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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. Pastor Wolfmuller. And it is Sunday, March 30th, the year of our Lord 2025. This is an amazing. This is an amazing Sunday. I think if you had me picking. In fact, why don't we just put these texts down for my funeral service, because these are like my favorite passages in all of the Bible all on one day. How do you decide? By the way, I'm recording on Saturday morning, Carrie and I are driving down to San Antonio, the doxology conference. I'll report back in Sunday school how that was. So that means a couple of things. Kerry's gonna be fact checking me, making sure I've got everything right from the bulletin. And also it means if you hear sirens, it's just 50, 50. Whether you're getting pulled over driving to church or I'm getting pulled over driving down to San Antonio, we'll have to see how that goes. I had a lot of complaints, by the way, Troy. Andrea complaining last week about the short. This Sunday drive. I got an hour and a half driving to San Antonio. So we'll see how long this one. This one goes the. The collect. Oh. So the first thing to notice, this is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. Oh.
[00:01:19] So you'll want to spend a little bit of time with the Rembrandt painting on the COVID It's beautiful. I remember hearing Dr. Gizi talk about this painting in his. He uses it for one of his classes. He's teaching New Testament. Because the Father completely embraces the Son. He's just enveloped him in his love and his mercy. And I think you'll have to see if you think I'm right about this, that the older brother.
[00:01:52] I mean, there's a few guys that are looking in, but I think the older brother is the one in the background with his face kind of blurry, still in the dark. And this is the whole question about the parable of the prodigal Son.
[00:02:07] Is the older brother going to come into the light?
[00:02:12] Is he going to join the festivities? In fact, the parable is less about the younger brother who squanders everything and then returns and is received by the grace of the Father. It's more about the older brother. Because Jesus is telling these three lost and found parables in Luke 15 to the Pharisees who think that they have never been lost and don't need to be found. And he's trying to break their hard, prideful hearts and also bring them into the joy of God's mercy and grace. That's the whole point. But anyway, that's the punchline at the very end. So if you don't listen to the end of the extended version, you got the point already. The collect is an old. I can't remember word for word. But the idea, and the collect is we deserve nothing but punishment, nothing but wrath, because we are sinners. But the Lord has mercy on us, and he's kind to us and generous and gracious to us. We pray that he would look upon us not according to our sins, but according to his mercy in Christ. And it's a beautiful prayer that really wonderfully reflects the whole theme of all the readings.
[00:03:29] The Psalm is Psalm 32.
[00:03:31] This is one of the seven penitental Psalms. We recognize Psalm 32 because we say it, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. We say it every. When we have divine service. Three we have those words as part of our preparation for confession. And maybe those three. There's three words in there that we should notice. In fact, this is for the kids. I guess it's for all of us. But this is especially for the kids to look in Psalm 32 for the word sin, iniquity and transgression.
[00:04:18] This is the three ways that the Bible talks about our sinfulness. And sin is the basic general word for breaking the commandments for doing the wrong thing. Iniquity has to do with the guilt, both internal and external, that comes from sin, maybe even that leads to sin, and that comes from sin. Transgression has to do with crossing the boundaries.
[00:04:47] It's the idea that the commandments carve out a space for righteousness. And if we go past that, we transgress. And this is transgression is a really important word. Now I'm thinking about it because we're going down to this conference, doxology conference, which is talking about how we in our age deal with all of the sexual revolution and all the results of it. And we live in this very transgressive age where freedom is defined by crossing the boundary of what's good and right and holy and helpful and wholesome and pure, so that we have whole cultural movements that are defined as transgressive. So this is transgressivism.
[00:05:37] So we need to think about that. And it's helpful that the Bible thinks about sin in all three sin and iniquity.
[00:05:45] And transgression, if I remember right, is quoted by Paul in Romans, blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity.
[00:06:01] And that has to do with this doctrine of justification, which is God's merciful act of imputation, that the Lord does not put our sins on us, but puts our sins on Christ. So the imputation means to take the. The guilt and the punishment for an act or a thought or whatever, to take that and put it on someone else. So the Lord imputes our sin to Christ, and he imputes Christ's righteousness, his perfection, both that he never did anything wrong and that he always did everything right. He takes that righteousness of Christ and puts it on us. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute sin. That's how it goes. Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whom the Lord does not impute.
