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[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church, and Merry Christmas for the last time. It's the 12th day of Christmas today, January 5th, 2025. You're listening to the Sunday Drive to Church podcast. Good morning. We have the joy of continuing to bask in the light of the birth of our Lord Jesus.
[00:00:24] Did we sort this out 20, 26 years ago? So our year plus two, we think that the second, second year before, oh, 22 B.C. is the current date that we think is the best day for the birth of Jesus. That's a kind of. That's a revision, by the way, of the older idea was it was between four and six. But that was because we didn't exactly know when Herod died. Or at least we had a thought when Herod died. But our own Andrew Steinman, a scholar, a Missouri Senate scholar who teaches at one of our Concord, sorted out that there was a copyist error in Josephus that meant that we were dating the death of Herod the Great at the wrong time. And so we could date it later, and everything kind of fell into place. So 2 BC for the birth of Jesus. We're going to fast forward actually to 11 AD for the gospel account that we have today. Boy Jesus in the temple when he's 12 years old. But we're still basking in the light of the Lord's birth. And we have that in the collect, the theme of light is there. The true light of your incarnate Word, that light. And notice how this is a twofold prayer. This collect first thanks God or recognizes that God has poured his light into our hearts. And then the prayer is that that light that's poured into our hearts would shine forth out of our hearts to the whole world. This is a really beautiful prayer, the collect of the day. Let's pray. Almighty God, you have poured into our hearts the true light of your incarnate Word. Grant that this light may shine forth in our lives through the same Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Remember that the form for the collect is very rigid. I mean, there's always exceptions to the rules, but there's these rules that you have in a collect. And one of the rules is that you conclude with that minor doxology that will always indicate to whom you're praying and will also bring in the other two persons of the Holy Trinity. So this prayer, almighty God, that's a prayer to God the Father. So the minor doxology at the end says, you live and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. There's another little rule that says that if the.
[00:03:08] Say you're praying to the Father, if the Son or the Spirit is mentioned in the prayer, then it says you add the words the same to the doxology at the end. So if the prayer, for example, is, dear Heavenly Father, send forth your Holy Spirit. For we ask this through Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, and the same Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. So you add that the same to indicate that the person to whom you are speaking in the doxology at the end was mentioned in the prayer. Well, we notice that in this little prayer through the same Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord. So we have to say, oh, where was the. Was the. Was Jesus mentioned in the prayer? And we realize it was the light that was mentioned there.
[00:03:56] You poured into our hearts the true light of your incarnate Word that's talking of Jesus. And so when it gets to the end, it says, through the same Jesus Christ, even though Jesus wasn't mentioned by name, he was there mentioned by the true light of the incarnate Word.
[00:04:14] That's really marvelous. Okay, now into the Scriptures we have Psalm 119, not the whole thing, verses 97 to 104, First Kings, 3, Ephesians 1, and Luke 2 for our lessons today. Now, the gospel Luke 2 is the one incident that we have from the childhood of Jesus. It starts, and ends, in fact, with these two most mysterious and marvelous verses, starting with Luke, chapter 2, verse 40. The child Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. And then at the end, verse 57, and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man. So this childhood of Jesus is indicating that he's growing, that he's becoming strong, that he's learning, that he's being filled with wisdom.
[00:05:16] It's a.
[00:05:17] It's an amazing thing to think not only of the birthday of God, but of the childhood of God, of the adolescence of God, of the growth of the Son of God in wisdom and stature. It's really amazing. And in between those two notes, we have the account of Jesus in the temple.
[00:05:39] It's a beautiful text in which we hear, for example, the first words. If you have a red letter Bible, these are the first red letters from the lips of our Lord Jesus when he was 12 years old, to his mom, who finds him after looking for three days. And he says, why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house.
[00:06:02] This is where Jesus belongs, there in the temple, there with the word of God. And marvelously, we think the text at first is a fourth commandment text, children obeying their parents and so forth and so on.
[00:06:16] It turns out to be a third commandment text where Jesus is giving his attention to the Word which is speaking of him. You wonder how it was for Jesus to be learning about the prophecies concerning himself, who he was, what he was there to do, why he was there to do it.
