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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmuller, and this is the Sunday drive to church for February 16, 2025. It's the sixth Sunday after Epiphany. We continue this March through the season of epiphany, getting closer and closer, inching our way towards transfiguration and then Lent coming up pretty soon. March 5th is when we start our season of Lent. So we're getting there. We still are hearing, though, the teaching of Jesus. We're in year three, so we're really leaning readings from Luke. And today we have this very interesting passage, this sermon from Jesus, which is sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain, to contrast it with a Sermon on the Mount, because these two sermons cover a lot of the same material. So we'll talk about that when we get there. But let's start with this collect for the day, our opening prayer. Let us pray. O Lord, graciously hear the prayers of your people. That we who justly suffer the consequence of our sin may be mercifully delivered by your goodness, to the glory of your name, through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:01:13] That collect is like a lot of the prayers of the church. We start by asking the Lord to hear our prayer, and then we ask him for the things that we need. It's really a pattern that we see all throughout the Psalms. It's wonderful. We have two psalms, really today, that we're going to be paying attention to. They are Psalm 1 and Psalm 119. You might hear 119 and say, oh, boy, do we have time for that? We're doing verses 1, 2, 4, and 5. So we have a small little sampling of the 186 verses of Psalm 119. We remember that Psalm 119 is the great Torah Psalm, the golden acrostic, where we have eight verses for each of the 22 Hebrew letters. Beautiful text. And this we're really sitting in there at the first few verses. And it sets the theme for the whole Psalm, which is a prayer that the Lord would keep us in the Word, that the Lord would guide us by the Word, give us the wisdom of the Word, that we would have joy in the Word, be protected from all danger, because we meditate on the Lord's Word, that his word would be our joy, our hope, our peace. The whole Psalm is a meditation on the Lord's Word, just like Psalm 1.
[00:02:24] Psalm 1 will serve as the gradual. It's going to be sung By. I think it's going to be sung by a cantor. It's between the Old Testament and the Epistle. But someone, remember, has this great picture of the two contrasting ways of living. There's the way of living. That's the way of a tree planted by streams of water. The leaves never wither, the fruits in due season. Everything about that tree is prosperous and great. And the other way of living is like the chaff, the little husk that's on the outside of the wheat that's blown away by the wind. So you have the chaff life and you have the tree life, and what's the difference? It's the Lord's word. Listen to how the psalm goes. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, or stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water.
[00:03:28] That's the one who meditates on the Lord's word day and night. That's that kind of tree by the stream life. The wicked are not so.
[00:03:38] Skipping down to verse four. The wicked are not so. They're like the chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked won't stand in the judgment, or sinners in the congregation of the righteous, and so forth. So that Psalm 1 sets forth this tree life or this chaff life, and it says, the tree life comes from daily meditating on the Lord's word. Now keep that in mind when I read you a few verses from Jeremiah. So we're in Jeremiah 17. This is a pivotal place in the preaching of Jeremiah. It's right before 18, which is this great picture of the potter. And the Lord says, I'm going to destroy you, but then if you repent, he won't. Or the Lord says, I'm going to build you up. But if you don't repent, he doesn't.
[00:04:22] And he's going to put forth a curse and a bless. And that's what Psalm 1 did. Blessed is the man who meditates on the Lord's word, not curse. Listen to the to the curse and the bless the blessing of Jeremiah 17. Thus says the Lord. Cursed is the man who trusts in man, makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the from the Lord. He's like a shrub in the desert. He shall dwell in parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. But verse 7. Blessed is the man who Trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He's like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and doesn't fear it when heat comes, its leaves remain green. It's not anxious about the year of doubt, of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit. This is Jeremiah's Psalm 1 sermon. And he says, look, you got these two lives.
[00:05:16] You got the tree life and the. The bush in the parched places of the wilderness life. What's it going to be?
[00:05:26] That idea, by the way. You got two ways. What's it going to be? That's this old wisdom literature. And there's always two paths. It's like the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus does the same thing. Broad is the path, and wide is the gate that leads to destruction. But narrow is the path, straight is the path, and narrow is the gate that leads to life eternal. So you got two. The broad, easy way and the hard, narrow way. And the Lord is setting us on that straight, narrow. Did I say broad? Narrow. The broad, narrow way.