[00:07:07] The Lord does not impute his sin. Carrie's looking at a different version. So the fact checking is here. The Lord does not impute sin. That's the idea that's quoted in Romans 4, 5 as this doctrine of justification. And in fact, it's reflected beautifully in the Epistle. Okay, so let's skip my favorite passage, Isaiah 12. We'll come back to it and go to my other favorite passage, Second Corinthians 5, where Paul says, we've been given the ministry of reconciliation.
[00:07:42] And so this picture of salvation as reconciliation is that when Adam and Eve sinned, they started a fight between humanity and God, between us and everything that's good. And the Lord says, no, I'm not going to have it. I'm going to put the fight between you and the devil between me and the devil.
[00:08:03] And so when Jesus comes into the world, he comes to reconcile the world to himself. And this is how Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 5, not imputing their sins, but we have this ministry of reconciliation. We encourage everyone be reconciled to God.
[00:08:25] And there's this God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their sins to them. That's that passage again. And then here's the culmination. This is our memory, verse 2nd Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 21, that says, God made him who knew no sin. That's Christ to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
[00:08:59] This is the clearest passage. This is our Sades doctrinae. Remember, the Sades doctrinae means seat of doctrine. And the old Lutheran Father said, whenever we have a doctrine, we have to find those clear passages in the Scripture that teach and Assert clearly that particular doctrine. And so this is our sades doctrinae of the great exchange. There's this. What is the great exchange? There was some table talk sometime, I think, where a student asked Luther, Dr. Luther, are you saying that we don't contribute anything at all to our salvation? Grace alone, faith alone?
[00:09:38] And Luther said, no, no, we contribute a lot to our salvation. And everyone around the table is probably shocked. Can you imagine Melanchthon? His jaw drops and the beer is spilling out down his beard, his little goatee looking thing. And what, Luther, you've been teaching for years and years that it's grace alone, we contribute something. And then Dr. Luther, I think, after kind of assessing everyone's astonishment, says, y, I contribute my sin, I contribute my death. I contribute the attacks of the devil and all the demons. I contribute my sickness, my weakness, my false desires. I contribute all of this.
[00:10:20] And Christ contributes his righteousness, his suffering, his holiness, his perfection, his strength, his overcoming death. For us, that's the great exchange, that all of our sins and guilt and shame and iniquity and transgression and everything that belongs to us, death and the bondage to the devil, that's all taken off of us and put on Christ and everything that belongs to Jesus, his life and perfection and holiness and obedience to God and perfect love for the Father that's given to us.
[00:11:02] I remember at some point I was trying to teach this at a chapel service some years ago, and it kind of went off the rails because I was asking the kids, I said, all right, you gotta tell me if this is a good deal. I said, I want you.
[00:11:24] I'm gonna give you my car and you can give me your house.
[00:11:34] They said, well, that's a pretty good deal for us. I said, all right, how about this? I'm going to give you my dirty socks and you can give me all the money in your bank account. And like, well, that's a pretty good deal for us too. All right, now how about this?
[00:11:53] I'm going to give you a bag full of dirty diapers and you're going to give me everything you own.
[00:12:09] I guess that's getting better and better and better. And I said, now this is getting closer and closer to how it is with Jesus.
[00:12:16] We didn't get much further past the dirty diapers stuff because they were kind of grossed out by that.
[00:12:23] But this is the point, is that. What do we. This isn't an exchange. We're trading Jesus.
[00:12:30] We're giving him our sin and death and hell and the wrath of God. That we deserve and the forsakenness and the smiting and stricken by God that to him. And he's giving us perfection and peace and righteousness and joy and love and everything wonderful and beautiful. That's the great exchange. That's the doctrine of the great exchange. And here it is in the text. God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
[00:13:08] Now notice it's that Jesus never committed sin. He never spoke a sinful word, thought a sinful thought, did a sinful thing, neglected to do what the law required of him. He was righteous and perfect in every way. There was no sin, so sin had no claim on him. Death had no claim on him. But God imputes to him our sin and our guilt and our shame, so that he can impute to us his righteousness and perfection. And notice this too. It's not the righteousness that we become as Christ becomes sin, we become righteousness. And it's not the righteousness of Adam and Eve in the garden, which is what you might expect. God made him, who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of man, or the righteousness of Adam, or the righteousness of perfect righteousness of the angels even. No, that's not what it says. It says that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
[00:14:07] That's astonishing.
[00:14:10] I mean, this is the stuff that. This is why we have to be saved by faith. Because you could never believe this if you were just trying to figure it out on your own. I mean, you could barely believe it when it's written right down in front of us by the hands of the Lord's apostles that we become the righteousness of God. So that when you are judged on the judgment day, God's determination of your state is that you are as righteous and holy and perfect as he is.
