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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. Pastor Wolfman. This is the Sunday drive to church for the sixth Sunday of Easter.
[00:00:10] You know, it's a good question if it's the last Sunday in the season of Easter, because sometimes the Sunday, the seventh Sunday of Easter is considered the first Sunday after ascension. Anyway, this is at least one of the last Sundays in the season of Easter. And we continue to hear all of this joy of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus coming through. Even, in fact, his promises that he's given, he gives to the disciples before his crucifixion and resurrection. So we're again in Revelation 21. We're again in John 16. We're again in the Book of Acts.
[00:00:46] Absolutely beautiful texts. So wonderful. And some beautiful hymns. And if you're in late service, a couple baptisms, a confirmation.
[00:00:58] Whoo. We're gonna have the.
[00:01:00] Yeah, it's a lot going on today anyway. Let's see what we got. The psalm. Oh, the psalm. Let's start. Oh, let's start with a collect. That's what I want to do. Let's pray.
[00:01:10] O God, the giver of all that is good, by your holy inspiration, grant that we may think those things that are right and by your merciful guiding, accomplish them through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:01:29] Amen.
[00:01:30] Amen. All right. Psalm 67 is our Psalm.
[00:01:36] This is a really interesting psalm. It's very.
[00:01:41] We don't know who wrote it.
[00:01:43] Maybe it's later, maybe it's earlier.
[00:01:46] Maybe the occasion is this great deliverance. It's a harvest, but it's an exceptional harvest. In fact, it's only seven verses, and the last two verses are the occasion of the psalm. The earth has yielded its increase. God our God shall bless us. God shall bless us.
[00:02:02] Let all the ends of the earth fear him. So God has blessed us. God will bless us. I remember when I did my fieldwork at the seminary, Pastor Olson, Thomas Olson, would end all of his Bible classes with the Psalm 67, verse 6 and 7. God our God shall bless us. God shall bless us.
[00:02:21] Let all the ends of the earth fear him. And I remember finding that in Chemnitz. Martin Chemnitz. Remember Martin Chemnitz? The second Martin.
[00:02:30] He was the examination. Oh, okay. How many rabbit trails am I? Sometimes I lose track of the rabbit trails. It reminded me, though, that our own Dylan Smith has translated a summary of Martin Chemnitz's examination of the Council of Trent. And he's finished that translation of the first part. And it's just on me to publish the book. It's an amazing thing.
[00:02:50] This is going to be so helpful. You guys asked me about.
[00:02:52] You all should spur me on to love and good deeds to get that thing done.
[00:02:58] Because Martin Chemnitz's examination of the Council of Trent is this massive takedown. It's like a body slam of Roman Catholicism and all the false doctrine. So Trent, remember, is the Roman Catholic council that was held as Luther was dying. They didn't invite the Lutherans, and they basically said, hey, the Lutherans are wrong. And also the Reformed and the Anabaptists, but especially the Lutherans are wrong. And they spent a couple years writing it all down about how wrong we are. So Martin Chemnitz, this probably the second greatest Lutheran theologian.
[00:03:33] He's up there. He's in the top five.
[00:03:36] He looked at the Council of Trent and the teaching of Andrada, who was the chief theologian of Trent, and just takes it down from the Scriptures and from church history and from the Fathers. It's absolutely beautiful. But it's in four volumes. It's kind of hard to.
[00:03:55] I mean, the professional theologians have it. And for a long time I've thought that, man, this book needs to be out there on every Lutheran shelf. And Dylan is making it happen. Anyway, it's going to be great. Now, Chemnitz, I was talking about him because in his lotze, his topics of Theology, he notes that this passage should be understood as trinitarian. In fact, he has a whole thing about how when we see these threefold repetitions in the Old Testament, we should think, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Holy, holy, holy. For example, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And this is the great second example that he gives. Psalm 67, 6, 7. God our God shall bless us.
[00:04:42] God shall bless us. Let the ends of the earth fear him. And that's really the theme of this psalm.
[00:04:48] That the Lord is Lord of all of the earth, and so all of the earth should rejoice and delight in his judgment and in his care.
[00:05:00] So the first two verses are the prayer, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us. Why, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.
