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[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmuller. This is the Sunday Drive to church podcast for May 3rd. Wow. May 2026, the fifth Sunday of Easter.
I think we could spend the entire Sunday drive to church talking about the collect for today. It's so. But. But I mean, it's again hit after hit after hit. Isaiah, chapter 12, James, chapter one. Jesus continues to teach us. It's John 16 for the gospel.
Beautiful. I mean, everything about today is wonderful. So let's pray this collect and then I want to. Well, let me see, let me, Let me prep you for it here.
It's an ancient collect. It's not. There's. There's three sources of these old collects. I was trying to track this down yesterday actually, because I was. I was wondering if this one is one of these collects that goes back to Gregory the Great. It doesn't. It's a different sacramentary system coming from the six hundreds, but. And we can't find this one. Although there's a lot of parallels of the theology back to Ambrose of Milan and his Easter pedagogical mystical sermons. So there was this mystical pedagogy tradition that there would be this sermons for the new confirmands after Easter, talking about the sacraments and that life that the Lord gives us in the sacraments. And we have some of these sermons from Ambrose.
And the people who have researched this collective found a lot of parallels in those sermons from Ambrose in this theology. It's just packed. Okay, so I'll pray it and then we'll bring out a few other points. Let's pray. Oh God, you make the minds of your faithful to be of one will.
Grant that we may love what you have 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.
Oh, boy. Okay, so the prayer is here to have a unity of mind. And will you make the minds of your faithful to be of one will? And this is a. This is a. The problem of being a Christian, I suppose, is that there's these two competing wills, the will of the spirit and the will of the flesh.
And so it results in this sort of divided mind. And coming right into the middle of that battle is this prayer for unity. And what does it look like? That we love what you command and we desire what you promise.
Our problem is that we love a lot of other things and desire a Lot of other things we have.
We have wrongly ordered love. We have wrongly ordered desires and wants. And so this is a prayer that our love might be directed towards the commandments of God and our desires towards the promises of God.
It's a beautiful way to distinguish law and Gospel, because remember that distinction between law and gospel is the distinction between command and promise.
That's the difference between obedience and faith. Because obedience is what you do with a command. It's how you keep a command. And faith is how you keep a promise. So that our, Our love, our actions, our words, our deeds are directed by God's commandments.
And our, Our desires, our wants, that inner life is. Is captivated by God's promises.
And then it talks about how this world is always changing.
Among the many changes of this world, there's all these fluctuations. There's a thing called the news, I don't know if you've heard of it, which is about how everything's new.
I mean, it's an amazing that this world is like a river. It just keeps rolling on.
It's.
There's an old. How did the old language for this go?
Here it is, the old tlh. It says, amongst the manifold changes of this world, that's the many changes, this multifaceted shiftiness of the world in which we're in.
And we feel it, this distress of everything changing among the manifold changes of this world.
Our hearts are fixed where true joys are found. This is the hope of the Resurrection.
But it's bound to that empty grave of Jesus so that our hearts are unmoving.
They're not cast about to and fro by every wind and wave.
Like the picture in James chapter one.
Our hearts are immovable.
They stand still like Psalm 46, while the world, the oceans are crashing and the mountains are collapsing.
We're still.
Our hearts are fixed.
Everything. This is the. I mean, this is so much in the prophets that the world, the judgment on the last day is going to be this shaking of the world, like this earthquake where the Lord almost just grabs the earth and just sort of shakes it. And everything that's not nailed down, everything that's not fixed is going to collapse. But our hearts are fixed.
And look at how the definition of eternal life is where true joys are found.
So we're not. Our hearts are not being tempted or lured away from Christ by false joys, by. By the illusion of happiness or contentment or whatever.
But. But our. Our hearts are established there where the true joy is.
This collect is just magnificent. Okay, we Got to roll through the rest of it because there's so much to talk about.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: For the infant Psalm, we have the first few verses of Psalm 66.
It's a great psalm of praise. Make a joyful shout to God all the earth.