[00:06:39] It's really beautiful. Vicar has a wonderful sermon on this for us prepared this morning. I was thinking about this. I probably know more about what' going to be preached when the vicar writes a sermon than when I do, because he has to write it to be approved. So I have to, you know, we were workshopping it yesterday and working on it to get it just right, etc. But when I'm preaching it's a little less defined, maybe a little less written down. Anyway, it's a beautiful text. It'll be really wonderful. Now, the texts that we have to pair with that are really amazing. So first of all, Psalm 119, when you look in your hymnal at Psalm 119, starting with verse 97, you'll see the little header. It says MEM. And then if you look over and you see lamed above verse 89, and down above verse 105, you see nun and then Samech and all this. What's going on there? Well, Psalm 119 is one of the three Torah Psalms or Bible Psalms. And they are the three are Psalm 1, blessed is the man, Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. And Psalm 119, very convenient that the Holy Spirit has. Let us remember one number, 1 19. And in that number we remember all three Torah, or Bible Psalms 1:19 and 119. And Psalm 119 is the greatest of all the Bible psalms. In fact, it's probably the greatest of all the Psalms. The Great Torah Psalm, it has 186 verses, and it's called the Golden Acrostic because there was an old Hebrew custom of acrostic poetry where you would start each verse with one letter from the Hebrew Alphabet. So a lot of the 22 verse Psalms are acrostic poems because there's 22 letters in the Hebrew Alphabet. But this Psalm, Psalm 119, has eight verses for each letter in the Hebrew Alphabet. So the first eight verses all begin with the letter Aleph. The next eight verses all begin with the letter Beth, Gimel, Dalit, etc. Etc. Until you get to verse 97. And all eight verses, 97 to 104 begin with the Hebrew letter Men, which is why it's subtitled Mem. So if you want to know the letters in the Hebrew Alphabet, you can just look at Psalm 119 and look at those little subheadings and you can see the letters that are there. So each of these eight verses begins with the same letter. And each of these eight verses, and this is true for the entirety of Psalm 119, with maybe one or two exceptions, every single verse uses a word to describe the word of God, all the different words that can be used to describe the Scriptures. So for example, and you can notice this, this is a good thing to point out to the kids and pay attention to when we're singing and chanting this. Oh, how I love your law.
[00:09:48] Your commandment makes me wiser. I have more understanding than all my teachers. For your testimonies are my meditation. I keep your precepts, your word, your just decrees, your words, your precepts, so that each verse mentions the word of God, the holy Scriptures. Now I think the reason why we have these particular verses is because of verses 99 and 100, maybe verse 98 too. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it's ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers. For your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. So this reminds us of Jesus who's there in the temple and he's talking and discussing with all of these old wise teachers and rabbis in the temple and Jesus, and they're amazed at how wise Jesus is, this 12 year old boy, how much he knows and why. Well, Psalm 119 tells us because the Lord's testimonies are his delight and his meditation.
[00:11:06] I understand more than the ages. I keep your precepts so that Jesus himself shows us how to delight in the word of God and to rejoice in it. It's really great. I think, by the way, if you're looking for a good New Year's resolution or a good discipline and you're trying to get into more Bible reading and meditation, it's always good to pray before we read the Bible. And one of the ways to do it is just to keep a bookmark in Psalm 119. And you can even just take one verse or two verses or eight verses of Psalm 119 before you read your other texts, your Other Bible passages in the morning or whenever you do it. And it's just a beautiful prayer. For example, Psalm 103, how great is this prayer. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Or verse 104, through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. So the entirety of the psalm is a prayer to God for the blessings of his word. It's Psalm 119, by the way, that Luther discusses how we become theologians. And it's meditation and prayer and suffering. Those three things are the elements that the Lord uses to craft us into theologians.
[00:12:24] Okay, the Old Testament lesson is 1 Kings 3, 4, 15. The famous story of Solomon's great wisdom. So Solomon has become king. Now. So this is. Oh, look at this. It says 560 BC. That's the wrong date. We'll have to make sure we correct that tomorrow. The date for Solomon's kingship is 970. 40 years after David took the throne, which was 1010. So we have all these 40 year reigns. So Solomon becomes sorry, Saul becomes king. 1050, David becomes king. 1010 unites both north and south in 1003 hands. The reigns over to Solomon. 970 Solomon reigns for 40 years, 9, 30, or maybe 931 the way that the new year fell. But 9 39, 31 is when we have the death of Solomon and the division of the kingdoms and then it's not so clean anymore. But 970 is when Solomon becomes king and he goes up to Gibeon to sacrifice. And he's offering this huge sacrifice, a thousand bulls Solomon would bring to sacrifice. Everything with Solomon is over the top.
[00:13:48] And so he goes up there to make this great sacrifice. And the Lord comes to him in a dream and says, what do you want?
