that we open our mouths, we. We start with thanksgiving and these letters start with that. Thanks. And he thanks God not just for their friendship and their kindness and things like this, he gives thanks for some really profound things. It's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Now, let me. I'll tell you something.
[00:17:21] You know, we're studying Hebrews in bible class, Hebrews 13. And when we finished that, someone requested a few months ago that we studied prayer. And I've been thinking about that for a few weeks. And I'll confess that I was getting kind of nervous that I'm so behind because there's a lot to talk about with prayer.
[00:17:38] And I just wanted to spend a few weeks doing it. And I wanted to kind of have a curriculum for you guys, but I didn't know what to do. Well, I got up yesterday and was working on it. Let's see, two days ago, Friday, this Friday morning, I was working on it, and bam, it came to me that we're going to study. This is what I want to do. I want to study the prayers that the Bible shows us, and I want to look carefully at them to see the things that they are praying for that we normally don't pray for.
[00:18:09] So I want the prayers of the Scriptures to expand our prayers, to fill out our prayers, to stretch our prayers. So we're going to spend four weeks studying expanded prayer. And one of the assignments I'm going to have for you all is to read prayers like this from Philippians chapter one and say, what is Paul praying for? In fact, we'll have one week looking at the Lord's Prayer, one Week praying with King David, looking at the Psalms, one week praying with Paul, looking at seven of Paul's prayers, and one week praying with Jesus, looking at seven of the prayers of Jesus that are recorded in the Gospels and asking the question, for example, what is Jesus asking for? What is Paul asking for? What is King David asking for? What is Jesus teaching us to ask for? And how can we ask for those things for ourselves and for our neighbors, for our family, for other people, for people in the church, etc. So we want to spend the time letting these prayers in the Bible stretch us out. And that's exactly what this does. I mean, look at what Paul. This is cheating for your homework, but look at what Paul says here. I pray that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment. So I want you to love more and more, but I want your love to be confined and overflowing with knowledge and discernment so that you're pure and blameless, because love can kind of get out of bounds or overflow discernment. And so we want to have love and discernment together.
[00:19:36] And so this is what Paul's praying for. And this is a great prayer for us to add to our own prayers. You all can pray for me, by the way. I hope you do all the time.
[00:19:45] And for Pastor LeBlanc, Pastor Davis, for the vicar, for Jonathan, for all the people serving you at church, you can pray, Lord, make their love to abound in knowledge and discernment. Oh boy, would I appreciate that prayer. It's great. And we can pray that for ourselves. We could pray that for each other.
[00:20:07] Fantastic. It's by the way, me looking at this, thinking this is teaching me how to pray for you all so that I can say I thank my God in all my remembrance of you always in every prayer of mine. Making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now. And I'm sure that he who began a good work will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ. And then this is the pastor's prayer. It's right for me to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace.
[00:20:40] Wow. Fantastic. Okay, which brings us to the Gospel lesson, Luke chapter three. So we're going to be bouncing around Luke well for the whole year. We're now in year C of our three year series. So we're going to spend a lot of time in Luke between now and next November. We're going to be bouncing around in Advent. So we had triumphal entry in Luke, and now we're in Luke 3. And next week we'll be in Luke 7, the imprisonment of John. And then the week after that we'll be in Luke 1, the visit of Mary to Elizabeth, right on the cusp of Christmas. So starting to bounce around Luke and checking out some of these John passages in Luke. And this is the Luke 3, verses 1 to 20 is really the summary of the ministry of John the Baptist.
[00:21:20] The word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. Here's this character, and he went into all the region around Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
[00:21:32] I don't know if this is the way it is in your imagination, but when I imagine Jesus going to be baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus in my mind is like 23 years old, even though he was 30. And John in my mind is like 50, 60, 70 years old, gray hair, old. John was also 30, 30 and six months. He was only six months older than Jesus. And so they're the same age. They're cousins, they're close to one another. They probably would have known each other growing up. There's all this great artwork that shows John and Jesus as young boys playing together. Who knows if it happened, but probably. But John was 30 and he's preaching this vigorous sermon of repentance. He's the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Isaiah 40, quoted here, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley is filled, every mountain and hills made low. That's the preaching of law and gospel. The prideful mountains cast down and the despairing valleys lifted up. All flesh shall see the salvation of God. And then here's John's preaching. This is just a summary of it. But can you imagine, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Well, we'd say, john, you're the one doing it. But listen to this, blasting away with a hammer of God's law. Bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and don't say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. In other words, stop boasting of your blood, stop boasting of your heritage. Stop boasting of Abraham and Jerusalem.
[00:23:03] It is by faith that we're saved. You need repentance and forgiveness. Even now, he says, verse 9. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.
[00:23:12] Every tree that doesn't bear good fruit, is cut down and thrown into the fire. What shall we do? He says. He says, if you have two tunics, share it. If you have food, share it. The tax collectors come, what should we do? The soldiers come, what should we do? And he gives them this instruction.
[00:23:27] And the people were there listening to John, thinking, what's going on? Is this the one? So they were asking, this is the question that comes up. Verse 15.
[00:23:36] Are you the Christian? And here John says, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming. The strap of whose sandal I'm not worthy to untie. He'll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. That's Jesus. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear the threshing floor, to gather the wheat into the barn, and the chaff he'll burn with unquenchable fire. In other words, John says, I am not the Messiah. I am not the Christ. I'm not the promised One.
[00:24:02] I'm not even the one crying in the wilderness. I'm just the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness.
[00:24:08] I have this humble office of preparation because the Messiah is on the way with so many other exhortations. He preached the gospel, the good news to the people, but he here. And this happens later on. This happens in fact, probably a year and a half down the road. But Luke kind of gives us a little fast forward. Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them, that he locked up John in prison and later beheaded him. The story that we'll head here next week.
[00:24:42] So there's John the Baptist preaching, prepare the royal highway, the Lord is on the way. I don't want to say too much more about it because then I'll repeat myself in the sermon.
[00:24:53] So I'm trying not to do that. The hymn of the day is this great. On Jordan's bank. You remember On Jordan's banks the Baptist cry, announcing that the Lord is nigh. We're going to try to sing it. I'm looking at the instructions in the bulletin here with a raised eyebrow and also a sense of excitement. We're going to try to sing it as a round stanza. Two women start, men start, one measure later we'll see how that goes. That'll be pretty cool.
[00:25:21] And look at these hymns. Comfort, comfort, my people. Prepare a royal highway Herald, sound the note of judgment Oof. When all the world was cursed? Arise, O Christian people? Hark the glad sound? The Savior comes. And we'll start with the advent of our King.
[00:25:37] So beautiful. Beautiful service. Ready to go. We're going to. We got the church already decked in blue. The Christmas trees with the. With the. With the white lights or the blue colored lights. And the second Advent candle all ready to go tomorrow, so. Can't wait for it. We'll see you. Hopefully you're driving safe. And we'll see you very soon. God's peace be with.