[00:14:51] This is just.
[00:14:53] It cannot get.
[00:14:55] You could not invent any better news than this. This is why this is the gospel.
[00:15:00] So beautiful. And it's reflected in the Old Testament. This is my favorite passage, Isaiah 12, where it starts out and it says, though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away.
[00:15:20] And that you've been comforting, comforted me so that. I remember one time when I was a kid, I think I've told you guys this story. My buddy Jeremy Bastian had got a new red scooter. I must have been sophomore in high school, maybe a freshman in high school. My buddy Jeremy lived up the street. He gets this new Red scooter. And he drives down, and we're looking at it in the driveway. And I said, let me give it a go.
[00:15:53] And so I jumped on the scooter and I hit the pedal and whap. I crashed it straight into the garage door, which was unfortunately painted white.
[00:16:06] Oh, boy. So it kind of knocked the track off. It pulled the track out. It dented the garage door. It got paint on it. It also wrecked Jeremy's fender, which he was not so happy that he had a red scooter for approximately two. And then I crashed it. Anyhow, he said, oh, see you later. He kind of left. And I was standing there in the driveway looking at the damage I'd done, and I thought, dad's gonna get home and he's gonna see this wrecked garage door, and I'm gonna get in trouble. So I thought, well, the only thing to do here is to try to hide the evidence. So I went inside and I got a. I got one of my mom' little trees or something, and I brought it outside and I put it in front of the garage door to try to cover it up. It's like a perfect parable of Adam and Eve and the fig leaves. Maybe it was a little fig tree. Who knows? That's what.
[00:17:09] And it was. Of course, that wasn't gonna work.
[00:17:13] And so I'm sitting in my room, nervous, nervous. Dad's coming home, and I hear him come in the door. And the first thing is, who wrecked the garage door? Oh, man. All right, I gotta go confess.
[00:17:32] And I remember I did all right, So I had to fix it and all this.
[00:17:39] But I remember very specifically, mom and dad were. Maybe it was dinnertime, it was later, and I was kind of realizing.
[00:17:48] And I went in and I said, are you mad at me?
[00:17:54] And that, you know, that's one of these definitive questions is, you know, in our lives, especially when we have our most important relationships and the people who matter the most to us, we do not want them to be mad at us.
[00:18:15] So this is. There's something deep in each one of us when we're children that we do not want our parents to be mad at us.
[00:18:25] And if you're married, husband and wife, you do not want your spouse to be mad at you.
[00:18:32] And if you're a student, you do not want your teacher or your coach to be mad at you. And I think for all of us, this is this profound question that we look up to heaven and we shout out to God, are you mad at me? That's one of the dangers of the troubles of this life, right?
[00:19:00] Sickness or disaster or difficulty or whatever.
[00:19:05] And we look at our. It's like Job. We look at the things going on around us and we look. And so we shout out to heaven, are you mad at me?
[00:19:17] And this text is beautiful to answer that question.
[00:19:24] Though I was angry with you, my anger has been put away.
[00:19:32] I was. God says I was mad at you, but I'm not anymore. And now I comfort you. And what's the difference?
[00:19:40] The difference is the death and resurrection of Jesus that turns away the wrath of God so that God is no longer angry with us or mad at us or upset with us.
[00:19:57] He loves us.
[00:20:00] Now, this is a theological point that is we probably don't want to miss. I mean, we can't miss it. We got to hold onto this one. That the love of God is directly bound up to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
[00:20:15] In the Old Testament, it's because Jesus is going to die that God loves the world. And now in the New Testament, it's because Christ has died that God loves the world. Apart from the death of Jesus, it's wrath and anger. But in Christ it's joy and peace and love, kindness, gentleness, compassion, all of that.
[00:20:40] He who did not spare his only begotten Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not also, together with him, give us all things so he's not mad. This Isaiah 12. It's a short little chapter. It's a hymn, in fact, and it's the hymn of God's anger being turned away.
[00:21:00] The hymn of God coming to us to comfort us. Beautiful. Speaking of hymns, the hymn is the John 3:16 hymn. God loved the world so that he gave his only Son, the lost, to save. It's a beautiful paraphrase. Beautiful, beautiful Law Gospel paraphrase of John 3:16.
[00:21:21] That's the conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus, the most famous of all Bible passages.
[00:21:28] God loved the world so that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in him would not perish, but have eternal life.