[00:06:04] I think I did. The Lord's putting us on that straight, narrow way that leads to eternal life. The epistle is from 1 Corinthians 15, the first 20 verses. We'll remember this passage as Paul's great tracked on the doctrine of the resurrection. And the whole chapter, it's the longest in Corinthians, and it's all about this theme of the resurrection. And he starts out by saying, that which I received, I gave to you. And that was of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures and that. And that he appeared to cephas and the 12 and more than 500 at one time, and then to James and all the apostles. And last of all, Paul says to me, so that Christ is truly raised from the dead. And this is key, you know, this is. I think we make this point at Easter every year that there's always these surveys that come out that say, if they found the body of Jesus, would you still be a Christian? And everybody says, oh, yes, yes. Paul's answer is no. No, this is a real thing, a real historical truth. The resurrection of Jesus and everything hinges on it. If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, he says, how can you say there's no resurrection? If there's no resurrection, Christ isn't raised. And if Christ isn't raised, our preaching is in vain. Your faith is in vain, and we're found to be Misrepresenting God, because we said that he raised Christ from the dead, who he didn't raise. If it's true that the dead are not raised, if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you're still in your sins.
[00:07:45] Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If. Here's a summary. Paul's fighting against this idea that there is no resurrection, which is the Greek idea, the Gnostic idea, the spiritualist idea, that there is no resurrection, that eternal life is spiritual or whatever. No, it can't be, because God raised Christ from the dead. And he says if in this life only we've hoped in Christ were of all people, the most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of all those who have fallen asleep. That firstfruits is a beautiful picture because especially in the ancient world, but it's still true. Now, if a farmer throws the seed out onto the ground, he's waiting to see if that first fruit, that first seed is going to sprout. And then he knows that the seed is good, that he didn't buy bad seed, and so he knows that he's going to have a harvest that's there. So Christ is the first fruits. He's proof of what God will do to all humanity on the last day, raise us all from the dead. Now, this truthfulness, this historical reality of the resurrection of the dead, means that Christianity is not some sort of mythology or abstract philosophy or something like that. No, it is first historical.
[00:09:07] The claims of Christianity, before they're theological, are historical. In fact, the Bible itself, before it gives us a theology, gives us a history. It says these things happened so that we confess the reality of the resurrection. That's the classic Easter greeting. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. That indeed means in reality, in truth, in history. There was a grave that had a body of Jesus in it, and it no longer does because that body was raised from the dead. Hallelujah. So that's the teaching here of the necessity of the resurrection of Jesus. And it's an interesting thing that there's all sorts of different apologetic tracts that different teachers and theologians and even church bodies have kind of taken at one time or another. Thomas Aquinas was arguing the five proofs of the existence of God, and the Reformed like to have this kind of negative, presuppositionalist, apologetic. But in modern times, the Lutherans have really latched onto this idea of the argument of the resurrection, the historicity of the claims of the resurrection. And a lot of this, I think, goes back to James Warwick Montgomery. He died recently.
[00:10:28] He argued this thoroughly that, that you can basically make a legal case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. And all of our claims, truth claims about who Jesus is and what he's accomplished, even for us, really rest on this. Now, I think they probably go too far in that they exclude the other forms of apologetic argument. I mean, I think it's fine to argue for the existence of God from philosophy and the cosmological argument and all these other things, but they make this point that, that this is a historic truth claim that we're making when we claim to be Christians, that Christ is raised from the dead. Beautiful. Then we turn to Luke 6, 1726. It starts out, the introduction, with Jesus healing. He's doing a lot of healing. And really his sermons are surrounded on both sides by healings, or maybe his healings are punctuated by sermons. So he lifts up his eyes on his disciples and he says, and he's going to remember in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to give eight or nine blessings. Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of God. In this sermon, he's going to give a set of four blessings and then four woes. And those are going to correspond to each other. Blessed are you who are poor. Yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
[00:11:59] Blessed are you when people hate you. Listen to this one. This is the final one.
[00:12:06] People exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of man. Listen to how over the top Jesus says our reaction should be. Rejoice in that day. Leap for joy, because your reward is great in heaven. So their fathers did to the prophets. Leap for joy.
[00:12:24] I can try to remember the last time I leapt for joy. So you have these four blessings. Blessing of the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated. And then listen to the woes. Woe to you who are rich, for you've received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh, for you shall mourn. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
[00:12:53] So if you just had this kind of lined up on your decision making chart where you said the pluses and the minuses and you said, okay, poor hungry Weeping, hated on one side and rich laughing, spoken well of full on the other. It'd be pretty easy to choose that rich, full laughing, spoken well of side. But Jesus says, no, no, don't. That's the woe side the blessing comes from.
[00:13:23] Well, the blessing comes from faith in God. And all these other things are added to us by God so we're not out there striving after our own riches or food or joy or to be liked by people.