Sing out the honor of his name. Make his praise glorious. Say to God, how awesome are your works. Come and see the works of God. He's awesome in his doing towards the sons of men.
It references here the escape from Egypt. And remember so many of the songs. Psalms will point back to these miracles that the Lord did in rescuing his people from Egypt and bringing them into the promised land. He turned the sea into dry ground.
They went through the river on foot also, not only the crossing of the Red Sea, but the crossing of the Jordan, both mentioned here.
There we will rejoice in Him. He rules by power forever. His eyes observe the nations. Don't let the rebellious exalt themselves. Bless our God, you people, and make the voice of his praise be heard.
This is this exaltation and praise of God, which we.
Which we do constantly, but especially on Sunday morning, we gather together to praise the Lord for who he is and all that he's done that is continued into the Old Testament, which is what the vicar is going to preach about today. It's a beautiful sermon that he's put together, especially this part. I'm still thinking about this.
I get to read the sermons, you know, and make sure they're orthodox and helpful. And I'm still thinking about this thing that he did in the sermon. You'll hear it, where he takes the song and says, well, how would Jesus have sung this song from the cross? It would be quite different. That's an amazing little thing.
So that's. That's there. It's one of my favorite passages from the Old Testament, especially the first verse.
You will say in that day, I'll give thanks to you, O Lord. For though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me.
So amazing.
We deserve God's anger and his wrath.
And. And we've done everything to invite it, but the Lord himself has turned it away.
And he hasn't turned away his anger just by saying, okay, I'm not angry anymore. He turned away his anger on to Christ our Lord Jesus, so that he's enduring the anger of God in our place.
With joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation. And you'll say, in that day, give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people. Proclaim that his name is exalted.
We'll sing this during the distribution. And I think Vicar has a singing. Remember we have that canticle in one of our liturgies. Give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. I think that's the order of prayer and preaching. We're going to sing that too.
Okay, I'll let him tell you the rest of that. We'll focus on the other two texts, James chapter one, which is also a beautiful text.
Don't be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, in whom there's no variation or shadow due to change of his own will. Will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
There's four places in the Bible where it talks about being born again or being regenerated.
John3.5 and Titus3.5 talk about the rebirth through the water and the Word, or the water and the Spirit.
So baptism is that rebirth. But Peter 1 Peter chapter one, and twice in 1 Peter, chapter one, and here in James chapter one, it talks about being born again by the word of truth, by just the word. So we have four passages that talk about the new birth. Two are water and the Word, and the other is the Word. Which is it? Are we reborn by the water and the Word in baptism or are we reborn. Reborn by the preaching of the Word, hearing and believing? The answer is yes.
And sometimes it happens altogether. And sometimes it happens, I suppose, in both. There's people who hear the word of God and they are born again. They become Christians and then they come to baptism where they're born again. Again, I suppose, where they're born by the water and the Spirit.
But the power is always in the Word. But it also happens. Happens in baptism. This is how we have to think of it. And then it gives some instructions. We're a first fruits of his creatures.
This is a beautiful connection.
That because Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, that resurrection has begun to do its work already in us before we're raised, so that we are participating in his new life already, even while we wait for our own resurrection.
So we'll be raised on the last day. That's true, but we already have.
That's the right way to think about it. We already have parts of that resurrected life that are showing up in our life now. And what does it look like?
James says, well, know this, my brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires. But put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save your souls.
So all the filthiness that we've inherited from Adam in our fallen heart is being thrown out. Just get rid of it, shovel it out, take out the trash.
And we're receiving the Word.
And the result is a. A quickness to listen, a slowness to speak, slowness to anger.
And here it talks about the difference. It talks about the anger of man. We can talk about the anger of God. There's sometimes when there's righteous anger that's called for, that's the anger of office, not the anger of person. So I'm not personally offended, but I might, as a father or husband or a pastor or citizen, there might be things that I'm supposed to be angry about.