[00:05:14] And then verses 3, 4, and 5 are repeating that same prayer with deeper intensity.
[00:05:23] Let all the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy for you Judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations on the Earth, Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you.
[00:05:40] So God is not only the God of Israel, he is the God of all of the earth. This is the evangelical impulse of even in the Old Testament, but of all of Christianity, that the Lord Jesus would claim all people as his friends, as the object of his affection and salvation.
[00:06:03] It's no wonder that Luther, his hymn on this psalm. May God bestow on us his grace.
[00:06:14] I'm going to find it. I'm going to sing it to you because the old way to sing it to you because like, oh, boy, Pastor, this is great. You know what we love most about Sunday drive to church is when you just start singing to us and all out of pitch. And this is what we need more of. That's why we tune in. Well, may God bestow on us his grace. The old way to do it, because here's my.
[00:06:37] Okay, sorry, I should finish one sentence.
[00:06:40] Luther did his Psalm 67 hymn. May God bestow on us his grace, his hymnic paraphrase of this psalm. And we put it in the mission section because that's what it's about. It's about the Lord claiming all people.
[00:06:59] Here it is, 8:23. Now, I'm not surprised that they've given us two options for tunes because the old tune was impossible. In fact, I'm not even sure if the old tune is in here.
[00:07:13] Let me see. No, yeah, here it. Oh, yeah, here it is.
[00:07:19] Now, here's the story. I remember at seminary I took classes from Dr. Masaki. Oh, beautiful man. Teacher, so great. He's a theologian from Japan.
[00:07:29] He's a great profound Luther scholar. And he had us singing Luther hymns at the beginning of every class.
[00:07:36] And they were just sung a cappella. And a lot of them were unknown to all of us. And so sometimes it would be bad. But there was no train wreck bigger than the train wreck of all of us first year seminarians with Dr. Masaki trying to sing.
[00:07:50] May God bestow on us his grace with blessing rich provide us.
[00:08:00] Train wreck. So we got another tune. May God bestow on us his grace with blessings rich, et cetera, et cetera. Sounds a little nicer. Anyway, we should probably sing that more because listen to what it says. May God bestow on us his grace with blessings rich provide us. And may the brightness of his face to life eternal guide us that we his saving health may know his gracious will and pleasure. And also to the nation show Christ riches without measure and unto God convert them.
[00:08:31] So the gospel is not just for us.
[00:08:33] It is for all people, for those near, for those far God be praised. Psalm 67. It's one of those psalms that we should.
[00:08:43] We should treasure. All right, first lesson is the book of Acts, chapter 16. We're in the Paul section. We've been in the Peter section, I think for the last few weeks. In fact, last week Peter was there in Joppa, going up to Caesarea, had the unclean picnic vision.
[00:09:01] Now we're at another vision. And this is to Paul. This is Acts 16, starting with verse 9. A vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, come over. Come over here to Macedonia and help us.
[00:09:17] Come help us.
[00:09:19] This is interesting that.
[00:09:21] So this is in the. It's in the middle. Well, it's. Yeah, it's in the middle of the second missionary journey.
[00:09:28] And if I'm reading the book of Acts right, Paul is trying to go to Ephesus and the Holy Spirit is preventing him. He just is blocking him every way and keeps sending him north. So Ephesus is kind of right in the center of the west facing coast of Turkey. And Paul is being guided northwest, northwest, so that he ends up in Troas, which is right next to Troy. That's like the northwest corner of Turkey. And it's there that he meets Luke. In fact, is this the we section?
[00:10:01] Yeah, yeah. Look at verse 11. So setting sail from Troy as we made a direct voyage, I think that's the first we. And this shows that that's where Luke joined Paul's company. It's amazing.
[00:10:15] And so when you're reading through the Book of Acts, sometimes you say he. And that's where Luke is writing about Paul. Sometimes he says, we. That's where Luke is with Paul. And this is why we think that Luke was from Troas. At least that's where Paul picked him up and he joined the group. But here Paul is in Troas and he's got his mind on Ephesus. As far as I can tell, he wants to go south down the coast. But he sees at night a vision. And it's a Macedonian man. Remember, there's Turkey and then there's the Aegean Sea and then there's Greece, and the north part of Greece is Macedonia, where Philip the Great was from and all those places.
