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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. Welcome to March. It's March, first year of our Lord, 2026. First Sunday. Oh, second Sunday in the season of Lent, the Sunday of the Canaanite woman.
[00:00:13] Beautiful texts, top to bottom. Beautiful scriptures. The theme is really quite wonderful, this theme of prayer and how the Lord looks like he's fighting against us when he's fighting for us.
[00:00:28] That's really the beautiful idea. Let's start with the prayer, and then we'll look at the text.
[00:00:34] Oh, God, you see that of ourselves, we have no strength.
[00:00:38] By your mighty power, defend us from all adversities that may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul. Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:00:54] Amen.
[00:00:56] One of the things that happens in Lent is we drop the alleluia verse for the tract. So we have a longer psalm between the Epistle and the Gospel. Also, a couple of years ago, we switched from the Introit, which is sort of a smaller psalm for the entrance psalm, to the entrance psalm, having a longer the whole thing or a bigger chunk of the psalms. That means that we get to hear more psalms on Sunday.
[00:01:26] And the psalms that we hear this Sunday are pretty amazing. The first is, our entrance psalm, is Psalm 121. I'll lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
[00:01:40] I'll pray this psalm oftentimes when I go to visit someone before they have surgery because they're about to get knocked out. But he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord your keeper, the Lord your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, or the moon by night. This is this beautiful psalm that the Lord is with us. It's one of the psalms of. In fact, it's the second psalm of ascent.
[00:02:06] The Lord will keep your going out and you're coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.
[00:02:13] We'll hear that psalm in the baptismal rite this morning in the early service for Levi Jane Huckabone. God be praised. And then we get Psalm 25, a few verses for the gradual.
[00:02:28] The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses, consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.
[00:02:37] If you are looking for a good prayer before the church, before the service started, Psalm 25 is always a go to psalm. It might be one of the most used psalms in the liturgy.
[00:02:52] It's this great prayer in time of distress.
[00:02:55] And then Psalm 106 for the tract.
[00:02:59] Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, which shows up over and over. His steadfast love endures forever.
[00:03:06] Who can utter the mighty deeds of the Lord or declare all his praise?
[00:03:10] Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people. It's beautiful.
[00:03:18] So these psalms, this is reminding us that it's the prayer book that Jesus has given to us. I was in Arizona yesterday, Friday, Saturday, and we had. For the matt and service. The pastor said, this is great. We're singing this prayer. They come straight from the prayer book that Jesus wrote. Psalms.
[00:03:36] It's so good.
[00:03:38] Okay, now to the texts. The Old Testament lesson is Jacob wrestling with Jesus.
[00:03:46] Genesis 32. This is an amazing thing. I mean, whatever you're expecting. Here's Jacob After 20 years of exile under the tyranny of wicked Laban, his uncle.
[00:04:00] And now the Lord has blessed him in spite of Laban's theft, and he's going back home. But he hears Esau's coming, so he divides his family and all his stuff into two, because he's sure that Esau is going to destroy half of them.
[00:04:14] And.
[00:04:15] And now he's there praying, and the Lord shows up and he. They start wrestling.
[00:04:24] I promise you, whatever you expect to happen, that is not it. I mean, and here comes Jesus and throws Jacob in the mud. But Jacob won't let go. He knocks his hip out of socket. He has to limp his whole life from this point on.
[00:04:41] But it's when Jacob gets a new name, Israel, which means wrestles with God.
[00:04:48] And this is a picture of prayer where Jacob says, I'm not letting go of you till you bless me.
[00:04:54] Who are you? He says, why do you ask who I am? I'll tell you who you are. You're Israel. You're wrestling with God.
[00:05:00] And he blesses him. And from that, well, I mean, it doesn't get easy for Jacob. Jacob had a hard life. Man, here's faithful Jacob, and he just gets demolished. I mean, his whole childhood, he has this promise, and his brother and even his dad are plotting against him. And then when finally the Lord arranges it, well, through Rachel and his thing for Isaac to give him the blessing at last. And then Esau hates him, wants to kill him. Then he's got this 20 years of slavery. Then he's got all the trouble with his kids, including he thinks his most precious Joseph, has been murdered.
[00:05:40] Boy Jacob.
[00:05:43] We're studying Jacob and the life of Jacob With Luther in the worldwide Bible class. It's so eye opening and amazing. So that podcast, by the way, is available. If you haven't listened to that, I would encourage you to. Because the way Luther talks about faith and hope and trusting in God, when everything that you see looks like God isn't keeping his promises or he's ignoring us, it's so good.
[00:06:07] Anyway, so Jacob the Lord is giving Jacob all this trouble. And in that he teaches us how to pray, how to hold on, how to not let go.
[00:06:18] And that's probably why it's the lesson for today, because we have Matthew 15:21, 28 as the gospel lesson.
[00:06:27] So Jesus withdrew. Oh, he was in kind of up by the Mount Hermon, I think.
[00:06:34] And he goes to the district of Tyre and Sidon.
[00:06:37] That's. That's kind of up north. It's on the Mediterranean Sea on the coast. It's a pretty pagan area.
[00:06:44] And it seems like Jesus goes over there, meets this lady and then leaves. Almost as if that was the point.
[00:06:51] But it's hard for the lady to see it because Jesus, remember, this is the story where Jesus ignores her, says, I've only come for the lost children of the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It's not right to take the food from the table and feed it to the dogs.
[00:07:09] Jesus is doing seemingly everything he can to get rid of this lady, but she sees through it.
[00:07:17] Luther says it like this.
[00:07:19] He says she's passed the hidden no to God's yes.
[00:07:26] And she holds on to the words.
[00:07:29] Vicar's preaching on this. And he's got a couple of things about this text that I never even noticed before.
