View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's a Sunday drive to church for February 9, the year of our Lord 2025, the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, which is a lot of Sundays after epiphany. I hope you excuse me. I'm recovering from a little cold this week, which is no bueno for me, but I think it is to your advantage because it gives me a nice radio voice. Hey, all you out there in radio land, welcome to the Sunday drive to church. This is a. It's a funny thing. Well, funny, but maybe a couple churchier things before we dig into the text.
[00:00:34] It's unique that epiphany is so long, the season of epiphany. And the reason is because Easter is so late. I was just looking this up that the earliest that Easter can be is March 22nd. Don't take this to the bank. This is just a quick search, but I think the earliest Easter can be is March 22nd. The latest Easter can be is April 25th. And this year we're April 20th. So I'm looking here in my old chart. I think the only time April was Easter was later. It was on April 23rd in the year 2000, April 22nd in 1884. But this is a pretty late Easter. And remember, because the church here is built around two major feasts. We have the incarnation celebration at December 25, Christmas and Advent leading up to it, and Christmas following. And then we have Holy Weekend, Easter, the resurrection in the spring, and December, the December feast. The Christmas is fixed on the calendar. It's always December 25th. But Easter moves because it's based on the lunar calendar. And how to figure out the date of Easter, I'll never know. You can sort it out by. It's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. But that's not actually how it's determined. That's just how you can figure it out. So you take the vernal equinox and then the next day could be a full moon. And then the next day could be a Sunday. That's the earliest it could be.
[00:02:01] Or you take the vernal equinox if it's on a full moon, then you got to wait a whole month for the full moon and say that full moon falls on a Sunday. Then you got to wait till the next Sunday. That's as late as it could be. And so you have this 2036 day time that Easter could fall. And what that means is you need two seasons in the church year that can stretch, can grow and shrink to accommodate for the way that Easter changes. So those two seasons are epiphany and what we used to call Trinity season. Now we call Pentecost season, the summer season. So they can get longer or shorter depending on when Easter is. And because Easter is so late, we have a long epiphany. So we're into some. Sunday is an epiphany that you rarely will see. And even more than that, remember, in the old, historic one year lectionary, there was a season before Lent. It was called pre Lent, the gezima Sundays, septuages and sexagesima and quinque gessima. The weeks were the 70th and 60th and 50th day before Lent fell. And there was a great little season to think about grace alone and Scripture alone, and faith alone. And so you had this kind of little ramp into Lent. The three year lectionary doesn't have it. We just go through epiphany. We climb up the mountain on the last Sunday of epiphany for the transfiguration and then wham, we're into the temptation on the next Sunday. In fact, before that at Ash Wednesday, we're talking about the repentance of Lent. So in the three year, you just go straight from the glory of epiphany boom, into the fasting of.
[00:03:44] Of Lent. But we're now. And so what's happening now is because we have such a long epiphany season, because Easter is so late, we're getting to some Sundays that we wouldn't normally get to. So it's not 100% clear if these texts have been read in the church in quite a while.
[00:04:00] So that's an interesting thing to think about. And it feels to me I'd be interested in your thoughts just looking at the texts that we have today. The calling of the disciples, the calling of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 6, that glorious passage, the speaking in tongues from 1 Corinthians 14 for the epistle.
[00:04:21] It really feels to me like a Sunday in the summer. In fact, maybe if I could complain a little bit, the Sundays in the summer used to be called ordinary time.
