View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolf Mueller. This is the Sunday drive to church for the fifth Sunday of Easter. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. It's April 28, the year of our Lord 2024. What a beautiful Sunday we have today ready for us. We had last week. I am the good shepherd. Another I am statement this week. I am the vine, you are the branches. The father is the vine. Dresser. We're going to get to that in a little bit, but you'll notice it on this old, ancient icon. I think the text is greek, maybe russian. That's in the picture, but it's Jesus as this vine, and there's the apostles as the branches. It's a beautiful picture of the text. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. The collect of the day is, it's a wonderful old collect. I don't think, I wonder where it's from. You'll recognize it. I imagine it's one of these classic and beautiful prayers. It's a prayer to God. So remember when the collect has this form of address. Rationale, petition conclusion with doxology, sometimes the prayer is addressed to the Father or to the Son or to the spirit. Sometimes o Lord or O God. And we wonder who it's made clear in the doxology because the person of the Trinity to whom we're praying is then I don't know the right word, supplemented by the following text. So we say, oh, God. And we say, well, is that the Father, son, or Holy Spirit? When we get to the end, it says, through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord. Ah, praying to God the Father. It's talking about how the Father makes the minds of his people to be of one will.
[00:01:44] And it follows up with the petition that we would love what God has commanded and desire what God has promised.
[00:01:53] So it's really a law, gospel prayer. We want to love your commands. We want to want what you promise and why that among the many changes of the world, our hearts are fixed where true joys are found. Maybe I should just preach on this collect. It's so beautiful that true joys are not. Do you know that the world is out there.
[00:02:15] Everybody in a way, just wants to be happy. So you're seeking after those things which you think will lead to happiness. But here we come to church because it's not just, it's more profound. It's a grounded happiness, an unmoving happiness, which is what we call joy.
[00:02:32] And true joys are found only in God's commands and promises, only in the law and the gospel.
[00:02:39] So that's the prayer that really collects, gathers up all the thoughts. Let's. As we start today, let's pray.
[00:02:47] O God, you make the minds of your faithful to be of one will grant that we may love what you commanded and desire what you promise, that among the many changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joys are found. Through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:03:11] Opening up to the liturgy, we see that in the season of Easter, which is coming to an end, remember that Easter has either five or seven Sundays. It's not 100%. It has to do with when. It has to do with when ascension is. And if we count ascension as the.
[00:03:34] As a Sunday boy, I'm getting. It has to do. If we count the Sundays after the ascension as ascension, Sundays or Sundays in Easter.
[00:03:46] So the Easter season either has seven or five weeks. It doesn't really matter. We have ascension on May 9 this year, so I guess there's six. Now I'm confusing myself. There's either six or seven Sundays in the season of Easter, depending on if you count the Sunday after the ascension is one. Let's just go with that. We'll stick with that, but no matter. We're not there yet, so we don't have to figure it out. But we continue doing these Sundays in the season of Easter to hear from the book of acts as the first lesson. So instead of going back to the prophets, we have Luke and the history of the early church. It's an interesting idea and kind of fun to play around with. And it's a beautiful text this week. Acts, chapter eight, verses 26 to 40. Readings are a little longer this week, so that's nice. Get ready for that. The first one is the evangelization and the baptism of the ethiopian eunuch by deacon the Philip.
[00:04:45] It's comedy of errors in this recording by Philip the deacon. Okay, you guys are with me. Anyhow, Philip the deacon is told by an angel, rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.
[00:05:01] It's amazing. I always. Whenever Gaza is mentioned in the Bible, it's like, wow, that's also in the news. So Philip's heading down to Gaza. It's a deserted place, and he comes across this ethiopian who's also a eunuch and a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. That word Candace, by the way, is. We normally think of it as a name, but it's most likely a title, candelake, which is a name for the nubian princesses or queens.
[00:05:33] Our history tells us that this particular Candace, this particular queen was named Amonteteri at the time queen of the Ethiopians.