[00:21:39] And if we missed it, note it's not will have eternal life, but have now that the Lord brings us already eternal life in our baptism, in the washing away, in the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, we already begin to live the eternal life. And can you believe it? God be praised that we have two people being baptized this morning, Trey and Stephen, two of our 15 confirmans being baptized before their confirmation. And by the way, we had this big confirmation class. We had that last week I had to line them all up to make sure they're all going to fit at the rail. And I think 15 is our max. We have three or four in the class who are.
[00:22:27] We're going to probably try to confirm before Easter. They just missed a few classes and we're trying to make up a couple of those classes, and two of those are going to line up for baptism. So God be praised for this work of calling his children to His Word and His church. It's just great. So when we are baptized, we begin to live that eternal life that's there in the hymn. God loved the world so that he gave. I don't think the hymn is that old. If I was to guess, Carrie's going to fact check the hymn. If I was to guess, that hymn is written in 1830.
[00:23:05] She's looking to see how close. I think it kind of shows the marks of that era to me. That kind of simplified paraphrased of the text.
[00:23:20] We'll see. Now that brings us.
[00:23:24] No one's going to complain about the shortness of the Sunday drive today because that brings us to the greatest of all texts, my favorite, Luke 15, the parable of the Prodigal and Prideful Sons. I just.
[00:23:40] I don't know if I've told you. I wrote a little book about this parable last winter, I think in December I wrote this. And I was gonna publish it, but I sent the cph. My friend Jacob Corzine, who's working at cph, it's too short really to be a book, but they just sent me a note last week and said, hey, we're gonna publish it.
[00:24:03] So that's kind of cool. So I guess CPH said they'll publish it in November if everything works out.
[00:24:10] So now I want to spend the next hour and a half reviewing everything that I wrote about this in the book.
[00:24:17] I'm just kidding. But the title of the thing is called Three Slavery's Three Freedoms. And I think one of the keys to understanding the whole parable of the Prodigal Son is getting the context. So if you go to the very beginning of Luke 15, and I think we have. I think the text has Luke 15, verse 1, and then skips ahead to. Verse carries. Check in, too, and then skips ahead to the Prodigal Son. Does it start with verse one and two or something?
[00:24:47] Yeah, yeah. One to three. Okay. So it gives you the context of the Pharisees that are there and they're complaining that Jesus is eating with sinners. This is what the Pharisees do. They complain that Jesus has fellowship with people who are sinful and unclean. And so Jesus is going to tell them three parables in a row. The parable of the lost sheep. Beautiful. A farmer has 99. Not a farmer, farmer, shepherd, rancher.
[00:25:25] I mean, I guess a farmer could have the sheep. But this is a shepherd who has 99 sheep and one. He's out in the woods with him, and one wanders off and he goes chasing after the one to rescue him. And he finds him and goes home. He doesn't even go back to the other 99. Crazy Shepherd.
[00:25:43] And the point of it is that the angels rejoice over one sinner who repents.
[00:25:50] And then he tells the parable of the lost coin.
[00:25:56] The old lady has 10 silver coins. She loses one. Oh, boy.
[00:26:03] And she lights a lamp and she sweeps and she looks for it till she finds it. And then there's this overwhelming joy in the one who's found.
[00:26:17] And then we get to the prodigal son, which has the same. At least the first part is the same. So there's a man, has two sons, and one of them, dad, give me the inheritance. Wish you were dead. Want the money? And he gives it to him, and he goes pagan and he takes all the cash and goes to Las Vegas and blows it all in riotous, sinful living.
[00:26:45] And then there's a famine, and now he's feeding the pigs and like, drooling over the slop.
[00:26:52] You can hardly imagine a guy who's in a worse state says he came to himself and says, oh, my father's servants have at least food, place to live. Look at this misery I'm in.
[00:27:06] So he comes up with this speech that he's going to give and he rehearses it for days as he limps home barefoot, destitute, starving to death. Father, I'm not worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.
[00:27:26] That word there, hired servant, is a unique word. It's not the word doulos, the normal word for slave or servant or vicar. It's the word misthos, which means a wage earner. It's a day laborer, at least a doulos. When you have a servant, you provide for the effort. They have a place to live, they have food. You're educating the children and providing for the family as well as having work that's being paid somewhat, I mean, depending on the arrangement. But mistos, that's just a guy who shows up and puts in the hours and then goes Home.
[00:28:10] That's it.