[00:13:42] That is not why we are given this life to chase after these things. We're given this life to seek first the kingdom and let the Lord himself add all these things to us.
[00:13:53] That's the idea. It's pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. And it shows how the kingdom of God really turns everything upside down.
[00:14:02] The hymn is a Christopher Wordsworth hymn. Pastor Davis told me that we have two Christopher Wordsworth HSymn I'm going to confirm that. Confirmed. Look at that. The opening hymn, Alleluia. Alleluia. Hearts to heaven. Christopher Wordsworth, 1807-1885. And then the hymn of the day, Songs of Thankfulness and Praise. Christopher Wordsworth. Christopher Wordsworth was the nephew of William Wordsworth. Is that William the famous poet? William Wordsworth. In fact, Christopher was. He was by his own right, a very successful scholar and theologian and churchman. In fact, Christopher Wordsworth was also something of a poet. And I believe William Wordsworth made Christopher the sort of executor of his will. Hey, you're my nephew. But I want you to make sure that all my poems keep getting published. Christopher Wordsworth, though, was really a scholar in his own right. He was bishop of the Church of England in some way or some other. And he was writing. I found some years ago, I was looking for old Bible commentaries and I found Christopher Wordsworth's Bible commentary on the Greek New Testament. And I use that all the time. In fact, I have a copy. I republished them because nobody publishes them anymore. So you can find them on. You can download them for free on my website. And I just was looking at his comments on the gospel lesson from Luke 6 to get his thoughts. No, he's actually not that helpful there. But Christopher Wordsworth, again, was a scholarship scholar in his own right. I believe he has a commentary on the whole Old Testament as well. And he wrote a number of hymns, including this one, Songs of Thankfulness and Praise. And this is basically a hymn that goes through all of the readings of epiphany.
[00:15:55] Songs of Thankfulness and Praise Jesus Lord to Thee we raise Manifested by the Star to the sages from afar, Branch of royal David's stem and thy birth at Bethlehem Anthems be to thee addressed God and man made manifest. That's the idea of epiphany, God in man manifest. And so the first story is the visit of the magi then manifest at Jordan's stream that's the baptism of Jesus and at Cana's wedding guest, that's the Sunday after epiphany. The traditional Gospel lesson is the turning the water into wine manifest in power divine, changing water into wine. Anthems be to the addressed God and man made manifest Manifest in making whole palsied limbs and fainting soul manifest in valiant fight, quelling all the devil's might manifest and gracious will ever bringing good from ill. This is the Lord's work of healing son. And then here's talking about the last day when he'll be manifest in glory. Sun and moon shall darken to be stars shall fall, the heavens flee Christ will then like lightning shine. All will see his glorious sign all will then the trumpet hear, all will see the judge appear Thou by all wilt be confessed God and man made manifest. That's the manifestation of the Lord's glory on the last day. And then this prayer to end the hymn is a really beautiful hymn. Grant us grace to see thee, Lord, present in thy holy word Grace to imitate thee now and be pure as pure art thou, that we might become like thee, thy great epiphany and may praise thee ever blessed God and man made manifestations. Christopher Wordsworth that's a beautiful hymn. And we have a handful of others include I Come O Savior to thy table, etc. Etc. So God be praised for the text and the wisdom and the joy and the glory that the Lord has for us today. I got a little time, so let's see what announcements we got. If you would like to keep Pastor LeBlanc and his family in your prayers, he'll be with his family praying for his grandson Owen, that he will be healed and his life will be delivered. He's in pretty critical state, so that's there. You'll notice a number of things in the bulletin coming up. We're going to have in Sunday school our last of our fourth Sundays on prayer listening to Jesus pray. So you can join us for that. But we've got the Concordia Wind Symphony concert coming up. We've got the Men's Retreat coming up. We've got the Youth for Life retreat coming up. We have the In His Image Conference that's down In San Antonio March 28th and 29th, the Doxology Conference down there, Fine Art Academy. And then we also announced here in the bulletin that Carrie and I are going to host a river cruise not this summer but next summer 2026. So that is open now and you're welcome to join us. The information is on the website.
[00:18:45] We'd love to have you guys come for that. I'm going to be this week Monday morning traveling up to Michigan for doxology conference. So if you think of it say a prayer for me too that I'll be able to minister to the pastors that are gathering for that conference and serve them well. Also be back on Facebook on Friday. So I'll miss the know I'll go up to Michigan so I miss all the freezing cold weather. So God be praised for that and have a safe drive there to church. Don't hit any of the marathoners. We'll see you soon. God's peace be with.