[00:04:38] Sundays after Trinity, Sunday in the old historic one year lectionary, Summer was kind of ordinary time. And it was a time to think about what it meant to be our Christian lives, what it meant to be a church body, what it meant to be a Christian. There weren't that many feasts that fell during the summer. It wasn't a festive time. It was just Kind of normal, ordinary time. And then when you got into November and you started with the feast even in September, when you started with St. Michael's and then you had St. Andrews and you started Advent and then you were in the, in the festive half of the church year from Advent all the way through Pentecost. So you had ordinary time, which is kind of, it was more peaceful. And then you had the feasting half of the church year. Well, I think that when the three year lectionary committees kind of going into Vatican II and all these liturgical councils that were happening back in the 60s and 70s, they made a move to make epiphany ordinary time. In fact, some that we have green for the color of epiphany. I think the old church used it just, you'd be white the whole season of epiphany, but they made it green and they tried to. And they, and they in some ways kind of downplayed the season of epiphany. And it made it kind of, it kind of flattened it out. So you have a little, you have a little break kind of ordinary time in the middle of the winter. And that's possible because you have this extended season of epiphany and so forth and so on. And that it really feels like that today. Today with these readings, it feels like a summertime service. And maybe it's going to feel like that when it's 85 degrees. But anyway, it's still the Lord's word and it still is beautiful and wonderful for us and we get to rejoice. We get to rejoice in it. Jonathan and I, by the way, this is, Jonathan and I were talking about what it might, what it might be to do the one year lectionary. This would be maybe next year going into 2026. So got to see what the elders think about that. But that might be fun for us to do that, to switch it up and hear some different text as well. But anyhow, here's what we've got today. It starts with Psalm 138, which is a beautiful psalm. It especially has this little gem which should be memorized. Verse two, you. It's a prayer. You, O Lord, have exalted above all things, your name and your word.
[00:06:58] So the two most precious things in all of the world are the Lord's name and the Lord's word.
[00:07:06] How beautiful is that? And then at verse 6, though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, the haughty, he knows from afar your right hand delivers me. Don't forsake the work of your hands. So we think, well, the Lord is so high and exalted that he would only deal with the high and exalted. That's not the case. He deals with the lowly. He finds us down low.
[00:07:32] That's like the Magnificat.
[00:07:35] He casts down the prideful and exalts those of low decree. Beautiful. The Old Testament lesson is Isaiah 6:1:8, which is the calling of Isaiah. The dating that we have for Isaiah is 8, 60. That's at the end of his, of his career. But remember, Isaiah has this long career. It's oh, 50, 55 year prophetic. 55 years of this prophetic career. So I think that probably takes us to the year 720 or something like that.
[00:08:07] Let's see, Uzziah 722.
[00:08:11] Yeah, maybe even before that. The year the King Uzziah died. I should know those sort of things. Let me, let me, let me try to look that up here. See what year king Uzziah died.
[00:08:21] 740 B.C.
[00:08:24] uzziah died. So while it says 6 80, that was when Isaiah was written. But it was 60 years earlier that this happened. Isaiah, remember, was a priest, and he was serving in the temple. And as he's serving the temple, probably preparing the incense that was burning before the veil of the temple. Remember that the temple had two rooms. It had the holy place. It's kind of the outer room. And then the holy of holies, the inner room. You'd only go in there once a year.
[00:08:57] I mean, well, twice a year, but on one day in the year and pour the blood on the Ark of the Covenant, that was the holy of holies. But the priests would minister daily in the holy place outside of the veil. And right in front of the veil was the incense altar. And then on one side was the candelabra. The other side, the table was showbread. And they would be ministering there. So Isaiah is probably there working on the incense.
[00:09:19] And all of a sudden the veil is pulled back. Maybe not the physical veil, but he's able to see as a vision the veil pulled back. And he sees the glory of the Lord. He says this. I saw the Lord sitting on the throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Now you have to think of it, because there's the Ark of the Covenant. That is the throne of God. And it has the two cherubim on either side. And then the two cherubim are woven into the curtain. And so Isaiah could look up and he could see two of the cherubim on the curtain, and he would know that there's two cherubim behind it. But those cherubim on the curtain and on the ark are just pictures of the heavenly reality that they represent. And what happens is, before Isaiah's eyes, the earthly shadow peels back and he sees the heavenly reality. And there's the glory of the Lord on the throne. And there's the four living creatures flying around him, crying out their eternal hymn. Each had six wings with two he covered his face, two he covered his feet, two he flew. And one called another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called. And the house was filled with smoke. And Isaiah falls to his face. Woe is me. I'm lost. I'm a man on clean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. What an amazing text.