[00:28:12] And he's saying, I'm not even. I don't even. You don't even have to give me a place to live or a place to stay.
[00:28:19] I'll just come and I'll show up and I'll work and I'll pay it back. I'll earn back everything that I've spent. I'm not worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired hands.
[00:28:31] That's what my brother.
[00:28:33] My brothers were on the oil field and they always call each other hand. Hope that's not a really bad thing, a hand. You know, you're just a hand. Make me a hand.
[00:28:45] That's the idea.
[00:28:51] So he's rehearsing this, walking back. He gets to the threshold of the father's farm homestead.
[00:29:02] He steps across and the father sees him. And he runs down the lane and scoops him up and he starts his little speech. Father, I'm not worthy to be called one of your sons. And he stops him. Da, da, da, da, da. None of this nonsense about not being my son. And he does everything that he possibly can think of to prove to him that he's still the son. He says, kill the fatted calf. A ring on his finger. Shoes on his feet. Give the finest robe. This. My son was lost and is found. He was dead and he's alive again. And they begin to make merry.
[00:29:39] So here's where the parallel between these three parables that Jesus is telling stops. Okay, but you see it.
[00:29:47] The lost and found sheep, the lost and found coin, the lost and found son.
[00:29:52] And we think that if Jesus was just following, he said, and the angels rejoice over one sinner who repents. Here's where the punchline comes. But the punchline doesn't come. The story goes on, because there's another son. And he's out in the field and he refused to come in, and he hears the sounds. And he says to them, what's all this noise?
[00:30:17] The text reminds us even of Moses and Joshua on Mount Sinai.
[00:30:24] What's that sound? And Joshua says, it's the sound of war. And then Moses says, no, it's the sound of feasting.
[00:30:32] And they go and they find the people worshiping baal, you know, they made their little golden calf.
[00:30:40] The text has little hints of that. It says, the older son hears sounds of feasting. What's this? And he asks the servant, he says, you, brother's back. And he refuses to go in. So the father comes out to him, and the older brother says, it's wrong for you to do this.
[00:31:01] It's not fair for you to do this.
[00:31:04] This will do his case. He says, look, my brother's bad. He wasted all the money with riotous living.
[00:31:12] But me, I've been serving you all these years, and I haven't failed to do a single word that you gave to me. Everything you commanded me, I did. He thinks that he's been the person, perfect, obedient servant of the Father.
[00:31:28] And again we get this problem. The younger son was despairing and wanted to be a slave. The older son is prideful and thinks of himself as a slave, as the Father's servant. And again the father says, you are not my servant.
[00:31:48] You are my son. He says to the older son, son, everything I have is yours.
[00:31:57] It was right to make merry because this, your brother, was lost and found dead and alive.
[00:32:02] And then it's over. The parable is over.
[00:32:05] And the question is, is the older son going to join in the Feast of mercy?
[00:32:13] This is the whole point for the Pharisees. Are the Pharisees going to join in the Lord's Feast of Merc? Are they going to be part of the kingdom of grace or not?
[00:32:25] Because you will have God as you want to have him. If you want God to be the lawgiver, you'll have him as the judge.
[00:32:33] But if you will receive him according to the death and resurrection of Jesus, then he will welcome you into his righteousness and give it to you accordingly.
[00:32:47] Now, what would happen if the parable kept going?
[00:32:54] I think that's what I'll preach about.
[00:32:56] So I can't say everything here. Carrie says you can't give away all the secrets on the Sunday drive to home. Then people just listen at home and never come to church.
[00:33:06] But I have an idea about what would happen with the parable, and it's not what you expect. It's not what anybody would expect.
[00:33:15] And that's a pretty good cliffhanger, huh?
[00:33:20] I think that's pretty good.
[00:33:22] All right. Don't miss Sunday school. Today we're going to introduce all of our confirmans. And farewell to Pastor Leblanc and Paula. We'll thank the Lord for their two and a half years of ministry and service in our midst and pray that the Lord would bless them on their next steps and their next ventures. So that'll be a great opportunity. We'll have a again, we'll have a card, a box for cards and gifts. That'll be in the narthex and then in the parish hall for that farewell as well. So so make sure to join us for that. And I think that's all. Did we cover everything? Did you figure out when the hymn was?
[00:34:03] Ah, fact checker couldn't check the facts. So we'll assume that I'm right. 1830.
[00:34:15] That's the guess. You guys can check it out. See how close I was as well. Drive safe. God's peace be with you. See you soon.