[00:05:44] And she was in charge. This eunuch was in charge of the treasury. He came to Jerusalem to worship, and he's heading back home, and Philip is sent by the spirit and by the angel. Go and talk to him. And so he hears him reading Isaiah, and he says, you know what you're reading? And the eunuch says, how can I unless someone guides me? So Philip comes and sits in the, in the chariot with him. It's so beautiful. And he's reading Isaiah 53 like a sheep was led to the slaughter. And like a lamb before it, shearers is silent. So he opens not his mouth.
[00:06:18] In his humiliation, justice was denied. Him who can describe his generation for his life is taken from the earth. Isaiah 53 seven, eight.
[00:06:27] And the eunuch turns to Philip and says, who is Isaiah talking about? Is he talking about himself? Is he talking about someone else? And Philip, you have to what a setup by the Lord here. And Philip just smiles and takes them through the scriptures, preaching the gospel about Jesus. This is about Jesus. And as he's preaching, it just tells us that he's talking about the scriptures, starting from this scripture and taking them through all the other scriptures and talking about Jesus. And when he's done, the Ethiopian stops the chariot and says, there's water. Why can't I be baptized?
[00:06:57] So fantastic. Because he doesn't tell us, Philip. It doesn't tell us that Philip talked about baptism, but he must have, which shows us the importance of baptism and the gospel. And so the ethiopian eunuch is. Goes down, he's baptized, and then, WHOOP. Philip is zipped away by the spirit. He goes up to Azotus is in the text. It's close to Ashdon. Ashdod.
[00:07:19] It's north of Gaza, still one of the seven philistine cities right on the coast.
[00:07:27] Think of the mediterranean coast in southern Israel. He's zapped up there, continues on to Caesarea, and the ethiopian eunuch goes his way. The church tradition tells us. In fact, Irenaeus, in his against heresies, writes about this text. And he gives the ethiopian eunuch the name Simon Bacchus.
[00:07:49] And tradition tells us that he went down to Ethiopia, that he preached the gospel and the good news, and that many became christians. There's some big debate about if this ethiopian eunuch was a plain old gentile or if he was jewish or if he was a jewish convert, or if he was a God fearer, Lutheran, says Gentile. There's a bunch of. There's a big fight about that. But no matter. Now he's a Christian. God be praised. What a text. Beautiful. The epistle lesson. We continue our reading from one John. They call this lectio continuum, where you just are reading through.
[00:08:25] You're reading through a text and kind of one chapter, another, another. We have one John, chapter four, verses one to 21. There's three big sections. And the epistle. I don't know if you guys think about this, but when you're reading through acts or the gospels or even some of the Old Testament history, it's a little easier to pay attention, because it's history. It's telling a story. There's a narrative, and there's movement and there's places. When you get to the epistles, it's much more concentrated.
[00:08:56] It's like eating cheesecake. It's thick, and you want to take it a section at a time because it's. It's not fluffing it out. It might give an illustration or a picture, but it doesn't have a narrative there.
[00:09:09] So it's always good to. If you have one text, you get to church early enough to read one text.
[00:09:15] Then I would look at the epistle lesson, maybe look at the gospel just to see what it's about. So it can be in your imagination. But read the epistle, because that takes the most work. You should read it a little bit slower. You have to pull out the ideas, and it's no different in this text.
[00:09:32] It's very tightly woven together.
[00:09:35] By the way, speaking about arriving to church early, the elders have asked to have a discussion about how to keep people from being too loud before the service. So there's two things that we need to work on as a church family. One is the putting up of the kneelers after we stand for prayer. You don't have to slam them up there.
[00:10:00] That's one place we can be sanctuary, and the other is trying to figure out how to be both welcoming and generous and happy to see each other, but also a little bit quiet and reverent before the service coming in. We'll work on that. Anyhow, reading the epistle lesson might be one way to calm things down. Right before the service, when the music is the pre service music is starting, that meditative reflection starts. Okay, so in the epistle, we have three paragraphs, verses one to six, verses seven to twelve, and then verses 13 to 21. At the end, the first paragraph is about doctrine and about testing the spirits. That's what it says. It says, test the spirits to see if they're from God. The second section is about love, and then the third section is going to bring them together. So first, test the spirits to see whether they're of God. For many false prophets have gone into the world. This means that every Christian is a theologian. We know that you are a theologian. If you're baptized, you're a theologian. But more than that, the theological task involves discernment, determining if this doctrine is true from God or if this doctrine is false from the world or the flesh or the devil.