[00:10:53] And so he sees this Macedonian, come over here and help us.
[00:10:57] So Paul says, all right, so they set sail from Macedonia and when they arrive, it's going to tell his journey.
[00:11:04] They made a direct voyage to Samothrace the following day to Neapolis. And Neapolis is the seacoast there on the north of the Aegean. And this is the first time that Paul reaches Europe, and maybe the first time the gospel reaches Europe and they hit Neapolis.
[00:11:26] There's a mosaic at the port of Neapolis that you can see now.
[00:11:31] And it's the vision of the Macedonian man saying, come and help us. And he goes up to Philippi.
[00:11:37] It's a weird thing that. So Paul gets to Philippi, and it's in Greece, Macedonia, but it's really a very Latin place because there was some great battle there and the Romans won, and then just a bunch of the generals kind of retired and set up shop there. So you can walk around the ruins of Philippi, and all of the inscriptions are not in Greek, they're in Latin. You're like, we're not in Italy, we're in Greece. But it was a real Roman kind of place. And he goes there, it says he goes to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. And we remain there some days.
[00:12:13] And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to a riverside where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women that had come together. It's interesting that any place there was 10 or more Jewish men, they would build a synagogue. And this. The fact that Paul meets Lydia, the seller of purple, this rich Jewish woman by the river, indicates that they didn't even have 10 Jewish men in the city.
[00:12:41] So Paul would normally go to the synagogue, but there's no synagogue. So he goes to Lydia, and she is granted repentance, and Paul stays in her home. And a number of things happen. Lydia's whole family is baptized, then Paul's put in jail, and then he's broken out of jail, except for he doesn't leave. And then the jailer becomes a Christian, and his whole family is baptized. And then they stone Paul and they lead him out of the city, but he comes back in. All this stuff is going to happen in Philippi, and from there he's going to travel kind of southwest to Thessalonica and then to Berea, and he's on his way down to Athens and Corinth. That's where we are in the story. But it's this Gospel, as the Lord promised, going from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and now to the ends of the earth. And this is another one of those big hurdles that the Holy Spirit drags the Gospel over so that now it's over in Europe.
[00:13:38] Paul would eventually get to Ephesians, in fact, to Ephesus.
[00:13:43] He makes a brief stop in Ephesus on his way back to Jerusalem at the end of the second missionary journey. And then the third missionary journey, it's boom, straight, straight to Ephesus. And he stays there for three years.
[00:13:58] The epistle lesson is Revelation 21, verses 9, 14, 21, 27. It's a continuation of this culmination.
[00:14:08] And it's really good for us to, especially when we're reading Revelation 20, 21 and 22, to see all of the parallels that exist between these chapters, the last chapters of the Bible and the first chapters of the Bible.
[00:14:26] There's the rivers.
[00:14:28] Just like the rivers were surrounding the Garden of Eden, so the rivers are surrounding the city.
[00:14:37] There's gates on the city. In fact, the vision here is this beautiful temple, garden city with the Lamb in the midst of it.
[00:14:49] It's beautiful beyond our comprehension.
[00:14:52] It says.
[00:14:54] It says, I saw no temple in the city. For its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb.
[00:15:01] The city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it. For the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.
[00:15:09] And by its light will the nations walk. That's Psalm 67. And the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it so that this whole city is lit by God, filled with God. There's no temple because the whole thing is this temple, this dwelling place, place of God, which is with man.
[00:15:28] And it's the.
[00:15:30] This culmination is the. Is the wedding.
[00:15:34] That's how it starts. It says, come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
[00:15:39] And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.
[00:15:48] Someone asked me the question. I can't remember where.
[00:15:51] It seems like the last couple of weeks, maybe it was at church. What about this new heaven and the new earth? What does that mean?
[00:16:00] We say, world without end. Is it going to end? Why is it new? The picture here is.
[00:16:05] It's almost like if you can imagine that the earth died and the soul of the earth, which is the heaven, was separated from it. And so now we have this kind of earthly existence below and the spiritual existence above. But just like we will be raised on the last day and our bodies will be perfected and our souls will be back into our bodies, that. That same thing happens at a cosmic level, that heaven and earth are joined back together and the dwelling place of God Is again with man.