[00:10:57] So Isaiah gets this glimpse into the heavenly throne room, and he sees the angels praising Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the shadow for a moment is pulled back so that he gets this glimpse into the heavenly reality and he comes undone. Woe is me. This is so important because remember how the Lord goes over this with Moses. Look, no one can see my face and live. My glory is dangerous for you because you are a sinner.
[00:11:27] This is true also for us. And you know, it cuts through all of this nonsense that people say, I'm spiritual but not religious. I want direct access to God. You do not.
[00:11:39] That's when your face melts. That's when the glory undoes you. Not because the glory is bad, but because we are. We're unfit to see the presence of God. So Isaiah falls down and notice how he confesses his sins. It's not just the sins that he's committed. I'm a man of unclean lips. It's also the sins of the people around him. I live amongst a people of unclean lips. And. And this is where the Lord says, well, I have a solution for that. And so there's one of the angels goes and gets a tong and grabs a coal. We have this in the stained glass window. Make sure you look at the stained glass window. I think the. The most, the brightest color coming into the sanctuary from all the windows is the red that comes through the coal that is touching Isaiah's lips. So it's on the. As you go into the sanctuary, you're looking on the Left hand, bottom. Windows for the prophets Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And Isaiah is there. The bottom right hand is the evangelists and disciples, apostles. But there's Isaiah. And the coal is touching his lips. I remember I was showing the sanctuary to someone, and one of the kids said, who's the guy eating the spicy chicken nugget? That's Isaiah. With the coal touching his lips. It's probably a coal from the altar of incense.
[00:12:59] So that, at least is my best guess that the angel takes one of the coals that Isaiah was working on that's burning the incense, and he touches his lips and he says, your guilt is taken away. Your sin is atoned for.
[00:13:13] This should.
[00:13:16] This should be a picture that we remember every time we come to the Lord's Supper. And when we kneel and when the Lord touches our lips, not with a coal from the altar, but with his body from the cross. I mean, his body from the right hand of the Father. But remember, this is my body given for you. It's his body handed over to the cross that touches our lips, and our sins are forgiven.
[00:13:40] And then Isaiah says, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And I said, here I am. Send me if you are going to forgive my sins. And notice that the forgiveness of sins is brought particularly to the place that Isaiah confessed, and particularly to the place that Isaiah will be called.
[00:14:01] So Isaiah is now called into the prophetic office where he will speak for the Lord. Thus says the Lord, So that. That requires pure lips. So he has a good conscience. He also has pure lips. What a beautiful text. Now we hear that song repeated. You can get hints of it in Ezekiel and Daniel, especially in Revelation. Holy, holy, holy. That's that heavenly hymn, the Holy Sanctus. And we sing it every Sunday. It's part of the liturgy. Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of Sabaoth. That's Sabaoth. That means hosts. Not Sabbath, not Sunday or Saturday, not Sabbath, but Sabaoth. It means Lord of angel groups, Lord of angel battalions, Lord of hosts.
[00:14:46] And we sing it every Sunday because we. I mean, the picture of what happens in. To Isaiah in the temple is what's happening to us when we come into the sanctuary every Sunday.
[00:15:01] It's beautiful. The epistle is from 1 Corinthians 14.
[00:15:06] This is Paul wrapping up his discussion of spiritual gifts, which started already back in 12, and then takes a little break in 13 for the famous discussion of love. And then he's back in 14 for the discussion of spiritual gifts. Now there were at this time, following the apostolic ministry, a number of gifts that were given to the church that were so called sign gifts, gifts to indicate that the people who had them could speak for the Lord. So Martin Chemnitz gives us this really helpful distinction between those who are immediately called by God and those who are immediately called through the church.