But that's not because Brian is troubled and offended. It's because the office is troubled and offended. That's the difference between righteous and unrighteous anger. Well, even anger of office can be unrighteous, but it has to at least be anger of office if it wants to be righteous.
But here we're throwing out all these fleshly things because Christ dwells in us with His Holy Spirit, and he's living forever and causing us to live forever so that we have a different kind of life now because we're Christians, because we belong to life and not to death.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit which Jesus outlines in John 16. This is amazing. There's a few passages where the Lord Jesus is talking about this right here in John 14, 15, 16, 17.
And he says, well, it's the craziest in this text that we're going to hear today. He says, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.
And we just think the disciples. Well, we think to ourselves even now, almost 2,000 years later.
That's crazy. How can that be? How can it be advantageous to us that Jesus would leave, would enter, would be with us in a different way, that he would go away?
But he explains why, if I didn't go away, the helper, the comforter, the advocate, the parakletos, the Spirit would not come to you. But if I go, I'll send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning three things. And here Jesus outlines the most important work of the Spirit. He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
So the Holy Spirit will come and will do his work in the world as well as his work in us.
But his work in the world is he convicts the world about sin because Jesus says, they don't believe in me about righteousness because I go to the Father. And our righteousness is established by Jesus going to the Father, where he intercedes for us with his blood in the Father's throne. And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged, we hear that concerning judgment, think, oh boy, that's going to be us judged on the last day. But the judgment that the Holy Spirit brings to us first is the judgment of the devil by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And also this point that we cannot stop thinking about and remembering that Jesus ascension is.
It has cosmic impact.
I'm flipping here in my Bible to Ephesians, Chapter 1, Galatians, Ephesians, where Paul, I mean, he talks about this a handful of times, but here in the very end of Ephesians 1, he's saying, I wish you knew the power, power that was at work in you. This is what we're talking about. This is what James is talking about. The power at work in us that Jesus dwells in us and the Spirit dwells in us, just as we dwell in Christ and in the Spirit. And that results in power.
The power that's at work in us is the same power which he worked in Christ. This is Ephesians 1:20, when he raised him from the dead and said, seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and name that is above every name, not only in this age, but also that which is in the age to come. So the.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: The ascension of Jesus is his exaltation, specifically above all the ranks of devils.
This is.
How do we. What's the right way to think about this? Remember, when you sit it, sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. That's the promise from the Father to the Son. Psalm 110, verse 1. Those enemies that are the footstool of Jesus are the. Are the devil. And all the.
All the demons, all the demonic hordes and all their armies that are arrayed to destroy the Church, Jesus rules over them.
So when Jesus is talking about his leaving and sending the Spirit, this is the benefit, is that the ruler of this world is judged and the Holy Spirit is making that known to us.
So you have you, dear Christian, you, the baptized. Can you imagine this?
You are not just flesh, you are also spirit, the new man and the Holy Spirit dwells in you. And Jesus, who's risen from the dead, is with you, so that his resurrected life is being shown forth in you by your slowness to anger, your quickness to listen, by your casting out filthiness, by your receiving the word of God.
And the Holy Spirit is doing this work to. To demonstrate to you that there's power at work. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead and put him over the demons is also at work in us.
Can you. I mean.
Wow.
Our hymn of the day is Dear Christians One and All Rejoice. It's one of the two great ballads of the Reformation. This one is the Luther one.
So we'll sing one to five for the office hymn, and then we'll finish it right when we start communion. The last five stanzas, 6 to 10, and it walks all the way through. One of the most fun parts of this hymn is that it's this typical Luther where he crafts this conversation between the Father and the Son.
And so the Father.
The Father says, go, do my pleasure. And the Son says, of course, dear Father, I'll do it.
It's so good. So that. So that we see the cross as the unfolding of the secret counsel of God.
And it's all. And it's all for us. It's magnificent. All right, that'll have to do it today.
Easter 5 Sunday drive to church podcast. Drive safe. See you soon. God's peace be with you.