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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. This is the fourth Sunday of Easter and good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. This is a Sunday Drive to church podcast for May 11, the year of our Lord 2025.
[00:00:14] It is Pastor Wolfmother recording. If it sounds a little funny, I'm recording this podcast from the airport in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, getting ready to fly home tonight. So I'll see you in the morning.
[00:00:26] I'll be home. When you're listening to this, I'll be home, Lord willing, no problem.
[00:00:31] But I'm sitting here holding the phone to my face like I'm talking to someone, so I don't look like a weirdo. So if it sounds funny, sorry about that. Let's start with the. Oh, this is Good Shepherd Sunday, which is amazing, actually. So in the history of the church, Good Shepherd Sunday follows quickly after Easter. And in fact, in the, in the One Year Lectionary, Good Shepherd Sunday was already last week, the third Sunday of Easter. So you have Easter Sunday, Sunday after Easter Sunday, then whap, Good Shepherd Sunday, it comes fast. The Three Year Lectionary folks decided we'd let Easter breathe a little bit more. So you have three Sundays of big Easter events, and then it flips over to Good Shepherd Sunday. So we had it on Wednesday night. Last week at the deaf church, we had Good shepherd and then we had it on Wednesday night. Since we follow the One Year on Wednesday and now we have it, we have it on this Sunday and we hear about how Christ is our good shepherd. I think, I don't know why exactly. That idea of Christ, the good shepherd comes especially after Easter.
[00:01:31] It's beautiful and it's wonderful. My guess is that it comes from the prophecy of Micah, because Micah says, that's the Bethlehem prophecy. He'll be born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem.
[00:01:42] But then it says he will rise and shepherd his flock.
[00:01:46] And I think that resurrection, that rising there, is talking about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead so that he's. He's up from the dead to be the Good shepherd of his precious flock, which we are. How wonderful is that, that he knows us, that he calls us by name. And so the theme of the Sunday really has to do with that. It's the beautiful painting of Christ carrying the Lamb on his shoulders is wonderful. And it reminds us of how he loves us so much and deals with us so tenderly, so preciously, so carefully as a shepherd deals with the tender lambs. So great. So here's. Let's pray and then we'll. We'll look at the different texts. I don't. I don't suspect that I will overrun my time today like I did last week. So we'll see how that goes.
[00:02:35] Almighty God, merciful Father, since you have wakened from death the shepherd of your sheep, grant us yous Holy Spirit, that when we hear the voice of our shepherd, we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads through the same Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:03:00] Amen.
[00:03:02] That idea that my sheep hear my voice comes from our Gospel lesson. In fact, let's just go to the Gospel lesson. John, chapter 10.
[00:03:09] It's.
[00:03:10] It's amazing how John really has. He wants to develop these big themes, and so he'll have a whole chapter for an idea. And John, chapter 10 is the good shepherd chapter. He's really wrestling through that idea in the whole chapter. And so we get the end of the chapter here in this verse 22 to 30. And it says, at that time, the feast of the dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking the temple in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said, how long will you keep us in suspense?
[00:03:42] If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.
[00:03:45] Jesus answered them, I told you, you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you're not part of my flock.
[00:03:53] My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life. They will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. Oh, my Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hands. I and the Father are one.
[00:04:11] This is Jesus talking about this great promise. I'm the good shepherd. Now, the greatest of all of these good shepherd promises that Jesus makes is earlier in the chapter when he says, I'm the good shepherd. I lay down my life for the sheep, which is amazing. I mean, you can't hardly.
[00:04:26] Can you imagine a shepherd who would give up his life for the sheep? That's what Jesus says he is, which is an amazing thing. But then this beautiful, comforting thing. My sheep know my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
[00:04:45] The picture is from the ancient world, when the shepherds in these little towns filled with flocks all around, they'd come back to town at night and they'd put all the sheep in a big pen and they'd hire some high school kid to watch them. And then in the morning, all the shepherds would come out and they'd get at the gate of the sheepfold and they'd call their sheep by name. Can you imagine the chaos of 20 shepherds with 20 sheep each, and they're calling them all by name. And the sheep are able to recognize that voice of the shepherd and gather to him.
[00:05:20] It's a beautiful picture. We were talking about it at the deaf church last week because.
[00:05:24] And one of the members over there said, this is an amazing thing that deaf people marvel at is that a hearing person can answer the telephone, hello. And you can hear the voice of the person calling you. And you say, oh, it's my mom, that's my cousin, that's my brother. You recognize the voice of someone?
[00:05:40] And she said, we don't. How do you do that? How do you know who it is from the voice? Because in ASL, there's no kind of voice inflection.
[00:05:50] You can't do that. So we were talking a lot about. This is just an interesting thing that. How the sheep have this unique thing. They don't have too much good going for them, but they have this unique thing that they're able to distinguish between the voice of their shepherd and all the other voices.
[00:06:08] So they go to the voice of the shepherd.
[00:06:11] So we are marked by that. That we.
[00:06:14] That we go to the voice of Jesus, we listen to him, and we find his voice in his word.