[00:15:45] So Jesus calls the disciples, in fact, wait five minutes, and we're going to hear about that in the Gospel text. He calls them directly and says, you follow me. And when the Lord calls someone directly, he gives them the ability to do signs, almost always to confirm their calling. How do we know that Jesus called them? Well, they could perform miracles. And this is especially important in the whole argument of the Book of Acts is that Paul's apostleship was questioned and the Lord gave him the capacity to perform miracles like Peter's miracles, to show, in fact, sometimes greater than Peter's miracles, to show that he was in fact called.
[00:16:26] One of the things that would happen is that the apostles would lay their hands on people. They'd ordain them, and then they'd not only be authorized to preach, but they'd be able to preach in languages that they didn't know. And that's the gift of tongues. Now, it's really, really important for us to recognize that when we're reading the Bible, talking about tongues, this is in first Corinthians and in the Book of Acts. It is not what the Pentecostal Church wants us to think about tongues now, which is just this kind of ecstatic speech, this sort of mumbo jumbo where nobody knows anything that's being said that we should understand the gift of tongues. From Acts, chapter two, Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit came on the disciples, the apostles, and they were able to preach to people who could hear them in their own language. So they're able to preach in languages that they never learned.
[00:17:17] It's pretty amazing. Now, this would happen especially before the.
[00:17:22] Before the scriptures are written, before the gospel is published, before the church has been settled in various places. The Lord would give this gift so that the word could spread throughout all the world. And so we hear about this in the early church, how there's various people were ordained to preach, and the Lord would give them the ability to preach in languages that they didn't even know.
[00:17:42] The result, though, is disorder, especially in Corinth.
[00:17:48] So Paul is hearing about this in Ephesus. He's on the third missionary journey. He's kind of camped out in Ephesus building the seminary and the churches around There. And he gets a letter from Corinth, and they're describing all these problems. They stop believing the Resurrection. They're exploiting their Christian liberty.
[00:18:07] There's all these different factions, and there's these spiritual gifts that are being abused. There's disorder in worship.
[00:18:14] There's women who are preaching all sorts of stuff that's going on. And Paul says, look, you guys have to. I praise God that you're giving these spiritual gifts, but they have to be exercised in. In order. God is not a God of disorder, but order. And the Spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets. This is Paul's main thing. Since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.
[00:18:41] Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue. I'm reading the Epistle now. Should pray for the power to interpret. In fact, Paul forbids speaking in tongues unless there's an interpreter there.
[00:18:51] For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, my mind's unfruitful. What am I to do? I'll pray with my Spirit, but I'll pray with my mind also. I'll sing praise with my Spirit, but I'll sing with my mind also.
[00:19:03] You see that the Corinthians were abusing this gift and letting it be ecstatic, which is never how the worship of the Lord is supposed to be. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say amen to your thanksgiving when he doesn't know what you're saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. Then listen to this. Paul says, I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to Instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue. Brothers, do not be children, in your thinking be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. So this fits in with Paul's instructions to the church in Corinth, that they would. That they would rejoice in the spiritual gifts that the Lord gives especially. And here's something that we often forget when the Lord calls us into an office, whatever that office is, son or daughter, husband or wife, parent, grandparent, neighbor, citizen, ruler, boss, worker, whatever the office is, the Lord also gives us his Holy Spirit to help with that office.
[00:20:13] We hear about this especially with the preaching office, because that's the office set apart from the Word. And we see the pastors lay on hands when they ordain a man and pray for the Holy Spirit, so that the pastor could have the Spirit to exercise the office. But remember the Holy Spirit. I need to remember this, and I think we all do. The Holy Spirit comes to us to give us the strength that we need to do what he's called us to do.
[00:20:36] So the Holy Spirit strengthens me to be a faithful husband, to be a faithful father, to be a faithful grandfather. That's pretty cool.