[00:13:56] Amazing. Ask what I shall give you. So the Lord comes to Solomon and says, what do you want? I'm going to answer your prayers. And Solomon amazingly prays for. Well, it says here in the text, give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who's able to govern this? Your great people.
[00:14:21] There's a couple of things going on there. One of them is that this distinction between good and evil is a reflection of the garden, but it's in some ways the anti garden. So when Adam and Eve wanted to grasp the knowledge of good and evil, it was so that they could be like God. Here Solomon is praying for a mind to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and Evil for the sake of the people that the Lord has given him to govern so that he can be a good, wise, compassionate king. But the words that are there, that are underneath the English are really interesting. It was Dr. Kleinig, you guys know I've talked about Dr. Kleineig Latzan, Australian theologian and professor and author and friend. He pointed this out to me, that the Hebrew there is not an understanding mind, but if you were to translate it literally, it would be this. Solomon says, give your servant, therefore, a listening heart.
[00:15:27] Isn't that amazing? A listening heart.
[00:15:32] And so. So the Lord is so delighted with this prayer of Solomon that he says, I'm going to give that to you and also everything else, so that not only are you going to be the wisest man ever to live, but you're going to be the most powerful king, the richest, have the most peaceful kingdom, everything in abundance with Solomon. And so the Lord delights to hear that prayer of Solomon, that he would have a listening heart. I think it's just amazing prayer.
[00:16:04] I pray this, and maybe we should all add this to our prayers. That the Lord would give us all listening hearts so that we would be able to discern what's good and evil, what's right and wrong. That we would be able to truly give our attention first to the Lord's word and then to the people around us, and then to combine those two things together in prayer. I think this is probably our whole life that we give attention to the word of God and we give attention to the people that the Lord has given us. Our family, our friends, our neighbors, our roommates, our co workers, our pew neighbors. This is how we should think of each other. The person that's sitting next to you in the pew is your pew neighbor. We listen to our pew neighbors and we combine what we hear there in those conversations with the word of God in prayer.
[00:16:54] So that I ought to, as a husband, be listening to Carrie very, very carefully. So I know the things that are. I have a listening heart, so I know the things that are on her mind. And then I can pray for them. And I should do the same with my children, and I should do the same with you all the members of the congregation, that we should be able to listen to each other and bring those. And truly hear what's going on and then bring those things to God in prayer. We're not.
[00:17:22] Well, let me just. I'm not a particularly good listener. It's something that's so important in, in our Christian life to be good at listening. And it's an art that is hard to come by and we should all be practicing that. And this is, this is this prayer that the Lord loves to hear and answer for. Solomon, give me a hearing heart. It's amazing. It's amazing.
[00:17:45] The Lord hears it and answers it.
[00:17:49] The Epistle. Boy, if this is not enough. The Epistle is Ephesians chapter one. Whenever you see, I mean it's true for all of the epistles because they're just more dense. Remember, the Epistles are like cheesecake. They're just high density theology. Whenever you see Paul there, you know it's going to be super high density. It's almost dehydrated. It's so tight. I mean, every single phrase is packed with theology. It's an amazing thing. And especially, especially in Ephesians and Colossians, and especially, especially, especially in the first chapters, first two chapters of Ephesians and Colossians. It's an amazingly dense theological section. I was reading through it a couple of times just thinking about it and I don't know if there's 20 sermons in this text, but here's my suggestion for you because this is hard when, I mean, just to think of the skills that we need when we come to church and we sit down and we pray and we prepare our hearts to hear the Lord's word. And then here it comes at you, it comes at you fast. And the skills that you need, you have to be able to listen, to listen to story with your imagination, to listen to history with some background knowledge, to sing the psalms. And when you're singing, for example, when we're singing Psalm 119, you have to be able to kind of follow the notes or follow everybody else and also pay attention to what you're saying. This is hard. And then it switches genres. So can you imagine like you're reading a book to the kids and it's a story and then all of a sudden it's a lecture and then all of a sudden it's a poem and then all of a sudden it's something else. It's just changing genres on you too. So you got to be nimble minded to be able to move from one genre to another. So you hear this great story of King Solomon and you're basking in the wisdom and then we're singing the People in darkness set for the gradual hymn. And then all of a sudden we're onto the Epistle whap.
[00:20:03] And it comes at you fast.
[00:20:08] So here's my tip For Ephesians chapter one is look for the US's in the text and then just dial back to the Word. That's right before the us. I'll give you an example. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Now there's two us's there. Us. He blessed us and he chose us.