[00:07:34] But one of them is that the Lord never just says no.
[00:07:38] And she hears that.
[00:07:40] She hears loud and clear what Jesus doesn't say.
[00:07:45] Beautiful. And finally, Jesus turns his face to her.
[00:07:51] So beautifully, woman, great is your faith.
[00:07:57] There's two people who Jesus commends their faith more than anybody else. Both of them are foreigners.
[00:08:04] The centurion and this canine woman. Both of them come to Jesus, praying for other people.
[00:08:09] It's amazing.
[00:08:11] Great is your faith. And you can see the softness of his face, how much he loves her and loves her little daughter, rescues her from the demons.
[00:08:22] So nice.
[00:08:24] This, by the way, is our second text dealing with the demons. And we have the third one, the Strong man, the Parable of the Strongman. Next week. That'll be great. The epistle lesson is not as directly related. It's 1st Thessalonians 4, 1 7.
[00:08:39] But it's also beautiful.
[00:08:41] Finally Brothers, this is Paul's kind of. He's going to land the plane here. He's coming in for a landing after this. And this is probably the first written New Testament scripture, by the way. First Thessalonians, maybe Galatians. But this is the will of God. He says, your sanctification.
[00:09:01] The Lord is making us holy, and he's making us holy in two different ways. He makes us holy first by forgiving our sins, and then he makes us holy by sending the Spirit into our heart, which teaches us and trains us to love and to live with patience.
[00:09:16] Abstain from sexual immorality.
[00:09:18] Each of you should know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust.
[00:09:24] No one should transgress or wrong his brother.
[00:09:27] The Lord is the avenger of these things.
[00:09:30] God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.
[00:09:34] A couple of those lines in there are beautifully reflected in the introductory words for the rite of holy matrimony.
[00:09:45] So at the beginning of the marriage rite, it goes through the purpose for which God has instituted marriage and says.
[00:09:51] And those purposes are, number one, help, number two, delight, number three, family.
[00:09:58] And we rejoice in all three of those.
[00:10:01] But so some of the language here from first Thessalonians is in there because we're not.
[00:10:06] We are not pagan, and we ought not to have pagan thoughts.
[00:10:12] We ought not to say pagan things, and we ought not to live pagan lives.
[00:10:17] That's the basic idea here from Paul.
[00:10:19] We are to be sanctified. The Lord is holy, and so his holiness is given to us first by faith, the forgiveness of sins and the righteousness of Christ, and then second by the Holy Spirit.
[00:10:32] Now, what separates that idea that we're growing in sanctification from the legalist idea or the pietist idea that this is the most important thing? The answer is that one of the answers is that when our Lutheran fathers talk about good works, they always talk about how they're begun, begun, but never finished. Really, it's always begun.
[00:10:54] And we have to think about that as well. We have love begun, patience begun, service begun.
[00:11:00] But we'll never get all the way there until the last day. It's fantastic.
[00:11:05] All right. The hymn of the week is this. Beautiful. Oh, look at this time. It's a short one today. Well, trying to get it out.
[00:11:12] Got in late last night. So it's another. It's another Sunday morning Sunday drive to church, which is not ideal. Maybe I'll talk about the hymn Forever and Ever. The hymn is.
[00:11:24] Oh, that's great. 6:15 when in the hour of deepest need. It's one of the old Lutheran hymns. But you remember, this is for prayer. Confession and absolution is a section wherein. When the hour of deepest need, we know not where to look for aid.
[00:11:43] When days of nights of anxious thought no help nor counsel yet have brought. Then is our comfort this alone that we may meet before your throne.
[00:11:52] To you, O faithful God, we cry for rescue in our misery.
[00:11:57] For you have promised, Lord, to heed your children's cry in time of need through him whose name alone is great, our Savior and our advocate.
[00:12:08] This is this beautiful promise of 1 John 2. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And it's good for us to remember that that word, advocate, parakletos in the Greek, is the same word that Jesus uses when he says, I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit, the parakletos, the comforter or the helper, really the advocate. So we have an advocate in heaven, and we have an advocate on earth, the Spirit in our own hearts and consciences.
[00:12:36] So we come, O God, today and all our woes before you lay for sorely tried cast down we stand perplexed by fears on every hand.
[00:12:45] O, from our sins, Lord, turn your face Absolve us through your boundless grace Be with us in our anguish still free us at last from every ill so we with all our hearts each day to you our glad thanksgiving pay Then walk obedient to your word and now and ever Praise you, Lord.
[00:13:03] It's a great hymn of prayer and confession.
[00:13:08] You could almost put pictures of Jacob wrestling with Jesus and the Canaanite woman begging for her daughter's release.
[00:13:18] While you think about this hymn. It's such a great meditation on the Lord's gifts. All right, let's see if we got some announcements. We got, oh, look at the confirmation picture. It's so fantastic. God, we praise for all our Confirmans.
[00:13:34] Overflow parking grounds, which are Bible study. Ah, the vicar started a Bible study for moms with young children. It's online studying Paul's letter to the Galatians. That's really great.
[00:13:44] So that's there. Ah, the name tags. Name tags are available. Please wear them. I got to get back in the pattern of name tagging. We have so many new people, especially that. This will be really good, so please do that. The men's retreat's coming up.
[00:14:00] I met some people who came to Arizona for this conference from, I think, Ohio, and they're going to fly down for the men's retreat in April. So we're going to have people from Ohio coming, but we got to have our own guys coming. So if you guys haven't signed up for the men's retreat coming up, that's great. And for all the tend to senior and high school kids, we got our catechism retreat coming up this summer, so you can sign up for that as well.
[00:14:26] All right, See you in a bit. Drive safe. God's peace be with you.