[00:20:44] To be a faithful neighbor and citizen. The Holy Spirit strengthens us. We need to pray more for the strength and wisdom of the Spirit, so that we could do these even daily routine tasks. We could do them with joy and thanksgiving to the Lord, to pray for the strength of the Holy Spirit. So we rejoice that the Holy Spirit gives us these gifts. That these gifts don't take us away from God's ordering of the church, but draw us deeper into his ordering of the church.
[00:21:14] Maybe to say that again. We normally think, because the Pentecostals have been trying to teach us this for 100 years, we normally think that the Holy Spirit makes people go crazy. That's not the work of the Spirit. The Spirit strengthens us to do the work that God has called us to do in our vocations.
[00:21:31] Okay, I just looked at the clock we got to look at. I guess that means I'll preach on Luke 5. That's our gospel text. I'll just touch on it very briefly. This is. It's the calling of the disciples. So Jesus is. The crowd is pressing in on him. It's in winter 31. It's in Capernaum.
[00:21:47] So up in Galilee, in this little city, Capernaum, which is the hometown of Peter. It's where he lived with his wife and mother in law. They have a little church over the house of Peter. They think there's an old synagogue in Capernaum that they found too. They didn't know where. If I have this right, I think I have it right. They didn't know where Capernaum is. They had an idea where it was, but they couldn't find it because it was all rubbled. And so a bunch of churches went and bought like plots of land where they thought Capernaum might be. And like the Orthodox bought like this spot. And the Catholics bought this spot, and the Presbyterians bought this spot. And it turns out the Catholics got it right. So that they led the archaeology and everything. And then the Presbyterians have the parking lot where the buses park when you go to visit Capernaum. I think that's how it happened.
[00:22:36] Someone better check me on that anyhow, they're in Capernaum and the crowds are pressing in so that Jesus goes into the boat and he's teaching them, oh, I wish we knew what he said. And then when he finished, the Holy Spirit says, you don't need to know what that sermon was about. It's not mentioned. So he says to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And he says, look, we've fished all night. Have nothing but at your word.
[00:23:01] And they did it. And they get this huge number of fish, the nets are breaking, everyone else has to go help them. And Peter falls down. He realizes now who Jesus is. Depart from me. I'm a sinful man, O Lord. And he says, don't be afraid. From now on you're going to be catching men.
[00:23:18] You're not going to be fishing for fish, you're going to be fishing for people. And they followed him. Now it's important to remember that this is the second coal of the disciples. There was probably six or seven disciples that were part of Jesus early ministry.
[00:23:33] Philip, Andrew, Peter, John, James. Probably they were following Jesus when he went to the wedding at Cana. They were following Jesus when he was in Jerusalem and cleansed the temple for the first time. So there's this kind of little group of disciples who were following Jesus for probably four, five, six months. And then it seems like Jesus released them for a while to go back home, get back to work at the family business.
[00:23:59] And then he comes and says, okay, now time for permanent ministry. So that from this time on it's going to be about two years and a bit, two and a half years. They're going to stick with Jesus all the way to the end. So most of the time we read this text and it's like they had no experience with Jesus at all. This is their first exposure to Jesus and they're just like, all right, we're going to leave everything and do it. No, they'd been with Jesus already before then they'd gone back to their nets and now they're coming back to full time ministry and to following Jesus. And that's I think, a pretty important part of the story. What's the other thing? Is that when we read these texts, when we read texts like this, we often think of ourselves as, oh yeah, God is also calling us to be fishers of men. But remember, the joy is not that we're fishers of men, but that we're the fish, we're caught. The Lord has sent the apostles out to preach and to write. And we have heard that word and believed. And the Lord has drawn us into his church.
[00:25:09] And that is the great gift that this text gives to us. All right, we better stop it there. Hymn of the day. Hail to the Lord's anointed ochre. I have to leave that for another time. Drive safe. See you soon. God's peace be with you. Sunday drive to church.