[00:20:46] So if you look for the US's and you dial back to the Word before it, you're going to be able to see what God is doing.
[00:20:52] It'll underline all the verbs that Paul is giving to God for our sake in love. He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will. Oh, this text is so good. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
[00:21:19] In Him. That beloved, by the way, is Jesus. It's capitalized wonderfully to know, hey, that beloved is Jesus. So that. So that Jesus is here referred to by Paul as the Beloved of the Father. And it's when we are in the Beloved that we ourselves are loved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us.
[00:21:46] Lavished. How often do you hear that word lavish?
[00:21:49] But this is what happened. This is what the Lord does. He lavishes his redemption, his blood, his kindness, his grace, the forgiveness of our trespass. He lavishes it upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose. What's the will of God? What's the purpose of God? To lavish you with forgiveness and mercy which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, in heaven and on earth, in Him.
[00:22:23] If you wanted to track this down another way, you could just look for the in Hims. In him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who are the first to hope in him in Christ might be the praise of glory in Him. You also, when you heard the Word of Truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him. We're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who's the guarantee of our inheritance, until we inquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. Oh my goodness. It's amazing. And here's the basic idea, because it talks about predestination and election and all these things that happened long before us. And then it talks about the glory to come, the.
[00:23:15] The guarantee of our inheritance to the praise of his glory and the salvation that's on the way.
[00:23:22] And so this text stretches all the way back to before creation and all the way forward to the new heaven and the new earth. And it says it's all for you, that you are in the saving gracious mind of God from before there was even time, and you will be with him in glory even after time has rolled up.
[00:23:46] And here we are in the middle of it and we have the Holy Spirit, which is how we know all these great things.
[00:23:52] So he blessed us, he chose us, he predestined us, he blessed us, he lavished upon us.
[00:24:01] So good. So good. The hymn of the day.
[00:24:05] We don't have enough, you know. Again, it's five books. It's 20 sermons. It's a whole lifetime, just those verses. Ephesians 1:3, 14. We could spend our whole lives trying to squeeze all the juice out of that lemon and it would never run dry. It would never run dry.
[00:24:27] Within the Father's house is the hymn of the day, which is a beautiful little hymn. It's a couple hundred years old, maybe 150 years old, that tells the story of Jesus in the temple within the Father's house. The Son has found his home and to his temple, suddenly the Lord of life has come.
[00:24:48] This gives us the visit of Jesus to the temple as the fulfillment of all these Old Testament promises that the Lord will come into his temple. Remember when Moses consecrated the tabernacle and the glory of God filled it? Or when Solomon dedicated the the temple and the glory of God came and filled it. Well now, finally all of those perfectory filling ups of the temple, they were just a matter, they were just prefaces indicating the great arrival of the glory of God in the temple. And here it happens. Well, it happened when Jesus was eight days old and came to be circumcised and when he was 40 days old and they came for the purification of Mary. But, but now also when he's 12 and he comes to visit. And now the Shekinah glory of God is there hidden in this boy who's asking questions of the teachers.
[00:25:48] Lord, visit thou our souls and teach us by Thy grace each dim revealing of thyself with loving awe to trace till we behold thy face and know as we are known, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost co = 3 in 1. That's beautiful prayer that. Here those teachers get to see the face of Jesus. They don't even know what they're seeing, that they're seeing the face of God.
[00:26:13] And one day we will, too. I think of all the sweet names of death, that's my favorite. To see the Lord face to face.
[00:26:20] All right, that's what we have for the service. What a great kind of feast that's laid out before us today. Please don't forget that Tomorrow is Epiphany, January 6th, every year. And we will celebrate that with the divine service at 7pm That's Monday night, 7pm Divine service. And it's just phenomenal. It's one of the most important feasts of the church here. The mark at the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of the Epiphany season, the manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles. So we'll hear the story of the visit of the Wise men. So we kind of zoom forward 12 years and then back 11 years to the visit of the Magi. And we'll talk about that tomorrow afternoon also. And we'll be announcing this in church as well. But we have our annual Life Magnified event. That will be Saturday, January 25th. We'll have prayer and Bible study in the morning, a lunch together, and then we'll head down to the Capitol and join the March for Life. So put that on your calendar, too. We've been a little bit slow getting out the information about it. So that's Saturday, January 25th, for the Life Magnified of it. All right, that should do it. We'll see you in a few minutes. Drive safe. God's peace be with you. That's the Sunday drive to church.