[00:11:19] Is this doctrine right or is this doctrine wrong? We talked about it last week with the discerning ears of the sheep. Now look, I know it's not fun. People would rather just not.
[00:11:33] It's hard to say that someone is wrong. It's hard to look and say, is this person right or wrong, helpful or not helpful?
[00:11:40] But discernment is important.
[00:11:44] It's more important than being nice.
[00:11:47] I have this growing conviction that most people just kind of. They go along to get along because they want to be nice people. I know you all want to be nice people. Sometimes I want to be a nice person too. So the best way to be a nice person just kind of go along. But discernment has to go over the top of go along to get along. We can't just be agreeable because there's bad, wrong and dangerous things out there. So we have to look out for those things. And that's what John is telling us, who writes this beautiful epistle about love and says, right here in chapter four, you have to test the spirits to see whether from God, because there's false prophets, there's false teaching out there. And he says, this is how you know, you know the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. Rather, the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and is now in the world already.
[00:12:47] By the way, Antichrist is only mentioned by John and not in revelation either. I think it's in his first and second epistle. I know it's his first and maybe 3rd. First and second epistle, I think is the only time that word Antichrist is used in the Bible.
[00:13:02] And he says Antichrist is here already. It's important. And listen to the two different spirits. He says, you are from God, you have overcome them. He who is in you is greater than he that's in the world. That's beautiful text. And then he says, we are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this, we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
[00:13:26] So we are to determine first what is true versus what is wrong. And the way we know what is true is if Christ and his coming in the flesh to be our savior. If that is confessed. Now, it also so happens that the things that are true are also good and beautiful, and the things that are wrong, the things that are false, are also wrong and ugly. So that when but the primacy is given to the truth, the spirit of truth. Okay, so that's the first section about truth. The second section is about love.
[00:14:06] Verse seven. John says, let us love one another, for love is from God. Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. That's this text, in fact, twice. It's here in verse eight, God is love. And again in verse 16, God is love.
[00:14:25] And then this verse, if you want one to memorize it, would be verses nine and ten in the middle of this epistle. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.
[00:14:43] In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
[00:14:53] That propitiation, that's language. That's theological language that mostly Paul uses. John picks it up here because he needs that word. That word, propitiation means the sacrifice to bring an end to wrath, so that Jesus is. It's the substitutionary atonement being brought forth here. Jesus is in our place on the cross, and that is the love of God, that instead of pouring out the wrath that we deserve because of our sins on us, it's poured out on his son. And notice the primacy. It's not we're loving. No, God loves us. In fact, our love is excluded from this. It says in this is love. Not that we have loved God.
[00:15:33] So we always want to put our love for God right up there as first thing, as the main thing, as the most important thing. John says, forget about your love for God. This is love. That God loved us and sent his son, and that son, Jesus, died for our sins so that we could be forgiven. That's lovely. And if you have any other idea of love or definition of love that does not put this forward, the primacy of the love of God for us, that Jesus is coming to love us and die for us, then you don't understand what love is. That's love. And then our love follows along. He says, beloved, if God. And how about that for a name for the christian beloved of God?
[00:16:14] It's so beautiful. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. So our love follows along, chasing after the love of God like a, like a dog chasing a car down the street. We're trying to, but it's his love is primary. God loves us and then it all comes together in the last section.
[00:16:36] By this we know that we abide in him and he and us. This is where we really connect to the gospel lesson. Abide in me because he has given us his spirit. So we're testing the spirits. By the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have seen and testified, the father sent his son to be the savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God abides in him and he in God. So we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love and then love is perfected in us. There's no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. What an amazing, beautiful text. We love verse 19. We love because he first loved us.
[00:17:22] God loves you.
[00:17:26] That's simple.