[00:06:21] It's amazing. So good. Okay, better go back to the beginning. We have Psalm. Oh, the beautiful Psalm 23. We have a special arrangement of it with this. The Lord's my shepherd.
[00:06:31] We've talked about this hymn, and this hymn is so comforting, so wonderful, the great funeral hymn. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me. But remember this point that I think I just realized last year or the year before, I don't know how. Millions and millions of times I've read the psalm.
[00:06:50] Hundreds of billions of times. I'm sure I've read this psalm. And only recently did I recognize this change that happens.
[00:06:57] Remember when we look at the psalm, one of the questions we ask is, who is talking to whom?
[00:07:01] And it starts out as a sermon. King David is talking to us. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down. He. So we look at the pronouns and the pronouns used for God. Here are he, he, he. It's the third person. He's talking about God to us. But then it switches to second person, it switches from talking about God as a He to a God as you.
[00:07:24] In other words, it turns from a sermon into a prayer.
[00:07:28] And it turns into a prayer somewhere in the valley of the shadow of death.
[00:07:36] So the last third person pronoun is in the end of verse three. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
[00:07:48] And then the first second person pronounced is in the middle of verse four. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
[00:07:59] And so this psalm sermon turns into a psalm prayer somewhere in the beginning of verse four, somewhere in these words for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Somewhere in that, walking through the valley of the shadow of death, it turns from a sermon into a prayer. Can you see how beautiful the psalm is here?
[00:08:33] Just amazing that the Lord has given us such precious gifts in his word, such beauty to meditate on such wonderful promises.
[00:08:44] Just incredible. And this is one of these places. It's so wonderful that we get to think about these things and wonder that when we're going through this valley of the shadow of death, that the Lord is turning our contemplation and speaking of him into prayer and trust in him.
[00:09:06] Prayer, remember, is the voice of faith.
[00:09:09] Prayer is that confidence that the Lord. Well, that the Lord speaks, that the Lord promises, and that the Lord keeps his promise.
[00:09:20] That's great. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And here's the promise of everlasting life. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I also think it's interesting that this Psalm 23 switches the picture, because the first whole part of the psalm is the picture of a nice, well cared for flock of sheep. But the last part of the psalm is of a soldier feasting on the battlefield.
[00:09:46] You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. That's amazing.
[00:09:51] Okay, the first lesson is not from the Old Testament, it's from Acts. Remember, whatever reason, the three year lectionary likes to give us Acts readings in Easter. That's cool. This is this beautiful sermon from Acts, chapter 20. Let me give you the background, Paul. This is the. Oh, this is the end of the third missionary journey. So you'll remember that Paul in the third missionary journey is basically Paul getting on the Sonic jetliner and going straight to Ephesus. I mean, he's like, don't get in my way. I'm going to Ephesus. I was Trying to get to Ephesus before, but the Holy Spirit prevented me. But now I'm loose and boom, we go straight to Ephesus. And he goes there for three years. Maybe even during his three year stay, he takes a quick trip over to Corinth and back, but he's. He's in Ephesus for three solid years, setting up the church there, setting up a seminary there, working on the evangelization of all the regions, the cities all around there.
[00:10:41] Because Ephesus is this big major place and Paul's working hard to put a beachhead for the gospel right there in the shadow of the Artemis Temple and all this pagan magic nonsense that was going on in Ephesus. So he stays there and he sets up the church and he sets up all this stuff and then, and then he leaves. And the end of the third missionary journey is Paul kind of circling around the Aegean. So Ephesus is on the west coast of Turkey.
[00:11:10] So remember, you have the Mediterranean and kind of, if you're thinking of the Mediterranean, and you go to the northeast corner of the Mediterranean, up that land mass there, that's Turkey. And if you go all the way west, as far as you can go in Turkey, down at the end of the Meander River Valley, right where facing the Aegean Sea and looking out from Turkey over west towards Greece, there's Ephesus. And then he goes and he sails around. He kind of goes up to Philippi and he goes around Thessalonica, Corinth, he checks on all the other churches. He comes back, almost gets murdered, jumps off a ship, all this kind of crazy stuff, and then he's heading back to Jerusalem. He's taking a vow. He wants to get into Jerusalem for time, the first feast. And so he's heading back to Jerusalem. But he gets this. There's this tricky thing because he's like, how can I get back to Jerusalem in time if I stop in Ephesus? It's going to be really tricky to do.
[00:12:04] So he doesn't want to do that. He's nervous about if he goes to Ephesus, he's nervous he's not going to be able to get out of Ephesus. They're not going to basically not going to let him out. He's going to get stuck there.
[00:12:16] So he has all the pastors walk down the coast a few miles to Miletus and it's like having a layover. He has like, I got an extra long layover, you guys come and meet me. So all the pastors come down to Miletus. And Paul meets them there and he preaches this beautiful sermon, Acts, chapter 20. It's the only time that the book of Acts tells us about Paul preaching to Christians.
[00:12:41] Every other audience that Paul preaches to is a pagan audience or Jewish audience or whatever. It's not a Christian. So this is only Christian sermon. It's the only sermon that he quotes Jesus in. It's better to give than to receive.
[00:12:54] And it's this sermon where he talks about how the Lord has bought us.
[00:13:01] We have been purchased with the blood of God. It's this major verse that's one of the chief texts that reminds us that we can speak of God's mom and God's birth and God's death and God's grave, because we can speak of the blood of God.
[00:13:20] And here's probably why it's Good Shepherd Sunday, because he's preaching to these Christians and probably pastors. And I think actually that Paul set these guys in a seminary there, and they're getting ready to be ordained. And this is an ordination sermon either way, he says, because this is what you'd preach. Verse 28. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
[00:13:54] So we're taught there to confess the blood of God.
[00:13:58] That's amazing. He says, after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock of. And from your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things so that there's false doctrine coming from outside and from inside. We always have to beware of that.
[00:14:12] What a beautiful, absolutely beautiful sermon.
[00:14:16] And then we have the Epistle lesson, which is not an epistle. It's from the Revelation of Jesus. Chapter 7.
[00:14:22] This glorious, glorious passage.
[00:14:25] It's another funeral passage. It's amazing.
[00:14:30] It's the multitude. Remember last week on the Sunday drive to church, I talked about how Revelation does this. You hear it and you see it. And what you hear and what you see are two totally different things, but they're two totally different ways of describing the same reality.
[00:14:48] So in chapter five, we heard lion of the tribe of Judah, and we saw the Lamb as he had been slain. Both a description of Jesus.
[00:14:55] The same thing happens. In chapter seven, we hear at the beginning of the chapter, 144,000, 12,000 from every tribe. And then we look and see in verse 9, this is where our text starts. A great multitude that no one can number.
[00:15:10] Now, that's two different. Two totally different Descriptions of the same reality which is the church.
[00:15:17] A great multitude that no one could number from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing before the throne and the Lamb and clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands. This is the clearest picture of how it is with our loved ones who are in heaven now. They're crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne on the Lamb.
[00:15:39] And the angel says, after they're described a little bit more. This is so good.
[00:15:44] One of the elders says, who are these clothed in white robes? And from where have they come?
[00:15:51] And John says, you know, sir, you know. And then the elder tells John who they are. Listen to these words describing those we love in heaven and describing you in a few years, whenever the Lord calls you and me into heaven. This is the description.
[00:16:13] These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.
[00:16:17] They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
[00:16:23] Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
[00:16:32] They shall hunger no more, neither shall thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. The Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd. Did you get that? The. The Lamb is the shepherd.
[00:16:44] Wait a minute. That's a trick.
[00:16:47] It's a beautiful trick.
[00:16:48] And he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
[00:16:58] There's too many beautiful things in that passage to talk about, but how about this? That the robes are made white by the blood, which is a kind of ridiculous image, because blood is like the last thing that can wash. I mean, blood is a terrible thing to stain.
[00:17:17] But here it says that we here in these tattered, dirty, filthy robes by our own sin, that we are cleansed by this blood.
[00:17:31] So the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins. That's how Peter says we're ransomed not by gold and silver, but with his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.
[00:17:45] So that it is the blood of Jesus that washes our conscience clean from all the sin and guilt and shame that we have. So that we're clothed in the white robes, not of our own works.
[00:17:57] We're clothed in the white robes, not of our own efforts. We're clothed in the white, in the dirty, filthy roof made white by the blood of the Lamb.
[00:18:10] That is wonderful.
[00:18:13] The hymn is this beautiful. The King of Love, My shepherd, is which is this paraphrase of Psalm 23, like so many of these paraphrases, are absolutely beautiful. The King of love, my shepherd is whose goodness faileth never I nothing lack, if I am his, and he is mine forever.
[00:18:35] We also tomorrow have the rite in the late service. We have the rite of First Communion and also had scheduled the Rite of Confirmation, although we had one confirmand and it sounds like he might not make it for being sick. So we have the right of First Communion.
[00:18:47] We haven't done this at St. Paul.
[00:18:50] We for the last few years, moved confirmation earlier so that the kids could get confirmed in sixth grade, seventh grade, whenever they were ready. We decided that we wanted to stretch out confirmation through eighth grade, and so we made available this rite of First Communion. So these kids, these young students, have gone through a couple years of confirmation class and have done their memory work and gotten to level five. And in some ways they would. Well, don't tell. Well, they. They would be at confirmation level where we were before. But we want to keep them all together in this class till eighth grade, so they're eligible for that. So that'll be in the late service as well. And it'll be a great joy to welcome them to the Lord's table and the gifts that the Lord has for them there. That'll be absolutely great. All right. I think that should probably do it for me. I got to go find the gate. But we'll have Bible class on the.
[00:19:48] Continuing on the. On the liturgy. I think I'm going to try to push a little more tomorrow, so I'm going to ignore you guys asking questions. Well, I say that I never can do it.
[00:19:59] We'll see how it goes.
[00:20:00] But that'll be great. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. See you soon.