[00:16:35] And this is not just some fairy tale. Sometimes I have to.
[00:16:39] This is actually the hard thing for me when I wonder about things. This is one of the places where I think the devil tempts me to doubt the scripture. Because maybe it's not to doubt, but just to forget that this is real, that this is really how things are going to be. I mean, it'll be even more wonderful than we could possibly imagine. But here the language is used to get us as close as we can get to it.
[00:17:07] That we'll behold the glory of Jesus. And it'll be this radiant light and joy and peace and wonder.
[00:17:20] Come, Lord Jesus.
[00:17:22] Our gospel lesson is John 16.
[00:17:25] It's continuing the discussion of Jesus on Maundy Thursday.
[00:17:31] It is his valedictory speech, his coming right before the end.
[00:17:37] And he speaks really of two things.
[00:17:40] He first speaks of prayer. He says, in that day you will ask nothing of me.
[00:17:46] Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he'll give it to you. Till now you've asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
[00:17:56] And the disciples, then Jesus says, now I've been speaking to you in figures of speech. And they say, well, we understand this part.
[00:18:03] And Jesus says, do you believe now? Look at what's happening. The day's coming, it's about to happen that you're all going to be scattered. You're going to leave me. I won't be alone. The Father's with me.
[00:18:13] But then he tells us why he says all these things. And this is a word to write in script of gold in our hearts.
[00:18:21] This is John 16:33.
[00:18:24] Jesus says, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.
[00:18:31] In the world you will have tribulation.
[00:18:35] But take heart, I have overcome the world.
[00:18:40] Oh boy, this is just so amazing. I think I'll have to preach on this. So I don't want to say too much about it. But Jesus says, you're in the world.
[00:18:47] Result trouble, but you're in me. The result of that is peace.
[00:18:54] And that peace is because Jesus has overcome the world.
[00:18:58] That victory over the world. That means. And it doesn't mean world like this, the physical world, the earth. It means the.
[00:19:05] The anti God impulses of this creation. After the fall, it's all overcome.
[00:19:12] It's great.
[00:19:14] Our hymn of the day is the great, the magnificent epic poem. Dear Christians one and all, rejoice by none other than Martin luther himself. It's 10 stanzas and so it's this ballad of Christ's redemption. And it's a nice thing to note that if you're in your hymnal, it's 5:56, the hymn before it. 5:55.
[00:19:37] Salvation unto us has Come. This hymn by Paul Spiratus. These were two, really the two foundational hymns of the Reformation. A Mighty fortress was in there. That first Lutheran hymnal was published with four hymns.
[00:19:49] Ah, eight hymns. Four or eight hymns. I think it's eight. And these are two of them. And I think four were by Luther and two were by Paul Spiratus and one was by Elizabeth Cusiger and I can't remember the other. Anyway, that's probably all wrong. Jonathan, if you're listening, shaking his head in embarrassment that I don't know these things, but this is a beautiful ballad and so you have to hear it as a story.
[00:20:16] Not every hymn tells a story. I mean, most of them have some sort of narrative movement to them, but not like this one. And Salvation of Osteos come. They.
[00:20:30] They're telling a story, so you got to get it all together. It's good. We're going to sing the first five verses before the sermon and then we'll sing the last five verses for the first distribution hymn. But listen to some of these. Just kind of get the contours of it. Dear Christians, one and all Rejoice with exaltation springing and with united heart and voice and holy rapture singing Proclaim the wonders God has done. How his right arm the victory won. What price our ransom cost him then? So this is this call to praise.
[00:21:01] But why did we need to be rescued and ransomed? Well, stanza two, fast. Bound in Satan chains I lay Death brooded darkly over me.
[00:21:13] Sin was my torment night and day. So did you see that, Satan? Death. Sin.
[00:21:18] In sin my mother bore me original sin. But daily deeper still I fell, I added to it actual sin. Life became a living hell without the gospel and without Christ. That's all we have. So firm sin possessed me.
[00:21:31] I'm trying to fix it. But look at Stanza 3. My own good works all came to naught, no grace or merit gaining. I can't get that by my works.