[00:17:28] It's simple to say. And maybe we hear it so often that we sort of don't stop to consider what a incredible miracle that is, that God loves you and God loves me.
[00:17:50] The gospel lesson, which I'm going to try to preach on, although there's so many things pulling for the sermon, but I think we'll get to John 15 is one of those 07:00 a.m.. Statements. Again last week we mentioned that there are seven of these. I am the statements, and I am statements in the gospel. This is one of the I am the statements. So just like Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth and the life. I'm the resurrection and the life. I am the door, I am the shepherd, I am the light of the world. Here Jesus says, I am the vine. Now here. And it's John 15. So remember that starting at the end of John 13, really the beginning of John 14, all the way to the end of John 17. So 14, 1516 and 17. Four entire chapters are taken up with the last sermon that Jesus gives after the Lord's supper in the upper room on the way to the garden of Gethsemane. And then probably upon arrival in the garden of Gethsemane, so that's the context here. And it's the most thorough sermon of Jesus that's accounted for. And it ends with this beautiful prayer of Jesus that they might be one as you and I are one. And it. It's taking us into this divine wisdom, into the conversation of the father and the son. It's going to actually end with that, with the son praying to the father and letting us hear all the things that he prays for. And so we're right up into the doctrine of the Trinity and how it relates to our salvation. And I think that that shows up in this text because I think, I'm trying to think this through today, but I think that this is the only I am statement that includes God the Father.
[00:19:36] Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. My father is the vine dresser.
[00:19:46] So that this picture that Jesus is putting forth is a trinitarian picture. Father, son, and spirit are all at work here. Jesus is the vine, we're the branch, but the father's the vine dresser.
[00:20:00] I can't think of how the Son and the father would be distinguished in the other ones. Like, I am the good shepherd and the father is the owner of the flock, maybe, or I am the light and the father is the source. But anyway, it's not mentioned in the other I am statements. But here Jesus draws, specifically draws the father into the picture. So I'm the vine, you're the branches. The father's the vine dresser, which means he's either pruning or, or cutting.
[00:20:29] And so the father has the shears in his hands and he's going to be cutting. The question is, are you going to be cut off or are you going to be pruned so that you grow?
[00:20:41] And it means that all of us are suffering at the hands of God.
[00:20:47] We're being trimmed back for our own good. Hebrews says the father disciplines those whom he loves so that all of us have difficult things in life.
[00:20:58] If you have a difficult thing in your life, it is because you are alive and you are a Christian. I mean, I think even non Christians have. In fact, I'm pretty sure everybody has difficult things in their lives. But it's not promised to the non Christian, it's promised to you. In just a few inches down the line here, Jesus is going to say, in this world, you will have trouble, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world so that you're suffering. It's because you're alive and you're a Christian, and it's the father pruning you so that you can bear much fruit. The key thing is that the pruning of the father draws us deeper into the vine.
[00:21:40] There's a. The picture is the old.
[00:21:43] Is the old, old vineyards where, you know, the vineyards around here are kind of new, although they're getting old enough that you can start to be able to see it. But like, over in Israel, in the Middle east, and in some of the places in Europe, they'll have vines that are old.
[00:22:01] I mean, I wonder what the oldest vine in the world. Hold on. I bet I can figure that out pretty quick. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest known grape producing vine in the world is the Zametovka vine in Slovenia that's over 400 years old, planted at the end of the middle ages during turkish invasion. That is pretty old. And what happens is these vines get trimmed so that they're not that big, at least above the surface. But every year, the roots are getting deeper and deeper and deeper. And the result is that all of the stuff it's pulling from the earth is being concentrated in these grapes. You can go to Israel and see these olive trees, and they're not that big, although, I mean, the trunks are huge, but the tree itself is not that tall and wide. And so all of the root structure, huge, big, that's digging all the way through this rocky soil is pulling these nutrients and concentrating them into these grapes.
[00:23:04] Some of those trees, they have trees in the garden of Gethsemane they think were little samplings when Jesus was praying. So here's the picture, is that the vine is being trimmed so that the fruit that it's bearing is even more flavorful.
[00:23:19] That's the picture. So that the suffering and the afflictions of this world are as a. Are a blessing to us, so that Jesus is the Father, is trimming us so that we can have an even deeper connection to the son. Now, how do we have that connection? The answer is through the word. It's twice in the text already. You are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Verse three and verse seven. Abide in me, and my words abide in you. Ask whatever you wish that it would be done for you. So that while we're tempted to think of this abiding in Jesus as some sort of spiritual condition, really we should think of it as we're hearing the word. And when we hear the word, it's not just that the word is coming to us, but that it's drawing us into the life of the son. So that the spirit is that life that flows from the father through the son to us in the forgiveness of sins and the gifts that God gives. And when we hear the word, we are abiding in him, we're living in him, we're holding onto him. And holding onto him will pass through death and the judgment day and come to the life that knows no end.
[00:24:27] We'll sing about that in all the hymns, especially the hymn of the day is, at the lamb's high feast we sing. Look at the dates on this guy. It's pretty amazing. The hymn comes from sometime between the fifth and 10th century. In other words, we got no idea. It's really old, but the tune is from 1566, and it's updated in probably 1980 or something. It was translated in the middle of the 18 hundreds every century got involved in this hymn. At the lamb's high feast we sing, and it's a beautiful picture. It's kind of grabbing that imagery of revelation and bringing it to the Lord's supper. Really fantastic. Together with all these other, all these other hymns that we're singing, the opening hymn, Christ is the world's redeemer, just phenomenal. God be praised. Oh, I didn't mention the psalm. It's the last psalm, psalm 150, which is in some ways kind of the culmination of the book of psalms, praise the Lord. And it goes on to list all these instruments. Whatever you got around, you better pull it out and use it to praise the Lord. It's a beautiful hymn, a beautiful psalm that reminds us it's the culminating Alleluia. So Alleluia is the greek word for praise the Lord. Praise yah. Yahweh.
[00:25:41] And this is the last eight, nine psalms, or all these great hallelujah psalms. And then we finally culminate in the greatest of the Alleluia psalms. That's a beautiful word, hallelujah. Here's a funny thing, though, to think about just as a thing to puzzle with it while you finish up your drive to church. Alleluia is a hebrew word, but it never shows up in the old testament, only the New Testament. Why is that?
[00:26:07] If you don't want to know the answer, you can just stop here and I'll see you in a few minutes. But I'll tell you the answer. Here it is. It's because the Old Testament is translated, so if it shows up in Hebrew, it's translated into praise the Lord. But if it's transliterated in the New Testament, so it's sometimes the Greek can say, praise the Lord. Would it be doxei adonai or something? But sometimes they just grab the Hebrew and transliterate it, so it'll say alleluia with greek letters. And so then in the translation, they don't translate it, they transliterate it. So the only time you get the Hebrew words like Hosanna or Alleluia is in the New Testament, because the New Testament is just transcribing them, not translating them. And so then the New Testament translators also transcribe and not translate. I wonder if that makes sense. It makes sense in my mind, but I'm pretty sure someone asked me the question, what's the difference between Alleluia and Hallelujah with the h and the j or with just the a and the I? And that's a Hebrew. That's a. That's a german latin difference.
[00:27:14] Latin doesn't have an h or a j, but the German can put it in there.
[00:27:18] And so if. If you're getting alleluia and it's just an a, you look back, and it's normally from a latin hymn, and if it's got hallelujah, it's normally from a german hymn, something like that. Luther's kind of back and forth, I think, but that's the difference there. All right, that'll do for today. I'm so glad that. What a beautiful. It's like, you know, sometimes it feels like an all you can eat buffet, and it's like, how do you even, like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna eat so much, like, mashed potatoes and fried vegetables that I'm not even going to have room for the. For the steak sometimes. That's what these texts are like. There's so much good stuff here. So, anyway, we'll do what we can. We'll carve off a piece of it, chew on it in the sermon, rejoice in it. Don't forget Bible class today. We'll be in Hebrews also chichnick after the late service. I hope you can join us for that. God's peace be with you. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. A Sunday drive to church.