[00:21:40] Free will against God's judgment fought. That's so amazing that Luther talked about the bondage of the will. Here he says we have free will, but our will is only free to fight against God, which is what it means to be bound. Death to all good remaining.
[00:21:54] My fears increased till sheer despair and left only death to be my share. The pangs of hell I suffered. But beautiful. Verse 4, stanza 4. But God had seen my wretched state before the world's foundation and mindful of his mercies great he planned for my salvation.
[00:22:15] He turned to me a father's heart. He did not choose the easy part, but gave his dearest treasure. He said to his beloved son, it's time to have compassion.
[00:22:23] Then go bright jewel my crown, and bring to all salvation. Can you imagine? Here Luther is picturing for us painting this picture of the Father saying to the Son, choitzke, it's time to go.
[00:22:36] I love you. But now it's time for you to suffer.
[00:22:40] And rescue all these sinners from sin and sorrow. Set them free, slay bitter death for them, that they may live with you forever.
[00:22:48] And then, stanza six. The Son obeyed his father's will, was born a virgin mother and God's good pleasure to fulfill. He came to be my brother, his royal power disguised, he bore a servant's form like mine he wore to lead the devil captive. Now there's a lot there actually. But that Jesus, he hides his glory in his incarnation, so his body covers up his glory.
[00:23:15] And he does that his humiliation to lead the devil captive. That's this old idea. It's all through the church fathers, and Luther picks up on it too. It's so great that Jesus is like a. He's like worm. A worm on the hook. And the devil is tricked and he bites him. He's like a lure to lure the devil in so that he devour him. And in his devouring of Christ be devoured himself.
[00:23:44] Now then Jesus turns to us and really, the last four stanzas, you have to imagine Jesus now crucified so that he could leave captivity captive and gives gifts to men. This is the great Ephesians 4, Psalm 68. Promise.
[00:24:04] Now Jesus turns to us and says, stay close to me.
[00:24:08] I'm your rock and castle, your ransom. I myself will be for you. I strive and wrestle. I'm yours, you're mine.
[00:24:15] Where I am you may remain. The foe won't divide us.
[00:24:19] He will shed my precious blood, me of my life, bereaving all this, I suffer for your good. Be steadfast in believing life will from death the victory win. My innocence will bear your sin, you're blessed forever. Now to my Father I depart from earth to heaven ascending and heavenly wisdom to impart the Holy Spirit sending in trouble, he'll comfort you and teach you always to be true and into truth shall guide you. I never noticed this until right now.
[00:24:47] Look at how smart Jonathan is when Jesus is talking to us, we have to say, well, when is he talking to us? Like, is he talking to us now? After he's ascended into heaven? Is he talking to us after he's raised from the dead? No, he's talking to us the night before the resurrection. This is John 16.
[00:25:06] This is a paraphrase of all the things that Jesus says. Look, he says, he will shed my precious blood me of my life bereaving, but all this I suffer for your good. So Luther takes us in our imaginations. Oh, man, this is unbelievable.
[00:25:24] I can't believe I never saw this.
[00:25:27] He takes us back to the upper room.
[00:25:30] That's where this hymn puts us.
[00:25:32] Jesus hasn't died yet, but he's saying to us and to the disciples, don't worry, I'm going to die, but it's for your good. And then I'm going to leave. But the Holy Spirit will come.
[00:25:43] What I on earth have done and taught guide all your life and teaching, so the kingdom's work be wrought and honored in your preaching.
[00:25:52] But watch lest foes with base alloy the heavenly treasure should destroy this final word I leave you. Oh, boy.
[00:26:00] So Luther puts us back into the John 16 text.
[00:26:04] So we're there with the disciples, hearing these words of Jesus.
[00:26:08] Oh, wow.
[00:26:13] How phenomenal is that? Oh, God be praised.
[00:26:16] All right, that sounds pretty good. I mean, look, I know you guys are probably like, you got in the car and you said, well, let's go get ice cream instead, but you listen to the podcast. Like, how can we miss this, right?
[00:26:30] So we'll see you soon. And Bible class. I think today I get to teach Bible class. And we'll take up the.
[00:26:35] We'll take up the Doctrine of the Liturgy and Divine service a little bit more as well and talk about that. So we'll see you soon. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah.